In 2020, 13-year-old Lauryn Licari’s life was turned upside down when she started receiving anonymous texts harassing her. Her story and the shocking reveal of who was sending the texts is explored in Netflix‘s Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.
Beginning in 2020, Lauryn and her boyfriend, Owen McKenny, received a text from an unknown number accusing Owen of cheating on Lauryn. The following year, in September 2021, the texts ramped up in frequency and cruelty, sometimes up to 50 texts a day with threats and insults hurled at the young couple.
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The texts, which insulted Lauryn’s “flat ass,” told her to kill herself and included sexually explicit advances towards McKenny, seemed to know personal details about Lauryn’s life, prompting the couple’s concerned parents to involve the authorities.
After a years-long FBI investigation, the identity of the person sending the texts was revealed.
Who Was The Texter in Netflix’s Unknown Number?
The cyberbully sending the texts was revealed to be Lauryn Licari’s mom, Kendra Licari.
Kendra was discovered after an FBI cybersecurity expect tracked the IP address of the person sending the texts.
Unknown Number, police bodycam footage of investigators confronting Kendra is shown. She admits to being behind the texts almost immediately. Lauryn, meanwhile, is in disbelief while her father is angry.
In December 2022, Kendra Licari was charged with two counts of stalking a minor, two counts of communicating with another to commit a crime and one count of obstruction of justice. Kendra pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 19 months to 5 years in prison. She was released from prison on Aug. 8, 2024.
Why Did Lauryn’s Mom, Kendra, Send Texts to Her Daughter?
In the documentary, Kendra says she was sexually assaulted at Lauryn’s age and sent the texts to her daughter to “keep Lauryn close” and protect her from anything similar happening to her.
However, Kendra’s reasons for taking things as far as she did still bewilder those close to her and Unknown Number director Skye Borgman who told Netflix’s Tudum, “I don’t know that she really knows why she did it.”
“She does mention in the documentary an assault that happened [to her] when she was right around Lauryn’s age,” Borgman said. “She talks about how scary that was for her to see her only child, her little girl, growing up, and that’s what she really relates to and that’s what she believes led her to sending these text messages and trying to keep Lauryn close.”
In the documentary, it is also suggested that the texts were less about protecting Lauryn and more of a sign of Kendra’s unhealthy obsession with Owen, her daughter’s boyfriend. In the documentary, Owen’s mom reveals that Kendra continued to quiz her about Owen’s love life after he and Lauryn broke up. Owen’s new girlfriend also received a text at one point.
Experts have suggested that Kendra has a form of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental condition that causes someone to harm someone to maintain control over them.
Do Lauryn & Kendra Have a Relationship Now?
By the end of the documentary, Lauryn and Kendra are still not on speaking terms but the teen says she plans to reconcile with her mother “when the time is right.”
“Being without that relationship I think is really hurting me, and I think rebuilding our relationship will help both of us a lot,” Lauryn says in the doc. “I love her more than anything.”
After her arrest, Kendra’s husband, Shawn, filed for divorce from her and got full custody of their daughter.
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