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Convicted penny-stock spammer Eddie Davidson has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, apparently after killing his wife and 3-year-old daughter in his home town of Bennet, Colorado, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.

His death came at the heels of the arrest last week of another Spam King, Robert Soloway.

Soloway, is credited with the massive volume of junk e-mail he sent out, pleaded guilty to fraud, spamming and tax evasion after being indicted in May 2007.

Davidson had been a fugitive from the law since walking away from a federal minimum-security prison camp in Florence, Colorado on Sunday. He had been serving a 21 month sentence after pleading guilty to criminal spam charges late last year.

Another person, a teenaged girl according to local reports, was shot, but survived the incident. Authorities also found an infant, unharmed, at the scene of the shooting.

Davidson's wife had been in the car with him when he left the Florence prison, about 45 miles south of Colorado Springs, on Sunday. He had last been seen in Lakewood, Colorado where he got a change of clothes and cash, according to the Department of Justice.

Known as the Colorado "Spam King," Davidson earned millions of dollars between 2003 and 2006 by operating a spamming operation, called Power Promoters, out of his home. He would change the header information in his messages to make it appear as if they had come from legitimate companies such as AOL and then send them out to hundreds of thousands of addresses.

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