As if being a teenager navigating high school, young love, friendship drama and social media wasn’t hard enough, Lauryn Licari‘s mother managed to make it so much worse.
In October 2020, then-13-year-old Lauryn and her boyfriend Owen McKenney got a group text from an unknown number that claimed Owen was breaking up with Lauryn. Occasional anonymous messages followed, but the couple assumed they were being pranked and tried to shrug them off.
But as seen in the new Netflix docuseries Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, the messages took a turn for the disturbing on Sept. 13, 2021, after which the Michigan teens were inundated with threatening, sexually explicit texts, sometimes receiving up to 40 or 50 in one day. They came from all different numbers, making blocking impossible.
“Most messages contain hateful speech and contain language like, ‘kill yourself,'” a 2022 Isabella County Sheriff’s report stated, per NBC News. “A lot of the messages repeat this same language.”
The upsetting messages kept coming until Feb. 20, 2023. And authorities eventually determined that they were sent by Lauryn’s mom, Kendra Licari.
Kendra denied being behind the original batch of texts, telling detectives, per the sheriff’s report, that she “just fed off from it” and started sending messages in September 2021, after which she “got caught up” and kept going.
When she confessed her involvement to authorities, according to the report, she asked “if this matter could be kept quiet and that others not find out about it” because she didn’t want Lauryn’s fellow students to “interact negatively with her” at school.
But there was no keeping it out of the public record—or the national news, for that matter—once Kendra was arrested. She ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor and was sentenced to 19 months in jail.
Read on for the unbelievable series of events chronicled in Unknown Number: The High School Catfish and find out where Kendra and Lauryn are now:
What happened to Lauryn Licari and Owen McKenny?
Sweethearts since junior high, Lauryn Licari and Owen McKenny started getting anonymous texts from an unknown number in October 2020, the sender seemingly wanting to drive a wedge between the couple.
The first message read, “Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you.” Subsequent texts read, “He no longer likes you and hasn’t liked you for a while” and “It’s obvious he wants me.”
Eventually the messages stopped and months went by. But on Sept. 13, 2021, the texts started up again—only this time, the pair started receiving dozens a day and they were far more upsetting.
“The messages are specific in nature indicating that they may be from someone who they know,” Isabella County Sheriff Michael Main wrote in a December 2022 report, per NBC News. “Most messages contain hateful speech and contain language like, ‘kill yourself …’ A lot of the messages repeat this same language.”
Owen and Lauryn broke up while this was unfolding, as recounted in the 2025 Netflix docuseries Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, but the messages kept coming.
Who is Lauryn Licari’s mom, Kendra Licari?
When the cyberbullying began, Lauryn was living with her parents Shawn Licari and Kendra Licari in Mt. Pleasant, Mich.
Kendra worked in IT at Ferris State University and coached girls’ basketball at Lauryn’s high school.
How did authorities figure out Kendra Licari was harassing her own daughter?
Lauryn and Owen’s families first reported the messages to the kids’ school, assuming it had to be other students who were responsible for the harassment. Beal City Public Schools referred the case to local law enforcement.
The Isabella County Sheriff’s Office called in the FBI for assistance. According to Sheriff Main’s report, a cybercrimes expert connected the texts to “an IP address from a Spectrum host from the Mt Pleasant area” and a user who was opening a number-generating app from an iPhone.
The FBI expert, per the report, “found that [Kendra’s] phone number was attached to the IP address each time a text message was sent to the victims.”
What did Kendra Licari say about the texts she sent to Lauryn and Owen?
Kendra told detectives Aug. 10, 2022, per Main’s report, that she did not send the original batch of messages that her daughter and Owen received in October 2020, but rather “she just fed off from it and began to send them” in September 2021. She “got caught up in sending the messages,” the report said, “and it just continued.”
In Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, Kendra said she started her own texting campaign to try to catch who was allegedly harassing her daughter in the first place.
“I was sending messages in the hopes that they might send back asking, ‘Is this so-and-so?'” she said in the series. “I started with the thought, ‘We need some answers.’ And then it just kept going.”
Kendra then said that trauma she herself experienced as a teen fueled her desire to protect her daughter from harm at all costs.
“As [Lauryn] started getting older, I had things that were suppressed come forward,” Kendra said in Unknown Number. She explained, “I wanted to try to control the outcome of her journey. I was afraid of letting her grow up. I was scared of what could happen to her.”
When was Kendra Licari arrested?
Kendra was arrested Dec. 12, 2022, and charged with two counts of stalking a minor and two counts of communicating with another to commit a crime, according to NBC News.
“We had tens of thousands of text messages, whether they were messages that were just for her daughter or some of her daughter’s friends,” Isabella County prosecutor David Barberi told Good Morning America at the time. “And the digital footprint was just insane.”
Beal City Public Schools Superintendent William Chilman told GMA that, even once they realized they weren’t dealing with a student prank, “we weren’t expecting that it would be a parent. When they informed us later in the spring that they were suspecting that it possibly was her, it was a shock to all of us.”
Kendra ultimately cut a deal and pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor in exchange for the other charges being dropped. She was sentenced in April 2023 to a minimum of 19 months in jail, minus 22 days for time served.
Where is Kendra Licari now?
After Kendra was revealed to be their daughter’s harasser, Shawn divorced her and was granted full custody of Lauryn.
“I just can’t believe she would do something like that to her daughter that supposedly she loved dearly,” Shawn said in the Netflix series. “Just makes me sick. She stabbed me in the heart—shot me in the heart—and threw it away.”
Kendra, now 45, was paroled on Aug. 8, 2024, and is on supervised release until Feb. 8, 2026, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections.
She said in Unknown Number that she hadn’t seen Lauryn in “about a year and a half,” and per the terms of her release they’re not allowed to reunite for the time being.
“We both know that we’re with each other no matter what,” Kendra said. “I definitely think we can have a healthy relationship. I know we both hold that bond that we have close.”
Where is Lauryn Licari now?
Lauryn, now 18, is not opposed to reconciling with her mom and expressed hope Kendra would get “the help that she needs” now that she’s out of jail.
“Being without that relationship is really hurting me,” Lauryn said in the series. “I think rebuilding our relationship will help both of us a lot. I love her more than anything.”
The series also noted that Lauryn is no longer in touch with Owen.
