Starting in October of 2020, then-13-year-old Lauryn Licari from the tranquil town of Beal City, Michigan, was terrorized by an unknown phone number.
She was bullied relentlessly for months on end about her appearance, her relationship with her boyfriend was sabotaged, and her everyday life was made a living hell.
Lewd, aggressive, and threatening messages were sent to both Lauryn and her boyfriend via text. Some even urged the young girl to harm herself.
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Even the couple’s breakup didn’t stop the stalking.
The Netflix documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish tells how Lauryn herself, schoolmates, and relatives are suspected of having sent the messages.
Eventually, the responsible party is caught red-handed.
Warning, spoilers ahead!
With the help of the FBI, it eventually turns out that Lauryn’s own mother Kendra was behind it all.
Kendra was shown throughout the whole documentary giving “talking head” interviews about the hardships her daughter endured, adding even more of a twist to her role in the whole ordeal.
While viewers express their horror on social media, Lauryn initially declares in the documentary that she misses and loves her convicted mother despite the harm she caused.
According to director Skye Borgman, however, the relationship between the two is now different.
“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,” she recalls in an interview with the Netflix Tudum site.
But after Kendra was released from prison, the now-18-year-old Lauryn revealed that she “wanted to approach the relationship with more caution in our second interview.”
Many are now wondering why Kendra Licari took part in the documentary in the first place and what her relationship with her daughter is like today.
“She’s done a lot of pretty critical thinking, especially between that time and now,” Borgman explains.
“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 mom,” she continued.
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Lauryn is now 18 years old, and thus a legal adult.
Accordingly, “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.”
After all, Lauryn now has a healthy support system of friends plus her loving father Shawn to lean on. As the doc revealed, the dad and daughter are closer than ever before.
Netflix hadn’t initially expected Kendra Licari to appear in the true-crime documentary, and so her scenes were shot after the bulk of the film was done.
“It was a long process with Kendra,” Borgman said. “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.”
But there will never be a return to the old days for the family, the director also believes.
“I mean, will they have a relationship? Will they get through this? I don’t know. There will probably be some kind of relationship,” Borgman continued.
“Will it be the same? Absolutely not. There’s no way it can be the same.”
