Internet security company mogul John McAfee and a biker gang. Anyone can be an addict.
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Software millionaire John McAfee, 67, who sold his anti-virus Internet security company in 1994, apprehended in Guatemala after his Belizean neighbor, Florida restaurateur and builder Gregory Viant Faull, 52, was murdered execution-style. Belizean authorities claim they simply want to question McAfee, but they likely believe he killed Faull after a long-running feud boiled over into the poisoning of McAfee’s dogs, for which McAfee blames Faull. Considering the fact that the heavily tattooed and reportedly paranoid McAfee is known for violent behavior, engages in odd sexual proclivities, keeps at least a half dozen under-25-year-old girlfriends and has long been suspected of psychotropic drug use (including “bath salts,” an extremely dangerous drug related to methamphetamine), addictionologists wouldn’t be surprised if he is responsible for Faull’s murder. His dogs may contain proof of his guilt: after he found them poisoned, he told a girlfriend he put them out of their misery by shooting and burying them. Authorities recently dug up the dogs to see if the bullets match those in Faull’s head.
Eight members of the Forbidden Ones, the Dirty Ones and the Trouble Makers, biker gangs whose members average age 51, arrested and charged with firearms trafficking. Undercover officers bought 41 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammo and a full-sized cast-iron cannon as part of a two-year undercover sting; the gangs sold the weapons out of tattoo parlors they controlled in Brooklyn and Queens. The cannon was fully operational and parked at the front door of the Forbidden Ones’ clubhouse ready to be fired at infiltrators. Members wore “bangout patches,” an emblem of two handguns crossing, as a badge of honor for assaulting NYPD cops. Four of the eight arrested were too sick to make their arraignment and were instead admitted to a hospital. Two of them needed heroin detox; another, Scott Brannigan, 61, complained of high blood pressure and a bad heart. Agents found several improvised explosive devices, 20 guns, 2,000 envelopes of heroin and a couple of ounces of cocaine and marijuana inside Brannigan’s home—where his wife—are you ready?—operated a day care center. It’s nice to know that, as Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch put it, “Violent biker gangs are not outside the reach of the law no matter how many patches or tattoos they wear.” Or even if they operate day care centers inside their homes, filled with weapons and drugs.