My terrifying stalker told me to ‘kill myself’ for ‘stealing’ high school boyfriend…unmasking shock culprit crushed me

LAURYN Licari and Owen McKenny were the cutest of childhood sweethearts, growing up in the small town of Beal City, Michigan.

They met at school when they were 12. She thought him “cute” and he liked her “shy, sweet and caring” nature. 

Lauryn and Owen were together for over two years

Lauryn, now 18 years old, tells her story in a Netflix documentary

Owen and Lauryn started receiving strange messages from an unknown number

But just a year after they had started dating their innocence was shattered by a relentless stream of vile, abusive and sexually explicit text messages from an unknown number that was to break them up and send the close-knit community into chaos.

They included:  “Owen loves me, and I will always be the girl he loves. He will be with me while your lonely ugly ass is alone,”  “f*** off u nasty skank wh*re”, and “kill yourself now, bitch. His life would be better if you were dead.”

The tirade of unsettling and disgusting messages every day went on for over a year – with up to 50 a day.

Suspicion switched from various classmates until the FBI were called in – but the true identity of their tormentor was a twist that nobody predicted.

The remarkable story is told through interviews with the young couple, their families and friends in the Netflix documentary, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.

The abuse began in October 2020, two weeks before a Halloween Party thrown at the home of classmate, Khloe Wilson. She did not get on with Lauryn and had invited Owen but not her. 

Lauryn and Owen got a text message from an anonymous phone number in their group chat saying: “Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you. He no longer likes you and hasn’t liked you for a while.

“It is obvious he wants me. He laughs, smiles, touches my hair. Not sure what he told you but he is coming to the Halloween party and we’re both DTF (down to f***). Sorry, not sorry!”

“I was just really confused as to who this could be,” says Lauryn, now 18. “Maybe one of our friends is just trying to mess with me and Owen.”

After 11 months of silence, they assumed it was a silly one off text, but then they began receiving up to six twisted messages a day, directed at Lauren –  “You are the ugliest person I’ve ever seen,” read one and another, “Get the f*** lost, b****. He is f***ing done with you.”

Several referred to what was going on in their school class of just 30 pupils.

The couple eventually confided in their parents, who had become good friends and spent time at each other’s houses, as well as watching their children compete in school basketball and baseball competitions, where Lauryn’s mother, Kendra volunteered as team coach.

“My mum said I was beautiful and encouraged me not to read the messages,” says Lauryn. 

But soon they started flooding in at a rate of 30 to 50 a day, at all hours –  “He wants sex, bj’s n makin out. He don’t want ur sry (sorry) ass” and “We stayin at hotel with him Thursday, n your sry ass won’t be there.”

Eventually the torment took its toll on the young couple.

“I didn’t know if I could trust Owen anymore,” says Lauryn.

“Me and Lauryn got into a lot more fights,” says Owen. “She would accuse me of things that aren’t true because she was listening to the text messages. The one thing the texter wanted was for me and Lauryn to break up.

Lauryn with parents Shawn and Kendra

Owen McKenny with his sister and parents David and Jill

Jill feared for her son’s welfare when the anonymous messages turned threatening

“I Facetimed Lauryn and I told her it had got too much and that maybe if we give them what they want, they would stop, and maybe one day we can try again. She was heartbroken.”

“He was my first boyfriend,” says Lauryn. “We had been together for over two years and we just stopped talking to each other. I felt like all they wanted us to do was to break us up and then when we did, the messages got worse.”

They turned threatening and so mentally damaging their parents feared for their children’s welfare – “Owen wants u dead today” and “Warning. U finish yourself before we do.”

“We were afraid that something could happen to our children,” says Owen’s mother, Jill.

Early suspicion fell on Khloe, who didn’t get on with Lauryn

Superintendent at Beal City Schools, Bill Chillman began questioning pupils

Their parents informed the school Principal, Dan Boyer, who, along with the Superintendent at Beal City Schools, Bill Chillman and investigator Sheriff Mike Main, began questioning pupils. Early suspicion fell on Khloe.

“I got this text where the sender talked about how many points they scored in the school basketball game the night before, in which I didn’t do well,” says Lauryn.

“My mum was the volunteer score keeper on most games and when we looked at the score chart, only one person had that amount of points (12) – Khloe Wilson.” 

Pal Sophie adds that Khloe and Owen “were a little bit more than friends. They always liked each other. Khloe really had a crush on Owen, but then he started dating Lauryn.”

When some of the abusive messages were sent from an area in Florida where Khloe and her family had taken a spring break, she became a person of interest to Sheriff Main. But a search of her phone revealed nothing incriminating.

The following day, another anonymous text: “B****es. I talk to police yesterday. They fn kept my phone, fn searched it, copied it. Found nothing bad.”

“It was weird because I would get texted pictures of me and Khloe, so if it was Khloe behind the messages, why would she reference herself?” says Owen. 

Driven to the brink

Owen and Lauryn broke up due to the abuse

The focus changed when Lauryn was sent a photograph of a phone case she had bought Owen as a Christmas gift, with the message: “We digging his new black phone case.”

“It was very alarming because the only people who would have been able to take that picture at our family Christmas at home were the people there – our family,” says Jill.

“The only family member there that was in Owen’s class was his cousin, Adriana.” However, Adriana was quickly ruled out. 

Jill was scared about the effect that it was all was having on her son when she noticed how angry he had become and then a message he had sent to the anonymous texter saying, “You make me feel suicidal.”

Owen began dating a girl from the nearby town of Pinconning and says he “started to feel happy again,” until, to his astonishment, the girl’s mother got a text message saying that the girl needs to back off because Owen was taken. 

“I felt like I had no freedom and couldn’t date anyone because I would put them in danger,” he says. “So we broke up because of this.”

After 18 months, Sheriff Main asked the FBI for help from their cyber crimes unit.

FBI Liaison Bradley Peter arrived and was immediately concerned about the danger.

“I’ve seen cases like this where the victim can’t handle it anymore and they commit suicide,” he says.

Bradley got hold of a list of IP addresses connected to the texter’s phone, which led to pages of phone numbers. One of them belonged to the abuser. 

He asked Jill to give him a phone number from any possible suspect. At first none matched, so Jill sent him numbers from practically everyone in her phone book and finally one number kept coming up at the time the messages were sent – it belonged to Lauryn’s mum, Kendra.

Family blown apart

The documentary shows filmed footage of Sheriff Main arriving at Kendra’s home to talk to her – and her shock confession to being behind the texts. 

Cuddling her stunned daughter, she says, “The first ones didn’t start with me. They were random. But I fed off them.”

Sheriff Main calls Kendra’s husband, Shawn, to come home from work. He is stunned when he is told the news. 

Kendra also revealed that she had not been at work for over a year since losing her job in IT at a university – something she had kept quiet from her family and friends.

“I just can’t believe she would do something like that to her daughter,” says Shawn. “It makes me sick. She stabbed me in the heart and threw it away.”

Kendra revealed she had not been at work for over a year since losing her job in IT at a university

Kendra Gail Licari conducted a year-long cyberbullying campaign against her own daughter

“The shock turned into sad, which turned into mad,” says Lauryn. “Why would my mum do this? I was just really confused.”

In the documentary, a tearful Kendra speaks for the first time about why she did it but the motive is unclear, her rationale bizarre and full of self-serving justification.

She claims she did not send the first text messages, around Halloween, and that she started sending her own vile messages in a bid to discover the original texter.

“I started with the view of getting some answers and then I just kept going,” she says. “It was a kind of snowball effect. I don’t think I knew how to stop. I was somebody different in those moments.

Kendra reveals in the documentary why she trolled her own daughter

Shawn, Kendra’s husband was stunned at the news

“I was in an awful place mentally. It was like I had a mask on. I don’t even know who I was. Sometimes it was an hour a day or eight hours a day. I let it consume me.

“I think it was an escape. It took me out of real life, in a sense. Lauryn knows she’s petite, thin, so I might have kind of picked up on some of her insecurities – her appearance, her hair, her looks. But, honestly, the messages weren’t really targeted at her insecurities.”

She adds: “Every single one of us makes mistakes. Realistically, a lot of us have probably broken the law at some time or another, and I got caught. I mean, a lot of people do drugs, right, and aren’t caught. 

“I know to some I am a villain and a bad mum but that’s because they only know a one little piece of my story. They don’t know my whole story.

“As Lauryn started getting older I started having things that were suppressed coming forward – previous trauma beginning to resurface, that I didn’t know how to handle. When I was 17 I was raped and as my daughter was hitting those teenage years I got scared.

“I didn’t want her to go through what I did. I was re-living what I had been through but at the same time, wanting to protect her and to control the outcome of her journey. I was afraid of letting her grow up… because I was scared of what could happen to her.”

Lisa Rinna and Briana Skye play the mother and daughter in Lifetime’s original movie, Mommy MeanestJen Osborne and Allister Foster/A&E

Lauryn says still loves her mother ‘more than anything’ despite her ordeal

Bill Chillman believes Kendra’s behaviour point to a case of Cyber Munchausen. “She wanted her daughter to need her in such a way that she was willing to hurt her. It is typical Munchausen’s behaviour,” he says.

Jill has another theory: “I think she became obsessed with Owen. I think there was some level of relationship that she wanted to have with him that obviously was not acceptable at her age.

“She would randomly text him and try to keep a connection with him. She came to all of his sporting events, even after he and Lauryn broke up.”

Kendra pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor on 26 April 2023 and was given a 19 month prison sentence. She was released on 8 August 2024.

Despite the vile personal attacks on her, Lauryn remains close to her mum and wants her back in her life.

“I was communicating with my mum while she was in prison and we sent emails,” she says. “She made me feel better.

“I still don’t know why she did it. She told me to kill myself which makes me feel a little bit sad. Why is my mum telling me to do that? 

“I know my dad is angry with her and will never forgive her but I just want to put that aside and have the relationship with my mum that I want. 

“I’m not allowed to see my mum without someone else being there at the moment. I want to see my mum when the time is right. Now that’s she’s out I just want her to get the help that she needs. I love her more than anything.”

Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, is on Netflix from Friday 29 August

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