Nikki Catsouras Death: Daughter's Accident Photos Get Viral [Latest Update]

January 1, 2008- -With only a few mouse clicks, you can access images that are way too graphic to be featured in the mainstream media images of horrifying injuries, mutilations, and even death.

The Internet is an Internet subculture dedicated to blood and gore, featuring many thousands of photos, all more bloody than before. For one family, the image that was posted through these kinds of web websites added insult to already severe suffering.

Nikki Catsouras Death was an 18-year-old college student living in California together with her two siblings and her parents. Nikki was fond of making videos with her camera, and, ironically enough, it was the camera that immortalized Nikki's life and death in a gruesome and macabre prank on the Internet.

The whole thing began with a typical fight between teenagers and parents after Nikki was found smoking cigarettes in the home.

"Nikki violated a house rule, and we had a fight, and I took her car keys from her," said Christos Catsouras, Nikki's father. Catsouras didn't know that the next day was the final time he would see his daughter, whom he named "Angel."

"As I left for the exit, I winked at her and kissed her. She turned around and handed me a peace sign," he remembered. "I said goodbye I'll see you in two hours. I love you.'. She replied, "Love you, goodbye.'"

Then, according to her family, Nikki did something out of her character. She took the keys to the car of her dad's Porsche 911 Carrera, a car that can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in five minutes. She'd never driven a Porsche before.

According to reports from the state highway patrol in the state highway patrol reports, around 1:45 p.m. on Halloween night, Nikki Catsouras was traveling 100 mph along State Route 241 near Lake Forest, Calif. She was struck by another vehicle and lost control, driving across the median before colliding with the concrete tollbooth. The driver was killed immediately.

"Her head was split in two, cleaved, then crushed. It's not something that any person should ever look at," said Michael Fertik, the founder of ReputationDefender. This company assists clients like the Catsouras family remove their belongings from the Internet. It was reported that the Catsouras family was told they shouldn't ever see photographs taken from the site of the horrific accident.

As the Catsouras family grieved for Nikki, their child's body crashed pictures of Nikki's broken body surfaced on the Internet. "They did not let me view my daughter, but everyone is watching my daughter's body," recalled Lesli Catsouras, Nikki's mother.

The family began to receive text messages and emails which contained photos of the crash, which included images of Nikki's body decapitated and still tethered to the smashed remains from her dad's Porsche. The fake MySpace page was made that initially appeared as an homage to Catsouras but resulted in horrifying images.

What kind of person would do this?

The images captured by California Highway Patrol officers and sent out to the public outside the department were so frequent that Lesli Catsouras stopped checking her email. Nikki's younger sisters were barred from accessing the Internet, and the 16-year-old Danielle was removed from school and sent homeschooled because of the fear that classmates could threaten her with the photos.

Catsouras family has filed a lawsuit against the California Highway Patrol. Catsouras family filed an action in the case against California Highway Patrol for allegedly publishing photos of the scene of an accident.

Who would ever want to look at images like this? Surprisingly the Catsouras family has said that a lot of people. At one time, photos of Nikki's death could be seen on over 1,600 Web sites across 50 countries.

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"Everybody knows witnessed them or knows anyone who's seen them," said Lesli Catsouras. "This was a costly car, and it was an aspiring young woman, and she was wonderful. Halloween was right around the corner, and it was the ideal recipe for something similar to this."

Although the Catsourases employed ReputationDefender to remove the images from the Internet, the photos live on. "It expands in bursts, and once it has spread rapidly, it does so," said Fertik.

"Whether you're correct or not doesn't need to be considered when online. The digital world is not moral," said Ron Braunstein, who goes by the name of Necro. Braunstein is self-described a death-rapper who has built a name for himself by making use of gore in his music as well as on his website.

"Me myself, personally. I've made an industry around exploitation. What I do, I consider to be real, and everything is real, and dying is real," Braunstein said. Braunstein said that his goal is not to surprise people. "They're fascinated; they're interested in it."

Braunstein's website has not posted photos of the crime scene that were taken from Nikki Catsouras' death; however, he has shared several other pictures of accidents. With thousands of websites similar to Braunstein's, there are plenty of places to search for disturbing images.

"This is extremely harmful. It's de-sensitizing certain people. It's contributing to the perversion of certain individuals. It's one thing if nobody is suffering, but it's quite another to be involved in other people's suffering," said Dr. Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist.

"We all have a lot of basic human feelings that center around sadness," Saltz said. " And there's something very satisfying about watching others be injured, brutally beaten, or even suffer violent violence."

Saltz warns that although curiosity is expected, the obsession with these images could be harmful. If they're obsessed with it and staring at it often, I would classify it as an obsession. I would classify it as perversion."

On the first anniversary of Nikki's death, Nikki's family Catsouras family put together a video in memory of Nikki, complete with their images of Nikki and set to the tune "Angel."

"I think that no one realized that she was a real person and, in a way, were extremely enthralled by this image, and it's a shame that somebody feels the need to share the picture out and keep in the public eye, and even harming people by posting it," said Danielle, Nikki's twin sister.

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