Nikki Catsouras Car Crash Photos - Part 2

Nikki Catsouras in a photo taken shortly before her death.
The sad story of Nikki Catsouras continues on, with Newsweek running a long story about the 18-year-old girl's death in a high-speed car accident, the gruesome accident photos that leaked to the Internet, and how the images have come to haunt her surviving family.

(Just as a word of warning, if you go looking for the photos, they are out there, and there are extremely graphic. We conisder ourselves pretty jaded web viewers, but we sincerely wish we hadn't gone and looked. NSFW doesn't even begin to apply.)

From Newsweek:

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.

A tragic event that occurred nearly three years ago continues to disturb a family in Orange County, Calif. Despite every effort, they are unable to move past the tragedy because the Internet will not allow them to reach closure. Actually, the World Wide Web itself is not to blame as much as the morbid and insensitive individuals who hide on its darker side.

The events surrounding this story began to unfold on October 31, 2006. On that day, 18-year-old Nikki Catsouras (photo here) fatefully grabbed the keys to her father’s Porsche 911 Carrera and walked out the front door of her parents’ home. Nikki had been forbidden to drive the sports car, and her judgment on that day will forever remain in question.

As a child, Nikki was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Tests showed the growth to be benign; however, she still had to endure radiation treatment which, doctors warned, could cause her to have difficulty with impulse control - issues which may have contributed to the cocaine-induced psychosis that she suffered in 2005. Despite her hospital stay after that incident, Nikki again experimented with cocaine in October 2006. In response, her parents scheduled an appointment with a brain disorder specialist. Unfortunately, Nikki never made the appointment.

It will never be known whether the accident was the result of teen disobedience or a lack of judgment caused by her brain disorder. Regardless of the reason, Nikki got behind the wheel of her father’s car and backed it out of the family’s garage. Nikki’s mother, Lesli Catsouras, heard the commotion outside and ran out, only to see her daughter speeding down the road. Lesli immediately phoned her husband, Christos, who called 911. During the call, the dispatcher informed him that a black Porsche had been involved in an accident on the 241 toll road in Lake Forest. Christos’ heart immediately sank to the pit of his stomach.

According to police, Nikki was traveling at approximately 100 mph when she lost control of the car. She hit a Honda driven by a lone man before tumbling over the median and slamming into a concrete toll booth. The accident was so severe that Nikki was nearly decapitated upon impact (those photos will not be shown here). Her remains were in such a horrific state that the coroner would not allow her family to view her body.

The driver of the Honda was transferred to a hospital with minor injuries. He seeks to recover damages in a pending lawsuit against the Catsouras family.

As tragic as Nikki’s death was, it was only the beginning of a long road of suffering that her family would have to endure.

In the weeks that followed the accident, Christos received an e-mail that he assumed was related to his real estate business. However, when he opened it, he was confronted by a gruesome crime scene photo of his daughter and a caption that read, “Whoohoo Daddy! Hey Daddy, I’m still alive.”

That e-mail set the stage for a wave of harassment which has targeted each member of Nikki’s family. In addition, one particularly sick individual took the time to set up a fake MySpace page in Nikki’s name in order to poke fun at her death. Within the comment section, one visitor wrote, “What a waste of a Porsche,” while another comment read, “That spoiled rich girl deserved it.”

The release of the nine crime scene photos was traced to two California Highway Patrol dispatchers - Thomas O’Donnell, 39, and Aaron Reich, 30. In response, the CHP sent a letter of apology to the family and suspended O’Donnell for 25 days without pay. According to newsweek.com, Reich quit his job for unrelated reasons.

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