Suicide Spammer had Belligerent Streak: Former Vendor

Though he’d never wish death on anyone, Mike Lewinski is breathing a little easier now that Edward “Eddie” Davidson is gone for good.

The escaped criminal spammer was found dead last week with his wife and three-year-old in an apparent murder suicide after four days on the run.

“I just had a general vague bad feeling when I heard he had escaped,” said Lewinski, who once fired Davidson as a broadband client.

Davidson walked away from a minimum-security prison in Colorado on July 20, just weeks into a 21-month sentence for spamming-related crimes. Four days later, he reportedly told his wife that he was ready to turn himself in and convinced her to meet him with their three-year-old daughter, seven-month-old son and Davidson’s teenage daughter by a previous marriage.

Once at the Home Depot parking lot where they agreed to meet, Davidson reportedly forced his way into the couple’s SUV and drove the family to a home they had recently sold.

He then reportedly pulled a gun out of a bag, which he had earlier said contained a gift for the family, shot and killed his wife, their three-year-old and himself. The seven-month-old boy was found in the SUV physically unharmed. The teenage girl was shot in the neck, but managed too run to the safety of a neighbor’s home a quarter mile away.

Lewinski—the technical director for Colorado business-to-business broadband Internet access provider RockyNet—dealt with Davidson as a client early this decade when RockyNet sold high-speed Internet access to Davidson and rented him office space.

According to Lewinski, his dealings with Davidson were generally unpleasant.

As a result, until last week when the news broke that Davidson was dead, Lewinski had been locking his office door at the Rockynet facility from which Davidson once ran his spamming operation—just in case.

He said he believed rumors that Davidson was a heavy drug user with a particular fondness for cocaine and its smoked counterpart crack. He said he also believed rumors Davidson physically abused the woman in his life at the time.

Indeed, according to a report in the Denver Post, sheriff’s deputies in Pinellas County, FL, in 1998 responded to a call from Davidson’s soon-to-be ex-wife Merry, who told officers that he had kicked and slapped her and beaten her with a belt at their home in Palm Harbor, FL.

Later, Merry also moved residences at least twice, taking the couple’s daughter with her without telling Davidson where she went. Both times, Davidson hired a private investigator and found her, according to the Post.

The attorney who represented Davidson in his divorce from Merry, Jim Saffell, described Davidson as both charming and “menacing,” according to the Post.

And throughout it all, Davidson was a hardcore, unrepentant, criminal spammer, who by many accounts behaved as though he thought rules were for other people.

Steve Sobol—now a system administrator for a California company—said he thought something wasn’t right with Davidson as early as 1995, when Davidson was a client of a company Sobol worked for in Cleveland: New Age Consulting.

“His whole world view was that he thought he could do anything without repercussion,” Sobol said. “Eddie felt he was above the rules.”

Lewinski tells a similar story. He said Davidson’s account at RockyNet was shut off twice in the late 90s for spamming.

Then in early 2001, Davidson came back to RockyNet, claiming he had changed his ways and that he wanted to strike a large-dollar deal.

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