Lauryn Licari’s world turned into a living nightmare when she was relentlessly bullied over text for two years in Beal City, Michigan.
The anonymous bully mocked the teenager’s appearance, demanded she break up with her then-boyfriend Owen McKenny, and even encouraged ideas about self-harm.
When the culprit was finally caught, it wasn’t an enemy, classmate or stranger who was put behind bars. It was her own mother.
Lauryn Licari’s world turned into a living nightmare when she was relentlessly cyberbullied for two years
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
Trigger warning: this article contains graphic details that may be distressing to some.
Lauryn and Owen were high school sweethearts, who struck up a bond when they first met in the 7th grade.
“They were like a high school couple from a movie,” Owen’s mother, Jill McKenny, said in the Netflix documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.
Things were going great for Lauryn and Owen, with even their families bonding in the process.
The parents, including Lauryn’s mother, Kendra Licari, would call each other over for barbecues and do family activities together.
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
But after a few months of dating, things took a turn when the then 13-year-old received a message from an unknown number.
At the time, Owen had been invited to a Halloween party. But Lauryn didn’t want to join because she “wasn’t a fan of the girls in our grade, she just wanted it to be me and her and no one else,” the ex-boyfriend said.
When the anonymous texter sent a message to Lauryn, they claimed they were going to be attending the party.
“Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you,” read the text.
“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,” the text continued. “We are both down to f***. You are a sweet girl but I know I can give him what he wants, sorry not sorry.”
“Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you,” read the very first message sent from the anonymous sender
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
Things seemed to return to normal after the Halloween party as the texts had stopped completely. But the relief was short-lived.
About 11 months after the first texts, Lauryn and Owen began receiving messages from random numbers that were often vile and too extreme for underage teenagers.
Owen would receive as many as 30-50 messages a day with the sender making explicit advances, while Lauryn was relentlessly told to break up with him.
“How’s the happy couple? Preparing for the end of a golden relationship? We hear about how you are the forever couple,” read one message. “Owen loves me, and I will always be the girl he loves. He will be with me while your lonely, ugly a** is alone.”
The vile texts would shame Lauryn for her body and her appearance, calling her “ugly” and “worthless”
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
“It seemed like the text messages were trying to make me and Owen break up,” Lauryn said in the documentary.
The mysterious texter sometimes even addressed Lauryn by her nickname Lo, which meant it had to be someone from within their circle.
When she and Owen tried to call the number back, nobody would pick up. The culprit was using a random number generator, which meant she couldn’t even block it.
“I was getting at least six text messages a day,” the teenager recalled.
“‘Trash b****, don’t wear leggings ain’t no one want to see your anorexic flat a**,’” she recalled one text, and said the messages made her question what she would wear to school.
“It definitely affected how I thought about myself,” she added.
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
Other texts included “he don’t want ur sry a**” and had explicit, vulgar messages about Owen and the texter being physical.
Along with friends, Lauryn and Owen’s parents also got involved in trying to identify the texter.
The four parents approached the kids’ school for help, and the anonymous texts became the center of drama within the school walls.
“When they showed me some of the text messages, I was astounded,” Principal Dan Boyer said.
The school installed cameras and began talking to suspects. But their efforts led to nothing.
Meanwhile, the police got involved in January 2022, and eventually, the FBI was also roped into the case by April.
The school installed extra cameras on the premises and began questioning students to find the texter’s identity
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
As the teenagers grappled with the situation, Owen decided it was best to end their two-year romance, hoping it would put an end to the messages.
But things only worsened, with the anonymous texter sending messages about self-harm to Lauryn.
“He thinks you’re ugly,” read one message, and another said, “He thinks you’re trash.”
“We won,” the texter wrote, calling her “worthless.”
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
“K*** yourself now b****”, “jump off a bridge,” “his life would be better if you were d**d,” and “Finish yourself or we will #bang” were some of the cruel messages.
Lauryn said she was “totally in shock” when she read the texts.
“It made me feel bad, I was in a bad mental state,” she added.
The situation for Owen had also reached a point where he would receive messages throughout the night.
The texter didn’t stop even after the teenage couple’s breakup and began texting Lauryn about self-harm
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
A cyber expert from the FBI Computer Crimes Tax Force eventually managed to track down the IP addresses and connected them to Lauryn’s mother Kendra’s devices.
Cops arrived at the house, leaving both Lauryn and her father Shawn Licari stunned to find out that Kendra had masterminded the entire ordeal.
Kendra, who had a background in IT, almost instantly admitted that she was the texter. She revealed she had lost both her jobs and began spending all her time sending the texts.
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
“Every single one of us makes mistakes, not a single one of us has lived a perfect life, and realistically a lot of us have probably broken the law at some point or another and not gotten caught,” the mother said in the documentary.
She said she didn’t send the first message ahead of the Halloween party, but she was behind the ones that followed.
“I just kept going, it was a spiral, kind of a snowball effect, I don’t think I knew how to stop,” the mother said. “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.”
Father Shawn Licari was in disbelief over his wife’s actions and was given custody of their daughter after the divorce
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
While addressing the body-shaming messages, the mother said: “Lauryn knows she’s skinny, she knows she’s petite, she knows she’s thin, so I might have kind of picked up on some of her insecurities.”
“I was not scared of her hurting herself,” she further claimed.
Owen said he was “speechless” when he discovered that Lauryn’s mother was the perpetrator. He also believes her actions might have partly been influenced by her attraction towards him.
“It felt like she was attracted to me. She was super friendly,” he said. “It wasn’t like it was my girlfriend’s mum, it felt like it was something more. She would do things for me, she would cut my own steak for me, it was too weird.”
Image credits: Isabella County Jail
His mother Jill also agreed in the documentary and said that Kendra had become “obsessed” with him.
“I think that there’s some kind of relationship that she wanted to have with Owen that obviously is not acceptable at her age,” she said, noting that Kendra would randomly text her son and tried to maintain a connection with him even after their kids broke up.
“She came to all of his sporting events even after him and Lauryn broke up. This is disgusting,” she added.
In the documentary, Kendra said her own childhood trauma may have fueled her actions.
“As my daughter was hitting those teenage years, I got scared. I was afraid of letting her grow up, want[ed] to protect her and keep her safe,” she said.
Owen and his mother believe Kendra was attracted to him and attended his sporting events even after he broke up with her daughter
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
Skye Borgman, who directed Unknown Number, said he was haunted by the question of why Kendra would harass her own daughter.
“I don’t know that she really knows why she did it,” he told Tudum.
“She does mention in the documentary an assault that happened [to her] when she was right around Lauryn’s age,” the director continued. “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.”
The former Beal City superintendent, Bill Chillman, who worked on the case, said in the documentary that Kendra’s cyberbullying of her own daughter may have been her indirect way of pulling her closer.
Image credits: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish / Netflix
“She wanted her daughter to need her in such a way that she was willing to hurt her, and this is the way she chose to do that versus physically trying to make her ill,” he said.
The accused mother pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting a minor and was sentenced to 19 months to five years in prison.
Lauryn’s father divorced Kendra after the twisted events came to light and got custody of their daughter.
Kendra was released in August last year and is currently not allowed to see Lauryn.
“She wanted her daughter to need her in such a way that she was willing to hurt her,” Bill Chillman said
Lauryn is currently studying criminology in college and has hopes of having a future with her mother someday.
“Not having a relationship with my mum, I just don’t feel like myself. I really need her in my life,” she said in the documentary.
She also hopes her mother will get the help she needs. “So when we see each other, it doesn’t go back to the old ways and the way it was before,” she added. “I love her more than anything.”
The chilling tale is now being told in Netflix’s documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, released on August 29.
If you or someone you know is struggling with self-harm or suicide ideation, help is available: International Hotlines
“She was obsessed with that boy. She needs to be in a mental hospital,” one commented online
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