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July 25, 2008 6:58 AM PDT

Escaped 'spam king' allegedly kills self, family

by Margaret Kane

A convicted spammer who escaped from prison was found dead Thursday night, along with his wife and 3-year-old daughter.

Eddie Davidson, dubbed a "spam king," was sentenced to 21 months in prison in April after pleading guilty to falsifying header information to send spam e-mail, tax evasion, and criminal forfeiture, the Associated Press reported.

Police had been searching for Davidson since Sunday, when he escaped from a minimum-security federal prison in Florence, Colo., 90 miles south of Denver, according to the AP.

Police responding to reports of gunshots found Davidson and his family in an SUV in a driveway in Bennett, Colo., according to news reports. A baby was found in a car seat uninjured, and a teenage girl who was shot in the neck ran to a neighbor's house for help and has been hospitalized. The relationship of the baby and teen to Davidson is unclear, according to the AP.

Margaret is news editor for CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. She also oversees the CNET Blog Network. E-mail Margaret.
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Add a Comment (Log in or register) (24 Comments)
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by mtadam July 25, 2008 7:46 AM PDT
Are you kidding me? EVERYONE who is incarcerated on ANY level should have a GPS band around their neck that requires at the very least, bolt cutters to remove. That way the police have a solid chance at aprehending them before they run home and kill their family. WAKE UP AMERICA.
Reply to this comment
by The_Decider July 25, 2008 12:19 PM PDT
And how many convicts escape and then proceed to kill their family?

You might want to wake up from your irrational fear.
by krosavcheg July 25, 2008 7:56 AM PDT
Coward is, coward does Forrest. Kill your family for having to go do 21 months? That is the real no brainer here. School shootings, people killing their whole family, kids shot for Ipods...when is enough a enough? Sad yes, embarrassing as a society, absolutely.
Reply to this comment
by Lerianis July 25, 2008 10:40 AM PDT
I wouldn't call this guy a coward. I would call him a family annihilator (look it up on Wikipedia) who believed that his family would not be able to go without him for that long..... and the sad fact is, considering he was the ONLY one making any money for his family, he was probably right.
by arlandean July 25, 2008 3:04 PM PDT
The Spam King was in fact a coward and a murderer. No label like "family annihilator" can change that. Speculation about his family's capacity to "go without him" rings hollow as well. Every day worldwide, families endure/survive far worse hardships under far more legitimate circumstances. No amount of psychological analysis or perverse rationalization can change what lies at the core of this tragedy.
by open-mind July 25, 2008 8:12 AM PDT
mtadam...

I couldn't agree more regarding GPS. This is such an obvious solution, yet the law enforcement world seems oblivious to it. I imagine the ACLU and liberal judges would whine about it, but that happens every day anyway. The rights of criminals are the most important ones after all.
Reply to this comment
by fredtheviking July 25, 2008 8:14 AM PDT
mtadam? GPS band around the neck? Are you insane? You can't stop murder or crime by such extreme measure. In fact, crime cannot altogether be stop. It comes down with what people are willing to live with. I would say the crime rate in my area (Boston) is well within my threshold. I feel quite safe. GPS band are not likely to make you safer and will only make prison worse than it already is.
Reply to this comment
by arlandean July 25, 2008 2:40 PM PDT
fredtheviking, you seem to miss the point entirely: Innocent people died because of an escaped convict's mental instability. A GPS device would permit tracking and alerting of an escape. Had the prison system been alerted immediately that the prison's physical perimeter been breached, capture could have been quickly initiated and those innocent people would doubtless be alive today. Of course crime in all its variations cannot be stopped but that is hardly the point. Moreover, the fact that you yourself feel safe is irrelevant.
by Remo_Williams July 25, 2008 8:23 AM PDT
go back to sleep, '****. two million ankle bracelets is too much care and feeding for most of the population. besides, the guards are the ones who need an upgrade.

-R
Reply to this comment
by 08Rabbit July 25, 2008 8:25 AM PDT
Man, people are sick...
Reply to this comment
by jarmenda July 25, 2008 8:39 AM PDT
What a pisser
Reply to this comment
by happyguy77 July 25, 2008 8:39 AM PDT
Wait, so he did that rather than just do the 21 months in prison? I mean, that's less than 2 years, wow. And knowing our prison system he probably would have gotten out in less than half that time on good behavior. Depressing stuff.
Reply to this comment
by Lerianis July 25, 2008 10:43 AM PDT
Two years is a LONG time. You ever spent even ONE DAY in prison or jail? I haven't, but I have talked with other people who have, and it is NOT a picnic.

Really, they shouldn't have given this guy jail time in the first place. An extremely stiff fine, forbidding him to have a computer, but NOT jail time. I mean, for freak's sake: murderers have been known to get only 2 years in prison.... this doesn't rise to the level of murder, I am sorry to say!

That said, I do absolutely hate spammers, and think they should have their computers busted and their hands cut off or, at least, broken.
by kkohnen July 25, 2008 8:43 AM PDT
I feel very sorry for his wife and daughter.
Reply to this comment
by Mabus July 25, 2008 9:04 AM PDT
It probably wasn't about the 21 months, but rather about the wife discovering the teenage mistress and baby...
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by masonx July 25, 2008 9:11 AM PDT
For the last hundred years, almost every animal study made on over population shows that as population increases, limited physical resources (in humans it includes the perception of limitations) and the resulting mental stresses create really bizarre deviations from normal mental (logical) processing and or typical instinctive species behavior. This kind of increased mental aberration in our uncontrolled, unmanaged and illogical growing population is just the beginning folks. In spite of our arrogance and conceit, we are subject to the same basic biological laws as all the other species. Welcome to the ongoing human bloom and crash process. Slower moving than in rat over population affects because of our longer life spans, later maturing and longer offspring rearing spans - but just as deadly.
Reply to this comment
by 4score20 July 25, 2008 9:26 AM PDT
This is such a tragedy. Family annihilation is a very scary phenomenon. It usually occurs with men but women have been known to kill their children and themselves at times also.
Reply to this comment
by yacahuma July 25, 2008 9:47 AM PDT
fredtheviking , within your threshold??????????

You have to be out of your freaking mind. If there just one dead in a whole year, and that happened to be your son, your spouse. Is that withint your threshold.

One death, is one to many, for the one affected, IDIOT
Reply to this comment
by The_Decider July 25, 2008 12:22 PM PDT
Too bad you aren't smart enough to know that lowjacking people won't stop murder.
by Joe3Eagles July 25, 2008 12:22 PM PDT
Appropriate end for the sleazeball. Unfortunate for his family.
Reply to this comment
by Vegaman_Dan July 25, 2008 1:16 PM PDT
I would be curious why once the prisoner's escape had been noticed that the authorities didn't immediately check and stake out his home since that was an obvious possible destination? We don't know the whole story here, but this is one question I'd like to have answered.
Reply to this comment
by listenbeforespeaking July 25, 2008 5:36 PM PDT
I believe law enforcement dropped the ball on this one!
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by walwebster July 25, 2008 11:13 PM PDT
Kinda confirms everything you ever suspected about the quality of person who generates spam, though, doesn't it? One step lower than bottom feeders ...
Reply to this comment
by Harrison912 July 26, 2008 12:21 AM PDT
Wow! I know spamming is wrong and for him the penalty was jail time but certainly not worth taking your life over.

There's got to be more to this than just the spamming charge.
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