Escaped 'Spam King' in Murder-Suicide
A convicted “spam king” who walked away from a minimum security federal prison camp earlier this month has reportedly committed a murder-suicide while on the lam.
Edward “Eddie” Davidson, 35, was found dead Thursday in a car in Colorado along with his wife, 29, and 3-year-old daughter, according to Scientific American. A teenage daughter who was shot in the neck survived, along with a 7-month-old boy who was not physically harmed,.
Lured into a final meeting with Davidson by his promise to turn himself in after saying goodbye to his family, his wife was the first to die. Next Davidson aimed the .45-caliber pistol at his 16-year-old daughter, merely grazing her neck as she desperately ducked to try to avoid him and bolted from the Toyota Sequoia, zigzagging shoeless down a gravel driveway, reports the Rocky Mountain News.
Strapped into her car seat, Davidson’s 3-year-old daughter couldn’t avoid his next shot. The car apparently was parked outside the family’s former home in Bennett, Colo., at the time, and the unnamed teen ran to the nearest home, where a Denver police officer lives. He found the bodies in the car, after calling for help.
The magazine reports that Davidson had served about two months of a 21-month sentence for tax evasion and falsifying computer records when he escaped on July 20 after a visit from his family. He also had been ordered to pay the Internal Revenue Service about $715,000 in fines.
Davidson received a reduced sentence, according to the article, for cooperating and agreeing to testify in a case against a former business partner, Darrel Uselton, 41, of Katy, Tex. Uselton, who is facing federal and state charges concerning an alleged securities fraud he is accused of perpetrating with the help of spam e-mail.
At last report, Uselton was being held in Texas in the Harris County Jail in lieu of $8 million bond, according to a press release from the Texas Attorney General’s office. He is scheduled to be tried on Sept. 29.
Related coverage:
Scientific American: “A Tale of Two ‘Spam Kings’ “
