Unknown Number: The High School Catfish (2025)
Director: Skye Borgman
Stars: Lauryn Licari, Sophie Weber, Macy Johnston, Owen McKenny, Shawn Licari
Plot: Netflix’s documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish details the shocking story of a relentless cyberbullying campaign against high schoolers Lauryn Licari and Owen McKenny. For nearly two years, the couple was harassed with dozens of aggressive text messages daily, some even suggesting suicide. The bullying persisted even after they broke up.
Local police and the FBI investigated, initially questioning the teens’ classmates and family. The documentary is structured as a mystery, building tension as the search for the harasser continues. The shocking reveal comes when investigators discover the culprit isn’t a peer at all…
* * *
[cell phone chimes]
Close it?
[woman 1] Yeah.
[girl 1 giggles]
[woman 2] Perfect.
[crew chuckles]
[girl 1] My name’s Lauryn Licari.
I grew up in Beal City, Michigan.
[light, electronic music playing]
[Lauryn] Beal City is so extremely small. There’s one stoplight and two bars.
[cow moos]
I go to Beal City High School.
It’s a really small school in a small area,
and everybody knows everybody.
[girl 2] My name is Sophie Weber.
I go to Beal City High School with Owen and Macy and Lauryn.
There’s nothing in the area to do besides walk around the small town. [laughs]
No one really has anything better to do than talk about other people.
Like, even the parents.
Like, they talk about what us teenagers are doing, and I feel like that’s kind of a toxic thing that just gets passed down.
A lot of people spend up to 13 hours on their phone a day, which I think is a little bit, like, excessive.
I really like going on my phone.
I love going on TikTok and Snapchat.
I love texting my friends.
[Sophie] It’s kind of the only way that people communicate now, like, is with their phones.
♪ Go, little mama, shake it fast… ♪
[upbeat hiphop music plays]
I was 13 years old when I got my first phone.
Everyone else had a phone, you know? I just… I wanted to fit in.
I was getting to that age where, like, social media was becoming popular, and I just wanted to be cool, you know?
[rhythmic, electronic music plays]
[Sophie] Your phone can be a good thing to, like, communicate with your friends, but it could definitely be a way that something dangerous could happen.
It’s crazy how having a phone could become the worst thing that happened to me.
[ominous music playing]
[distorted voice reading message]
A high school girl in Michigan was cyberbullied for more than a year.
And who turned out to be the suspect shocked everyone.
[man 1] There were details in some of the texts
that made it seem as though somebody was stalking them.
[Sophie] You had to be careful of every single word you said, or else you could look guilty.
These texts were coming in at a clip of 40, 50 a day.
[man 2] When they involve the state police and then eventually the FBI, you can just see how fast this escalates.
Have you ever sent anything to either one of them like this?
This is felony stalking.
I have to make sure you are safe before I leave.
[Lauryn] The more friends you have, the easier it is to be betrayed by them.
[girl 3] It’s crazy how something like that could happen at Beal.
Things were about to get so much worse.
[dramatic music building]
[music abates]
[static crackles]
[music ends]
[ominous music playing]
There was a girl in my class that threw a Halloween party every year, and all of our classmates would go, and all of our parents would go.
[Owen] We were about a year into our relationship, me and Lauryn,
and she was not invited,
but, like, I basically invited her.
Like, “If I’m going, you’re gonna come with me.”
[Lauryn] I didn’t wanna go to the Halloween party.
[Owen] She wasn’t a fan of the girls in our grade.
She just wanted it to be me and her, no one else.
About two weeks before the Halloween party, we got a text from an unknown number in a group chat.
[phone chimes]
[distorted voice reading message]
[phone chimes]
[phone chimes]
[phone chimes]
[phone chimes]
[distorted voice] …and we are both down to fuck.
[phone chimes]
[Lauryn] I was just really confused of who this could be.
Maybe one of our friends just trying to mess with me and Owen.
[Owen] I asked Khloe ’cause we were, like, best friends, and it was her party.
You know, I’m like, “Do you know who sent this?”
Or, like, “Did you send it?” You know, just asking around.
I was like, “Okay, it’s just gonna stop. Just give it some time.”
[Lauryn] After the Halloween party, the messages had kind of stopped, and things seemed to get better.
[Owen] Everything is normal, you know, at the school. Like, everyone’s friends.
You know, like, there was, like, no beef between anyone that would have started these messages.
[Lauryn] I was actually excited about the new school year.
But then, after almost a year, the messages came back.
[school bell rings]
[Lauryn] It seemed like the text messages were trying to break me and Owen up.
I knew it wasn’t somebody I knew
because I would have had their phone number saved in my phone.
[Owen] There was no reason for it, you know?
Like, the first text was for the Halloween party.
Like, this just happened, and then we got more.
[line ringing]
I wanted them to answer the phone so we could maybe figure out who it was.
[ringing continues]
But they would just text us right after we called them.
[ringing ends]
[beep]
They would never answer the phone.
[Lauryn] In a lot of the texts, the unknown sender called me by my nickname, Lo.
So it really made me think it had to be someone who had been around me or one of my close friends before.
I was getting at least six text messagesplus a day.
It was just really annoying because I knew Owen wasn’t involved with it, and I knew he didn’t know what was going on either.
[“Feels Like Falling” plays]
Before all of this, dating Owen, I was just having a good life.
I loved life.
♪ Daydreams… ♪
I first met Owen in seventh grade when I was 12 years old.
♪ Move me, baby, like no one’s watching… ♪
I thought he was cute.
[Owen] Lauryn was shy, but, you know, she was sweet.
She was caring.
We always just were talking, and then one day, eventually, I asked her out.
It was very, like, nerveracking.
And so I was like, “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.” I was super red.
♪ My head is spinning… ♪
Lauryn started talking to a boy named Owen.
And I’m like, “You’re talking to a boy? Aren’t you a little young for that?”
You know, dad talk, you know?
They liked a lot of the same stuff, you know? A lot of the sports.
They went trickortreating together.
Little things like that.
[music continues]
[director] What was your first date? Where did you go?
[Owen] Hmm.
[music halts]
Mom, do you know?
[laughter]
I remember Owen just coming home and telling me there was this cute blonde in his class.
[music resumes] ♪ Daydreams, I hear the… ♪
[man 3] They shared common interests, particularly in athletics.
Owen was very athletic and involved in sports, and so was Lauryn, and so I thought they were a really nice fit.
[Shawn] We all just started hanging out as a group, started doing things.
[Owen] My whole family liked her. You know, we just clicked.
[Shawn] Kendra and Owen’s mom, Jill, became really good friends.
We would invite each other over. We’d have bonfires and just hang out and spend time together while the kids were off playing.
[cheering on video]
Yeah.
It’s gonna go.
It’ll set on fire.
[Lauryn giggles]
[Shawn] Lauryn and Owen, they were always smiling and giggling together.
[Jill] They were just like a highschool couple in a movie.
Their freshman year, they were referred to as the golden couple.
I do think that there was some jealousy, you know, in their class, maybe wanting a relationship, or wanting boys to notice the girls, and, you know, they both had that.
I’m sure there was some… some of that.
[music fades]
[Lauryn] Beal City School is preschool through 12th grade, all in one building.
The people in my high school,
I’ve grown up with since kindergarten, basically.
[Owen] There are only 30 kids a class.
We all have group chats. We’re all friends.
No one really, truly hates each other.
[phone chimes]
We had this class together,
which was science, and we would sit together.
And one day, Owen told us what was going on.
At first, it was like,
“Oh, I’m getting these weird messages. I don’t know who they’re from.”
But as they would come in more,
he would start to tell us, like, actually what they were saying
and how they were saying things
from the conversations we were having in class.
[phone chimes]
[Macy] I never really suspected it was the boys in our grade,
just ’cause the boys in our grade aren’t super involved with people.
They don’t really care about drama.
Boys don’t really have drama. We just play sports and have fun. That’s all.
[Lauryn] Usually, there’s a lot of mean girls.
[Owen] I wanted to try to narrow it down to a certain amount of people.
We would FaceTime each other at night and just talk about it
and be like, “Okay, what came up in the text today?”
Like, “Who was around?”
[Sophie] We were making a list of what group it could be
or who specifically it could be.
I feel like, at Beal, like, there’s certain groups.
The more popular one,
then there was the cheer group that…
They were just cheerleaders.
And there was just another group of girls that my cousin Adrianna was in,
who didn’t have much drama.
And I thought it could’ve been the quieter ones
’cause they could have been more techy.
[Lauryn] I was like, “Is it someone that even goes to Beal?”
“Is it someone inside the school?”
[Owen] If it’s a student,
when I get it at a certain time, there’s only so many people it can be.
If I got a text message during the middle of a school day,
I would look around and see if anyone was on their phone.
They knew, like, what I was doing in class, I feel like.
[distorted voice] Fuckin’ trash bitch. Don’t fuckin’ wear leggings…
[Lauryn] I would question what I wear to school,
how I look, how’s my hair.
Definitely affected how I thought about myself.
[Shawn] Lauryn came home from school one day,
and she just had this look on her face and attitude.
And I’m like, “What’s going on?”
She’s just like, “No, I just got this dumb text at school.”
I was just getting super frustrated with it.
But my mom was like, “Just ignore them.”
“Obviously, you’re beautiful.”
Like, she was just encouraging me to not read them.
[Kendra] I told her just to keep being her
and just not even worry about anything, right?
I didn’t believe anybody would do anything harmful.
[Owen] Then it started to get worse and worse.
[phone chiming]
[Owen] It was so bad where I didn’t want to even go to school anymore.
I didn’t really know who to trust.
And then I said, “Okay, that’s it. I have to tell my parents.”
[Jill] They’re 13.
If this is a ninthgrade girl or boy,
these are pretty intense.
[dramatic music plays]
[phone chiming]
[Jill] We started, unfortunately,
having to take Owen’s phone every night.
I tried to fight them on it. I haven’t had my phone for a year. I wanted privacy.
[Jill] We would have to sit and read all the messages, start to end.
There were times that these text messages were coming in at a clip of, you know,
30, 40, 50 a day.
And that just seemed very, very excessive.
[Jill] Shawn and Kendra and Dave and I decided,
“Okay, the four of us need to go to the school and sit down
and really show how terrible this has gotten.”
We were hoping for some type of action, right?
‘Cause some of the messages were happening during school hours.
The school is responsible for them when they’re on school property.
So we really thought the school would, you know, kind of,
“Let’s see what we can do.”
Unfortunately, in my opinion,
I don’t think the school handled things very well.
[man 1] I thought we were gonna be doing a typical
cyberbullying type of investigation,
which we handle a lot of, unfortunately, in schools today.
Obviously, this situation turned out much different than most.
When they showed me some of the text messages,
I… I… I was astounded by how vitriolic they were.
I’ve never seen this kind of volume in my career.
What in the world?
They were vulgar and nasty enough in nature
to make a 53yearold man blush.
The evidence was extraordinary,
the egregiousness of these texts,
and we knew this was a serious matter.
[Lauryn] Me and Owen got called out of last hour, I think it was,
and we walked in there, and I was like,
“Oh no, this is not about to happen.”
“I’m so scared.”
We didn’t know exactly what was going on, so we called Lauryn in,
’cause we didn’t know.
She could be sending them to herself for attention or…
We had no clue.
[Sophie] So we would try to, like, say things loud next to certain people
to see if it would get brought up into the text messages.
And the only time it got brought into the text
was when we would say it around Lauryn,
which was definitely a red flag.
Lauryn would never really directly talk to me about things.
[Sophie] Lauryn was always just, like, to herself,
never showed any emotion,
and only talked about, like, sports
and just stuff that didn’t really mean a lot to her.
[lipsynching] ♪ Everybody want to know What I would do if I didn’t win ♪
♪ I guess we’ll never know ♪
[Sophie] She had friends,
but not, like, a ton, and she was always kind of a quiet person.
So I thought that Lauryn could have been sending the text messages to herself
to try to, honestly, get closer with Owen.
And it kind of seemed like she wanted attention,
and this would be a way that she could get it.
[Bill] We talked to Owen and Lauryn,
but we did feel that we ruled them out pretty quickly by their responses,
genuine responses.
[Owen] It kind of became a little hot topic of the school.
[Bill] There’s 700 kids that go to Beal City.
Really, at this point,
you know, this could be anybody.
[dramatic music pulsing]
[Dan] I went to some of my students
who I knew would be the most truthful with me
and asked them about the situation.
We asked every question imaginable to these kids.
[Dan] They knew little to nothing about it.
So I began with some video surveillance,
marking when the text would come in,
and then looking at video to see if we could see someone in the hallway
sending a text at that particular time.
Mr. Boyer wanted me to text him when I got a text message,
so then he could see who was on their phone.
So that I would know, here’s a time stamp,
and we could begin checking cameras and looking to see
if we see someone who excused them self from class.
They did all this, and they still couldn’t come up with it, you know?
And they kept getting these text messages.
[Dan] It’s hard to say if they’re sending a Snapchat or a harassing text
when we’re just looking at video.
[Jill] Kendra and I started comparing notes.
We were at the school almost every day with a practice or some sort of event.
So it would just be like, “Hey, you know, did Lauryn get any messages today?”
“This is what Owen got.”
Jill and I spoke about it.
When we were together, we could talk about just about anything,
share things, you know,
kind of really feel, like, a support there.
[Jill] We would sit down and have conversations with Mr. Boyer
about the messages.
[Dan] Some of the first techniques that we talked about
is to simply block the caller.
In this case, that wasn’t possible because they were using
a random number generator application for their phone.
You know, we did try blocking the number,
but then it would come from another number.
We gave further advice to change the students’ numbers.
[Jill] We did contemplate that for a while,
but we knew that it was someone that we were close with.
The information that they knew.
They knew where they were at all the time,
and we were afraid of never finding out and allowing this person into our home.
You know, if it’s one of their friends, are we inviting them over?
Are we opening the doors to somebody who did so much damage?
So we were not willing to give up that hope of finding out.
I can’t tell you the countless times
just standing in the principal’s office, in tears, going,
“Can we please enforce a cell phone policy?”
“Why does my kid have access to look at this
when he should be learning?”
I’m kind of all over the board with kids having phones at school,
because our cell phones… I mean, I use mine as a personal office.
I work a lot from my phone.
You know, I know that they can be used in a classroom as an educational tool.
[low, tense music plays]
[phone chimes]
[phone chimes]
So me and Lauryn were fine through the text messages,
but then they started to make Lauryn question herself and our relationship.
[phone chimes]
[Owen] And then the texter was saying that we hung out.
[Lauryn] So then I was like,
“Okay, I don’t even know if I can trust Owen anymore.”
[Owen] Me and Lauryn got into a lot more fights.
She would accuse me of things that aren’t true at all
’cause she would listen to the text messages.
We were just getting mad at each other about it
when we shouldn’t have been mad at each other.
[Owen] The one thing the texter wanted was for me and Lauryn to break up.
Me and Lauryn, we FaceTime,
and I told her that it just got too much
and that maybe if we give them what they want and they stop,
maybe one day, we can try again.
[poignant music plays]
[Owen] She was very heartbroken.
She was super hurt.
[Lauryn] He was my first love.
We had been together for over two years.
And we just kind of stopped talking to each other.
[Kendra] I talked to Lauryn, just reminding her,
“You know who Owen is,
and… as a person,
even if he didn’t like you, he’s not gonna say these things.”
And, unfortunately, it became a strain in their relationship.
The messages had just gotten to be too much,
and I think that’s really what the last several months of their relationship
revolved around, was,
“Did you talk to this girl?”
“Were you, you know, with this person?”
‘Cause it’s a lot of lies.
[Lauryn] I feel like, in the messages, all they want us to do was break up.
But then, when we broke up, it seemed like the messages got worse.
The fact that they’re still going after the one thing they wanted,
that was really heartbreaking.
[phone chiming]
[distorted voice]
[Lauryn] When I first read that, I was, like, totally in shock.
Made me definitely feel sad. I was in a bad mental state.
This is getting bad.
[Shawn] There are some sick messages.
“Lauryn needs to go kill herself.”
“She shouldn’t be alive. She shouldn’t be at this school anymore.”
My blood pressure is skyrocketing.
[Dan] When I think about a student
who’s been subjected to this kind of harassment
for this period of time,
I’m worried about their mental health.
The incredible toll that that must take
on the emotional wellbeing of a young person.
[phone chimes]
[Owen] It could definitely mess with someone’s mind.
[Jill] What happens one day if this kid has enough of this
and they’re not getting the satisfaction
or the reaction that they’re wanting from the messages anymore?
One day, somebody is going to snap.
I said, “We gotta nail this son of a bitch.”
[distorted voice]
[Jill] When the physical harm started coming out in the messages,
we were afraid, as parents,
that something could happen to our children.
It was a breaking point.
That was also about the time that Officer Main got involved.
[man] I was contacted by the school district
in regards to some cyberbullying and harassment.
We met at the Beal City high school. Both sets of parents were there.
The school superintendent and principal were there.
And the parents explained that this harassment had been going on
for over a year.
Both Jill and Kendra, the mothers,
they were extremely concerned about their children,
their mental health status,
how it was affecting their school academics.
They were pleading for help.
The worst fear ever
is that both of the kids have emotional trauma over this.
And when that gets to the point
where they can’t sustain that emotional trauma anymore,
their potential for risk of selfharm is huge.
It’s actually extremely concerning.
[school bell rings]
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] I knew I was looking for a group of students
who had a very close bond.
Like, they’re sworn to secrecy.
They’re not gonna tell anybody about what’s going on.
So early on, I thought that’s probably what it was.
[phone chimes]
[Lauryn] Once or twice a week, Sheriff Main would come to school
and just ask questions like, “When was your last message?”
“What was it about?”
[Mike] How are things transpiring? Any different?
Anything less, more, same?
[Owen] Hmm.
Not as many messages.
[Mike] Okay.
Don’t let it get you down. It’s just garbage. Somebody’s…
Somebody needs some serious help. So, um, we’ll go from there.
[man on video] Shot is good.
[Lauryn] During basketball season, I started getting messages
related to our games.
I remember there was one basketball game
where I didn’t have any points or something,
so they were hating on me in the messages.
[phone chimes]
The sad part is that Lauryn is a really good athlete,
and she just, you know, kind of gave up.
[Lauryn] Maybe somebody watching the game could have been sending it.
[cheering on video]
[cheers erupt]
[Bill] There were details in some of the texts
that made it seem as though that somebody was stalking them.
[Jill] I called Kendra and said, “You know the girls on the basketball team.”
“I don’t know them very well.”
“Does this look like any of them? I mean, you’ve coached them.”
“Who competes with Lauryn?”
[Kendra] This is where I started to really think,
“Okay, is somebody on the high school team jealous or envious?”
[Lauryn] I got one text where the sender talked about
how many points they scored in the game the night before.
So me and my mom thought maybe we could figure out
who scored that many points.
My mom was a volunteer scorekeeper at most games,
so she thought we could look at the score chart.
And when we looked, only one person had that amount of points.
Khloe Wilson.
It’s like, “Whoa.” Like, “Hold on.”
[unsettling music builds]
[music halts]
[Owen] “It can’t be Khloe.”
[Sophie] Khloe and Owen kind of like…
They weren’t… I don’t know how to explain their relationship.
They were a little bit more than friends. They kind of always liked each other.
[Lauryn] Khloe really had a crush on Owen.
I think she would always just go and talk to him just to make me jealous.
[Sophie] Owen and Khloe became, like, really good friends,
but then he started dating Lauryn.
So, yeah, Lauryn and Khloe never got along.
Khloe wasn’t the nicest person growing up,
and she wasn’t a bully, but she… she wasn’t a nice person by any means.
And I think that she said some things to Lauryn
that just made Lauryn not like her.
I didn’t like Khloe
because I feel like we just had two completely different vibes.
We played basketball together, and we just didn’t match each other.
We were told by the school that, when we took the name,
like, “Could this potentially… Could you see this being Khloe?”
At that point, it was like, “Well, we’ve had some issues in the past.”
Seventh through eighth grade, there was just multiple allegations against Khloe
where she was bullying or she wasn’t being nice to this person.
The principal called Khloe in constantly, and she’s like, “I’m not doing anything.”
♪ Where I wanna go, break free ♪
♪ Tattoos on her body And she lightskin… ♪
[Craig] She was a leader.
At the time, she had a huge friend group.
It spanned, you know…
To other schools.
…to several other schools.
And, you know, so I think that, to some people…
I’m not gonna say they were offended by that,
but maybe they wanted that sort of thing for themselves.
[unsettling music builds]
[music abates]
[phone chimes]
[dramatic sting]
[music fades]
I started to look at a young lady by the name of Khloe Wilson.
She had scored the 12 points in the basketball game.
I learned that there was a lot of messaging going on,
talking about a Halloween party.
And it was interesting because I discovered that that party,
it was actually put on by Khloe and her family.
Maybe Khloe was interested in Owen and that was one of the other motives.
Was she
jealous of Lauryn?
[Mike] All right. Khloe, how are you?
[Khloe] Hi.
[Mike] Have a seat right here.
[man] Sheriff Main, here you go.
[Mike] Tell me your story. I mean, let’s hear it.
[Khloe] Okay. So… I didn’t even…
I didn’t know about all of this stuff
that was happening until, like, probably around volleyball season.
I would just hear, like, little things here and there from Owen.
I didn’t really talk to them that much at all really.
Like, I’m not close with Lauryn.
And… [scoffs] …then it started getting blamed on me.
[Mike] There’s 348 pages.
They’re nasty. I mean, they’re… they’re past, like, harassment. These are…
This is stalking.
I just wanna get it stopped. Like, it’s gotta stop.
[Khloe] Well, I don’t have anything to do with it.
I’m with people all the time, and if something were happening like that,
someone would see it.
[Shawn] I thought, “Khloe’s gonna get away with this. Her dad is a police officer.”
“He’s gonna do certain things to get rid of things.”
And there was all kinds of, like, thoughts going on with that.
[Mike] I did some research and asked questions at the school,
and they said Sophie and Macy are really good friends with Khloe.
They’re a pretty close group. So I thought, “Well, there we are.”
“There’s my close group.”
“There’s the three that are… that know about what’s going on here.”
“I’ll talk to one of these two young girls.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of this quickly.”
Me and Sophie have always been close. Our parents were super close friends.
And so our whole childhood, basically, was spending time with each other.
I might have been, like, taking Owen away from Sophie a little bit,
so she might have wanted to get back at me.
[Mike] Hi. Sophie?
[Sophie] Yeah.
[Mike] Hi. I’m talking to lots of people today.
Any idea why?
I don’t know. I kind of have an idea, ’cause I’m close with Owen.
[Mike] Okay. Are you friends with Khloe?
[Sophie] Yeah, she’s one of my close friends.
[Mike] Do you think Khloe would do it?
[Sophie] I couldn’t, ’cause her dad’s a police,
so she wouldn’t be dumb enough to do something like that.
[Mike] Thank you.
[woman 1] I got a phone call from Mike Main
stating that he had pulled Sophie into an interview,
and they had actually interviewed an entire group of kids.
[Jill] I remember reaching out to Korin, who’s my best friend,
saying, “Can you please talk to your daughter about this?”
“This is getting out of control.”
[Korin] So I had taken Sophie’s phone and gone through it.
She was looking if there’s messages from Khloe to Sophie,
or if Sophie has these burner apps on her phone.
[Korin] There had been arguments and, you know, yelling.
“I think you know what’s going on. You have to know.”
[Lauryn] Khloe, Macy, Sophie were always in a certain area,
just all huddled up together on their phones.
[phone chimes]
At that point, the parents started to get more and more upset with the school
because we weren’t doing more.
I reached out to the basketball coach,
who was fed up at this point ’cause the girls on the team are fighting.
And I said, “Is there any way that we can talk to your basketball team
and just show them, like,
‘This is what’s happening. Can you go through your kids’ phones?'”
And he was like, “Yes, absolutely.”
“I think this is a great idea. Just run it through the school.”
Then we were informed by Mr. Chillman that that was not going to happen.
The parents wanted to come into classrooms.
[chuckles] And they just…
They wanted to get involved in the investigation themselves,
you know, have these group meetings
and confront people and start pointing fingers.
We told the parents, I told them pointblank,
“That isn’t gonna go how you think it’s gonna go.”
[Tami] You got Jill and Kendra going into the school,
just bitching at Dan.
And luckily, the superintendent is like, “You’re crazy.”
They made quite a scene at the school.
There was a point
to where Owen was trying to get Khloe to confess to this.
He was giving her the whatfor constantly, like a daily thing.
Owen later texted Khloe or called her the next day
and said, “That was my mom. I’m sorry about that.”
Jill was sending texts that wasn’t… that was not her, pretending to be Owen.
All the evidence kept pointing to Khloe.
[Sophie] Me and Macy did confront her,
and she, like… got upset,
and she was like, “I… I’m not doing it. I don’t know why no one will believe me.”
[Khloe] Owen said something to me first. “Are you doing this?”
And I was just like, “No.”
After a while, I kept getting asked more and more,
’cause after I got asked once,
it really just all started to look more and more like me.
[Mike] As it continued, Owen and Lauryn received area codes
from an area in Florida.
And we’re told Khloe and her family had taken a spring break trip
to the Florida area during that period of time.
So when those messages come in with those area codes, you start to think,
“Okay, this is, you know, potentially pointing right back to her
as a person of interest.”
[Tami] I don’t think we were across the border
for not even an hour,
and Mike’s texting us that it’s coming from Florida now.
[intriguing music playing]
I was just like, “It’s not me. I don’t know what you want me to do.”
And my dad was like, “You should get your phone dumped.”
Khloe and her family provided Khloe’s phone for a forensic download.
But there was just nothing on her phone.
[music rises, fades]
[phone chimes]
[Owen] Khloe was searched by the police, her phone was dumped,
and we kept on getting messages saying that she got her phone dumped.
It was weird because if Khloe was the one texting,
why would she reference herself?
I would get texts of pictures of me and Khloe,
and it just… it just got so weird.
Like, she was referencing herself too much.
Why would Khloe send a picture of herself if she didn’t wanna get caught?
Nobody would actually directly point to themselves.
It almost had to be somebody setting her up.
[Khloe] I was just thinking about who in my class would want to, like,
frame me like this and just do this.
[dramatic music playing]
[music fades]
[Mike] As an investigator,
we have to be very careful that we don’t get that tunnel vision.
We were probably over a thousand pages of full messages.
So I read every one of them,
looking for that… that hidden clue.
A few weeks prior,
there was a text message conversation about a sweatshirt and a phone case,
and a picture had been taken.
And that picture was sent to Owen and Lauryn from this perpetrator.
[Jill] It was very alarming
because the only people that would have been able
to even take that picture at our family Christmas
were obviously people that were there with us,
which would just have been our families.
Sheriff Main asked us who would have been potentially at the Christmas
that also would have been in Owen’s class.
The only family member that is in Owen’s class
is his cousin Adrianna.
[Khloe] I think Adrianna could have been a part of this.
She was in a group of girls that just kind of kept to themselves.
We grew up playing sports together with these girls,
and maybe they thought I was just being rude to them,
or I just didn’t like them for some reason,
just ’cause I can be a little competitive in sports and stuff like that.
So maybe they just didn’t like me because of that, I thought.
[Sophie] When we were in middle school, Adrianna, like, made up this rumor
that we bullied her and that we threw carrots at her.
[Mike] Khloe thinks somebody’s setting her up.
Your cousin is, uh, Adrianna, right?
[Owen] Yes.
[Mike] Sounds like maybe there was history with Khloe or something from forever ago,
but she was just trying to figure out who could be doing it.
There’s no one else that would dislike us that much
to make it sound like we’re bullying someone else.
[Adrianna] There was a couple of times I did not wanna go to school.
It was a very stressful time for me.
I was on the volleyball team with Khloe, Macy, and Sophie.
They had their group, and if you weren’t part of that group,
you were considered what I call “the outsiders.”
And if you were an outsider, they weren’t nice to you.
It was last volleyball season that we dealt with Adrianna and her mom.
It started last year.
They started this huge thing in volleyball.
And this… There was another time that we got called into Boyer’s office,
and they got caught lying.
And it wasn’t until a couple of parents stood up,
that go to the games, see all this, say, “This is ridiculous.”
[Mike] None of it’s true.
[Adrianna] It makes you feel like the entire world is going against you.
Like, it feels like there is no way out.
There was no good days I had at that point.
I didn’t tell anybody. My mom had noticed it, and she spoke up.
She made a Facebook post.
It wasn’t calling anybody out or anything.
She was just saying, “This is what my kid is going through.”
“We need to get this fixed” type thing.
And after that, it kind of…
I wouldn’t say it spiraled, but it didn’t get any better.
Parents were involved in it, making all these Facebook posts.
Her mom was, like, on a “I’m a victim,” you know, journey.
My finger is pointing towards Adrianna. That’s who I think it is.
[Adrianna] People thought it was me trying to frame Khloe
because of the way she had been treating me.
When I first heard about the messages, Owen had texted me
and asked if, like, I was getting these text messages.
I remember I told him, “Just send me the numbers.”
“I’ll check and see if I have them in my contacts.” And I did not.
But that was really the last I heard about it
until after I got questioned by the cops.
The next step in the investigation was obviously to speak with Adrianna.
I asked her if she was involved or if she had any information on this.
He was drilling me with questions. Like, it was very intense.
He had asked me, like, if I had anything against Lauryn.
Um, and, of course, I was like, “No, I don’t have anything against Lauryn.”
[Mike] I asked about the picture that had been taken at a Christmas party.
[Adrianna] He had asked me if I knew who took the picture
or if I took the picture.
I just… I didn’t know how people thought I could do that.
But it was also very hurtful, ’cause I was this quiet kid at school.
I didn’t really talk to anybody. I… I wronged nobody.
I was just kinda confused as to why they thought I would do that.
Walking into class after being questioned by Sheriff Main,
everybody was looking at me like they knew what happened.
They were looking at me like I was guilty.
My opinion towards police officers has changed since then.
Now, every time I pass a cop on the road, like, I am scared.
Like, I’m scared of cops now.
It was very traumatic for her, A, to think…
I mean, you got called into the office to talk to a cop
about a situation that she really didn’t know a lot about.
And, I mean, absolutely, there was no way that she was a part of this.
[Adrianna] After I had talked to Sheriff Main,
there was one day I was sitting in the living room with my parents…
[cell phone chimes]
…and I got a message from an unknown number.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Adrianna] I was terrified.
As soon as I got the message, I dropped my phone. I cried.
Like, I was bawling my eyes out. Like, I was… I was terrified.
[sniffles]
I was really worried about like, “Who is this person?”
“Why do they have my phone number?”
It was scary ’cause I didn’t think that it would ever happen to me.
[geese honking]
[Jill] In the spring of 2022, we were not living our normal lives.
Every night was practically sleepless.
[phone chimes]
[Jill] The messages would just go nonstop.
I mean, 1:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning. It was relentless.
You wake up and see this. You’re like, “Oh, okay. Good morning to you too.”
[Shawn] Kind of turned into an argument at home about these messages.
And the tension in the house, you know, you could just feel the vibe in the house.
No one could get along right now, you know,
and just everybody is mad, you know.
I started to yell at Kendra because,
“You’re doing nothing. You told me you can handle this.”
And she’s like, “Oh, you know what? I’ll keep taking care of it.”
[Kendra] I wasn’t spending enough time at home.
Yes, Lauryn was a priority, and I spent tons of time with her.
But unfortunately… Shawn wasn’t made a priority.
[Shawn] Kendra and I were arguing and fighting.
Then, all of a sudden, we had to start moving from place to place.
Went through four houses through all this mess.
And it just, you know, led to financial struggle,
worse financial struggles than we were already in.
[Shawn] Lauryn can’t sleep. We’re forcing her to go to school.
She’s crying in the morning. She doesn’t wanna go to school.
[phone chimes]
[Lauryn] Like, reading them now,
little me was just trying to stick up for myself.
[Jill] Uhhuh. Wow.
[Jill sobs]
Oh my God. Clearly this is lack of sleep and stress, but…
[Mike] Okay.
[voice breaks] So there is nothing… nothing that we can do?
I… This is like…
Have we taken the phone, changed the number?
I have the phone.
[Mike] Okay.
I… I have it, um…
It’s already going off all morning.
It was horrible yesterday, and…
I… I don’t know how to handle Owen with it,
and, um… [sobs]
I mean, there’s no way to just track this
when they send their messages.
And they’re doing it…
They’re taunting me right now about
the police, and, like, it’s…
I just can’t…
Did… did you get… did you get Owen a new phone?
No. No.
Okay.
He just doesn’t have one at the moment.
Like, a week or so ago,
I think it was two… Oh, no.
They would not leave Owen alone.
So he sent them this message
that said, “I hope you people know that you make me feel suicidal.”
Um, you know, he didn’t actually spell it all correctly,
but that’s what he responded,
um, which totally put me over the edge.
[tense, electronic music plays]
Jill had said to Mike that she was gonna go to the papers
if they couldn’t figure something out.
[Jill] Mike Main had talked to all of these people,
Khloe, Sophie, Macy, Adrianna,
and still was no closer to finding out who was behind this.
Again, he said, “I think you’re just gonna have to get Owen another phone.”
And I said, “That’s not good enough.”
“Someone needs to be held accountable for what they’ve done.”
[Mike] I had tapped out the resources that I felt that I had available to me.
So I provided my reports and my case to the FBI
and asked for assistance in their cybercrimes unit.
[man] In April of ’22,
Sheriff Mike Main requested some assistance
in a case he was investigating.
He gave me a thumb drive that contained 720 pages of messages.
[Jill] Brad was appalled at the messages and the lack of help.
I’ve seen cases like this where the victim can’t handle any more,
and they commit suicide, unfortunately.
The first thing I wanted to do
was a full phone extraction of Owen’s phone
to see if, maybe somewhere in his phone,
I could gather some clues as to who may be sending these messages.
[rhythmic, intriguing music plays]
I did perform a full extraction.
So, basically, messages, pictures, emails,
geolocations is presented to me in separate files,
but I was not able to find anything that was linking
any of his friends that may be sending these messages.
So I didn’t really gather anything new after doing a phone extraction.
[light, electronic music playing]
[Owen] I started dating a girl from Pinconning.
We talked a lot. We were close. Like, it was a serious thing.
I slowly started to feel happy again. Like, maybe everything will be okay.
[Mike] Owen had been over in the Pinconning, Michigan, area,
which is a couple hours away from our location, for a sporting event,
and had met a girl and started communicating with this girl.
[Owen] One day, she texted me,
and she’s like, “Um, my mom just got a random text from someone.”
And it… Here we go again.
It’s the same format, same words,
telling the girl from Pinconning to back off me ’cause I’m theirs.
[phone chimes]
[Owen] The texter went out of their way
to find her mom’s phone number that lives in Pinconning.
I just felt like I couldn’t do anything anymore.
I… I had no freedom.
I felt like I couldn’t date anyone ’cause I was putting them in danger,
and just… I don’t wanna put them through the same thing Lauryn went through.
It would eat me alive. Each and every day, I’d feel like I’d lose trust in everyone.
That was terrifying, knowing that somebody was watching him that closely
and also had the ability
to find phone numbers of people that I didn’t even know.
It was somebody who was truly watching, like, every movement of his.
[phone chimes]
[Owen] So me and the girl from Pinconning ended up breaking up ’cause of this.
[Mike] Now you’re wondering how would those messages,
that we’ve seen by the hundreds and hundreds of,
start to go to this family?
[Jill] He was very fidgety and angry.
The anger really started to become apparent to us.
A lot of aggression on the basketball court
was something that we noticed.
[tense music playing]
It was very obvious, the days that were harder on him,
especially with the content of the messages.
It was almost like he was trying to take it out in a physical way
without physically hurting anyone.
[phone chimes]
[tense music halts]
[tense music resumes]
[Bradley] The next thing I do is
I take a look at the phone number that was sending these messages
and try to determine what company owned this phone number.
I did some research and found out at least one of them came from Pinger.
It’s an application that people use to disguise their phone number.
I submitted a search warrant to Pinger,
and they gave me two IP addresses that belonged to a Verizon network.
So, at this point, I submitted a search warrant to Verizon
for information on these two IP addresses.
Tuesday, May 23rd, Verizon did send me the search warrant results back,
and they gave me a severalpage document
with what phone numbers were attached to these two IP addresses.
[Jill] He called me one day and told me
that they got the list of phone numbers from the IP address
and wanted me to give him any phone number
from any possible suspect.
So I talked to Owen and had him send me basically any of his friends,
any phone numbers that he had.
[Bradley] I could not find any of those numbers
connected to this IP address.
[Jill] What about adults? What about, you know, whoever?
So we… we just dumped contacts.
[Bradley] And then I found one phone number that kept coming up
being connected to that IP address at the time these messages were sent.
[electronic whirring]
[pinging]
And the phone number was…
[tense music builds]
…Lauryn’s mom, uh, Kendra.
[dramatic sting]
[haunting music plays]
[Bradley] Um…
I really didn’t know what to say.
[Jill] Brad got back a hold of me and said,
“The only phone number on all these pages out of everybody you’ve sent me
that matches is Kendra’s phone number.”
And I said, “It’s not her.”
He’s like, “Do you think there’s a possibility it could be her?”
And I said, “No.”
“She’s helping me. She’s Lauryn’s mom.”
I said, “It’s… it’s not her.”
[Bradley] I ended up meeting with Sheriff Main.
I presented to him who I felt was involved in the case.
I gave him a thumb drive with all the search warrant results,
all my search warrants, my whole report.
[Mike] I remember thinking in my head…
[chuckles] “This doesn’t make sense.”
A reasonable person would say,
“There is no absolute way
that Kendra Licari is sending these messages to her daughter,”
but we’ve eliminated everything up to this point.
And then I started realizing that Kendra has tried to interject herself
into my investigation a few times under the guise of,
“Can you tell me where you’re at with everything?”
“Can you… can you update me on the case?”
[Bill] Sheriff Main called me and said,
“We have some concerns that it might be one of the parents.”
And I’m like,
“No way!”
Kendra helped coach and… and… and was at the school involved.
I… Even when Lauryn was in elementary school,
I can remember Kendra helping with the book fair
and other events that we had at the school.
I mean, she was a supportive, caring parent.
[man] When the sheriff came to me
and said, “Hey, we’ve identified the mom as a potential suspect,”
I said, “You gotta be shitting me.”
No one in their right mind would have thought a mother would do this to a child.
When we get involved,
our role is typically to review a search warrant.
The sheriff approached me and said we may need a search warrant
for the electronics belonging to Ms. Licari.
You start to look at it, and you say, “She’s involved as a coach at the school.”
“She’s got an IT background.”
You know, “She’s… she’s always around
when the kids are… are receiving these text messages.”
[tense music playing]
[Mike] So one of my detectives and I, armed with a search warrant,
head to Kendra Licari’s home.
There was very limited evidence, so it was a tightrope to walk.
It wasn’t exactly a straightforward case.
We were able to identify an IP address that belonged to Kendra Licari,
but we weren’t necessarily able to say who was behind that device.
[Mike] We had to make sure that we had enough information
to get a conviction in this case.
I needed a recorded confession.
We want as much evidence as possible.
[music fades out]
[police radio chatter]
[Mike] Hi, Kendra.
[Kendra] Hi.
[Mike] We gotta have a conversation.
[Kendra] Okay.
[Mike] And I have a search warrant…
Okay.
[Mike] …for your devices and your phones.
Okay.
[Mike] All right?
I wanna go in, sit down, and talk. Anybody else here?
[Kendra] Lauryn is.
[Mike] I’d rather Lauryn stay in her room.
You have a place we can sit down and have a chat?
[Kendra] Um… yeah.
[tense music resumes]
[officer] Is there a phone on you?
Yeah.
[Mike] Here’s the warrant.
[officer] Do you have any other devices you use? Do you have a laptop?
My computer is outside.
[officer] Where is it at?
On the back porch.
[Mike] So this is the deal.
When we were doing the investigation and the FBI got involved,
we come up with some stuff that comes back to you.
What do you mean?
[Mike] The messages coming and originating from you.
No.
[Mike] Every message that went to the kids,
your number come back through Pinger or whatever it is,
the app that’s tried to hide it.
Your number, even though it was being hid, showed up every single message.
My number?
[Mike] Yep.
Is it… Does it have to do with Owen?
Is there an infatuation there with Owen?
No, nothing like that.
[Mike] Okay. Then just tell me what… You know, did he treat Lauryn bad? I mean…
Um…
[Mike] It’s something serious, ’cause it went on a while, right?
Yeah. And it didn’t start that way.
[Mike] And I’m sure it didn’t.
[Kendra] It…
I don’t even know.
[Mike] That’s okay.
Just start from the beginning.
So they were dating, and then they started… they broke up.
So how did… how did it really start? Like, why did it start at…
Did it start during… when they were still dating?
It did.
[Mike] Was he treating her bad?
But it… Like, it didn’t…
The first ones didn’t start, like, with me.
[Mike] Okay.
I will say that.
Those ones were,
like, random or whatever.
[Mike] So somebody else started those. You don’t know ’em.
Yeah, um, but then I, like, fed off of it some.
Her confession isn’t an overthetop admission.
She more or less is tacitly admitting that she did it by not denying it,
but it wasn’t a, you know, clear admission of guilt.
[Mike] Does Lauryn know anything about it?
No.
[Mike] All right.
I really don’t want her to.
[Mike] Not sure that’s gonna be something we can solve, right?
Because I have to let Jill know and those guys, um…
Really? I mean…
[Mike] There’s others that are gonna wanna know because their daughter,
like the Wilsons, has been accused of all this throughout.
And it’s a bad deal. I get it.
Once this is out there, like, I don’t know how she can go to school.
[Mike] I know. I know.
Do you have any other electronic devices you use?
I haven’t… No.
[Mike] You want me to go out and talk to Lauryn?
Can we just bring her in here?
[Mike] Mmhmm. Yup.
Miss Lauryn, can you come in?
How are you today?
[Lauryn] Good. How are you?
[Mike] Good.
When your mom comes back out, we’re gonna chat for a few minutes, okay?
[Lauryn] All right.
[Mike] All right, Miss Lauryn. So I’m just gonna start the conversation.
You guys have been under a lot of stress lately,
some moves going on,
some financial issues, and everything else going on.
Mom got wrapped up into some stuff,
and she didn’t start it but continued it.
So we found some evidence and have a search warrant.
We’re gonna take her phone and stuff.
Sometimes when we’re not… thinking straight,
we do some things that aren’t right.
Your mom doesn’t want this to get out, but it is some public information.
So it’s not going to not get out. I wanna be honest about it, all right?
Um, she said you had no idea what was going on, and I believe that.
What has to happen now is
I have to make sure you and your mom are safe before I leave.
So I’d like you to call your dad
so maybe he can come home and meet with us, okay?
Yeah.
[police radio chatter]
[line ringing]
[indistinct chatter over cell phone]
[Mike] Hey, Sha… Shawn?
[Shawn] Yeah?
Hi, this is Sheriff Mike Main.
I’m with Lauryn and Kendra.
[Shawn] Oh, hey. What’s going on?
[Mike] Do you have a minute to chat where you’re available in someplace quiet?
[Shawn] Yeah.
[Shawn] I get this crazy phone call while I’m at work,
and it’s the sheriff saying that they figured it out.
I’m like, “Sweet. Finally, this is gonna be over with.”
He’s like, “I’m sorry. I gotta tell you this.”
I’m like, “What? I wanna know who it is.”
He’s like, “Unfortunately, it’s your wife.”
[inhales deeply] And I’m like, “Okay.”
You know, I don’t know what to say to him because, you know, I’m in shock.
And just, you know, “She’s the one doing this for the year and a half,
the text messaging?”
And he’s like, “Are you still there?” And I’m like, “Are you for real?”
I said, “This is my fucking wife doing this?”
So I come flying home.
The sheriff was standing on the front porch.
[Mike] So this is the deal.
Every time the kids received a message, her number came back.
So that was enough for a search warrant, and that’s why we’re here today.
So we took her phone and her computer. My detective was collecting that.
I started talking to her. I said, “It’s over with. It’s done.”
May I ask what… what phone did you take?
[Mike] Mmm… She had it in her pocket. I can show you. So…
She’s got a couple of them.
[Mike] Okay, I have a search warrant for all of them, so I’d like all of them.
Should she go to jail? I mean…
[Mike] Well… So this is the deal.
Felony stalking. That’s what the charge is.
I knew there was a lot of things going on.
Yeah. Worst, yeah.
[Mike] Yep, I know she was let go from Ferris, you know,
and she had IT backgrounds.
[Shawn] He’s like, “She’s doing all the text messaging.”
“She lost, you know, both of her jobs,
and she hasn’t had a job in over a year.”
“She hasn’t had a job for over a year?”
You just said she got let go. She told me that she quit.
[Mike] Uh… I was told by somebody I know over there that she was let go.
She was no longer employed. So I think there’s more to that story too.
[somber music playing]
[Mike] Shawn looked like a broken person.
He just… He was trying to
process what I had just told him
and understand
this whole ordeal and… and… and how this could be.
There was a lot more to unpack than just what was going on with Lauryn.
[Mike] But we do wanna go ask her about this other phone. I appreciate that.
And those devices need to be away from her.
Let’s go in the house.
[Mike] Yeah.
Hey, Kendra, so I wanna be real clear here.
Like, you have any other devices?
Apparently, there’s another phone somewhere, so where’s that at?
[Kendra] I…
[Mike] You… you gotta tell me. Right? You’ve already confessed to it.
You gotta tell me where.
[officer] I don’t wanna rip this house apart, but I will.
[Mike] That search warrant right there gives us the authority
to flip it upside down.
I have no will to destroy this house, but I will.
It’s outside.
[Mike] Outside where?
Where?
On the side.
[Mike] That house where you tried to walk away from us?
Okay.
[officer] I’ll go grab the other copy. Just unlock the door.
[Shawn] So what happened at Ferris?
[tense music playing]
What?
Tell me the truth.
[Mike] Time to get it off your shoulders.
If I blow a gasket when they leave, I’ll probably go to jail, so tell me now.
I got let go from it.
Yeah. What about the Texas job?
You still have that or you got terminated from that?
No, I don’t have that.
[Shawn] You don’t have that either?
No.
So when did you get let go from that?
[Kendra] A while ago.
Are you fucking telling me the truth? Or are you lying?
No.
When did you get let go from there?
About the same time.
So you’ve been lying to me for, like, six months, a year?
You haven’t been working for Texas?
[Kendra] Right.
[Shawn] Mmhmm.
Wow.
[tense music continues]
Okay. You need to go somewhere tonight.
I don’t know where you gotta go, but she’s gotta go.
You need to call your parents, have them come get you,
because… this is it.
[Kendra sniffles]
I can’t do this anymore. The other house, this house…
Now I know what the truth is.
And having her in the middle? This is not good.
Okay. You need to call your parents. Here’s my phone.
You need to go.
[Lauryn sobbing]
[Shawn] You need to call your parents. Nope.
While he’s here… No. You need to go.
[Kendra] No. Hold on, please.
[Shawn] You gotta go. I’ll call them.
[Kendra] Shawn, just wait for a second, please.
[Shawn] No. I can’t do this, Kendra. I’m sorry.
I… I can’t leave her.
[Shawn] Nah, you gotta.
No.
I can’t.
[Shawn] They’re getting their stuff around and they’re heading north.
All right.
They’re in Waterford, so…
I don’t wanna go with them.
[Shawn] Well, your dad and mom’s on their way.
So I told them I’d talk to them facetoface.
I need to stay with her.
You… We gotta get some time apart.
[Mike] I think…
If I or you do something stupid, we’re both in trouble,
and then she’s gonna go away.
Okay?
We gotta work through this.
We just gotta be separated for a little while.
[Mike] Miss Lauryn, I’m so sorry that I had to knock on your door today,
and I hope you guys find a path, all right?
Okay.
[Mike] All right. Thank you.
[Shawn] Thanks, Mike.
[sobbing] I don’t know.
[music fades out]
[sniffles]
[sobbing] Sorry.
[director] There’s a Kleenex there.
I’m sorry.
[director] It’s okay.
[sniffles]
[sighs deeply]
You guys are gonna think I’m the crazy lady. [laughs]
[director] No.
[Kendra sighs]
It was a very high emotional day in our house, um…
A day of… confusion,
unknown answers,
um… shock.
A day of not even knowing how we move forward to the next day, um…
So it was a hard day, um…
but at the same time,
it was an end.
[reflective music playing]
[Lauryn] I think the shock feeling turned into sad,
which turned into mad, which turned into crazy.
I don’t even know how to describe the feeling.
Why would my mom do this?
But, like, did she really, actually do this?
Like, I can’t believe it, honestly.
I was just really confused.
[sighs heavily]
[Shawn] I can’t believe she would do something like that to her daughter…
that supposedly she loved dearly.
[sniffles]
You know, a 14, 15yearold daughter…
You know, it just makes me sick.
You know, she stabbed me in the heart, shot me in the heart, and threw it away.
[Jill] Mike called me and just said,
you know, “It’s over.”
And I’m like, “Wha… I don’t understand. It’s over?”
And he said, “I went to Kendra’s house, and, um, she confessed to everything.”
And it was like…
[hesitates] I…
I can’t ever get that feeling out of me,
just the disgust and, like, betrayal.
This woman we allowed into our lives and our house and my kids’ lives,
and I just…
You just can’t…
You just cannot imagine what that felt like.
Hmm. [sighs, scoffs softly]
I don’t know.
I was just speechless.
Hmm.
Just, like, I didn’t know how to handle it.
You know, it was just like my… my head was spinning, like…
Yeah.
How… how could a mom do such a thing?
It’s just, like, crazy
that someone that close could do something like that,
well, to me, but also to her own daughter.
[Kendra] 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 broke the law
at some point or another and not got caught.
I mean, I’ll be honest, you know.
I’m sure people drove drunk, haven’t been caught, right?
But again, if you get caught,
you’re in the same situation I’m in but for a different thing.
So I do feel that, you know,
people lose sight of that.
I know, to some, I’m a headline.
I’m a villain.
I’m a bad mom. I’m a whatever.
But that’s because they know one little piece of my story.
They don’t know my whole story.
[light, intriguing music plays]
[woman 1] Kendra’s mom and my mom are sisters.
They were the only two kids, so we were close growing up
’cause there was just the two of them.
She was fun, outgoing, like, the life of the party.
We’ve been on tons of cruises. Probably about six or seven cruises.
Some girls’ cruises, family cruises.
[cheering on video]
[man on video] I said, ladies!
[woman 2 whoops]
She does like attention, I think.
If she was here right now and you were talking to me,
she would be dancing over there to try and get you to look at her.
♪ Tell me what you want What you really, really want! ♪
♪ So tell me what you want What you really want! ♪
[Melissa] But as far as being there for people and being… a good person,
yes, I mean, she was.
She would help you. She would…
You know, I could… Before all this, I probably could have called her anytime
and said, “I need you to do this,” and she would be there.
She was the baseball coach for Lauryn. She was basketball coach for Lauryn.
So she always seemed to be very involved.
Kendra being a mom, you know, I thought she was great at what she’s done,
you know, with Lauryn, and made sure she was always there and on time
and just being a mom, you know.
Life was perfect and everything was great, and then, you know…
[music fades out]
…things started happening.
[phone chimes]
[Kendra] So the first text message started around Halloween.
[director] And did you send those text messages?
No, those ones, I did not.
It wasn’t until… [sighs]
…way later, um, on.
So the messages kind of 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?”
Honestly, the best way would have been to stop it
by shutting her cell phone down, right?
But then I was like, “Well, why should she have to do that?”
You know? “Why should I have to get her a new cell phone?”
Like,
because of someone else’s actions, right?
I really wanted to get to the bottom of who it was, right?
And that’s when I started sending the text messages to Lauryn and Owen.
[foreboding music plays]
I was sending the messages in hopes that maybe they would send back,
asking, “Is this somebody?” or, “Is this soandso?”
To just kind of give me something, right?
And then also hoping that,
as they maybe talked about the messages amongst their friend groups and stuff,
that something might come up that could help pinpoint,
you know, where they were originating from.
I started in the thoughts of,
“We need some answers,” um…
And then it just…
[music halts]
…kept going.
[tense music plays]
It was a spiral.
Kind of a snowball effect.
I don’t think I knew how to stop.
[thunder rumbling]
[Kendra] 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 don’t even know who I was.
[Melissa] She just kind of changed. She was more introverted,
didn’t reach out as much.
I guess more selfabsorbed too, maybe.
[Kendra] Sometimes, it was an hour a day
or eight hours a day.
I let it consume me.
[phone chimes]
[Lauryn] Her saying that she didn’t send the first couple messages
makes it sound a little bit weird,
but, I don’t know, I think it might have just been her.
I had evidence and proof through search warrants
to thirdparty vendors and apps that she had been sending the messages.
Sometimes, you know, in law enforcement, we see people try to deflect.
But I did ask who started it. She said she didn’t know.
To this day, I do not believe that no one else started it.
[Dan] Up until the time Kendra Licari was revealed
as the perpetrator of the text messages,
we believed that she was fully employed at Ferris State University
in their tech department.
But that was not the case.
She hadn’t been working for a long time.
This, in hindsight, made clear how she was able to send
all of the hundreds and thousands of messages throughout the day.
I am not sure if she ever went to work at Ferris.
And I don’t know that…
I think Shawn thought she was working there.
So I don’t know what she was doing,
as far as getting up in the morning, getting ready for work.
How did you…? I don’t know. I’ve tried to figure it out.
I don’t know how you pull that one over on somebody you’re living with.
So, to my knowledge, she never worked at Ferris, no. Kendra didn’t.
She acted like she was working and said she had stuff to do.
And she just… She played it off really well.
[Kendra] I think it was more of an escape, um…
It more…
took me…
kind of out of real life, in a sense, even though it was real life.
So when I was… really doing that, and I wasn’t myself,
it removed me from… my everyday life.
Um…
Just kept going and going.
[phone chimes]
[Kendra] Lauryn knows she’s petite. She knows she’s small.
She knows she’s thin. So…
I might have kind of picked up on some of her insecurities,
her appearance, her hair, her looks, her… you know.
But, honestly,
the messages weren’t really targeted at her insecurities.
[director] Were they targeted at you?
Were you sending these messages to yourself?
That very well, possibly, um, because
I was way too thin.
I was not eating.
So you could put me in that anorexic category.
[director] And were you afraid she was gonna hurt herself?
Because there were messages telling her to kill herself.
So… [sighs]
I… can say, I…
I was not scared of her hurting herself.
Um, and I know some people may question that
or diminish that or whatever.
But I know Lauryn, and I know the conversations that her and I have.
But if I didn’t know her as well as I did, it might be different.
So, um…
Yeah.
[Melissa] One of the texts that I specifically remember,
she said something about a blow job…
and how Owen doesn’t like Lauryn anymore
because Lauryn doesn’t give him blowjobs.
That little girl was 14 years old.
She shouldn’t be doing that!
So I think it gave Kendra a false sense of,
“Lauryn and I are friends. She needs me. She…”
And, I mean, you do, as a teenager. You do need your mom, but not in that way.
I think it was a cyber Munchausen’s case.
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, which is typical Munchausen’s behavior.
I think that’s exactly it,
because Lauryn would come home upset about these text messages,
and Kendra got to play the hero and be there for her
and, you know, do that. So, um…
But as far as Lauryn, I…
[sighs] I can’t even imagine how it made her feel.
So I’m sure she’s… I’m sure Lauryn is just… eaten alive inside.
But I don’t think that you can
escape the grips of Kendra’s manipulation
when you’re still talking to her.
[Mike] Kendra Licari was very manipulative to her family.
She was very controlling. She took care of the finances.
And whatever they did was determined and organized by Kendra Licari.
[Melissa] Kendra was telling Shawn and Lauryn they were fine financially,
so she had to figure out how to come up with all of this money
while not going to work.
At one time, she had told us that their house got struck by lightning.
She made some insurance claims,
and I think it’s possible that she could have just kept the money.
[Shawn] One time, we pull in the driveway,
and there’s this big ol’ piece of paper on the front door,
saying that you’ve been evicted.
She finally told me that, you know, she wasn’t paying the bills.
And I’m hustling, getting everything out of there.
Phoned the storage units, got it all in there.
We’re like, “We can pay this so we don’t lose any of our stuff.”
And she’s like, “Oh, yeah. It’s no problem. It’s only a few dollars.”
But she really was not taking care of that stuff.
So we ended up losing everything that we owned in our storage units.
It had my tools.
[voice breaks] All important stuff that we got souvenirs from was all in there.
Just all the stuff that I worked for all my life is now gone.
[sniffles]
I think pretty much everything she’s told Shawn
for the last at least ten years has been a lie.
[director] Is that true? Is that…
Is that your perspective?
No.
But…
I handled more of the finances than he did.
Um…
But we were both aware of situations we were in,
but neither one of us had the answers to the right actions
that needed to be taken,
so, yeah, unfortunately.
After the identity of the perpetrator became publicly known,
it shocked our whole community.
[Khloe] We were sitting in class with Macy and Sophie,
and we had looked on Instagram,
and there was Kendra’s mugshot posted everywhere online.
[dynamic music playing]
[Lauryn] I got a text message at school from my cousin that said, “Are you okay?”
And I’m sitting in class, and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m fine. Like, why?”
Everyone was kind of looking around at Lauryn and everything
’cause her mom is everywhere right now online.
And then the next hour, I got pulled into the office.
They were like, “Your mom got arrested today.”
And so then I texted my dad, and I was like, “What is going on?”
She’s like, “They pulled me in the office and told me Mom went to jail.”
And now to the bizarre case of a mother
accused of cyberstalking her very own daughter.
A high school girl in Michigan was cyberbullied for more than a year.
And who turned out to be the suspect shocked everyone.
[reporter 1] Prosecutors accusing a mother of cat fishing.
Catfishing.
Catfishing.
Even when we realized that it wasn’t a kid,
we weren’t expecting that it would be a parent.
This mother is facing criminal charges.
[speaking Italian]
[reporter 2] Licari is charged with five crimes, mainly for stalking,
as the messages went on for more than a year.
We had tens of thousands of text messages.
[reporter 3] Kendra Licari was in Isabella County courtroom Thursday.
The judge made it a point to ban Licari from having contact with the victims.
That includes Licari’s daughter.
[Barberi] One of the challenges on this case was the level of closeness
between Kendra and her daughter.
And we were hoping that creating that separation
would provide an opportunity for her to get outside of that umbrella of control
that she’d had on her throughout the entirety of this process.
[reporter 3] Licari and her attorney asked to have the nocontact order lifted.
The court received letters from her daughter
saying she wanted to be back with her mother.
Not having the relationship with my mom, I just don’t feel like myself.
I feel like I really need her in my life.
[director] Do you think people judge you for missing your mom?
Um, I think some people might have their own opinions on it.
But… [sighs]
Honestly, I don’t really care.
Ultimately, Kendra pled to two counts of stalking a minor,
one count for Owen and one count for Lauryn.
[Khloe] I went to Kendra’s sentencing for court, and my whole family was there.
There was a bunch of people there. The room was filled.
And I saw Kendra,
and it was just very shocking to see her after everything had happened,
’cause it was just really weird
seeing your coach from seventh grade like that.
Kendra got to speak first, the day of court, and, um,
she is very convincing.
[Kendra] I am sorry, Your Honor.
[voice breaking] I am sorry for my behavior
to Owen McKenny and his family.
I’m sorry for my behavior to Khloe Wilson and her family.
[sniffles] I am sorry to my daughter, Lauryn.
I have learned that I have a mental illness,
and I was unaware that I was in crisis for many years.
I have learned to acknowledge and cope with my childhood trauma.
[Korin] There were a lot of excuses as to what she did,
things that had happened to her in her life.
And I’m not saying that those things didn’t happen,
but to use those as an excuse as to why you hurt children
just doesn’t seem right or fair.
[Kendra] If I could go back and undo everything I did,
please know that I would do so in a heartbeat.
I knew Owen and Jill were both gonna be talking there,
and I honestly didn’t wanna hear what they were gonna say,
because I knew it wasn’t gonna be anything good.
[Owen] At the end of the day, this will be over,
and we can try to go back to our own lives.
You can try, but it scarred me.
This whole thing is gonna affect the rest of my life.
[Jill] I didn’t get to speak with Kendra from the time she confessed
until that day in court.
It was the only thing we were gonna get to do
because we didn’t get to go to trial and speak, so it was our one chance.
I will never forget the sick feeling that overcame me the day we found out.
The hurt, anger, betrayal, sadness
all hit me at once.
I have waited years for this moment,
the day that you could look me in the eye and tell me why.
Was it worth it? Was all of this worth it?
When you look at the trauma that this caused,
there’s no doubt that it’ll have a lasting impact on all of these families.
And the impact that this is gonna have on these kids may be lifelong.
[judge] Well, this is truly a horrible case.
So I think, you know, based on your conduct, you deserve…
you’ve earned a prison sentence.
[reporter 3] Kendra Licari, the catfish mom,
is going to prison for at least a year and a half.
In this case, the judge sentenced on what I would consider
to be the high end of the guideline range, 19 months.
It felt good to just address her and… ask why.
I know I’ll never get the reason that I… you know, a true reason.
I think she became obsessed with Owen,
which is hard, being a mom, and that she’s a grown woman.
But I… I think that there was some level of relationship
that she wanted to have with Owen
that obviously is not acceptable at her age.
[Owen] It felt like she was attracted to me.
She was super friendly and super like,
“Here, I’ll get you this. I’ll go do this for you.”
You know, it’s just…
It wasn’t like it was my girlfriend’s mom.
It felt like it was something more.
She would do things for me. She would…
She would cut my own steak for me.
It was just to the point where, like, it was almost too weird.
If you look at how she treated him and how she glorified him,
and she would go out of her way to do anything and everything for him,
or just to be noticed by him.
She would randomly just text him
and try to keep a connection with him.
She came to all of his sporting events, even after Lauryn and him broke up.
This is disgusting.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Lauryn] She told me to kill myself.
It makes me feel a little bit sad, like,
“Why is my own mom telling me to do that?”
I’ve, like, talked to her about it,
but not necessarily like, “Why did you tell me to kill myself?”
I still question it every day. Like, I still don’t know why.
[Shawn] Would I love to know the truth? Absolutely.
And what caused it, you know, in her mind.
You know, what… what made her do this?
I know my dad’s angry and will probably, like, never forgive her,
but I just kind of put that aside
and just have the relationship with my mom that I want.
[pulsing string music]
[Lauryn] I liked communicating with my mom while she was in prison.
I could talk to my mom on Mondays and Wednesdays.
We were just talking about our days, things that happened, funny stories,
and she would send me emails, and we were able to email back and forth.
[keyboard tapping]
She made it seem like everything’s better,
and she just made me feel better.
[messages chiming]
[string music building]
[music stops]
[soft, emotional music playing]
[Lauryn] My mom got out of prison August 8th, 2024.
I hope me and Mom can rebuild our relationship
because I feel like I’m definitely missing a part of me,
whether it’s, like,
the female part of it, or just, like, not having my mom.
[Kendra] When I go back,
I… am very disappointed in myself
for allowing myself to get to where I got.
[sniffles] Um…
You know, I… I let my family down.
I let myself down, and that’s hard.
So… [sniffles]
Because that time frame in life
is not who I am as a person.
It’s not who I was,
and it’s not who I am today.
[emotional piano music playing]
Ever since Lauryn was born, her and I have always been close.
Family really means a lot to me,
so I always knew I wanted to have that family.
And when we,
you know, got pregnant,
you know, I remember us sitting in the doctor’s office
and hearing that heartbeat for the first time.
[hesitates]
It gives you chills, you know? Um…
You know, sometimes you think you can’t
love any more.
And then, all of a sudden, this little baby is placed in your arms,
and it’s a whole new world.
It’s a whole new feeling.
[camera shutter clicks]
As, you know, she started getting older,
I started having things that were suppressed come forward.
[shutter clicks]
A lot of it, really, was previous trauma starting to resurface
that I didn’t know how to handle.
When I was 17,
I was raped.
[sniffles] Um…
And as… [falters]
…my daughter was hitting those teenage years, I got scared.
Very scared. [sniffles]
I didn’t want her to go through that process that I did.
And…
And I think that really led to… [sighs]
…me not know how to handle things, right?
Um…
It was hard because I was reliving what I had been through, um,
but also, at the same time…
wanting to protect her.
I wanted to try to, like, control the outcome of her journey.
I was afraid of letting her grow up some, right?
Wanting to protect her and keep her safe and keep her close,
um, and scared to let her grow up
because scared of what could happen to her.
[Owen] I have not talked to Lauryn
since, pff, a very long time ago.
Me and Owen don’t talk at all now.
I see him in the hallways and stuff,
but we don’t really have interactions at all.
[Owen] Yeah, I was mad at Lauryn.
I don’t think I will talk to her in the future.
[Khloe] Lauryn, she was just so young for all this to happen.
I really don’t think that it’s truly her fault
that her mom was like that and wanted things to go this way.
[Craig] Khloe missed a whole goddamn year
of what should have been some of the, you know, best memories of her life.
A whole year of people pointing the finger at her
and not believing what she’s saying,
being grilled by her parents,
and, you know, not believed by the majority.
I thought that I was losing a lot of friendships because of it.
At first, me and Owen, like, we were all friends.
Me, Macy, Owen, and Sophie, we’d sit at a table, um…
[exhales softly]
[sobs]
[Jill] I do feel guilty about Khloe, um,
placing blame on her or, you know,
her family.
We just, at that point,
were going off of any little bit of information that we had,
which was not a lot throughout two years of this.
And I… I feel very…
You know, I feel guilty for doing that to her.
Jill, she… she invited this in.
The impact to my family, to our family,
is largely because of her and Mike Main.
I remember, within a day or two of our initial interview,
I had sent him a text message that said that a very good part of me
believes that this is probably Kendra doing this.
You know, she… I said, “I don’t know what you know of her, Mike,
but she’s not a truthful person.”
[Tami] I told someone else
that Shawn and Lauryn are going to play this off
like they were the victim in this shit,
they had no clue what was going on, and they’re gonna get away with it
because Mike Main didn’t do his fucking job and investigate them.
[clears throat] And that’s exactly what happened.
[clears throat]
I’m… I’m proud of her for that.
[laughing]
I kept that good. That’s good.
[both chuckle]
[Craig] Thank God for Brad Peters, ’cause without him, it wouldn’t have went anywhere.
Or who knows where it would have ended with Kendra?
You watch all these other documentaries of how this ends. It’s not good.
You know, who knows what else she would have done
if this didn’t catch up to her?
[Lauryn] Okay.
[Shawn] That’s all you got?
[Lauryn chuckles] Go on!
Me and my dad have gotten so much closer since this has happened.
You know how much I love you, right?
Yeah, sometimes. [giggles]
[chuckles] Sometimes? Well, I love you.
[Lauryn] I love you.
[Shawn] Okay.
I’m proud of you. You’re a good kid. Okay?
Love you.
[Lauryn] We just bond so well together.
In everything we do, we can find a way to laugh.
[geese honking]
[Lauryn laughs]
[Shawn] It’s fun to watch her smile and giggle and be a kid and do stupid things like we all used to do.
Now she’s starting to come to Dad a lot more.
She’s growing, and it’s just… it’s unbelievable.
You know, she’s just growing up to be a beautiful woman.
[ethereal, serene music playing]
[geese honking]
I’m not allowed to see my mom now that she’s out of prison.
I wanna see my mom when the time is right.
I think it would just be a relief to see her, but, like, also hard.
It’s been about a year and a half since I’ve seen her.
We both know that we’re with each other, no matter what.
[phone chimes]
[Lauryn] I think I wanna trust her now, but I don’t think I can.
Now that she’s out, I just want her to get the help she needs…
[phone chimes]
…so then when we see each other, it doesn’t go back to, uh, the old ways and how it was before.
[Kendra] I definitely think
that we can have a healthy relationship.
[phone chimes]
[Kendra] I know that we both hold that bond we have
close.
[Lauryn] Being without that relationship, I think, is really hurting me, and I think rebuilding our relationship will help both of us a lot.
[phone chiming rapidly]
I love her more than anything.
[gentle, intriguing music plays]
[music fades out]
