The distressing messages a Michigan mother sent to her teenage daughter while posing as an anonymous online harasser for a year have been unveiled.
In 2021, Lauryn Licari began receiving an alarming number of anonymous threatening messages. Her then-boyfriend, Owen McKenny, was also targeted by these texts. Over the course of a year, Lauryn and Owen were bombarded with messages from an unidentified sender on various social media platforms.
Kendra Licari, Lauryn’s mother, worked with Owen’s mother, school officials, and law enforcement in Beal City to identify the anonymous harasser. The investigation eventually uncovered that Kendra Licari was behind the harassment.
Authorities found that Licari had been using a virtual private network (VPN) to conceal her location. However, the FBI successfully traced all the IP addresses back to Licari.
In 2023, Licari pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor and was sentenced to a maximum of five years. She was released in August 2024, according to Today. However, she is prohibited from contacting her daughter due to the terms of her plea deal.
Netflix’s documentary series, “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish,” highlights several messages that Licari sent to her daughter, which ultimately led to Licari’s conviction.
The messages Lauryn received from her mother included derogatory remarks such as “He thinks you’re ugly,” referring to Owen, as well as “you’re worthless,” “We won,” and “He thinks you’re trash.”
Alarmingly, some messages contained sexually explicit content, expressing a desire to “bang” Owen and claiming that Owen was not interested in Lauryn while stating they are “both down to f***.”
“They were vulgar and nasty enough to make a 53-year-old man blush,” Superintendent Bill Chillan commented. “The evidence was extraordinary.”
The messages escalated in severity, with Lauryn receiving threats of physical harm, including a message urging her to end her own life.
“When I first read that, I was totally in shock, it made me feel bad, I was in a bad mental state,” Lauryn expressed.
In the Netflix documentary, Licari stated that once she began sending the messages, she ‘didn’t know how 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 confessed. “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 previously voiced regret for her behavior and, in the documentary, mentioned that she is deeply ‘disappointed’ in herself, acknowledging that she has let down both herself and her family.
The documentary also reveals that the mother insists she did not send the initial messages that her daughter received, which suggested Owen was planning to break up with her.