A mother from Michigan has shared the underlying reason for why she pursued and harassed her 13-year-old daughter over the span of a year.
In 2021, Lauyrn Licari began receiving a barrage of anonymous threatening messages. Her boyfriend at the time, Owen McKenny, was also targeted by these messages.
Throughout the following year, both Lauryn and Owen were bombarded with text messages from an unfamiliar number, in addition to alarming messages on social media, purportedly from someone of their own age.
Cosmopolitan reports that they would sometimes receive as many as 12 messages each day.
In an effort to identify the sender, Lauryn’s mother, Kendra Licari, teamed up with Owen’s mother, school officials, and local law enforcement in Beal City, Michigan. Eventually, the FBI was involved, leading to the revelation that Kendra was behind the messages.
The investigation uncovered that Kendra had been using a virtual private network (VPN) to conceal her location. Nevertheless, the FBI managed to trace the IP addresses back to Licari.
Following her arrest, Kendra initially alleged that one of the teenagers was responsible for the messages, but she eventually confessed.
In 2023, Licari pleaded guilty to two charges of stalking a minor and was sentenced to a maximum of five years. She was released in August 2024 and, according to Today, her plea agreement prohibits her from contacting her daughter.
The true motivation behind her actions remained undisclosed until her participation in Netflix’s documentary series, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.
In the series, Licari claims she did not send the initial messages to her daughter, which insinuated Owen was planning to end their relationship. Instead, she asserts that her subsequent messages were attempts to uncover the source of the harassment.
She explained: “The messages stopped for a little bit, and then they picked back up. In my mind, I’m like, ‘How long do we let this go on? What do I do as a parent?’
“I really wanted to get to the bottom of who it was. And that’s when I started sending the text messages to Lauryn and Owen.”
Kendra mentioned that she hoped the teenagers would discuss the messages with friends, potentially uncovering clues about the sender.
She also confessed that once she began, she felt unable to stop.
“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,” she admitted. “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.”
Licari has voiced regret for her actions, admitting in the documentary that she is deeply ‘disappointed’ in herself for letting down both herself and her family.
Lauryn, on the other hand, described feeling conflicted as she copes with the loss of trust in her mother, while also longing for her presence.
She expressed: “Being without that relationship I think is really hurting me, and I think rebuilding our relationship will help both of us a lot. I love her more than anything.”
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is currently available for streaming on Netflix.