BENNETT, Colo.—A man, a woman and a girl about 3 years old were found shot dead in an apparent double murder-suicide in the driveway of a rural Colorado home, but a teenage girl and an infant survived, authorities said Thursday.
Denver-area media reported one of those killed was Edward “Eddie” Davidson, a man known as the “Spam King” who was convicted of spamming and tax evasion. Authorities had been searching for Davidson since Sunday, when he escaped from a minimum-security federal prison in Florence, 90 miles south of Denver.
Local, state and federal authorities said they could not confirm the reports. But a law enforcement official who requested anonymity because another agency was in charge of the probe said authorities were no longer searching for Davidson.
Arapahoe County undersheriff Mark Campbell said deputies rushed to a home in a subdivision in Bennett, about 35 miles east of Denver, after receiving reports of shots fired.
Deputies found a man, who appeared to be the gunman, on the driver’s side of an SUV in the driveway, and a woman dead on the passenger side.
A girl who was about 3 was found dead in the back of the car, Campbell said. A 7- or 8-month-old boy was found in a car seat uninjured.
Campbell said a teenage girl who was shot in the neck ran to a neighbor’s house for help and has been hospitalized.
Both the man and the woman had been shot, but it wasn’t immediately clear how the young girl died.
It also wasn’t clear if the victims were related. Campbell said they didn’t live at the home, which sits on a 35-acre horse property in unincorporated Arapahoe County.
Davidson walked away from a federal prison camp in Florence on Sunday and was last seen in Lakewood, a Denver suburb.
He was sentenced April 28 to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay $714,139 in restitution to the IRS after pleading guilty to falsifying header information to send spam e-mail, tax evasion and criminal forfeiture.
Prosecutors said that from 2002 to 2005, Davidson’s business, Power Promoters, and his subcontractors would spam people’s inboxes with e-mails promoting items like watches and perfume.
