A killer fan. A deadly plane crash. A horrific ocean accident. These reality stars made a name for themselves on-screen, but their lives were cut short in tragic ways.
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00:00A killer fan, a deadly plane crash, a horrific ocean accident — these reality stars made
00:05a name for themselves on screen, but their lives were cut short in tragic ways.
00:10Christina Grimmie was already on her way to a successful music career well before her
00:14star turn on The Voice. She had built a fan base on YouTube by posting videos of herself
00:18doing covers of pop songs. By 2011, she had released her first EP, was recognized at the
00:23American Music Awards, and went on tour with Selena Gomez. But it was her appearance on
00:28The Voice in 2014, where she came in third, that brought her to a much larger group of
00:32fans. Tragically, one of those fans would take her life.
00:35At a meet-and-greet after one of her own tour shows in June 2016, Kevin James Loible, an
00:40obsessed fan who authorities believe came there specifically to kill her, approached
00:44the singer and opened fire. Grimmie's brother Marcus quickly tackled the shooter, but Loible
00:49turned the gun on himself during the struggle. Grimmie had been shot multiple times in the
00:52head and chest. She was 22. At a memorial service for his sister, Marcus said,
00:57All the rumors are true that when the gunmen came, her arms were open. That's how she treated
01:01everyone she knew. Her arms were open for them. Using the proceeds of a posthumous single,
01:06the family set up a charity in Grimmie's name to support victims of gun violence.
01:10"...that this happens every day. There are close to 40 deaths just from guns every day."
01:17Shane Gandy was cast on the MTV reality show Buckwild after he took a producer who'd been
01:21looking to cast a new reality TV show to a mudhole with some of his friends. By all accounts,
01:26what you saw was what you got with Gandy, who was a true child of West Virginia and
01:30didn't need to fake his outdoorsy persona at all. Even during production, Gandy, who
01:34was 21, would go off and do his own thing, until producers insisted he needed to carry
01:38a cell phone for the first time in his life so they could contact him. When he was there,
01:42he was the cast member who came up with a lot of the situations that showed off the
01:45local lifestyle.
01:46The first season was a success. There would not be a second season. In April 2013, Gandy
01:52and two other men were discovered dead in his truck. They had left a bar at 3 a.m.,
01:56telling people they were going off-roading. Somehow, the truck got stuck in a mudhole
02:00and the exhaust was submerged, causing the vehicle to fill with poisonous carbon dioxide.
02:05All three men died.
02:07Ben Watkins had dreams of a career in food. At 11 years old, he was already working at
02:11his family's restaurant, Big Ben's Bodacious Barbecue & Deli. Tragically, though, he lost
02:15both his parents when his father killed his mother in a murder-suicide. Ben was taken
02:19in by his grandmother and uncle, and a year later, he was appearing on MasterChef Junior.
02:24The fan-favorite made it into the top 18, crediting his late mother for his talent for
02:28baking.
02:29But there was more tragedy in store for Ben. At age 13, he was diagnosed with an extremely
02:33rare form of cancer called angiomatoid fibrous histiocytoma. At the time, he was only one
02:39of six people on Earth with the diagnosis. He offered to waive medical privacy laws so
02:43his doctor could include certain details in a paper he wrote about the case, in the hopes
02:47that it might help others with the condition.
02:49Ben died in 2020, aged 14.
02:52Phil Harris, captain of the Cornelia Marie on Discovery's Deadliest Catch, was no stranger
02:56to health issues. The notoriously demanding job of a fisherman had taken its toll on his
03:00body, and he had already experienced several crushed discs in his back, as well as a pulmonary
03:04embolism in 2008. Then, in 2010, he was discovered collapsed on his boat, having had a stroke.
03:10He was flown to a hospital, where he underwent surgery.
03:13Despite the trauma, Harris seemed to be getting better, and he was well enough to worry about
03:16the show that made him famous. Cameraman Todd Stanley told People magazine that after Harris
03:20called him into the room,
03:22"...he scribbled on a piece of paper, got to get the ending, ending to the story. I
03:26said, do you want me filming? He just looked at me with those blue eyes, man, and he was
03:29shaking his head yes, and shaking his hand with excitement."
03:32A few days later, though, Harris suddenly took a turn for the worse. He died on February
03:379th, at age 53. The footage Stanley shot would eventually be shown to an audience of millions.
03:42I don't know how to tell you this, Jake, but, um, we lost Dad, dude."
03:51American Idol was a cultural phenomenon when it debuted in 2002. While winner Kelly Clarkson
03:56went on to huge fame, things went a bit differently for third-place finisher Nikki McKibben.
04:00"...everything in my life has changed so far, and I'm just expecting so much more good stuff
04:04in the future that it's all amazing."
04:07She told People magazine,
04:08"...people automatically assumed that I was some millionaire because I was in the show,
04:12and nothing could be further from the truth. A couple of years later, I was still struggling
04:16financially, but people expect that you're living this glamorous life, and I'm like,
04:19I'm just trying to pay my electric bill."
04:21McKibben struggled with substance abuse, and she went on to appear on Celebrity Rehab with
04:25Dr. Drew in 2008. She got sober and released an EP with her band in 2012. In October 2020,
04:32McKibben had a brain aneurysm, after which she was kept on life support for a period
04:35in order to fulfill her wish to be an organ donor. Her husband, Craig Sadler, posted the
04:39news on Facebook, writing,
04:41"...you probably know she practically worships Stevie Nicks. Before they begin, they will
04:45play Landslide for her one last time. If you are able, you can pause at 3 o'clock, wherever
04:50you are, and listen to it with her. She will know that you're sharing her farewell."
04:54McKibben was 42.
04:56Ahmaud Reel Gibbons appeared on VH1's I Love New York in 2007 alongside his brother Kamal
05:02Chance Gibbons. The fan-favorite pair were given their own reality show the following
05:06year, creatively named Reel Chance of Love. While it only lasted two seasons, by 2013,
05:11Reel had much bigger problems than a stalled TV career. As he explained in a 2014 interview
05:16during the New York Life National Cultural Markets Conference, he was diagnosed with
05:20stage 4 colon cancer that had already spread to his liver. He said,
05:24"...I remember I was laying on the hospital bed and the doctor came in crying and when
05:27I saw her crying I knew it was something serious. My doctors thought I had, like, three days
05:32to live so they just zapped me with chemo. I left out of there with my veins burning
05:36and everything."
05:37Eventually, he needed surgery and radiation treatment as the cancer spread further, this
05:41time to his brain. Tragically, Reel died in 2015. He was 33.
05:47J.L. Strauss competed on the eighth season of America's Next Top Model, where she finished
05:51sixth. But her budding modeling career was derailed by addiction issues. In 2012, Strauss'
05:56family got Dr. Phil to stage a televised intervention. Despite the coarse way she was forced to enter
06:01treatment, Strauss celebrated her continued sobriety on Instagram in 2018, writing,
06:06"...today I have five years sober. Good God. I know a few things to be true. Miracles are
06:10real. Recovery is possible for everyone no matter how far gone you think you are. We
06:14are never too broken to be put back together."
06:17Mere months later, Strauss posted a much more painful update on her Facebook page, writing,
06:21"...on October 2nd I was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. It has aggressively spread
06:25throughout my body and is incurable. With treatment, it may prolong my life longer than
06:30the few months doctors said I could make it. I don't want to die. I need another one of
06:34those miracles that I got back in 2013."
06:37While Strauss began chemotherapy, she soon entered hospice. She died just two months
06:41after announcing her diagnosis.
06:44The singer Jenny Rivera was known as the diva de la banda. While she found success in her
06:48takes on traditional Mexican music, selling 20 million albums along the way, Rivera also
06:53had a thriving career in reality television. This included her role as a judge on La Voz,
06:58as well as her own reality show, I Love Jenny.
07:01After performing in concert in December 2012, Rivera gave a press conference where she spoke
07:05about her positive outlook on life, despite her recent separation from her husband. She
07:09told reporters,
07:10"...I can't focus on the negative because that will defeat you. That will destroy you.
07:14The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."
07:17Rivera then boarded a private plane with six others in order to make a taping of La Voz.
07:21But just minutes into the flight, the plane crashed, killing everyone on board. Rivera
07:26was 43.
07:28In 2015, a helicopter crashed in Argentina, killing all 10 people on board. They were
07:33filming a French reality show called Dropped, which was similar to the U.S. series Survivor.
07:38As the episodes hadn't aired, the three participants killed in the crash were not yet reality stars.
07:42But they were stars in their home country for other reasons. 25-year-old Camille Mouffat
07:46won three Olympic medals in swimming, 28-year-old boxer Alexis Vasteen had a bronze Olympic
07:51medal, and 57-year-old Florence Artaud was a decorated sailor.
07:55The French sporting world was heartbroken. What Mouffat, Vasteen, and Artaud might not
07:59have known was how little the company behind the show cared about them. It was later revealed
08:04that the production company had been fined hundreds of times for cutting corners and
08:07putting contestants in danger.
08:10Steve Irwin became known around the world as a crocodile hunter. As well as his educational
08:14TV show, Irwin ran his family zoo in Australia. He was famous for being able to tackle the
08:19most dangerous animals, something he started doing as a young child. So it was shocking
08:23when he died due to an attack by a normally docile animal, a stingray.
08:27Cameraman Justin Lyons was air-filming Irwin for an upcoming program when he was attacked
08:31by the stingray. Lyons told Australian morning show Studio 10,
08:34"...I had the camera on. I thought, this is going to be a great shot. And all of a sudden,
08:39it propped on its front and started stabbing wildly with its tail. Hundreds of strikes
08:43in a few seconds. He had a two-inch-wide injury over his heart with blood and fluid coming
08:47out of it. Even if we had got him into an emergency ward at that moment, we probably
08:51wouldn't have been able to save him."
08:52I was saying to him things like, think of your kid, Steve, hang on, hang on, hang on.
08:57And he just sort of calmly looked up at me and said, I'm dying.
09:01Those were Irwin's last words. He was 44.