Topics: Netflix, Documentaries, TV And Film, Real Life, True Life, Parenting, Crime
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Unknown Number: The High School Catfish
A truly chilling documentary has just landed on Netflix last Friday (29 August) and the hype around it doesn't seem to be dying down anytime soon.
Now, the doc in question looked back at a real-life cyberbullying case that rocked the small community of Beal City, Michigan, back in 2020 when the likes of 13-year-old Lauryn Licari and her then-boyfriend Owen began receiving suspicious texts from an unknown number.
While the creepy messages took a hiatus, they then resumed in September 2021 with the teens finding themselves on the receiving end of a daily barrage of threats and vile insults over the next 15 months.
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School officials soon turned to law enforcement for help when the messages began containing information that only someone close to Lauryn could have known
An initial investigation led by Isabella County Sheriff Mike Main first focused on Lauryn and Owen’s classmates and friends, casting suspicion throughout their school and fracturing relationships.
But, when those efforts stalled, Bradley Peter, a police officer, stepped in as liaison to the FBI, only to discover that the perpetrator was her own 'obsessed' mother, Kendra Licari.
In December 2022, Kendra was arrested and charged with multiple counts of stalking and using a computer to commit a crime. She pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor and was sentenced to 19 months to 5 years in prison and has since been released from prison on August 8, 2024.
While the Netflix doc didn't ultimately get to the bottom of the reason why Kendra relentlessly tormented her own daughter, Isabella County prosecutor David Barberi believes that her behaviour could be a kind of cyber Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Munchausen syndrome by proxy, also known as Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA), is a mental illness and a form of child abuse, where the caretaker of a child, most often a mother, exaggerates or deliberately causes symptoms of illness in the child.
However, in this case, of course, it was slightly different as it was cyberbullying rather than being illness-related, and as far as we know, Kendra has not actually been diagnosed.
"To give it any sort of medical foundation is a little bit problematic. … But I think that there are elements about Munchausen by proxy - about harming someone to keep them close - that definitely existed," director Skye Borgman added.
Interestingly, however, Kendra actually agreed to be in the doc with the end of the film showing the disgraced mother out of prison after not seeing Lauryn for a year and a half.
Understandably, Lauryn, who is now 18, was not ready to see her mum yet.
And, as a barrage of screenshots of the cruel text messages that Kendra sent her daughter flashed across the screen, Lauryn tells the camera: "Now that she’s out, I just want her to get the help she needs, so when we see each other, it doesn’t go back to the old ways and the way it was before."
She then concluded the doc with the tragic six-word statement: "I love her more than anything."
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is currently available to stream on Netflix.
