Courtesy of Netflix
Netflix has turn out to be recognized for creating documentaries about unbelievable true crime tales, however Unknown Quantity on Netflix may take the cake.
Unknown Quantity: The Excessive College Catfish, which premiered on the streamer on August 29, tells the story of a cyberbullying and catfishing case that consumed the small city of Beal Metropolis, Michigan. In 2020, 13-year-old Lauryn Licari and her middle-school boyfriend, Owen McKenny, began getting fixed graphic and disturbing messages from an unknown quantity out of the blue.
Over the subsequent two years, the kids continued to be harassed by the nameless texter, who despatched them sexually express materials and horrifically merciless taunts, together with telling Lauryn she ought to die by suicide. When the pair ended their relationship, the bully didn’t cease, even sending texts to Owen’s new love curiosity and her mom.
Finally, the bullying grew to become so extreme that the native sheriff’s division after which the FBI stepped in to analyze. In the long run of 2022, the probe revealed the gorgeous fact—the cyberbully had been Lauryn’s personal mom, Kendra. The now 45-year-old ultimately pled responsible to 2 counts of stalking a minor in 2023 and was sentenced to 19 months in jail.
In the event you’re something like us, you’re dying to know much more in regards to the particulars of this case, from how Lauryn and her father, Shawn, are doing now to why Kendra determined to share her story with the cameras.
Right here’s every thing we’ve got discovered, based mostly on court docket data and interviews which were launched outdoors of Unknown Quantity on Netflix.
Lauryn and Owen.
Courtesy of Netflix
At the beginning—why did Kendra Licari ship the messages to Lauryn and Owen?
Nicely, Kendra herself within the documentary mentioned that she was making an attempt to guard her daughter from experiencing one thing just like her personal trauma from a sexual assault. However Skye Borgman, the movie’s director, thinks that it’s attainable Kendra hasn’t totally untangled her personal reasoning but.
“I don’t know that she actually is aware of why she did it,” Borgman advised Netflix’s Tudum.
The article notes that some have speculated that Kendra’s actions have been a type of Munchausen’s by proxy, however Borgman cautioned that there hasn’t been any formal analysis that she’s conscious of.
“To offer it any type of medical basis is somewhat bit problematic,” she mentioned, although she did observe she noticed the similarities between the situation and what Kendra did.
Why did Kendra comply with take part within the documentary?
Often in true crime docs, we don’t hear straight from the perpetrators—however Kendra was interviewed extensively by Borgman and her crew. This made the reveal that Kendra was behind the cyberbullying much more stunning. Maybe unsurprisingly, Borgman mentioned the method of getting Kendra to seem wasn’t straightforward, telling Tudum that many of the movie was full earlier than she agreed to speak.
In the end, Borgman mentioned, it appeared Kendra was thinking about sharing her story straight with an viewers.
“That was interesting to her, [to] sit down and inform her story from her perspective and that Lauryn [could] see her do this,” she mentioned. “She needed to do it, I feel, for her daughter.”
Lauryn and Shawn Licari.
Courtesy of Netflix
We study that Kendra was additionally mendacity about her employment. Are there extra particulars?
In response to a deep-dive investigative piece on the case printed in The Reduce, Kendra was hiding rather more from her household than simply her horrifying function as her personal daughter’s catfish.
Kendra had been the breadwinner of the household, working at Central Michigan College in human assets (Shawn labored at an auto-body store). In 2019 she advised the household she had gotten a brand new job, working at an IT desk at one other native faculty, Ferris State College. In response to the article, Kendra advised her husband she had gotten an enormous elevate on the new job and the household even purchased a “dream residence” within the woods.
However bizarre issues stored taking place. Shawn, in keeping with the article, advised his coworkers the household had skilled id theft, which led them to lacking home funds, and Kendra had mentioned she’d been hacked after bouncing a examine.
What Shawn came upon after his spouse’s arrest was that it was all a lie. In actuality, Kendra had been fired from her job at Central Michigan in 2019, and her new job at Ferris State didn’t include a wage improve. Then she was positioned on a performance-improvement plan in 2021 and give up. By the point Kendra’s lies have been found, the household was being hounded by debt collectors and have been in peril of shedding their residence.
It was this cash hassle that Kendra initially blamed her habits on, in keeping with the article, telling the sheriff’s investigator that “stress and finance” had brought on her to behave out.
The place is Kendra now?
Kendra was launched from jail in Michigan on August 8, 2024, and might be on parole till 2026. The Reduce reported that as of January 2025 she was residing close to Detroit with household.
Shawn and Kendra at the moment are divorced, and he was granted full custody of Lauryn, who’s now 18. In response to the documentary, Kendra has had no contact together with her daughter since her launch from jail.
The place are Lauryn and Owen now?
Each teenagers graduated from highschool in 2024. In response to on-line data, Owen is now attending a small non-public faculty in Michigan, the place he performs baseball.
As for Lauryn, Borgman notes that she first sat down with the teenager in 2023. On the time, Lauryn was centered on reuniting together with her mother, with Borgman saying “she simply needed her mother again in her life.” However by the point they ended filming after Kendra’s launch from jail, Borgman mentioned she noticed a shift in Lauryn, who “needed to method the connection with extra warning in our second interview.”
“She’s finished loads of fairly important pondering, particularly between that point and now,” the director mentioned. “These years are such important years for younger folks…she’s acquired probably the most sophisticated emotions to take care of. Everyone else can hate Kendra. I don’t suppose Lauryn can, proper? It’s your mother. I imply, how do you navigate that? It’s actually uncharted waters.”
Initially Appeared on Glamour