- As a teenager, Lauryn and her boyfriend began receiving aggressive, harassing anonymous texts — after a multi-year investigation, it was revealed the sender was her own mother, Kendra.
- Kendra Licari pled guilty to stalking charges in 2023, was sentenced to prison, and was released on parole in 2024; her contact with Lauryn has been limited since.
- Now 18, Lauryn is speaking about what happened.
Ping! Ping! Lauryn Licari’s mobile buzzed as texts flooded in.
You are worthless and mean nothing, read one.
It was late 2021, and Lauryn had been receiving abusive texts from an unknown number since October 2020.
The texts began in a group chat with the then 13-year-old and her boyfriend Owen McKenny, also 13.
Owen is breaking up with you. He no longer likes you and hasn’t liked you for a while, the texter taunted.
Thinking it was just someone messing with them, the pair did their best to ignore the prankster.
For a while, the messages stopped.
But 11 months later, in September 2021, they started up again.
How’s the happy couple? Preparing for the end of the golden relationship? one read.
In some texts, the sender referred to Lauryn using her nickname, ‘Lo’.
Confused, the couple tried to find out who was sending the texts.
They even called the number but there was no answer.
Only her closest family and friends called her Lo, but surely it couldn’t be one of them.
Distraught, Lauryn turned to the person she trusted most, her mum Kendra.
Horrified by what she read Kendra, who worked in IT, vowed to help her daughter uncover the truth.
Still, the texts continued.
They’d taunt Lauryn for the clothes she wore to school, or the way she styled her hair, suggesting the texter was someone in her class.
In time, the messages grew more sexually explicit, suggesting Owen was going to break up with Lauryn as she wasn’t fulfilling his desires.
Soon doubt and fear began to creep in for Lauryn. Could this be true? she questioned.
As Lauryn tried to determine who she could trust, the daily barrage of threats and vile insults continued, sometimes up to 50 per day.
Eventually Owen ended their relationship in hopes the anonymous texter would leave them alone.
But the messages kept coming.
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This time the sender’s abuse became even more vile, encouraging Lauryn to take her own life.
His life would be better if you were dead, one read.
Warning, you finish yourself before we do, threatened another.
The attacks became so overwhelming that both teens, with the help of their mums, who were close friends, reported the cyberbullying to the school.
By January 2022, when the school authorities had been unable to identify the bully, law enforcement was called in.
Investigators began scouring the online accounts used to send the messages.
It didn’t take long before police noticed something unusual.
The sender had been using an app which disguised their phone number and masked their location.
It was a sophisticated trick, unusual for a schoolyard bully.
With the case growing more complex, the FBI were called in to assist.
The scope of the harassment was staggering.
During their investigation, 349 pages of abusive text and social media messages were compiled.
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Over the following months, federal agents worked to trace the digital fingerprints behind the abusive accounts.
Eventually that August, they uncovered a clear pattern.
The IP addresses linked to the fake profiles all pointed back to the same source – Lauryn’s mum, Kendra.
The abusive messages hadn’t come from a classmate, an anonymous online troll, or even a stranger with a grudge.
It was her own mother.
At first, the mum denied involvement.
Then, confronted with the evidence by police, she confessed.
‘It didn’t start that way,’ she said, seen in bodycam footage.
Detectives then told Lauryn everything.
Stunned, the teen remained silent learning her mum, who’d publicly been helping authorities search for her attacker, was the culprit all along.
For almost two years Kendra had catfished and psychologically targeted Lauryn and Owen.
In December 2022, Kendra Licari was charged with two counts of stalking a minor, two counts of using a computer to commit a crime, and one count of obstruction of justice.
Striking a plea deal, she pleaded guilty to the stalking charges, and the others were dropped.
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In April 2023, Kendra Gail Licari, then 42, appeared in Isabella County Trial Court, in Michigan, US, where she was sentenced to between 19 months and five years in prison.
During proceedings, Judge Mark Duthie described the case as ‘truly horrible’.
‘It’s the kind of case that makes me glad that at the end of my term, I’m retiring.’
The mum told the court she was ‘ashamed, remorseful and embarrassed’ of her actions.
Lauryn’s dad Shawn commented, ‘I just can’t believe she would do something like that to her daughter that supposedly she loved dearly. Just makes me sick.’
Released on parole in August 2024, Kendra Licari remains under supervision until February 2026.
The disturbing case was featured in the 2025 Netflix documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.
In the doco, Kendra Licari explained, ‘It was like I had a mask on or something, I didn’t even know who I was.’
Lauryn, now 18, lives with her dad, who had no idea about his ex-wife’s twisted actions.
The teen plans to study criminology at uni.
Despite everything, Lauryn hopes to rebuild a relationship with her mother when the time is right.
‘I feel like I’m definitely missing a part of me,’ she said.
