Kendra Licari and Shawn Licari are divorced. Shawn filed after Kendra was arrested in December 2022 and was awarded full custody of their daughter, Lauryn. As of February 8, 2026, Kendra has completed her supervised parole — and the court-ordered no-contact condition with Lauryn that came with it has now expired.
Netflix’s Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, which premiered August 29, 2025, brought the case back into wide circulation. Since then, questions about Kendra and Shawn’s marriage, Kendra’s current status, and where their daughter is today have followed the documentary closely. What is confirmed below comes from court records reviewed by TODAY.com, the Michigan Department of Corrections public record, The Cut’s January 2025 investigation, and the documentary itself.
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What Happened to Kendra and Shawn’s Marriage
The marriage was deteriorating long before the arrest, though Shawn did not know the real reason.
For years, Kendra had been hiding a financial collapse from him. She was fired from Central Michigan University in 2019 after performance issues, but told Shawn she had taken a higher-paying position elsewhere. The new job at Ferris State University did not come with the salary increase she claimed. She was eventually let go from Ferris State as well, partly for making personal calls and non-work texts during office hours, then told Shawn she had shifted to remote work. Meanwhile, collectors were filing court suits over unpaid utility and insurance bills. The family moved between four homes, which Kendra blamed on a stalker. Their car was repossessed. They were evicted in April 2022.
The stalker, as it turned out, was Kendra.
When police arrived at the Licari home in December 2022, Shawn was not there. He rushed back from work and was told two things at once: his wife had been sending their daughter graphic, threatening messages for over a year, and she had not held a job in more than six months.
Isabella County Sheriff Mike Main described what he witnessed when Shawn walked through the door: “He looked like a broken person.”
In the documentary, Shawn recalled the moment directly:
“I just can’t believe she would do something like that to her daughter that supposedly she loved dearly. Just makes me sick. She stabbed me in the heart, shot me in the heart, and threw it away.”
He told Kendra that night, in front of law enforcement: “This is it. I can’t do this anymore.”
When she refused to leave, saying she needed to be there for Lauryn, Shawn called Kendra’s parents and asked them to come.
What Did Kendra Licari Do?
The harassment began in October 2020. Lauryn, then 13, and her boyfriend Owen McKenny started receiving anonymous texts from an unknown number. The first message read: “Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you.” The messages were scattered and the teenagers dismissed them as a prank.
Then they stopped for roughly 11 months.
On September 13, 2021, they came back. This time, the volume was relentless. At their worst, Lauryn and Owen were receiving 40 to 50 messages a day, sent through Pinger, an app that generated a fresh phone number with every single message, making it impossible to block the sender. The content included graphic sexual language directed at both teenagers, sustained attacks on Lauryn’s appearance, and repeated messages telling Lauryn to take her own life.
Beal City Public Schools and local law enforcement both tried and failed to identify the source. The FBI came in, filed a search warrant with Pinger, pulled the IP address logs, and traced every message back to one address in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. The account was tied to Kendra’s iPhone.
She was arrested in December 2022.
In the Netflix documentary, Kendra maintained she did not send the first batch of messages from October 2020. She claimed a real unknown perpetrator started the campaign and she “fed off from it” before getting “caught up.” Prosecutor David Barberi, law enforcement, and Lauryn herself do not accept that account. The FBI linked her phone to the IP address each time a message was sent.
The Charges, the Plea, and the Sentence
Kendra was charged with five counts when she was arrested: two counts of stalking a minor, two counts of communicating with another to commit a crime, and one count of obstruction of justice.
She pleaded guilty to the two stalking counts in March 2023. Prosecutor Barberi dropped the remaining three specifically to spare Lauryn and Owen from having to sit through a full trial.
In April 2023, Judge Mark Duthie sentenced Kendra to a minimum of 19 months and a maximum of five years in prison. At sentencing, the judge told the court the case had shown him the “worst in human nature” and said directly to Kendra: “I can’t imagine any parent saying such horrible things to her own daughter.”
Where Is Kendra Licari Now? (April 2026)
Kendra was released from prison on August 8, 2024, after serving her minimum sentence.
Her parole came with 20 conditions pulled from her Michigan Department of Corrections inmate record. The conditions included mandatory mental health treatment, no alcohol use, no changing residence, no leaving Michigan, and no contact with Lauryn or within 500 feet of her home, school, or workplace. She was required to make sincere efforts to find and maintain employment.
Her supervised release was set to end on February 8, 2026.
The Michigan Department of Corrections public record now lists Kendra’s status as Discharged. Her parole ended on schedule. As of April 2026, no court-ordered restrictions remain between Kendra and Lauryn.
Whether the two have spoken or made contact since is not publicly known.
Kendra is living with family near Pontiac, in the Detroit area. Her employment situation was uncertain as of The Cut’s January 2025 investigation and has not been updated since. Her interview for the Netflix documentary was the last public statement she has made. Director Skye Borgman told Variety that toward the end of filming, Kendra said the experience had been “kind of fun” and that she had “really loved” it.
Where Are Shawn and Lauryn Licari Now?
Shawn has not given public interviews since the documentary and has stayed out of the public eye. In the film’s final segment, he spoke about watching Lauryn gradually come back to herself:
“She’s starting to come to dad a lot more. She’s growing and it’s just unbelievable. She’s just growing up to be a beautiful woman.”
Lauryn graduated from Beal City High School in May 2025. The documentary’s closing notes confirm she plans to study criminology in college. At the time of filming, she had not seen her mother in roughly a year and a half.
She was direct about where she stood:
“I think I want to trust her now, but I don’t think I can. I just want her to get the help that she needs so then when we see each other, it doesn’t go back to the old ways.”
Lauryn and Owen McKenny are no longer in contact, per E! Online’s reporting. Owen graduated alongside his classmates in May 2025 and was voted senior homecoming king at Beal City High School.
Kendra’s parole is over. Lauryn is an adult. The legal chapter closed in February 2026, but the question of whether a mother and daughter can find their way back to each other after something like this has no scheduled answer.
