Where is Kendra Licari now from ‘Unknown Number: High School Catfish’?
Netflix’s library holds the skeletons of many such true cases of cyberbullying whose titles are enough to conjure a spine chill.
While they maintain the streak of unpredictable perpetrators, Unknown Number: High School Catfish completely catches you asleep at the wheel, revealing the culprit to be the mother, Kendra Licari.
Directed by Skye Borgman, the film follows a jaw-dropping tale of cyberbullying, with perpetrators in close proximity nursing twisted motivations. In October 2020, 13-year-old Lauryn Licari and her then-boyfriend, Owen, received texts from an unknown number bordering on online harassment. While the texts stemmed, within a year in September, they reared their ugly lexical heads full of humiliating insults and unforeseen threats.
The messages had substantial information about the teenager, which subsequently raised eyebrows, confirming that the culprit was actually from a close circle. The parents and school officials didn’t waste time before resorting to law enforcement for a closure on the matter. Isabella County Sheriff Mike Main initially set their sights on Lauryn and Owen’s schoolmates and buddies, resulting in anxiety, suspicion and fragmented interpersonal relationships.
When the efforts didn’t guarantee a resolution, a Bay City police officer, Bradley Peter, stepped in to assist the FBI with the case. The investigation ultimately paid off, revealing the entity behind the messages to be none other than Lauryn’s mother, Kendra Licari. But where Unknown Number: High School Catfish wins beyond the twist is it makes one curious about what happened to her and where she is now.
According to Tudum, Licari was arrested in December 2022 and indicted on several counts of stalking and cyberbullying, where she pleaded guilty to two accounts of stalking a minor, resulting in a sentence of 19 months to five years of prison. She was released on August 8th, 2024, during the concluding phase of Unknown Number’s filming, and expressed her desire to remain a part of her daughter’s life.
As per Borgman, it was always unclear whether mother Licari would be involved in the documentary, as by the time she agreed to dispel her mythos, the documentary was nearly completed. Furthermore, the creator recounted the effort it took to onboard her for interviews. Although her release was a turning point for the broken family, not many have forgotten the trauma and consequences of her action, especially her daughter.
“She’s remorseful that she has severely altered her relationship with her daughter in most likely a negative way,” Borgman explains. And that alone makes you wonder whether reconciliation is at all possible. While he negates the likelihood of their relationship going back to square one, he doesn’t rule out the possibility of amiability, perhaps now on Lauryn’s terms.