Reddit users help feds nab graffiti vandal who defaced US national parks

David Kravets

Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, the site of some of Casey Nocket's vandalism. Story below includes links to some of the defacements.

Howard Ignatius

A woman who defaced national parks with graffiti was nabbed with the assistance of online outrage and, ultimately, the Reddit community.

The defendant, 23-year-old Casey Nocket from San Diego, was handed two years of probation and 200 hours of community service for using magic markers and acrylic paint (PDF) to deface rock formations in several national parks—from Death Valley in California to Zion National Park in Utah. The woman was also barred from all national parks and federal lands—which amounts to about one-fifth of the US.

Reddit users helped track down the woman who left the message "Creepytings" with her vandalism that occurred in 2014. What got her into trouble was her cavalier attitude about the vandalism on an Instagram post, which spread across the Internet and eventually to a hiking site and Reddit.

The Guardian explained how the online community's outrage over the vandalism led to the woman recently pleading guilty (PDF) to defacing public property. Here is a link and another link to some of her national park vandalism.

Nocket’s devil-may-care attitude came back to haunt her, however, when outraged Reddit users tracked her down and reported her to the National Parks Service.

Nocket, a New York-based graffiti artist, first came to the attention of Reddit’s climbing and hiking community when a backpacker posted a picture of one of her works that they had found on a trail in Yosemite. Users quickly began talking about the “National Park Vandal."

Along the way, there was a White House petition pushing for the government to charge the perpetrator. Ultimately, National Park Service investigator Steve Yu saw a post about the vandalism on the subreddit Yosemite, which ultimately led to the woman being charged.

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