High School Catfish prosecutor answers ‘million-dollar question’ on why ‘obsessed’ mother tormented her daughter online for years

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Unknown Number: The High School Catfish

The prosecutor from the infamous High School Catfish case has given his verdict on the question everyone wants to know - why did Kendra Licari do it?

For those who are unfamiliar with the chilling story, you might want to go and watch Netflix's mind-blowing documentary, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.

The doc hit our screens on 29 August, telling the real-life story of a teen girl who was anonymously harassed online by a cyberbully who turned out to be her own mother.

Beginning in October 2020, Lauryn Licari, who was 13 at the time, and her then-boyfriend Owen McKenny were inundated with vile text messages sent from an unknown number.

After a brief pause, the messages continued again in September 2021, and this time the teens were subject to a daily barrage of threats and vile insults over the next 15 months.

When things began to spiral out of control, school authorities and the police got involved, with some of Lauryn and Owen's classmates questioned as suspects.

However, no one was expecting who the real culprit was - Lauryn's own mother Kendra, who also gave her account of what happened in the documentary.

With Beal City Michigan's own police team unable to crack the case, the FBI were brought in to speed up the process.

After connecting Kendra's phone number to the messages, which had been sent via an anonymous texting app, Isabella County Sheriff Mike Main confronted the mother in her own home, in front of Lauryn.

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 five years in prison, before being released on 8 August, 2024.

In the doc, she described her actions as a 'sprial' and 'snowball effect', claiming she 'didn't know how to stop'.

Kendra explained: "I was somebody different in those moments. I was in an awful place mentally. It was like I had a mask on or something, I didn't even know who I was."

The prosecutor in the Unknown Catfish case has revealed why he thinks Kendra Licari did it (Netflix)

And now, with her motive still unknown, Isabella County prosecutor David Barberi has revealed why he thinks she tormented her own daughter.

Calling it a 'million-dollar question', he told NewsNation's Banfield on Monday (8 September): "I don’t think anybody ever really is going to know why she did this.

"I think that the theory that we all have, that we lean on anyways, is that it was kind of when this started to cause harm to her daughter."

Barberi added: "I think her daughter looked to her for comfort, and over the course of that relationship and this harassment, I think that she kind of fed on that."

In the doc, the prosecutor also said he believed Kendra's actions could be liked to a kind of 'cyber Munchausen syndrome by proxy'.

David Barberi was the prosecutor in the Kendra Licari cyberbullying case (NewsNation/Banfield)

What is '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 told Tudum.