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THE RUNDOWN:
- A new Netflix documentary Unknown Number: The Highschool Catfish documents the case of Kendra Licari who cyberbullied her daughter for two years
- Kendra Licari was charged with felony stalking in 2022 after sending her daughter Lauryn Licari and Owen McKenny up to 50 hate-filled, explicit messages a day for almost two years
- Shawn Licari was shocked when he discovered his wife was not only behind the messages but had also been lying about her employment, they have broken up.
“I know to some I’m a headline, I’m a villain, I’m a bad mom. But that’s because they only know one piece of my story, they don’t know the whole story.”
These are the words of Kendra Licari, the Michigan mother at the centre of Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary. The now 44-year-old woman made headlines in 2022 after she was charged with sending her 13-year-old daughter, Lauryn Licari, and Lauryn’s boyfriend, Owen McKenney, a barrage of violent, sexually explicit, and degrading messages over the course of two years.
The texts, sent from an anonymous number, cruelly targeted a teenage girl’s deepest insecurities, criticising Lauryn’s body, her athletic performance, and her relationship. The messages called her a “skank” and a “ho,” claimed Owen was cheating on her, told her to “die,” and mocked her “flat ass” and “tits.”
In Unknown Number, Kendra gives her first public interview, alongside friends and family—including her now ex-husband, Shawn Licari, who was blindsided by the discovery that the person tormenting their daughter was his wife. It’s left viewers wondering: Are Kendra and Shawn Licari still married? And where is Kendra now?
Here’s everything we know.
What Did Kendra Licari Do?
In 2020, 13-year-old Lauryn began receiving disturbing messages via an anonymous group chat that included her boyfriend, Owen McKenney. The messages quickly escalated in tone—death threats, body-shaming, and sexually explicit content were all part of a campaign Lauryn later described as inescapable.
According to the documentary, the messages were so vile the school superintendent described them as “nasty enough to make a 53-year-old man blush.”
Related: ‘Unknown Number’ Has Us Searching For Where Lauryn And Kendra Licari Ended Up
The small community of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, was thrown into turmoil as students were interrogated by police on suspicion of felony stalking. Eventually, the FBI stepped in, tracing the messages back to apps Kendra had used to mask her identity. When the trail led to her, police confronted Kendra at home in a scene that forms the climax of the documentary.
Although in the documentary she seems as confused and concerned as the other parents interviewed, by the time the documentary was filmed, she had already served 20 months in prison for her crimes.
Are Kendra Licari And Shawn Licari Still Married?
The short answer? No.
By the time Kendra’s crimes came to light, the Licari household was already under pressure. Shawn tells the filmmakers that financial stress was mounting and the family moved between four homes, fearing a stalker was pursuing them. “Kendra and I were fighting and arguing,” he says. Kendra adds, “It led to financial struggle—worse financial struggle than we were already in.”
What Shawn didn’t know was that Kendra had lost both of her jobs—one at Mt. Pleasant Public Schools, the other at a university—and had lied about it. In the documentary, Shawn is visibly stunned when police reveal this, confronting her about the job losses even before the texts.
There had been warning signs: bounced cheques, missed mortgage payments, Shawn’s car being repossessed. Kendra told her husband these were the result of hackers and scammers. But, according to The Cut, while Kendra Licari claimed she had resigned from her university job and taken a higher-paying role, leading the family to upsize their home, in reality, she was fired and was later performance-managed in her job, partly for “nonwork texting and calls.” A year before her arrest, she was fired from both her jobs, but told her husband she was still working remotely.
The officer recalls Shawn’s reaction to the news: “He looked like a broken person.”
Shawn demands that Kendra leave the house. When she refuses, saying she needs to be there for Lauryn, Shawn calls her parents for her. “I can’t do this, Kendra. I’m sorry. We gotta get some time apart.”
According to The Cut, Shawn has since divorced Kendra and now has full custody of Lauryn. Kendra is living with her parents near Detroit and, heartbreakingly, has even less contact with her daughter now than she did in prison.
Where Is Kendra Licari Now?
In April 2023, Kendra pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor, receiving a 20-month prison sentence and five years of probation. She was released after serving her time and is currently living with her parents. She is not permitted to contact Lauryn.
Meanwhile, Shawn closes out the story in tears, saying: “You know, she stabbed me in the heart, shot me in the heart.”
The story of Kendra Licari is shocking not just for its cruelty but for how close to home it hit—for her daughter, her husband, and an entire community.
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