Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, True Crime, Social Media, Entertainment, Documentaries, Crime, US News, World News
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Madison Burgess
Topics: Netflix, True Crime, Social Media, Entertainment, Documentaries, Crime, US News, World News
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Unknown Number: The High School Catfish
Kendra Licari, the star of Netflix's Unknown Number documentary, has left viewers 'outraged' by the controversial comments she made about her crime.
If you're got no idea what we're talking about, the streaming platform dropped the new doc on 29th August - and the world has been gripped by the shocking real-life story.
It followed the case of a teen girl in the small community of Beal City, Michigan, who was cyberbullied by an anonymous texter
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Back in October 2020, 13-year-old Lauryn Licari and her then-boyfriend Owen began receiving vulgar and vile texts from an unknown number and, after a pause, the messages resumed in September 2021.
As persistent and disgusting as ever, they continued for the next 15 months.
Concerned parents and school officials turned to law enforcement for help, and soon the local police force had enlisted the help of the FBI.
After a long investigation, which looked at some of Lauryn and Owen's classmates as suspects, it was revealed that the real culprit was someone no-one expected.
It was Kendra Licari - Lauryn's own mother.
In December 2022, the mother 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. She was released from prison on August 8, 2024.
As for her reasoning, Kendra said: "I started in the thoughts of needing some answers, and then I just kept going, it was a spiral, kind of a snowball effect, I don't think I knew how to stop.
"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."
She continued: "I let it consume me. I think it was more of an escape. It took me kind of out of real-life, in a sense, even though it was real-life.
"So when I was doing that and I wasn't myself, it removed me from my everyday life. Just kept going and going."
Now, after the unbelievable story has been made into a documentary, social media are discussing every little detail that the TV show revealed.
As well as the whole bullying your own daughter aspect, there is one particular comment the mother made that has left viewers seriously outraged.
When discussing her crimes in a confessional, Kendra compared what she'd done to drink driving and tried to justify it with the logic that everyone makes mistakes.
Taking to Reddit, one user wrote: "She can't be this delusional. Was she trying to justify herself in the end and compare driving after a few beers to extreme cyber stalking and bullying other kids and her daughter??"
A second agreed: "I had to stop watching soon after. Soooo enraged. What the actual f**k."
A third wrote: "It sure sounded like it. She also acted like it was justified because of her past."
And a fourth chimed in with: "The really delusional thing is she obviously thought this documentary would help redeem her. This lady seems to have taken no responsibility for her actions."
"What would she say if a drunk driver used the same excuse she did in court?" questioned someone else.
And another Redditor penned: "I mean she essentially said the only reason anyone cared about what she did was because she had been caught.
"That woman would STILL be doing this to this day had she not been caught. She wasn't remotely remorseful."