Spoilers ahead: This article contains spoilers for the documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, now streaming on Netflix.
High school can be the best time of your life, the worst, or somewhere in between. For Lauryn Licari, two years of high school were hard. She experienced almost daily harassment from a stranger. This documentary, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, doesn’t reveal who it was right away.
The documentary tells the story of Licari and her boyfriend, Owen McKenny. In 2020, after they had been dating for a few months, they started getting text messages from an unknown person. The messages were mean and rude. Online harassment became bad.
They both went to a small high school in Beal City, Michigan. It’s a very quiet town with not much to do. Their story shocked a lot of people because it was a real case of cyberbullying.
The documentary looks nice. It has good editing and well-lit interviews. The creators set up the lighting well, making the interviews feel personal. The focus is on Licari and McKenny. They seemed like a great couple, unless you were the one sending the mean messages.
The unknown person would send texts that were cruel and hurtful. They would tell Licari things like she was not worth being with McKenny, that McKenny hated her, and even that he was cheating on her. They would also make fun of her appearance and everything she did.
Some people can’t imagine dealing with that kind of abuse every single day for years. The person even knew Licari’s nickname, “Lo,” which made it seem like they knew her well.
Eventually, the parents and school intervened. The film shows on-camera testimonies from the victims, parents, the principal, a police officer, and even an FBI agent. It looks clean and professional.
Since the events happened not too long ago, there’s also body cam footage from the police, which makes the story feel more real.
Other parents suspected and questioned some of Licari’s friends and acquaintances. They felt the school wasn’t doing enough and decided to take matters into their own hands. This led them to question other students, including McKenny’s cousin, who remained a main suspect for a long time.
Everything came to a head when the FBI got involved and discovered that the person responsible didn’t go to the same high school as Licari and McKenny. The cyberbully wasn’t a teenager. In the end, it was revealed that the real person behind the harassment and threats was Licari’s own mother, Kendra Licari.
Many of these messages were extremely lewd. If you do want to hear them, it’s best you watch the documentary for yourself. It is graphic, and because it’s discussing minors, it becomes disgusting.
It brought up questions to McKenny’s family about whether Kendra was attracted to the boy. She would cut his steak for him and check in on him one-on-one. This is while he was dating her daughter. The interviewers do not ask her about these accusations in the documentary.
An IP address identified Licari’s mother as the culprit and led to the body cam footage we see. In December 2022, police came to seize all of Kendra’s technology. She cooperated but called her husband so he could come home. Kendra soon unraveled more lies: she admitted she’d been lying about her job — claiming she had quit, when in reality her employer had fired her — and had been dishonest about financial matters for months. These revelations ultimately led her husband to kick her out of the house.
This documentary has also garnered attention on social media — especially on TikTok — with people switching personas as if they were the mom. Part of the interest comes from Kendra’s reasoning, as she says, “Realistically, a lot of us have probably broken the law at some point or another and not gotten caught. I’m sure people have driven drunk and haven’t been caught.”
Kendra also explains that her behavior stemmed from unprocessed trauma. She tells the interviewers about being sexually assaulted at 17 and says she was scared for her daughter, wanting to protect her and keep her safe.
In the documentary, the former superintendent, Bill Chillman, says that Kendra had a cyber version of Munchausen syndrome. He argues, “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 behavior.”
Lacari and her mother still have a relationship today. Licari says, “Now that she’s out, I just want her to get the help she needs, so when we see each other, it doesn’t go back to the old ways and the way it was before.” She doesn’t seem to hate or resent her mother at all for what she has done to her and to those close to her. It’s hard to want to be with your mother so badly and not be able to. But knowing you can’t be with her because of what she did to you has to be even harder. Still, they stayed in touch during her prison sentence.
We may never know why Kendra did this to her daughter. As well as Licari may never fully understand why her mother acted the way she did. The story serves as a cautionary tale about cyberbullying. While someone sent the teenagers dangerous threats, they fortunately survived, highlighting the severity of the situation. We can only take care of ourselves and surround ourselves with people who truly support us and want the best for us. Licari gets the last word, saying, “I love her more than anything.”
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