A mother who stalked her own daughter with daily death threats is speaking out for the first time in a new Netflix documentary that has stunned viewers with its shocking twists.
The film, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, features never-before-seen police bodycam footage showing the moment Kendra Licari was confronted by investigators - as well as her first interview since serving time in prison.
The story begins in late 2020, when Licari’s daughter, Lauryn, and her then-boyfriend Owen started receiving bizarre messages that escalated into relentless death threats by 2021. At one point, the pair were receiving up to 12 messages a day.
The FBI eventually joined the investigation, and after 22 months, it led back to Lauryn’s own mother.
Isabella County Sheriff Mike Main appears in the Netflix documentary, confronting Licari at her home.
“The messages coming were originating from you… Your number, even though it was being hidden, was showing up on every message,” he tells her.
The mom admitted to sending some of the messages, though prosecutor Dave Barberi later noted it wasn’t a “clear confession".
She was eventually arrested in December 2022 and charged with multiple counts of stalking and using a computer to commit a crime. She ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor and was sentenced to 19 months to five years in prison.
She was released on August 8, 2024. By the time filming concluded, she still expressed a desire to be part of her daughter’s life.
In the documentary, Licari is seen in tears as she reflects on the day she was exposed.
“It was a very high emotional day in our house, a day of confusion,” she says, per Daily Mail. “A day of confusion, unknown answers, shock, a day of not even knowing how we move forward to the next day, so it was a hard day, but at the same time, it was an end."
She continued. "Every single one of us makes mistakes, not a single one of us has lived a perfect life, and realistically a lot of us have probably broken the law at some point or another and not gotten caught.
"I know to some I’m a headline; I’m a villain I’m a bad Mum, I’m a whatever. But that’s because they know one little piece of my story, they don’t know my whole story," she added.
Licari also shared that she had been assaulted at around the same age Lauryn was during the harassment, claiming fear of her daughter growing up was what drove her actions.
Despite her attempt to explain her actions, the reaction from viewers has been harsh. One user summed up the widespread response: “Why is Kendra acting as if she made a silly mistake like forgetting to pick her daughter up from school, this woman is seriously unwell how she is not in jail is beyond me.”
Another added: "Kendra Licari is just sorry she got caught. Why the f*** is she getting more attention with this new Netflix doc?...She’s not safe to society."
Director Skye Borgman, who persuaded Licari to take part in the documentary, says she saw the film as a chance to tell her story directly.
“That was appealing to her, [to] sit down and tell her story from her perspective, and that Lauryn [could] see her do that. She wanted to do it, I think, for her daughter,” she explained.
Still, the damage to the family remains profound. “She’s remorseful that she has severely altered her relationship with her daughter in most likely a negative way,” Borgman says. “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.”
Lauryn, now 18, has been navigating those complexities while moving into adulthood.
“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 said, adding that Lauryn’s bond with her father, Shawn Licari, has deepened since the case.
Shawn, who now has full custody of Lauryn, admitted in the film that he never imagined his then-wife could have been the one telling their daughter to kill herself.
“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,” Borgman noted of their relationship today.
Meanwhile, Owen and Lauryn broke up before the case was solved and are no longer in contact.
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is streaming now on Netflix.