Spoiler Alert: This story contains spoilers for the documentary “Unknown Number: High School Catfish.” It is currently streaming on Netflix.
Netflix documentary “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” – currently No. 1 in Streamer’s Top 10 movies – tells the disturbing story of teenage girl Lauryn Licari and her boyfriend Owen McKenny.
“Hello, Laurin, Owen is breaking up with you,” read one text. He followed, “He didn’t like you anymore and didn’t like you for a while. It’s clear that he wants me.”
A teenage couple attended a small high school in Beal City, Michigan, and after nearly two years of Cyber, they were off. At one point, 40-50 offensive and horrifying texts were being sent every day. Even after they broke up, both Rikari and McKenney continued to receive malicious text messages from their harassers. At one point, the stalker pretended to be another classmate who liked McKenney, told Rikari that he should kill him.
Contacted by Rikari and McKenney’s parents, local police began questioning fellow schoolmates and McKenney’s cousin, ending their lives. Eventually, the FBI was involved and soon discovered that the perpetrator had not gone to high school in Beal City. Cyberburley wasn’t even a teenager. The perpetrator behind the nonstop harassment and physical threats was Laurin’s own mother, Kendra Rikari.
Kendra and Laurin Rikari
Provided by Netflix
Documentary – Based on Lawrence Miley’s New York magazine story in January, “Who was Kendra Likari’s teenage daughter?” – There is a revelation that it was Laurin Rikari’s mother who was setting her like a mystery and tortured her like a punch in her gut. The body cam footage shown in “Unknown Number: High School Catfish” shows Kendra as being said to have been caught, and seeing her world collapse in real time is like watching a car accident.
Variety spoke to Sky Borgman, director of “Unknown Numbers: High School Catfish.”
It had incredible access to a pool of people involved in the case, including classmates, Owen’s parents, police, FBI agents working on the case, and even Kendra Likari, who was released from prison after being sentenced to 16 months in August 2024. Was it challenging to persuade them all to be part of this document?
Everybody we spoke had a huge feeling about this story. It was very immediate and very raw for them. So asking them to sit down and talk to us was a matter of gaining their trust and understanding why they wanted to tell their stories. Most of the time, people just wanted to hear, but I felt this was an important story to tell because of the cyberbullying element. It hurts so much to everyone involved.
Provided by Netflix
I’ve seen some of the text sent, how many people have passed during the pre-production?
There were 350 pages with multiple text messages on every page. Kendra and (Owen’s mom) Jill printed them out and handed them over to law enforcement. So there were thousands of texts we had experienced.
During her interview with Kendra, she seemed to regret it, but did she feel like she was doing the act?
Kendra is a bit of a mystery. I think she had plenty of time to think about what she did. She was undergoing treatment when she was imprisoned and I believe she is still looking at the therapist. She thought of what she had done. I don’t know that she fully recognized or recognized what she did or why she did it. I think only Kendra could really answer that.
If I were her, I would never want to show my face again. Why do you think she sat for your camera?
She was nervous about going to the camera. Because just sitting down and talking about you is sometimes nervous. But she was so great and in fact she really loves the experience. At the end of that, she said it was a bit fun. She laughed about things and I think it was an opportunity for her to think a little more deeply about things. Every time I ask, she really needs to think about a few things and I think that’s really good for her.
At the beginning of the film, when Kendra is being interviewed, you set up the document so that the audience doesn’t know that she is the culprit. She seems to be a mother who has gone through hell. And then there’s a twist midway through the film. Was it a plan to always make her look innocent and then reveal?
It was really based on her interview. We sat down and talked to her. Because of the way she directed herself in the interviews and what we knew and came to learn in the story, we felt it was pretty accurate to include her as we did before revealing that it was her who committed cyberstalking.
Footage of Kendra’s body cam was told she was caught by a police officer and she had to tell her daughter and husband. Did you know that when you start writing this document, there are footages?
We worked with law enforcement and prosecutors to access the footage. When we were first cutting the film, we played full body cam footage during that period. We couldn’t stop looking at it. We invested deeply in watching it play. In the end I realized I couldn’t play for 20 minutes.
There was also the indication that he was “awayed into vision,” which had a significant proportion of Twists and Turns. Did making “unknown numbers” remind us that it was “visually accused”?
In all these stories, from “ejected to vision” to “unknown numbers,” it is the way people act, and drives them to act that is perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of each story. There are many moments when you drop your chin, but for me it’s people’s actions. That’s very appealing.
This interview was compiled and condensed.
