NetflixWhen a cyberbullying campaign against teen Lauryn Licari was launched, Shawn and Kendra Licari were seemingly two suffering parents – but one of them harbored a dark secret. Did their marriage survive it? Warning: some may find this content distressing.
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is a new Netflix documentary detailing the case, which started in October 2020 when then-13-year-old Lauryn and her boyfriend at the time, Owen McKenney, began receiving vicious messages from an anonymous perpetrator.
For months, the messages would roll in, targeting Lauryn’s appearance and Owen’s new love interests. Some of them were sexually explicit, while others urged Lauryn to take her own life, but one thing they had in common: they were all vile.
When the FBI were called in to help, all roads led to the most unexpected perpetrator: Lauryn’s own mother, Kendra Licari. She had been living a double life, one that her husband and Lauryn’s father, Shawn Licari, knew nothing about.
Are Kendra and Shawn Licari still married?
NetflixNo, Shawn Licari filed for divorce after the cyberbullying scandal came to light. This was revealed in The Cut’s article on the case, which was published in January 2025 before the Netflix documentary.
Shawn was concerned about his daughter Lauryn’s wellbeing throughout the saga, which continued until Kendra’s arrest in December 2022. Unknown Number shows the moment the police confront Kendra, with Shawn rushing home from work.
When he arrives, Isabella County Sheriff Mike Main explains how they discovered Kendra’s ties to the crime while also revealing that she had been lying about going to work for the past year.
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Speaking in the documentary, Shawn says, “He’s like, ‘She’s doing all the text messaging, she lost both of her jobs, and she hasn’t had a job in over a year.’” Main adds that Shawn looked “like a broken man” at that moment.
The police cam footage then cuts to Shawn inside the house with Kendra and Lauryn. Visibly upset, he tells his wife, “If I blow a gasket when [the police] leave, I’ll probably go to jail. You need to go somewhere tonight.
“You need to call your parents and have them come get you. This is it. I can’t do this anymore.”
In The Cut article, one of Shawn’s colleagues at the auto shop he worked at recalls the moment he received the call from police. Shawn was “red-faced and in shock, stammering, ‘They think it’s Kendra.’”
To Shawn, divorcing Kendra was something that had to be done for the sake of Lauryn – but it didn’t make it any easier. The pair had met back when Kendra was studying at Central Michigan University before having Lauryn in 2007.
To this day, he’s still grappling with the fact that the woman he loved could do what she did. “I can’t believe she would do something like that to her daughter that supposedly she loved dearly,” he says in the new documentary.
“It just makes me sick. You know, she stabbed me in the heart, shot me in the heart, and threw it away.”
Where is Shawn Licari now?
NetflixShawn was able to gain full custody of Lauryn after Kendra’s arrest. He’s now focusing on raising her, with the pair still reportedly living in Michigan.
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish filmmaker Skye Borgman told Netflix that their father-daughter relationship has gone from strength-to-strength in the aftermath of the true crime case.
Borgman said, “It’s so wonderful to see them together… 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.”
Lauryn also says in the doc, “Me and my dad have gotten so much closer since this has happened… we just bond so well together. In everything we do we can find a way to laugh.”
Shawn does have Instagram and Facebook profiles, although they both have their privacy settings switched on, which is understandable given the amount of attention both he and his daughter are receiving since the release of the documentary.
NetflixWhile Kendra was released from prison in August 2024, she’s on parole until August 2026, with part of the conditions meaning she isn’t allowed to contact Lauryn.
At the end of Unknown Number, clips show Shawn and Lauryn bonding. “It’s fun to watch her smile and giggle and be a kid and do stupid things like we all used to do,” Shawn continues.
“Now she’s starting to come to dad a lot more. She’s growing and it’s just unbelievable, you know, she’s just growing up to be a beautiful woman.”
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is streaming on Netflix now. For more true crime news, read about if the Jussie Smollett case was a hoax, Amanda Knox’s ordeal in prison, and where the Tinder Swindler is now.