The story of Kaycee Nicole is a quintessential online cancer hoax. The two-year-long chronicle of a teenage girl's battle with leukemia that garnered support from hundreds of readers, but Nicole's story was merely the product of Debbie Swenson's imagination.
Ms. Swenson, a 40-year-old housewife of Peabody, Kan., started the weblog in 1999 and posed as Nicole until the high schooler's “death” in 2001. Her motive, she said, was to tell a compelling story related to the lives of three people affected by cancer, according to The Guardian.
The hoax emerged in 1999 with “Kaycee Nicole” and her weblog. She wrote about her academics, her love of music and poetry, and about her cancer treatment. She gained thousands of followers as she underwent remission and got cancer again. She made several online friends and corresponded with them through e-mail, instant messaging, and over the telephone.
Nicole's website even had a volunteer, according to The New York Times. Randall van der Woning, a writer living in Hong Kong, updated the weblog and paid the costs to maintain it.
Nicole reportedly died on May 14 from an unexpected aneurysm, according to her mother "Debbie." She asked Mr. van der Woning to post the news on her daughter's blog, and when she died thousands mourned the loss on the Internet. Some send Debbie condolences.
Readers grew suspicious when Swenson refused to accept the gifts and flowers sent to her. Another red flag went up when she claimed to have already cremated Nicole two days after her death.
Discussion forum metafilter.com investigated Nicole’s story and found neither a listing of a Kaycee Nicole in Kansas nor any school record. The photos of Nicole turned out to belong to a college basketball star who was still alive.
When Swenson was exposed, she confessed and apologized about making up Kaycee Nicole.
“Her name was not Kaycee and she was not my daughter,” Swenson wrote. “[The diary] was about the lives of three people who suffered with cancer. I am to blame for wanting to tell their stories.”
