Netflix’s Unknown Number: Who Was Behind Lauryn Licari’s Cyberbullying? Find Out!
Netflix is currently streaming Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, a documentary about a truly shocking case of cyberbullying. Here’s the truth of what happened.
Netflix’s Unknown Number: The High School Catfish ( Photo Credit – Netflix )
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Netflix’s Unknown Number: The High School Catfish was released in late August, covering a particularly twisted case of cyberbullying that occurred in late 2021. The victims of this cyberbullying campaign were Lauryn Licari and her boyfriend, Owen. They were subjected to a prolonged harassment campaign that targeted their relationship and outright told Lauren to kill herself.
This relentless cyberbullying proved to be an enduring mystery, and eventually, Lauryn and Owen’s family would get the local police and the FBI involved to try and get to the bottom of the mystery. What they ended up finding was a shocking truth that would forever upend Lauryn’s family life.
Lauryn Licari Was Cyberbullied By Her Mother
The true culprit behind the cyberbullying Lauryn suffered through was her own mother, Kendra Licari, as per Today. While she played the part of a supportive mother and told her daughter, Lauryn, not to let everything get to her, she herself was sending threatening text messages such as “Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you,” or “He will be with me while your lonely ugly a** is alone.”
The FBI pieced together the truth about Lauryn’s cyberbullying by piecing together several clues left by the messages. One such clue was the cyberbully addressing Laura as “Lo”, a nickname only her close friends and family knew about.
Other clues that pointed to the cyberbully’s true identity came from the discovery of an app the culprit used to disguise her phone number. FBI liaison Bradley Peter detailed his analysis in the documentary, stating that after he submitted search warrants to the app, he saw a pattern of Verizon numbers being used. Then he submitted a search warrant to Verizon and saw that Lauryn’s mother, Kendra’s number, was popping up.
This discovery took local authorities by surprise, especially since Kendra had made a big show about hunting down her daughter’s tormentor no matter the cost. When the police finally came to arrest her, however, she surrendered without a fight as her daughter looked on in stunned silence.
The Documentary Presents Kendra’s Perspective
The documentary has Kendra speak out on her motivations and reasoning for what she did, although the director, Skye Borgman, has cautioned that Kendra is an unreliable narrator. In both the documentary and in the courtroom, Kendra has claimed that she deeply regrets what she did, with her claiming “I never want to hurt anyone else like I have already done.”
Kendra has also claimed that she was dealing with the stress of being unemployed after being let go from her job, as well as unprocessed trauma from being raped when she was 17, claiming, “As my daughter was hitting those teenage years, I got scared. I was afraid of letting her grow up, want[ed] to protect her and keep her safe.”
Lauryn’s boyfriend, Owen, speculated that Kendra may have been attracted to him, claiming that she often gave him special attention when he came over to visit, and even attended his sporting events after he and Lauryn had broken up, thanks to the cyberbullying.
Kendra is currently on parole and is no longer on speaking terms with her daughter, Lauryn, who has graduated from high school and is closer to her father than ever. Unknown Number is currently streaming on Netflix.
