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Where Is Raffaele Sollecito Now? All About Amanda Knox's Italian Ex-Boyfriend
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.
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.
]]>When her father announced his third run for the White House, her statement focused on what her goals were outside of Washington, D.C.
“I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics,” she wrote in November 2022.
People focused on her decision to have a “private life” after her role as a White House senior adviser, but she and husband Jared Kushner are being criticized for trying to stay in the spotlight.
“Now they’re no longer big players in Washington, they have all the time in the world to cultivate their good looks,” claimed a pal (or frenemy??) close to the Trump family to the Daily Mail. “They’ve always been especially vain.”
They don’t seem to love Ivanka’s fashion posts and surfing videos on Instagram. The critic wants her to pick a lane — private or public life. “You can’t have it both ways. She spent the first administration complaining about all the media attention, and now it seems she can’t get enough of it,” they added.
There were rumors at the end of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign that she was considering a return to politics, but that never came to fruition. Instead, she’s reportedly planning the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event that will be held at the White House for the United States’ 250th anniversary of independence on July 4, 2026, per Fox News.
“Ivanka is a longtime fan of UFC and is honored to help [UFC president] Dana White create an exciting event celebrating a sport beloved by so many Americans, as part of our country’s 250th celebration,” a source explained to the media outlet while noting it was not an official role.
Ivanka also runs in A-list circles that include friends like Kim Kardashian and Lauren Sánchez, so it’s hard to avoid the spotlight. But, not every one of her friends seems to enjoy her new life out of politics, and it’s a friendship she might want to reassess.
Before you go, click here to see every time Ivanka Trump has tried to distance herself from the Trump family:
The 8,725-square-foot property first hit the market in November 2022 at $26.5 million, but price cut after price cut — nobody seems to be taking the bait. According to an Aug. 26 New York Post report, the residence is now being offered at $17.9 million, a 32 percent reduction from its initial listing price.
The decor definitely has that Ivana flair with animal-print furniture and lots of signature Trump gold on the interior. “Ivana said that, ‘The house is as Louis the 16th would have lived if he had money,’ and that sums it up perfectly in her own words,” Realtor J. Roger Erickson of Douglas Elliman told CNBC in November 2023.
“My mom absolutely loved that house,” Eric Trump told The Wall Street Journal in November 2022 when they put the home up for sale. He believed it “embodied” her “style and elegance.”
Still, it’s a very particular style, and it might be one of the reasons the home hasn’t attracted a buyer. After sitting empty for three years, it will likely need a major overhaul to suit a new owner’s decor tastes. The New York Post laid out some of the issues with the property.
“The reductions reflect both the challenges of finding buyers for highly personalized homes and the current state of the Manhattan luxury townhouse market, where properties with traditional layouts and muted interiors are often quicker to move,” they wrote. “While Trump’s home carries a distinct provenance, its interiors present a buyer with a choice: embrace the décor as-is or commit to a costly renovation.”
If the home does sell, her three children, Donald Jr., 47, Ivanka, 43, and Eric, 41, would be the beneficiaries.
The townhouse is in a coveted neighborhood, the Upper East Side, near the famous Versace mansion, but luxury home sales have been cooling over the past few years in New York City. Someone could own a piece of history with Ivana’s residence, but the Trump family hasn’t found the right price for the right buyer.
Before you go, click here to see all of the biggest and most expensive celebrity homes!
America is seven months into Donald Trump’s second administration, and according to CNN, she’s only made 19 public appearances.
Some voters may think this is typical for the First Lady of the United States, but she had attended 40 events by this time in his first administration. In additions to her disappearing act, her White House staff is “a fraction of her first-term team and that of her predecessors,” per the media outlet.
Details at the White House that would normally fall under the first lady’s scope of work, including the Rose Garden’s patio and the announced $200 million ballroom project, seem to be on Donald Trump’s to-do list instead. (In fact, the renovation of the ballroom displaces Melania and her small staff until the construction is completed.)
“I don’t think it’s anything interpersonal,” a source noted. “It’s just – she’s not interested.”
This sentiment about Melania has echoed for years. Kate Andersen Brower, author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies, spoke with SheKnows in August 2023 and shared that she reshaped the very traditional role — whether voters like it or not.
“I always felt that she didn’t want to be the first lady, and she was unapologetic about it,” Brower explained. “She wasn’t interested in doing what we expected of her.” Melania essentially “lowered the bar” for the first lady duties, which is an unpaid position.
It’s unlikely that the public will see more of Melania, who prefers to spend her time at Trump Tower in New York City — son Barron still lives at home while attending New York University. If she’s not in Manhattan, her friends are more likely to find her at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida versus Washington, D.C. CNN also noted that a “key role,” the White House social secretary position, still remains unfilled in Melania’s office — so don’t expect to see a busy calendar.
Melania is keeping her profile even lower, likely because she allegedly didn’t enjoy her time in Washington, D.C. the first time around. “When you look back, Melania was betrayed by her staff,” an insider told The Times in April 2024.
“She tried but was attacked — everything, her shoes, her hair,” the source noted. “The microscope is so intense. The sunglasses she wears all the time are her shield.”
So it’s likely Melania will continue with a light set of obligations as the First Lady of the United States because politics is her husband’s job, not hers.
Before you go, click here to see quotes that prove Melania Trump is a lot like her husband.
She stepped into the crosswalk and vanished amongst the crowd, where it struck me just how many women were dressed exactly like her. Long skirts, long sleeves, high necklines. Tidy, sporting faint tones and dull hues. If you saw them from across the street, you’d think they could blend into the background of a painting. As I kept walking, I started counting. I stopped at six maxi skirts before I reached the end of the block.
I don’t know when it changed, exactly. It wasn’t like a season flipped and suddenly everyone covered up. It was more like the color slowly drained from the room, like the light shifted while we weren’t looking. Two years ago, every hot brunch spot was a parade of mesh, cutouts, chainmail tops, tiny dresses, and tiny bags. We were loud then, dressed like we were trying to scream with our bodies.
Fashion has always been a cipher, tracking the pulse of the times; it’s how a nation dresses up its subconscious. The hemline index, a concept introduced in the 1920s, indicates that skirt lengths rise and fall with the economy. When the economy is booming, skirts get shorter. When it crashes, skirts lengthen. But what if the index needs a rewrite? What if morality, politics, and fear play more of a role in societal changes than previously thought?
Hemlines got shorter in the 1920s because of a roaring economy and the empowerment produced by first wave feminism, most famously represented by Coco Chanel’s Little Black Dress. However, hemlines lowered with depression in the ‘30s, while the decade of war in the ‘40s brought flak jackets and surplus trench coats with it. By the swinging ‘60s, shorter hemlines made a dramatic return as second wave feminism spread like wildfire. Although hemlines fluctuate with the times, one thing has remained consistent: the female body has historically been displayed or covered up based on the prevailing mood of a country.
The aesthetic of the hour is modest, refined, and just shy of severe with long skirts, high necklines, and thick fabrics that feel vaguely puritanical. Even the color palette has shifted: away from saturated neon or expressive prints, toward browns, taupes, and the same mild “butter yellow” as government stationery. Gen Z, supposedly the generation of rupture and rebellion, shockingly doesn’t seem to be putting up a fight against America’s changing culture.
And it’s not that I think the new aesthetic is ugly; quite the contrary. Sometimes I look at what’s trending and feel a strange sense of longing. I like the softness, the order, the placidity of pastels. On certain days, when I’ve had a hard week or the news is too loud or I just don’t want to be looked at, I’ll reach for a long skirt and a vintage cardigan and feel safer somehow. Not just covered, but smaller. Contained, the way a doll is safely kept in a box. But then I’ll catch myself in the mirror and wonder what exactly I’m dressing for. And more importantly: who.
Although what becomes a trend often appears to be arbitrary, society’s invisible strings are always being tugged at by those in power. Governments across the globe are legislating modesty and pushing for conservative doctrines, while traditional gender roles are being repackaged as refuge and empowerment. It would be easier to believe that the new trends this summer are just a passing phase, if it weren’t for the headlines that keep reminding us, again and again, that the rights we thought we had were never as solid as we believed.
In the past few years, several U.S. states have introduced or passed legislation reinforcing the power of the patriarchy while attacking women’s rights. From abortion restrictions to the destruction of DEI programs to the erasure of women’s contributions to history, these policies govern female bodies while simultaneously affecting how femininity is perceived across the nation. And, whether intentionally or not, a growing portion of young women are beginning to reflect America’s changing culture on their bodies. Some call it soft conservatism, others call it repression in a beige trench coat, but either way, we’re actively witnessing gender equality backslide like never before.
The fashion industry, of course, claims otherwise. Designers argue that longer lengths are merely a return to elegance, a much-needed palate cleanser after the vibrant, maximalist upheaval of the early 2020s. But if you look closely, these silhouettes are evidently far more than just aesthetic choices. And there’s something especially haunting about the way modesty has rebranded itself to adapt to modern society. On TikTok, #modestfashion has over 12 billion views.
The language around it has shifted, too. “Feminine.” “Elegant.” “Clean.” All words that sound lovely, sure, but if you tilt your head, they start to sound like reminders: be quiet, be soft, take up less space. Some of the most viral creators are women around my age who layer long skirts over blouses and describe their style as “old money” or “subtle.” They do GRWMs where they speak in hushed voices and pair butter yellow dresses with pearl earrings and say things like “I just feel more like myself this way.” But I wonder: which version of themselves do they mean? And how much of that self is theirs, and how much of it is what we’ve all been told to be?
I remember the day the Supreme Court decision on abortion dropped. Even in New York, where I knew my rights were technically protected, I didn’t feel safe. It felt like the ground had shifted, like something ancient and domineering had woken up beneath us. When I started my first year of college at WashU in St. Louis in the fall, it hit me even harder. Missouri had a trigger ban; abortion became illegal almost immediately. I remember one night in the library, overhearing two girls whisper about how far they’d have to drive — Illinois, maybe Kansas — if something happened. I watched them mouth the word abortion like a dirty word, a word that’s only fictional as long as you don’t utter it out loud.
Post-Roe America is different. For Gen Z women, the reversal of constitutional protections was a psychological event as much as, if not more than, a legal one. Suddenly, the body became a battleground again. For a generation raised with modern feminist icons, the rise of conservative fashion can initially seem like a new form of agency. To cover up can feel like a considerable form of resistance. But sometimes it can also feel like surrender, especially if it’s not of your own volition. Either way, it’s impossible to separate what’s trending from the larger forces at work — forces that want to re-domesticate the female body and punish it for being difficult to control. We are witnessing, in real time, a visual negotiation of power.
At the same time, it’s no secret that America’s political landscape is changing. According to Tufts’ CIRCLE, young voters skewed more conservative in the 2024 election than in previous years, potentially impacting the sense of nostalgia woven into this season’s fashion era. Butter yellow. Polka dots. Peter Pan collars. The aesthetic of the 1960s housewife is creeping back into pop culture; think Mad Men or The Stepford Wives, but without the irony. Women are dressing like characters in a story that someone else wrote for them, because someone else did write it for them. When girls start dressing like tradwives before they’ve even graduated high school, it begs the question: “Are we choosing this look, or is it choosing us?”
I’ll admit, it feels strange sometimes to criticize something that on the surface looks so preciously harmless. A long skirt doesn’t hurt anyone, and Peter Pan collar is just a neckline. Yet when those styles come back en masse, at the same time as school dress codes get stricter, books are banned, and conservative lawmakers start talking about decency like it’s the 1950s, it’s difficult not to feel like something larger is happening. Ultimately, what’s unnerving about the return of long skirts isn’t the skirt itself. It’s the silent return of expectations that women have worked so hard to escape, the packaging of repression as elegance. Fashion is always political, even when it pretends not to be. Especially when it pretends not to be.
]]>According to a New York Times Aug. 21 report, Tiffany Trump’s husband, Michael Boulos, made a major deal with Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, shortly after he proposed to his now-wife. Boulos was working for a yacht brokerage firm owned by his cousin, Jimmy Frangi.
Kushner bought a 50-meter superyacht as an investment, but Boulos’ firm reportedly overcharged his future brother-in-law by $2.5 million, and Boulos pocketed $300,000 in commission from the early 2022 sale. The New York Times noted that the deal “went bad” and Kushner’s “yacht sits unfinished in Greece” — and he also realize that he overpaid for his purchase.
No one is taking the blame as everyone points fingers at each other, but a spokesperson for Tiffany and Boulos claimed there was no issue with Kushner. “Mr. Boulos is proud of and honored by his close, familial relationship with Mr. Kushner,” the representative told the media outlet via email while noting that Boulos is no longer working with his cousin. Per The Daily Beast, Boulos is also trying to find a buyer for his brother-in-law’s unfinished yacht.
Still, this business deal gone bad might be awkward for Tiffany and Ivanka, who weren’t the closest of siblings growing up. They were raised on separate coasts after Tiffany’s mom, Marla Maples, divorced Donald Trump in 1999. The tension had been building for years, according to a People source who shared that the Trump family inheritance was a source of their early feud.
Yet their relationship took a positive turn once Donald Trump was elected to the White House in 2016. “They used to not get along, but now they’re bonded over their shared trauma of being the most hated kids in America,” an insider explained. “Going through that experience with their dad as president was awful for them; they hated it. People were so cruel. Especially about Tiffany’s looks.”
With Tiffany recently giving birth to a baby boy, the women have bonded over motherhood. But the failed business deal between their husbands could fracture their blossoming friendship if the yacht doesn’t sell — it would be a $15 million mess.
Before you go, click here to see every time Ivanka Trump has tried to distance herself from the Trump family:
Sleeping arrangements are different for everybody. Some like the fan on for white noise, while others like to listen to ASMR to drift off to sleep. Some people have the lights on, some have them off; you get it, it’s all about preferences. Apparently, though, a couple of US President Donald Trump’s sleeping habits caused a confrontation with his staff, per one of his close acquaintances.
In case you missed it, biographer Michael Wolff spoke on a new Inside Trump’s Head podcast episode, specifically about Trump’s bedtime habits; and how they had to be put to an end.
“During the first administration, he had a lock installed on his bedroom door, and that precipitated a fight with the Secret Service, who actually took it off — demanded it be taken off. This was a confrontation,” he said.
You may be wondering: Why could no locks be installed? Well, according to The Week, the US President isn’t allowed to do so because their armed guards need easier access to them. Plus, the armed guard is always out front, and having to go through a locked door could be a security risk.
Now, this actually isn’t the first time we’ve heard about this bedroom habit. Back in 2019, in Free, Melania: the Unauthorized Biography, it was revealed that Donald originally asked for a lock on his door back then, too.
But then, Wolff also discussed a second altercation with the White House staff, saying, “Then there was another issue when the White House domestic staff changed his sheets, and he had a fit. What that’s about, I have no idea.” And neither do we!
Before you go, click here to see the biggest presidential scandals in US History.
While friends close to the professional golfer have tried to stop the stories in their tracks, they were unsuccessful in getting a White House wedding rumor from circulating.
“That’s bulls—t,” a Woods pal told the Daily Mail. “Why would he want to get married in the White House? That doesn’t even stand up to any sort of critical thinking.”
They called it “twisted fan fiction” because even Woods knows that a ceremony at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW would be “polarizing” to his fans. And let’s remember, even though Vanessa’s last name is Trump, the White House is occupied by her former father-in-law — talk about an awkward venue choice!
Plus, with Woods’ “unlimited money to get married wherever the hell he wants to,” the White House wouldn’t be his top choice. It doesn’t seem like the couple is interested in walking down the aisle anyway.
In July, a second source told the Daily Mail that Vanessa, who was formerly married to Donald Trump Jr., and Woods, who divorced his wife, Elin Nordegren, in 2010, like the status quo of their relationship.
“Cynically, why should she get married? There’s no point of it, and it would just complicate her alimony from Donald [Jr.],” the insider claimed. “And Tiger, of course, paid out a lot in his divorce from Elin, and I don’t think he’s particularly excited to do that again.”
Even though the couple’s inner circle seems to be downplaying any marriage talk, their relationship is serious. Woods shared a surprisingly personal note on his Instagram page on March 23 about their blossoming romance.
“Love is in the air and life is better with you by my side,” he wrote in the caption alongside two sweet snapshots with Vanessa. “We look forward to our journey through life together. At this time, we would appreciate privacy to all those close to our hearts.”
It sounds like Woods and Vanessa are happy just where they are for now.
Before you go, click here to see surprising celebrity couples we never saw coming.
Knox was arrested, alongside her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, in 2007 after her British roommate was found dead in their home in Perugia, Italy, where they were both on study abroad years.
Throughout the high-profile case, and several appeals and retrials, Knox was painted as a “she-devil” who manipulated Sollecito and accused the pair of killing Kercher in a “drug-fueled sex game gone awry.”
However Knox and Sollecito were released from prison in 2011 after spending four years behind bars spanning from their 2007 arrests through their 2009 conviction. After yet another appeal, they were officially exonerated when an Italian court ruled that Rudy Guede, a man who admitted to the killing in 2007 after his DNA was found at the crime scene, had acted alone in killing Meredith.
While Knox has since shifted the public’s opinion of her through documentaries, two books and, now, Hulu series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, there are still some people who believe she was connected to Kercher.
One of those people is someone Knox has said she has grown close with, regularly exchanging greeting cards and personal life updates — Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor in her case.
Mignini, who served as both the lead prosecutor and investigator in Kercher’s murder, told The Telegraph in 2022 that he still believes Knox was present at the crime scene when Kercher was killed but has formed a bond with the woman he once faced off against in court.
“Amanda has changed a lot and I think I can say that I know her,” he said. “We have different ideas about the trial that involved us, but now I have a good opinion of her.”
Why Does Mignini Think Amanda Knox Is Guilty?
Mignini has long cited Knox’s allegedly strange behavior after Kercher’s murder as proof that she killed her roommate. “I have to remind you that her behavior was completely inexplicable,” he said in 2016 Netflix documentary reexamining the case. “Totally irrational.”
“Amanda was a girl that was very uninhibited,” Mignini said, leaning into his theory that Knox, Sollecito and Guede killed Kercher in a sex game. “She would bring boys home – and hearing Meredith’s friends, if you could imagine a girl different from Amanda in every imaginable way, it would have been Meredith.”
Mignini later met with Knox during her return to Italy in 2022, a meeting that plays a central role in in the Hulu drama series Knox produced.
In March 2025, Knox told People why she met with Mignini in 2022, saying, “My goal was to understand him… there was this deep curiosity in me to try to understand this person who decided that I was a dangerous person, who deserved to spend the most years of my life in prison.”
She described Mignini as a “boogeyman” figure in her life. “Whether directly or indirectly, he kept being a presence in my life because he was the one who portrayed me as this girl gone wild, who out of the blue murdered her roommate,” she said.
“And that rippled through my life. And he was, for so long, this very big, scary sort of omniscient presence that just had power over my life and who had sort of diminished me into a pawn in his game. And so, I felt like I didn’t have agency in my life primarily because of him, Dr. Giuliano Mignini.”
Knox said meeting Mignini helped her feel “free” and the pair have formed a friendship of sorts.
Before you go, click here to learn more about Amanda Knox’s infamous return to Italy in 2022.
There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding Andrew Lownie’s book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York. It’s a book about Prince Andrew, but there’s one particular story that is causing more heat than any other — and it’s not about the royal.
The book, which was released Aug. 14, included an allegation that Jeffrey Epstein was the person who introduced Donald Trump to his now-wife, Melania Trump. There are currently 60,000 copies in circulation that contain the story, but future copies will not include those details, per People. EBooks and audiobooks have already been updated with the changes, per The Telegraph.
“We can confirm that several passages from Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie have been removed in consultation with the author,” a spokesperson for HarperCollins UK told the media outlet. “Entitled is published in the UK by HarperCollins. In the US, the book is self-published by Mr. Lownie.”
The controversy didn’t start with Lownie, though; it actually started with a now-retracted Daily Beast Podcast interview with Michael Wolff, a biographer who wrote the critical book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, about the president’s first administration. He was the one who first claimed Melania was “very involved” with Epstein’s inner circle, which is how she met her now-husband.
Hunter Biden then repeated those claims in a July interview with YouTube host Andrew Callaghan and the fight only became more complicated. Donald Trump has since refuted the allegations and told Fox News Radio last week, via The Telegraph, “Jeffrey Epstein had nothing to do with Melania and introducing. It was another person, actually… but it wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein.”
Melania has since threatened Biden with a $1 billion lawsuit, citing that his comments were “false, disparaging, defamatory” and “extremely salacious,” per The Hill. So, Lownie’s Prince Andrew book, which told a similar tale about how Donald and Melania Trump allegedly met, is hoping to avoid any threat of lawsuits.
The couple’s beginnings have several different tales, as told by the first lady. In September 2024, she sat down with Fox News to discuss their rather formal first date. He took her on a business visit to Bedford, New Jersey, where he wanted to buy property.
“And it was very nice, because we were two of us alone in the car for hour, hour and a half, and it’s no other noise, no other people, because at that time, he was already known and a celebrity,” she said. “So, it was really nice to be just two of us.”
In 2016, she shared a very different tale to Harper’s Bazaar about a trendy night on the town at a celerity hotspot at the time. “Remember Moomba?” she asked the reporter. “It was a great place, wasn’t it? I remember that night like it was two months ago.”
It sounds like Melania and Donald Trump’s origin story is a bit of a mystery.
Before you go, click here to see the biggest presidential scandals in US History.