For the Catsouras family, calling attention to the case has obvious drawbacks: they realize some who read this story may seek out their daughter's death photos, though they desperately hope you won't.
This is a story about a photo—an image so horrific we can't print it in NEWSWEEK. The picture shows the lifeless body of an 18-year-old Orange County girl named Nikki Catsouras, who was killed in a devastating car crash on Halloween day in 2006. The accident was so gruesome the coroner wouldn't allow her parents, Christos and Lesli Catsouras, to identify their daughter's body. But because of two California Highway Patrol officers, a digital camera and e-mail users' easy access to the 'Forward' button, there are now nine photos of the accident scene, taken just moments after Nikki's death, circulating virally on the Web. In one, her nearly decapitated head is drooping out the shattered window of her father's Porsche.
The Web is full of dark images, so perhaps the urge to post these tragic pictures isn't surprising. But for the Catsouras family, the photos are a daily torment. Just days after Nikki's death, her father, a local real-estate agent, clicked open an e-mail that appeared to be a property listing. Onto his screen popped his daughter's bloodied face, captioned with the words 'Woohoo Daddy! Hey daddy, I'm still alive.' Nikki's sisters—Danielle, 18, Christiana, 16, and Kira, 10—have managed to avoid the photos, but live in fear that they'll happen upon them. And so the Catsourases are spending thousands in legal fees in an attempt to stop strangers from displaying the grisly images—an effort that has transformed Nikki's death into a case about privacy, cyber-harassment and image control.
Nikki Catsouras Death Real Photographs
By Jessica Bennett | NEWSWEEKPublished Apr 25, 2009
- Worse, they wound up in the inboxes of Catsouras family members. Nikki's father, Christos, a real estate agent, received the photos in a fake house listing with the mocking caption: 'Hey, Daddy. I'm still alive.' Imagine the anguish that he must have felt upon seeing those photos and reading that sadistic caption.
- While the name Nikki Mayo Catsouras may be on her death certificate, it would run into problems with WP:PRIMARY and WP:COMMONNAME. I could not find any news coverage on Google with this name, so it would have to stay out of the article for the time being.- ♦Ian Ma.
- Australian miracle baby Jaxon Taylor survived an internal decapitation. Doctors successfully reattached his head to his spine after a car crash.
- It's true that what everyone thinks is her decapitated head in the accident scene photos was her wig, but she was indeed 'scalped', for lack of a better word- The death certificate reads 'crushed skull with avulsion of cranium and brain.' The dictionary definition of avulsion is the forcible tearing away of a body part by trauma or surgery.
This is a story about a photo—an image so horrific we can't print it in NEWSWEEK. The picture shows the lifeless body of an 18-year-old Orange County girl named Nikki Catsouras, who was killed in a devastating car crash on Halloween day in 2006. The accident was so gruesome the coroner wouldn't allow her parents, Christos and Lesli Catsouras, to identify their daughter's body. But because of two California Highway Patrol officers, a digital camera and e-mail users' easy access to the 'Forward' button, there are now nine photos of the accident scene, taken just moments after Nikki's death, circulating virally on the Web. In one, her nearly decapitated head is drooping out the shattered window of her father's Porsche.
The Web is full of dark images, so perhaps the urge to post these tragic pictures isn't surprising. But for the Catsouras family, the photos are a daily torment. Just days after Nikki's death, her father, a local real-estate agent, clicked open an e-mail that appeared to be a property listing. Onto his screen popped his daughter's bloodied face, captioned with the words 'Woohoo Daddy! Hey daddy, I'm still alive.' Nikki's sisters—Danielle, 18, Christiana, 16, and Kira, 10—have managed to avoid the photos, but live in fear that they'll happen upon them. And so the Catsourases are spending thousands in legal fees in an attempt to stop strangers from displaying the grisly images—an effort that has transformed Nikki's death into a case about privacy, cyber-harassment and image control.
The Catsourases are by no means the first to suffer at the hands of cyber-aggressors. But their story is unique in that it touches on so many of the ways the Web has become perverted: as an outlet for morbid curiosities, a space where cruel behavior suffers little consequence and an uncontrollable forum in which things that were once private—like photos of the dead—can go public in an instant. The case also illustrates how the law has struggled to define how legal concepts like privacy and defamation are translated into an online world.
For the Catsouras family, calling attention to the case has obvious drawbacks: they realize some who read this story may seek out their daughter's death photos, though they desperately hope you won't. But the family decided that sharing its story with NEWSWEEK was worth that risk, to raise awareness of the real suffering caused by their dissemination—and of the need for America's legal system to better protect privacy in the Internet age. 'The fact is that we will never get rid of the photos anyway,' says Lesli, Nikki's mother. 'So we have made a decision to make something good come out of this horrible bad.'
Nikki Catsouras The Whole Story
From the beginning, Nikki's death had all the makings of a sensational story. She was gorgeous; it was Halloween, and she was driving a $90,000 sports car. She was from Orange County; the Beverly Hills 90210 of the housewives-filled suburbs. And from the outside, the Catsourases seemed to have it all: Christos and Lesli and their four beautiful girls lived in a planned community with man-made parks and multimillion-dollar homes. The family ate dinner together almost every night; their best friends lived next door.
But the family's life wasn't as idyllic as it seemed. In third grade, Nikki was diagnosed with a brain tumor that doctors didn't think she'd survive. It turned out to be benign, but 8-year-old Nikki had to undergo intensive radiation, and doctors told her parents the effects of that treatment on her young brain might show up someday—perhaps by causing changes in her judgment, or impulse control. Her family believes that's why, the summer before the accident, Nikki tried cocaine and ended up in the hospital in a cocaine-induced psychosis. She used cocaine again the night before the accident, her family says. Lesli and Christos discussed checking her into a hospital, but decided against it: she was to visit a psychiatrist the next day, a specialist on brain disorders. So they let her sleep it off, and the next day, the three of them ate lunch together.
Nikki Catsouras Death Photographs
Afterward, as Christos left for work, he waved goodbye to his daughter, and Nikki flashed him a peace sign from the couch, smiling. Lesli went to fold laundry. About 10 minutes later, Lesli heard the door slam, and footsteps out the back door. She walked toward the garage, hesitantly, and locked eyes with Nikki, who was backing out of the driveway in Christos's Porsche 911 Carrera—a car she was never allowed to drive. Lesli called out to her, but Nikki looked away, accelerating out the cul-de-sac. Lesli phoned Christos, who began driving around trying to find his daughter and called 911. As he waited on hold, two police cars raced past him, sirens blaring, headed toward the toll road. 'Has there been an accident?' he asked. 'Yes,' the dispatcher told him. 'A black Porsche.'