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Warning: This story comprises spoilers for “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.”
Once in a while, Netflix releases a sleeper hit that turns into everybody’s favourite new obsession. This previous week, it was a real crime documentary with one of the weird plot twists in current reminiscence.
“Unknown Number: The High School Catfish,” at the moment the highest film on the streamer, follows the mysterious case of a teenage lady, Lauryn Licari, and her boyfriend, Owen McKenny, from a small highschool in Beal Metropolis, Michigan, who had been viciously cyberstalked by an unknown quantity for months in 2020, seemingly in an try to interrupt them up.
At first, the texts had been gentle, like one which learn, “Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you.” One other learn, “He no longer likes you and hasn’t liked you for a while. It’s obvious he wants me.”
The teenage couple thought it would simply be a prank. However then the messages obtained extra aggressive and very graphic in nature, even escalating to bodily threats. They finally changed into a full-out harassment marketing campaign, with upward of 40 to 50 texts being despatched to Licari and McKenny in any respect hours of the day and evening.
This went on for roughly two years; nevertheless, the kids’ dad and mom turned concerned after the primary few months, as soon as they discovered how extreme the state of affairs had turn out to be, and alerted the varsity principal and native authorities. However by then, they realized that they weren’t coping with the typical cyberbullying case — this one hit a lot nearer to dwelling.
It appeared that the particular person behind the texts was somebody near Licari and McKenny who knew intimate particulars about them and their relationship. Their dad and mom had been decided to search out the leak of their circle, and so many of the Netflix documentary performs like a guessing recreation of types to determine who may probably be the wrongdoer.
Along with Licari, McKenny and their dad and mom, their fellow schoolmates — a few of whom had been below suspicion — had been all interviewed on digital camera about this catfish scheme and the way it spun so uncontrolled that the FBI finally obtained concerned.
The idea was that one in every of Licari or McKenny’s classmates was the cyberbully, even from a viewer standpoint. However the particular person everybody least suspected turned out to be the perpetrator all alongside — Licari’s personal mom, Kendra Licari.
To the doc’s credit score, nobody may’ve seen that plot twist coming from the way in which Kendra Licari was interviewed all through the doc. To an unsuspecting particular person, she appeared like a involved dad or mum attempting to unravel the textual content thriller, identical to all the opposite adults concerned. Nevertheless, an IP handle tracked by the FBI finally led proper again to Kendra Licari, and from there, she confessed.
It was a fairly stunning reveal, to say the least. And despite the fact that the case made nationwide headlines in 2023 after she pleaded responsible to 2 counts of stalking and was sentenced to 19 months to 5 years in jail, viewers had been nonetheless caught means off guard, as evidenced by reactions on-line:
There have been loads of these posts going round on social media this week. The FOMO of what had everybody floored is what satisfied me to look at the doc within the first place, and boy, I used to be not upset.
I’ve at hand it to the “Unknown Number” group; they knew the way to hold viewers on their toes. The one factor extra shocking than Kendra Licari being the wrongdoer was her agreeing to be interviewed for the doc, which, in line with director Skye Borgman, was no straightforward feat.
“It was a long process with Kendra,” Borgman informed Tudum, noting that the mother finally agreed so she may reply questions surrounding the case.
“That was appealing to her,” the director added, “[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.”
Plenty of individuals had questions on why Kendra Licari focused her personal daughter, and with such vitriol, for therefore lengthy. Some, like former Beal Metropolis Superintendent Invoice Chilman within the doc, attributed her conduct to a cyber type of Munchausen syndrome, noting, “She wanted her daughter to need her in such a way that she was willing to hurt her, and this is the way she chose to do that versus physically trying to make her ill, which is typical Munchausen behavior.”
However even with the mother’s reflections on the finish of the doc, a few of which she stated stemmed from private trauma, we by no means actually get a straight reply.
That facet of “Unknown Number” might at all times be a thriller. What we do know is that everybody who was impacted by Kendra Licari’s catfishing scheme has tried to maneuver on with their lives, together with her, after being launched from jail final August.
Nonetheless, viewers are certain to proceed dissecting their horror and shock on-line so long as the doc retains trending.
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