[lily.]

Kaycee Nicole Swenson

Type: Online Impostor.

Summary: A woman attracted many friends online by pretending to be a young girl dying of cancer.

Kaycee Nicole was a nineteen-year-old girl from Kansas dying of cancer. Or so believed the thousands of people who visited her website on which she kept a diary of her fight against leukemia.

For over a year Kaycee Nicole had added updates to her diary, letting people know about the ups and downs of her struggle with the disease, about her hope as the cancer went into remission, and about her fear as it reappeared. Kaycee’s mother, Debbie, maintained a companion journal in which she discussed what it was like caring for a child with cancer. Many people grew extremely close to Kaycee. They communicated with her via e-mail, chatted with her in online chatrooms, and some even phoned her.

Then on May 15, 2001 Kaycee Nicole died of a brain aneurysm. Her online friends were distraught. They sought for ways to express their sorrow. They wanted to send gifts to her family. Some even wanted to attend her funeral. And that’s when things began to get suspicious.

Kaycee’s mother refused to provide anyone with information about where the funeral was being held or where to send gifts. This prompted a group of individuals who participated in the online community Metafilter, and who called themselves the ‘ScoobyDoos,‘ to find out what was going on. What they discovered was disturbing. Kaycee’s death had not been recorded by any obituary they could locate. Nor could anyone remember ever having met Kaycee in person. They began to wonder if Kaycee actually existed.

Their fears were confirmed a few days later when Debbie Swenson, a forty-year-old woman from Kansas, confessed that she had invented Kaycee and written all the diary entries herself. The photos of Kaycee that appeared on the site were simply pictures of a neighbor, used without the neighbor’s knowledge. Whenever anyone had thought that they were e-mailing Kaycee or instant messaging with her, it was actually Debbie they were communicating with. Debbie did not reveal who had posed as Kaycee for the phone calls.

Debbie Swenson remained unrepentant and evasive in her confessions, claiming that Kaycee was real, in a way, because the character of Kaycee was a composite of a number of cancer victims whom Debbie had known. She added that she hadn’t realized so many people were reading the diary.

This hardly satisfied the thousands of people who felt their trust had been abused. The FBI even looked into the case, but determined that because Debbie Swenson hadn’t gained money from the hoax (besides a few small gifts and the use of webspace donated by a sympathetic man in Hong Kong) she hadn’t actually committed a prosecutable crime.

As strange as it was, Kaycee’s case was not the first of its kind. In 1981 the journalist Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer for her series of stories about Jimmy, an 8-year-old boy hooked on heroin by his mother’s live-in boyfriend. Jimmy, however, didn’t exist, and so the Putitzer committee took back their prize. In 1992 American heartstrings were tugged by the story of Thad, a homeless boy who wrote a letter to Santa detailing how his homeless parents lacked money to buy food and telling Santa that, “I want to go to Heven too be with the angels.“ Thad didn’t exist either.

Source:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/H...icole_Swenson/

[Ross]

I hate online imposters I think they're sick in the way that they gather everyone to believe their lies.

[30stone]

What the hell why would you even go to the touble unless you have somthing seirously wrong with you..

[Damaris]

[Scarlett.]

Anyone who does that is sick in the head

[lily.]

That's just it Ben... these kind of people do have something seriously wrong with them.. It's the fools who believe them I feel sorry for..

[Shaun]

Rather poor taste given a recent thread...

[lily.]

Whatchoo talkin bout Shaun?

[pinkmichk]

i have on a parenting site seen a imposter she invented a whole pregnancy problems that came with it and the birth story etc and even stole peoples pics from google that she posted as her 'child' her scans etc

[lily.]

That's awful Mich... It's horrible when they use pics of other people.. especially children!

[Scarlett.]

Somone did summat like this happened here recently if ya'll remember


Some member posted another had died, turned out they were both the same person

[pinkmichk]

i agree linda and chewy i remember that

[Tom]

Originally posted by Shaun
Rather poor taste given a recent thread...

My thoughts exactly.

[lily.]

I must have missed that one.. was it during my absence?

[Tom]

Its below this thread

[lily.]

Originally posted by Tom

My thoughts exactly.

Shaun didn't answer me.. maybe you can...

What do you mean?

[Ross]

I'm confused

[lily.]

Originally posted by Tom
Its below this thread

No, I meant the one Chewy and Mich were talking about. I don't remember it.

[lily.]

Tom and I posted at the same time I think and that's where the confusion was Ross.. lol

[Ross]

Originally posted by Linda
Tom and I posted at the same time I think and that's where the confusion was Ross.. lol

Oh lmao.

[Tom]

Ah OK

But when people do it it does make me question the mentality of those people, I mean who'd invest so much time into creating a fake character? They must have serious issues with their own life or have waaaaaay too much time on their hands

[Ross]

Originally posted by Tom
Ah OK

But when people do it it does make me question the mentality of those people, I mean who'd invest so much time into creating a fake character? They must have serious issues with their own life or have waaaaaay too much time on their hands

Are ye getting mad because some people thought/think you are a fake? It isn't about you all the time...

[lily.]

Oh, I'd agree with you there Tom. There is something seriously wrong with someone who fakes an entire personality (ironic that I accused you of such, but let's move past that)...

It's a shame in the case I posted in this thread, because people were genuinely distraught at the thought of this young girl dying.

I don't get what pleasure that woman got out of doing such a thing.

[pinkmichk]

it wasnt that long ago linda the person came on saying his friend who was also a poster (but actually him) had commited suicide but when questioned over memorial things etc thats when it came out

[Saph]

i was freinds with someone once who was predending to be someone they wernt, but they did tell me after a while and i still talk to him lol turns out it wasent a girl it was a gay guy :S