Topics: Netflix, True Crime, TV And Film, Parenting, Entertainment, Crime, Documentaries, Real Life
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Unknown Number: The High School Catfish
A teenage girl and her boyfriend who were cruelly tormented by a cyberbully had their world turned upside down when they found out who the perpetrator was.
Imagine being relentlessly harassed by someone hiding behind an unknown number, only to realise it was your own mother - and no, this isn't a fictional story, it's unfortunately real life.
It's exactly what happened to Lauryn Licari and her then-boyfriend Owen - the subject of Netlfix's new documentary, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.
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For those who are yet to see the shocking TV series, it unpacks the warped cyberbullying case that rocked the small community of Beal City, Michigan, back in 2020.
Lauryn, who was 13 at the time, began receiving suspicious texts from an unknown number, which paused for a while but started up again in September 2021, consisting of daily barrages of threats and insults for 15 months.
What made it worse was that the messages contained information that only someone close to Lauryn could have known, so she began to realise this was not a random attack.
But first, a bit more backstory - Lauryn and Owen had met in the seventh grade when she was just 12-years-old, with their families supporting the relationship.
Their mothers even became pals and Owen's mum Jill described the pair as being 'like a high school couple from a movie'.
Despite everything going smoothly, the awful texts began flooding in, a lot of which were claiming that Owen was going to break up with Lauryn.
One creepy message read: "Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you. He no longer likes you and hasn't liked you for a while. It's obvious he wants me. He laughs, smiles, and touches my hair.
"We are both down to f**k. You are a sweet girl but I know I can give him what he wants, sorry not sorry."
Another text that came through 11 months later read: "'How's the happy couple? Preparing for the end of a golden relationship? We hear about how you are the forever couple.
"Owen loves me, and I will always be the girl he loves. He will be with me while your lonely, ugly a** is alone."
As the situation worsened, Lauryn and Owen's families banded together to try and catch the perpetrator, even getting school officials and law enforcement involved to help.
Following months of investigations, the FBI discovered the bombshell news that her 44-year-old mother, Kendra Licari, was behind the attacks.
During a search of Kendra’s home, the police confronted her and informed Lauryn of the news no teenage girl would ever want to hear.
This encounter was captured on an officer's body camera and shown in real time in the documentary, including the harrowing moment the teen realised her mother was behind the messages.
In December 2022, Kendra was arrested and charged with multiple counts of stalking and using a compute to commit a crime.
The mother pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor and was subsequently sentenced to 19 months to five years behind bars.
She was released on August 8th, 2024, and spoke out about what happened in the new documentary for the first time.
Director Skye Borgman told Netflix's Tudum of how 'she’s remorseful that she has severely altered her relationship with her daughter', but it was 'appealing to her' to get to tell her side of the story.
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is available to watch on Netflix now.
