In 2021, Michigan high school student Lauryn Licari began receiving hostile text messages claiming that her boyfriend, Owen McKenny, was cheating on her. Owen started to receive concerning text messages soon after, with each message becoming more violent and disturbing. Police eventually got involved in the matter and identified Lauryn’s mother, Kendra Licari, as the person behind the messages. On the latest episode of Us Weekly’s Uncovered, investigative journalist Kristin Thorne spoke to officer Brad Peter to discuss the “turning point” in the case.
Peter, who is a former FBI Computer Crimes Task Force liaison, explained he first learned of the case when a sheriff in Isabella County called to say they were having issues with “a couple students receiving just an ungodly amount of messages” and local police “didn’t know what to do anymore.”
He agreed to look into the case and was given a thumb drive, which contained reports, phone numbers and messages.
After looking through the thumb drive, Peter “was able to draft a couple search warrants” to a few “wireless-based text messaging services.”
“And through all that, I was able to get a couple IP addresses that belong to Verizon,” he explained.
Peter received the information about a month later, which was when he could start determining “which phone numbers were using these IP addresses at the time these messages were sent.”
“That was a little bit of work,” he said. “And the mother of the male victim was keeping me updated on what numbers were sending the messages.”
Peter said the messages were “not very nice,” with many telling Lauryn to “commit suicide” and that Owen “doesn’t love you.”
“I did speak with Lauryn’s mother, Kendra, on one occasion,” he said. “I basically told her … what I was trying to do, and she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s been a problem. You know, Lauryn’s having a hard time with it. I’ll email you some of the stuff I know. Maybe that’ll help you out.’ I said, ‘OK, great.’ I gave her my email address.”
Despite offering to help, Peter said that Kendra didn’t offer any insight and may have only emailed him as little as one time. Peter admitted that Kendra’s lack of involvement in the case caught him off guard.
He also explained that in these types of cases, “it’s always somebody in school.” Peter continued, “Kids run their mouths, and that’s how you find out who’s doing it.”
A few months into the investigation, Peter said he started to wonder if the person behind the messages wasn’t a student after no one came forward with information.
“We did discuss maybe it was a parent,” he said. “I was able to determine, after some Verizon IP address search warrants, that Kendra’s phone number was linked to these IP addresses at the time some of these messages were sent. No other phone numbers from any of Owen or Lauryn’s friends were on this sheet at all.”
He said that the discovery was the “turning point in the case.”
“I’d had to double-check to make sure I was even right, but when her phone number kept coming up on these IP addresses, I’m like, ‘Wow, that just … that’s Kendra’s phone number and, you know, it came up at this date and time, and that just happened to be when a message was sent,” he recalled. “I was shocked, to say the least.”
Kendra was arrested in December 2022 and has never denied being behind the messages. She pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor and served about two years in prison before she was released in August 2024.
The case has gained national attention, and was the subject of Netflix’s 2025 documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.
