Netflix has become known for creating documentaries about unbelievable true crime stories, but Unknown Number may just take the cake.
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, which premiered on the streamer on 29 August, tells the story of a cyberbullying and catfishing case that consumed the small town of Beal City in Michigan. In 2020, 13-year-old Lauryn Licari and her middle-school boyfriend, Owen McKenny, started getting constant graphic and disturbing messages from an unknown number out of the blue.
Over the next two years, the teens continued to be harassed by the anonymous texter, who sent them sexually explicit material and horrifically cruel taunts, including telling Lauryn she should die by suicide. When the pair ended their relationship, the bully didn’t stop, even sending texts to Owen’s new love interest and her mother.
Netflix's latest true crime fare follows Kendra Licari, who was sentenced to a minimum of 19 months in prison for cyberbullying her daughter Lauryn in 2023. Where is Lauryn now?
Eventually, the bullying became so severe that the local police department and then the FBI stepped in to investigate. In the end of 2022, the probe revealed the stunning truth — the cyberbully had been Lauryn’s own mother, Kendra. The now 45-year-old eventually pled guilty to two counts of stalking a minor in 2023 and was sentenced to 19 months in prison.
If you’re anything like us, you’re dying to know even more about the details of this case, from how Lauryn and her father, Shawn, are doing now to why Kendra decided to share her story with the cameras.
Here’s everything we have found, based on court records and interviews that have been released outside of Unknown Number on Netflix.
Why did Kendra Licari send the messages to Lauryn and Owen?
Well, Kendra herself in the documentary said that she was trying to protect her daughter from experiencing something similar to her own trauma from a sexual assault. But Skye Borgman, the film’s director, thinks that it’s possible Kendra hasn’t fully untangled her own reasoning yet.
“I don’t know that she really knows why she did it,” Borgman told Netflix’s Tudum.
The article notes that some have speculated that Kendra’s actions were a form of Munchausen’s by proxy, but Borgman cautioned that there hasn’t been any formal diagnosis that she’s aware of.
“To give it any sort of medical foundation is a little bit problematic,” she said, though she did note she saw the similarities between the condition and what Kendra did.
Why did Kendra agree to participate in the documentary?
Usually in true crime docs, we don’t hear directly from the perpetrators — but Kendra was interviewed extensively by Borgman and her team. This made the reveal that Kendra was behind the cyberbullying even more shocking. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Borgman said the process of getting Kendra to appear wasn’t easy, telling Tudum that most of the film was complete before she agreed to talk.
Ultimately, Borgman said, it seemed Kendra was interested in sharing her story directly with an audience.
“That was appealing to her, [to] sit down and tell her story from her perspective and that Lauryn [could] see her do that,” she said. “She wanted to do it, I think, for her daughter.”
“I'm the one who has put myself in the firing line, and it's not easy.”
We learn that Kendra was also lying about her employment. Are there more details?
According to a deep-dive investigative piece on the case published in The Cut, Kendra was hiding much more from her family than just her horrifying role as her own daughter’s catfish.
Kendra had been the breadwinner of the family, working at Central Michigan University in human resources (Shawn worked at an car body shop). In 2019 she told the family she had got a new job, working at an IT desk at another local university, Ferris State University. According to the article, Kendra told her husband she had gotten a big raise at the new job and the family even bought a “dream home” in the woods.
But weird things kept happening. Shawn, according to the article, told his coworkers the family had experienced identity theft, which led them to missing house payments, and Kendra had said she’d been hacked after bouncing a cheque.
What Shawn found out after his wife’s arrest was that it was all a lie. In reality, Kendra had been fired from her job at Central Michigan in 2019, and her new job at Ferris State didn’t come with a salary increase. Then she was placed on a performance improvement plan in 2021 and quit. By the time Kendra’s lies were discovered, the family was being hounded by debt collectors and were in danger of losing their home.
It was this money trouble that Kendra initially blamed her behaviour on, according to the article, telling the police investigator that “stress and finance” had caused her to act out.
The doc will cover “Beckham and her fashion and beauty business”.
Where is Kendra now?
Kendra was released from prison in Michigan on 8 August 2024, and will be on parole until 2026. The Cut reported that as of January 2025 she was living near Detroit with family.
Shawn and Kendra are now divorced, and he was granted full custody of Lauryn, who is now 18. According to the documentary, Kendra has had no contact with her daughter since her release from prison.
Where are Lauryn and Owen now?
Both teens graduated from high school in 2024. According to online records, Owen is now attending a small private university in Michigan, where he plays baseball.
As for Lauryn, Borgman notes that she first sat down with the teen in 2023. At the time, Lauryn was focused on reuniting with her mum, with Borgman saying “she just wanted her mum back in her life.” But by the time they ended filming after Kendra’s release from prison, Borgman said she saw a shift in Lauryn, who “wanted to approach the relationship with more caution in our second interview.”
“She’s done a lot of pretty critical thinking, especially between that time and now,” the director said. “These years are such critical years for young people… she’s got the most complicated feelings to deal with. Everybody else can hate Kendra. I don’t think Lauryn can, right? It’s your mom. I mean, how do you navigate that? It’s really uncharted waters.”
This article was originally published in GLAMOUR US.
