Wired Women: Beautiful Cancer Victim a Hoax

May 30 -- There's a sucker born every minute. And on the Internet, maybe two.

Take, for example, the thousands of faithful Web fans duped into believing in the tragic tale of Kaycee Nicole, a young, beautiful Kansas teen dying of leukemia.

For the past two years, hundreds of perfectly reasonable peopletracked the girl's illness in her daily Web-log postings, suffering each setback and rejoicing over each remission.

They passed around her musings like so many feel-good trading cards.

"I know what a miracle is," Kaycee enthused after a particularlygruesome hospital stay. "As I look out into the morning light, I know how totally blessed I've been. I shouldn't be here, gazing at the awesomeness of it. But I am here because love carried me on its wings to this moment …"

Kind of tears you up, doesn't it?

Gifts, Cards, and More

And there was more. People sent gifts, condolence cards, andbaseball caps when Kaycee confessed that the chemotherapy had made her hair fall out.

They e-mailed her. They called the family home in Kansas and carriedon telephone conversations with the ailing teen.

Randall van der Woning, a Canadian Web designer living in Hong Kong,met Kaycee in a chat room. Intrigued, he offered to create a site, "Living Colours" where she could share her experiences with the Web. For two years, van der Woning spoke regularly with Kaycee, online and by telephone, fully convinced that she was real — and dying.

Like dozens of others, van der Woning helped create online tributesto the teen, posting her childhood photographs, a Kaycee collage from toddler to homecoming queen.

Little wonder, then, that when her mother, housewife Debbie Swenson,announced Kaycee's unexpected death from an aneurysm two weeks ago,the Web community mourned. Hundreds gathered in chat rooms to share their Kaycee stories and their grief.

But the sad fact wasn't that a 19-year-old had died. The realtragedy was that she'd never existed at all.