Netflix has no shortage of shocking true crime documentaries to tune in to, but Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is perhaps one of the most jaw-dropping films we’ve seen in a long time.
The documentary follows Lauryn Licari, a regular American teenager in high school who starts to receive a catalogue of cruel, horrible messages from an unknown number. Soon after, her boyfriend Owen McKenny also begins to receive a series of nasty messages in a similar vein. The cyberbullying goes on for months—but in a particularly cruel twist of fate, it turns out the person behind the attacks was Lauryn’s own mother, Kendra Licari. As Unknown Number: The High School Catfish shows, Kendra Licari was sentenced to a minimum of 19 months in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of stalking a minor in 2023.
As she was sentenced, Judge Mark Duthie told the court that the “truly horrible” case had shown him the “worst in human nature.”
Lauryn was just 13 years old when her own mother started an onslaught of hate against her for 15 months. Now, three years on from the initial investigation, Lauryn is 18 and looking to start afresh.
Cosmopolitan UK did some digging, and here’s what Lauryn is up to now.
What is Lauryn Licardi doing today?
Skye Borgman, director of Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, said she kept in contact with Lauryn, and that she is now looking to enter a new chapter following the strange and horrific incident she endured.
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“She is at the beginning of figuring out that she can be the one in charge, that she can make all the decisions for herself and for her relationship with her mother,” Borgman explained to Netflix publication Tudum. “I think that’s going to be a really interesting place for Lauryn to explore.”
Lauryn is also now really close with her father, Shawn.
“It’s so wonderful to see them together,” Borgman continued. “It’s just a great outcome of something so tragic and so terrible that you see this really loving, really respectful relationship that the two of them have.”
Is Lauryn Licari still dating Owen McKenny?
While it was this relationship that was at the heart of the documentary, Borgman confirmed to Netflix that the pair broke up before the case was solved and Kendra was outed as the perpetrator.
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Lauryn is no longer in contact with Owen.
Does Lauryn still speak to her mother, Kendra?
According to Kendra’s plea deal, she is not able to see her daughter. However, as we see in the documentary, Lauryn isn’t against forming some sort of relationship later down the line, telling the cameras she’ll see her mother “when the time is right.”
“I think I want to trust her now, but I don’t think I can,” Lauryn said on screen. “Now that she’s out, I just want her to get the help she needs so then when we see each other, it doesn’t go back to the old ways and how it was before.”
Borgman adds that it’s unsurprising that Lauryn has more complex feelings than most about her mother.
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“The first time we sat down with Lauryn was in the spring of 2023 … and she at the time loved her mom. She just wanted her mom back in her life,” Borgman said. But when the filmmakers returned about a year later, there had been a noticeable shift in Lauryn’s thought process.
“She’s done a lot of pretty critical thinking, especially between that time and now… These years are such critical years for young people,” Borgman continued. “She’s got the most complicated feelings to deal with. Everybody else can hate Kendra. I don’t think Lauryn can, right? It’s your mum. I mean, how do you navigate that?It’s uncharted waters.”