Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Crime, Film and TV, Michigan, Parenting, US News, True crime, Netflix
Callum Jones
Topics: Crime, Film and TV, Michigan, Parenting, US News, True crime, Netflix
The horrific messages a Michigan mother sent her teen daughter while anonymously harassing her online for a year have been revealed.
Lauryn Licari began receiving numerous anonymous threatening messages in 2021, and her then-boyfriend, Owen McKenny, was also receiving them. These texts lasted for a year, and the pair were also harassed with messages on social media from an unknown sender.
Lauryn's mother, Kendra Licari, and Owen's mother collaborated with school officials and law enforcement in Beal City in an attempt to catch the anonymous stalker. But it was soon discovered it was Licari all along.
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They also discovered that the mom had been using a VPN (virtual private network) to hide her location, but the FBI managed to track all the IP addresses before realizing they were all linked to Licari.
Licari pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor in 2023, receiving a maximum sentence of five years. She was later released in August 2024, according to Today, but isn't allowed to see her daughter due to her plea deal.
Netflix's latest documentary series, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, detailed a number of messages the mother sent her daughter that ultimately led to her conviction.
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Lauryn received messages from her mother such as 'He thinks you're ugly', referring to Owen, as well as 'you're worthless', 'We won' and 'He thinks you're trash'.
Disturbingly, some messages even included sexually explicit terms, saying that they wanted to 'bang' Owen and telling Lauryn that Owen didn't want her and that they are 'both down to f***'.
"They were vulgar and nasty enough to make a 53-year-old man blush," Superintendent Bill Chillan said. "The evidence was extraordinary."
The horrific messages got even worse as Lauryn received messages regarding physical harm, including one telling her to end her own life.
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"When I first read that, I was totally in shock, it made me feel bad, I was in a bad mental state," Lauryn said.
Licari said in the Netflix documentary that once she started, she 'didn't know how to stop'.
"I started in the thoughts of needing some answers, and then I just kept going, it was a spiral, kind of a snowball effect, I don't think I knew how to stop," she admitted. "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 didn't even know who I was."
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Licari has previously expressed remorse for her actions, and in the documentary, said she is very 'disappointed' in herself and that she has let herself and her family down.
The mother claims in the doc that she didn't send the initial messages received by her daughter, which told her Owen was going to break up with her.