Where Kendra Licari Stands With Her Daughter Lauryn Today After Her ‘Regret’ Sending Threatening Texts to Her & Her Boyfriend
Netflix‘s latest true crime documentary, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, reveals the dangers of cyberstalking. But what if that cyberstalker was your own mother?
In 2021, Lauryn Licari received text messages from an unknown number that were insulting and threatening her relationship with her boyfriend at the time, Owen. The text messages revealed deeply personal information that only the 13-year-old knew at the time. The first read, “Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you.” Others included, “He no longer likes you and hasn’t liked you for a while,” and “It’s obvious he wants me.”
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Their classmates and teachers were suspects, but when the FBI stepped in, all signs led towards Lauryn Licari’s mom, Kendra. Investigators reported that the texts were received from “an IP address from a Spectrum host from the Mt Pleasant area” and a user who “opened the link with an Apple iPhone,” according to the report obtained by NBC News. There was “only one number that matched anyone involved in this case was.” She confessed and was arrested for stalking a minor.
Kendra pleaded guilty to two counts of cyberstalking. When she was sentenced, she said (via The Cut), “I am sorry for my behavior to Owen McKenny and his family. I am sorry for my behavior to Khloe Wilson and her family. I am sorry to my daughter, Ashley, and my husband, Shawn.”
Is Kendra Licari still in jail?
Kendra Licari was released on parole on Aug. 8, 2024, and will be supervised until February 2026, according to her inmate record from the Michigan Department of Corrections. She currently lives in Michigan.
Her husband Shawn gained full custody of Lauryn and the family is no longer in contact with Kendra. However, Lauryn would like to reconcile with her mother “when the time is right.”
“I think it would be relief to see her, but also hard,” the teenager says in the documentary. “Now that she’s out, I just want her to get the help that she needs. So then, when we see each other, it doesn’t go back to the old ways and how it was before.”
Unknown Number director Skye Borgman told Netflix’s Tudum that a reconciliation might be possible, but things won’t look the same for the family. “She’s remorseful that she has severely altered her relationship with her daughter in most likely a negative way,” Borgman says. “I mean, will they have a relationship? Will they get through this? I don’t know. There will probably be some kind of relationship. Will it be the same? Absolutely not. There’s no way it can be the same.”
As for whether she thinks that Lauryn would talk to her mother again, she doesn’t think it’s off the table. “She didn’t hate her mother at all, but she was a little bit more measured in communications with her and a little bit more measured about how much she was willing to let Kendra into her life,” said Borgman.
