To most casual Internet browsers, Kiki Kannibal is just some girl who achieved dubious viral online fame in the MySpace-happy days of 2006
Five years later, Rolling Stone details the quick rise and tragic personal fall of the teenage Internet queen, a story that played itself out in the suburbs of South Florida as much as it did in the dark corners of cyberspace.
The first thing Kiki Ostrenga saw as she ran out the front door of her family's white ranch house were the neon-green words spray-painted across the front path: "Regal Slut." She stopped short. Maybe this is just a dream, she thought. The 14-year-old took a few fearful steps forward. She gasped when she reached the driveway. Her parents' home was splattered with ketchup, chocolate syrup and eggs. And across the garage door, big as a billboard, was scrawled the word "SLUT."
"Oh, my God," Kiki whispered. Her mother and 11-year-old sister stepped outside, and their faces froze in horror. That's when Kiki burst into sobs. This was more than she could handle. For the past year, she had endured the hateful blogs and e-mails, the threats and prank calls, the late-night drive-bys with teenagers screaming her name out of car windows. Just this week, at an all-ages punk show, a pack of girls had recognized Kiki in the audience and jumped her, cramming gum into her bleached-blond hair. But this vandalism of her home was a different level of harassment.
A year earlier, Kirsten "Kiki" Ostrenga was just another tween nobody living her so-called life in Coral Springs, Florida. Then she got a MySpace account, and everything changed. A stylish wisp of a girl who adored punky "scene kid" fashion, Kiki began filling her MySpace page with pouty photos of herself in heavy makeup and cropped tops, adopting a persona as brash and outrageous as the real Kirsten was awkward and insecure. She named her creation "Kiki Kannibal," and her new and improved online self swiftly became an Internet celebrity. But fame had come with a backlash she could never have anticipated.
Still crying, Kiki clambered into the family car. Despite that morning's shock, she had to run: She was late for the first of two appointments, which summed up her life. The first was a modeling gig at a local hair salon, for which Kiki was dolled up in a pink tube top, skinny jeans and heels, her makeup now a tragic ruin. Her second appointment was with a sex-crimes detective, investigating a pedophile who had sought her out online and taken advantage of her.
As her mom backed the car out of the driveway, Kiki took one last look at their house, where her father stood before the graffiti-ridden garage, raising one hand in a cheerless goodbye. She wondered if this would go down as the strangest day of her young life.
Not by a long shot. Kiki was hurtling into a twisted online realm, populated not just with trash-talking teens but also with stalkers, hackers, predators and profiteers. She didn't realize the Web can be a portal for people's cruelest impulses, or that it allows those forces to assemble into a mob. She didn't know that her life was about to become an extreme parable about connection and celebrity in the digital age — that the next four years would be fraught with danger, threats to her family, and a violent death. She had yet to understand what a lot of us don't comprehend: that our virtual lives can take on their own momentum, rippling outward with real-life consequences we can neither predict nor control.
Thirteen-year-old Kirsten Ostrenga moved with her family to Coral Springs in 2005. The Ostrenga family thought the move to sunny South Florida would be good for the family, but Kirsten failed to adapt to her new surroundings. According to Rolling Stone, she never fit in with the black and Hispanic students "who dominated her classroom" at Sawgrass Springs Middle School, so she embraced her outsider status and began to experiment with hair dye, turning herself into a proto-"scene queen" and listening to pop-punk and emo bands.
By the time she turned 14, Kirsten had adopted the nickname "Kiki Kannibal" and settled on her signature hairstyle: a giant mess of black-striped blond hair that resembled a dead raccoon. Still feeling lonely, she turned to MySpace to make friends. Fascination (both earnest and ironic) with her hair led to her becoming a bona fide MySpace celebrity and frequent target of online harassment.
Her home address was posted online, and kids begin harassing her at shows. Gum was crammed into her hair, a group of guys in their 20s pestered her to pose for a photo and then punched her in the head, and someone spray-painted slut on her family's garage door. Local police repeatedly said there was little they could do
Despite the harassment, her parents never insisted Kiki get offline, and soon she met a boy through MySpace. Daniel de Jesus Cespedes came from a broken home in Miami-Dade but had found a modicum of fame online as "Mr. MySpace." He told Kiki and her parents he was 17, though in fact he was 18. The two began dating, and Kiki's parents felt sorry for his home life, so he became a frequent guest at their house. His mother often complained about the dyed hair and eyeliner he often came home with, and called Kiki's parents to complain, "He looks like a fucking faggot!" She even threatened, "You and your daughter, you ain't gonna be around no more!"
Kiki's parents called police, but like before, the officers said there was nothing they could do.
Cespedes, though, wouldn't stop seeing Kiki despite his mother's pleas and even got a tattoo of Kiki, raccoon hair and all, inked on his arm.
But one night, Cespedes pressured Kiki into sex against her will. The abuse continued until Kiki ended the relationship and told her mother about it.
The police finally decided to take action, but Cespedes had recently moved to North Carolina with his family. Cops discovered that Cespedes had a habit of pressuring underage girls, some as young as 12, into sex after meeting them online.
Cespedes eventually returned to Florida several months later, and Kiki learned he was dating a 14-year-old girl. That's when police moved in.
They found Cespedes surrounded by underage girls at Aventura Mall. He also had marijuana stashed in his backpack and cocaine hidden in his shoe.
They quickly cuffed him in the parking garage, but a gust of wind caught a piece of paper Cespedes was holding, so the arresting officer temporarily let him free to retrieve it. That's when Cespedes ran and jumped from the second story of the parking structure. Authorities believe the handcuffed 19-year-old was trying to jump on top of a moving van below but tripped on the railing and fell to the asphalt. He was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital and died after spending two months in a coma. A WSVN report on the 2007 incident is titled "Accused molester almost died trying to elude authorities."
Internet detractors began blaming Kiki for his death, and the harassment, both online and in real life, escalated. Her parents decided it was best to leave Coral Springs. Her father took a deep pay cut to transfer, and their Coral Springs home fell into foreclosure before they could sell it.
However, not once did Kiki's parents ever force her offline. Now 18, she lives in Orlando, but her online past continues to haunt her. Her life has been forever marred by the dangers of the Internet and its shady characters, lax law enforcement, and South Florida's crappy real estate market. Oh, and that haircut.
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