316: What Netflix DIDN’T Show: The Catfish Case Everyone’s Talking About | Kendra Licari

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A high school girl in Michigan was cyber-bullied for more than a year, sometimes receiving up to 12 threatening messages a day.

And who turned out to be the suspect shocked everyone?

The more friends you have, the easier it is to be betrayed by them.

It was so bad to the point where I didn't want to even go to school anymore.

The motive is still a mystery.

Things are about to get so much worse.

There's no confirmed motive, but there are some theories being floated up.

There's still no explanation for why.

Hey, true crime besties.

Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialist Lee.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to an all-new episode of Seriously with me, your true crime bestie, Anna Elise.

I am here to break down another wild-ass case for you today.

It is one that honestly still has me reeling and my mind is just like warped and shook and all the things.

But before we get into all of that, I hope you all had a fantastic weekend.

Hopefully you are getting ready to...

I don't know, do something amazing this week.

Hopefully you're in like your Zen place, whether you're on your way to work, walking, cleaning the house, doing dishes, whatever it is you're doing.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for listening with me.

I just got back into town myself from Crime Con over the weekend in Denver, which let me just tell you was CrimeCon is always an incredible experience.

There's so many like victims' families there.

There's so many supportive people and it's just always a really moving weekend.

And so if I met you and had the pleasure of meeting you at CrimeCon, thank you for coming up and approaching me and talking with me.

I love meeting all of you guys and talking with you.

And yeah, it was just another really, I don't want to say uplifting weekend, but

kind of.

It really was uplifting.

It's like talking with a lot of these survivors and these victims' families and hearing that they are appreciative of the coverage and the stories continuing and the voices continuing.

It's just, there is something.

uplifting and also fulfilling in that, if that makes sense.

So just coming off the heels of that, now getting ready to hit the road again, this time for the next leg of the tour, hitting Austin, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix.

So, now's the time, guys.

Tickets, there's only a few left for not even all of those shows because some of them are sold out.

But I think we have a couple more in Texas, a few tickets left for the Texas shows.

So, grab them now, annieelise.com.

You can see me in person, all new exclusive case, meet and greets, greets, the whole shebang.

So, you know, exclusive tour merch, all those things.

So that is happening next week.

So let me talk to you about the case that I want to break down with you today.

Because when I first heard about this case, it was probably a year ago.

And at the time, all of the names were still relatively concealed because it involved some minors.

There was.

still a lot of speculation out there about what the truth was.

And so I kind of just sat on it for a while, researched it, gathered as much much information as I could, conducted as many interviews about it as I could, and just kind of like sat with it, just to be like,

you know, like, what's really going on here?

Because it is very, very complex.

And look, you hear about catfishing stories all the time, right?

I'm talking fake profiles, stolen pictures, anonymous trolls just slithering their way into your DMs, whether it's to stir chaos, get in a relationship, maybe it's an Nigerian prince who wants to gift you $20 million.

Like you hear about it all the time.

But what happened in this case, specifically to two miners named Lauren and Owen, this wasn't just some online prank.

This was something that was so much more calculated, just far more sinister and very, very cruel because someone out there actually spent two entire years tormenting this teenage girl and her boyfriend, sending over 350,000 messages.

I didn't even know that was possible.

That is like, I'm a texting freak.

And like, that's nearly half a million text messages.

That is a lot.

And it was just a full two years of cruelty, manipulation, psychological warfare.

And then the truth came out.

And when it did, when the truth finally surfaced about who was behind this, who was involved, it left an entire community stunned.

And I promise you, you are going to be stunned and your head is going to be spinning as well.

Because even if you think you know this story, trust me, you don't.

Netflix just released this documentary called Unknown Caller, the high school catfish.

And I'm sure a lot of you have watched it.

But like I always say, anytime we're researching a case and these docu series or these documentaries get released, they have to shove it all in 90 minutes, right?

And they're a little bit more careful with the legalities of it all.

And there is so much information that was not released, that was not shared.

And it really makes your head spin to wonder who truly was involved in this.

You may think you know, but who truly was and how deep does this go?

So, like I said, I have been sitting on this case for about a year.

And then I saw this documentary come out last week.

And I was like, oh, I guess like, you know, people are speaking out now.

It's out there.

Like, maybe we will talk about it.

So I watched it just to be like, okay, you know, like, let me just see how they're portraying it.

And when I tell you, they left out so many details, they left out so many details.

So what I want to do is talk about all of it because what they didn't show you, I mean, the real story is even much darker than you could possibly imagine.

So let's go back to 2021.

Lauren was your classic small town high school girl in Michigan.

She was popular, athletic.

She was very close with her family.

She also did like a plethora of extra curriculars and sports.

She played basketball.

She ran cross-country.

She would spend her weekends kind of just like bouncing between team hangouts, team, you know, kickbacks, parties, family dinners, you name it, all the things, just a very active social life.

And she kind of had this picture-perfect life.

I mean, this full social life, great at sports, lived at home with both of her parents, Kendra and Sean, had this small town feel.

And if you asked anyone, they would tell you Lauren had a very good life.

So that spring, Lauren started dating another student, a guy named Owen, someone who she had known for pretty much almost her entire life.

And this was kind of your normal teenage romance.

They were having study sessions, basketball games, late night texting, just the usual.

And people called them the golden couple, saying that they were kind of, you know, as the younger kids would put it, goals.

They're goals.

They were high school sweethearts.

They were going going to make it.

They were going to be endgame, all of those things.

And like I said, they had grown up next door to each other.

So Lauren, while she's this bubbly, athletic, very popular girl, Owen too was just this very well-liked and kind and talented athlete himself.

They meshed really well together.

So he had asked her out in the eighth grade.

And then by the time they got to high school, they were just inseparable.

And I got to say, that is kind of a big deal when you think about it.

At least when I think back to my middle school and high school experience, not very often did relationships last that long.

Sure, there were like the mega couples in high school who had been together all through high school.

Maybe they started in junior high, but I feel like on average, it's like...

at least again in my experience it's like you'd ask them out they'd be your girlfriend for like a couple weeks maybe through like homecoming or through one of the dances then after a couple months it fizzles out so the fact that they got together in eighth grade and then were together through high school this was a pretty serious relationship.

People looked up to them.

People idolized them.

And through all of this, their parents also became friends with one another.

They would host barbecues together.

They would spend the weekends side by side, just both of the families coming together.

So it was almost like Lauren and Owen weren't just dating, but now they started to become like woven into the fabric of each other's families.

And like I said, everything was normal.

Everything was, you know, what's the expression?

Coming up roses.

I don't know if that's the expression, but something like that.

Everything seemed great great.

Until one day, it wasn't.

Because out of the blue one day, some pretty horrific text messages started.

Now, at first, it was just one text, and it was from an unknown number.

And it read, quote, ugly, too ugly for anyone to love you.

But then another, everyone knows Owen's cheating on you.

And another, you should kill yourself.

The world would be better off.

And these text messages didn't stop.

There were dozens.

Then there were hundreds.

Then there were thousands.

It was relentless.

This anonymous sender was just so cruel and non-stop, just text after text, just rapid fire.

They started accusing Owen of sneaking around behind Lauren's back, saying he's cheating on you.

He doesn't want to be with you.

You're nothing.

You know, you should just give up.

They said that Lauren was a bad girlfriend, a bad athlete, a bad person.

And meanwhile, these were just kids.

These were kids in high school, and Lauren had absolutely no idea who was behind any of it.

And it kind of felt like just, just like that, out of the blue, this perfect teenage romance that everybody idolized, that everybody kind of envied in a way.

It was now under attack, insults being slung every other way, accusations of cheating, you know, threats of telling them to self-harm.

It was getting awful.

But then, suddenly, the messages just poof, they stopped.

And for months, there was just complete silence.

That is until the following year.

The messages ramped back up again, and this time they didn't stop.

By 2021, Lauren and Owen were getting text messages constantly, all day, often even through the night.

And like I said, these messages, they were cruel, they were manipulative, they were obsessive, and they were accusing Owen of cheating.

They were claiming that Lauren wasn't pretty enough, skinny enough, good enough, smart enough, saying Owen doesn't even really want you.

He's just with you because he pities you.

You're nothing.

And this person, this text messenger, whoever it was, they knew things.

They even started calling Lauren by her nickname Lowe, a name that only people close to her would have ever used or even would have ever known.

They started commenting on what she wore to class, how she styled her hair that day at school.

I mean, little details that only someone in her real life could know.

Somebody who saw her, was watching her.

So Lauren and Owen at this point, I mean, they were convinced this had to be someone at the school, someone who saw them every single day, a peer, a friend, an ex an enemy, someone who had visibility to them day in and day out.

And these text messages weren't just mean, they were so calculated.

For example, the sender had told Lauren that Owen had plans to meet them at a Halloween party, one that she wasn't invited to, and said, you know, he's coming to this party.

He's sneaking around behind your back.

You should just take your own life.

You should just be done with it.

The world would be better off without you.

Just trying to really

jab the knife and then twist the knife.

And it didn't stop with just Lauren.

Before long, Owen was getting these text messages too.

They were telling him, you know, Lauren's incredibly ugly.

She's a bad girlfriend.

You should dump her.

She's nothing.

And whenever he tried defending her and, you know, coming to Lauren's defense, saying like, she's great, she's talented, she's smart, all of those things, the texter didn't like that and they would try to twist it.

They also told him that they would reveal who they were if and only if he admitted that he hated Lauren.

So Owen was like, okay, fine, I'll play along with this.

I just want to know who the heck this is, right?

So sure, I hate her.

I'll text you those exact words.

I hate her.

And sure enough, this stalker, this texter screenshotted that.

That's what they wanted.

And then they sent that message to Lauren, trying to weasel their way in between them, being like, look, see, I'm texting with Owen and he does hate you.

You're nothing.

Like, look at this text message.

Just kind of really trying to like blow up their relationship from the inside out.

The thing was, though, Lauren was smart.

She didn't fall for any of it.

Not to mention, she and Owen had been comparing text messages, piecing together what was happening.

And they realized this person was lying to both of them, trying to pit them against one another.

So they started blocking the phone number, trying to get this person out of their life, you know, turning, leaving them on red, then blocking the phone number entirely.

But no matter how many phone numbers they blocked, this sender would just pop back up.

Brand new number, brand new text message.

It just could not stop.

It would not stop.

They even started making up these fake social media accounts using real friends' photos, trying to trick Lauren and Owen into accepting the friend request so that they could keep tormenting them, keep harassing them and sending them messages.

And over time, these messages got darker, even more personal.

And through all of them, one detail stood out.

This texter, all of the messages that they sent would always type the word care less as one word, like it read careless.

So for example, instead of typing, I couldn't care less, breaking up the words, it would say, I couldn't care less.

And it was over and over, the same phrasing, the same insults, the same obsession, quite honestly.

And as the months passed, like I said, the harassment, it really started escalating.

This stalker was now watching Lauren, watching her in real time, texting her about those outfits, her hairstyles.

They even started texting her about her basketball game stats, watching her games in real time, and then texting her after the game, taunting her and tormenting her.

Whoever it was, they were close, too close.

And the nightmare was only just beginning.

Which here's the thing.

Given the close proximity of who this person must have been, I mean, you might assume that it was some classmate who had a grudge of some sort.

Maybe a jealous ex, maybe some mean girl just stirring up drama, maybe somebody who just liked the theatrics of it all, something like that.

But what this person did went way beyond your typical teenage bullying.

Like I said, they even had tracked Lauren's basketball stats after every game, mocking her when she didn't score enough points.

They were criticizing her for sitting on the bench.

They would harass Owen as well, saying, you know, not only is Lauren a terrible girlfriend, but she sucks at basketball.

She's skipping your football games because she doesn't even care about you.

You should break up with her.

All sorts of things where when you're a young high school kid who's impressionable, still trying to like prove yourself, get over any insecurities, hearing those things, even if you don't believe them, I feel like that would stick with you and almost kind of like, what's the term?

Almost like subliminal messaging, right?

Like if a young kid is getting these text messages often enough that say like, your girlfriend hasn't even come to any of your football games.

Obviously she doesn't care about you.

You may be able to be at a certain point in the beginning, be like, no, she's not coming because she's busy or she has other

requirements.

She's doing her own practices.

But then after a while, I could see where that doubt would start to creep in, where as a young person, you'd be like,

is that true?

Does she really not come to my games because she doesn't care about me?

And it really did start creating a lot of turmoil in this relationship.

However, whenever Owen would stand up for Lauren, this texter would just keep trying to twist the knife.

And what I mean by that is this stalker and texter was very, very clever.

See, every time Lauren or Owen would either ghost them, leave them on red, or as I even mentioned, block the numbers, they would pop up with that brand new number all over again.

So it's like, even if they wanted to shut out the noise and turn all of it off, they couldn't.

They couldn't get away because this person just managed to know how to just pop right back into their lives.

The only thing they would be able to do to essentially, you know, completely block it out would be to turn their phone off forever, to never go on social media again because this person had been creating fake social media accounts as well.

And I bet you that if they had done that, which that would be very difficult for any teenager to do, to give up all on their tech, but I bet you like a snail mail would start coming with these threats, like even like magazine clippings or weird shit like that.

And as time went on, the harassment, it just only got worse.

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Now, some people say that the best way to deal with a bully is to ignore them, right?

And I'm not saying that I I agree with that logic, but there are people who believe it, especially when you're older, you're more aware, you've heard things, you've seen things, you've been exposed to things.

You'd be like, you know, just ignore it.

Things get better.

It's just high school.

It's just this.

And the argument is kind of like, if you act like you don't care, then the bully will lose interest because all they are looking for is a reaction.

So if there's no reaction, there's no fun.

Eventually, they just move on.

And I will say that is true to an extent.

Even now, the amount of trolls that I get online sometimes or in the comment section, I just don't engage because I know that they're looking for a reaction.

And the moment you feed the troll, they just are coming back hungrier than ever for more.

So there is some truth in that.

But Lauren tried that.

She tried to just ignore these messages, not reply, acting like none of it even phased her.

She didn't even read it.

It didn't affect her or get to her.

But the texts, they just kept coming, one after another, crueler, nastier, harsher.

So then Lauren decided she was going to switch tactics completely.

And over and over, she begged this sender to leave her alone, to stop, just let me breathe, just leave me alone, trying to like plead with them as though there's an ounce of humanity there.

But that didn't work either.

And by December of 2021, over a year after this relentless harassment, Lauren finally realized this was not something that she could handle on her own anymore.

It was wearing her down day after day.

So she finally turned to the one person that she trusted the most, her mom, Kendra.

Now, Kendra wasn't just Lauren's mom.

She was also deeply involved in her daughter's life.

She worked as the high school basketball coach.

She worked as a softball coach.

She spent countless hours running drills with Lauren, cheering her on from the sidelines, and just kind of being there for her, everything big and small.

She was very much an active part in Lauren's life.

So when Lauren told her what had been happening, Kendra did exactly exactly what you are supposed to do as a parent.

She escalated it.

She got others involved, more senior people, not the police right away.

I mean, maybe it didn't occur to her that this could be criminal to some extent.

Maybe she thought it was just teenage drama that had gone too far.

But whatever her reasoning or thought process was, by that December of 2021, she went straight to the school principal, Dan Boyer.

She also went to other school officials trying to get help, trying to make this harassment stop.

And I want to pause on the timeline of it all for a second here, because these text messages first started in 2020.

And Lauren didn't bring it up to her mom until December of 2021.

So that is over an entire year of this young teenage girl just carrying the weight of this alone.

And can you even imagine how isolating that must have been to try to just shoulder all of this on your own.

Yeah, you have your boyfriend, you have some friends, but like that is a lot to carry, especially again, when a lot of these threats were coming after her in such a personal way, criticizing her athleticism, her game stats, her appearance, encouraging her to self-harm.

That's a lot for a young girl to try to shoulder herself.

So once the school got involved, they took this seriously and knew that this was a problem.

So they launched an investigation.

They also started pulling in Lauren's friends one by one, asking, you know, who may be jealous, who has bad blood?

Who has beef with someone?

Who may have any sort of grudge?

Who may have been so jealous that they wanted Owen for themselves?

But nothing obvious came up.

There were no clear suspects, no smoking gun, and nobody who seemingly could have been behind this.

There were a couple of people who were looked at in a possible way.

There were some friends, a cousin.

Maybe they were like feeding off the drama because the groups of girls didn't get along in school.

But in terms of an actual clear-cut motive, there really wasn't anyone.

And like I said, it began to affect their relationship.

It was stressful and it was toxic and there was a lot of turmoil involved.

So just before Christmas, Lauren and Owen ended up breaking up.

Now, it's unclear exactly why, whether it was mutual or one of them ended it first.

But what we do know is that Owen told this anonymous texter that the constant harassment was making him miserable, even making him have thoughts of self-harm.

This was affecting not only he and Lauren's relationship, but it was affecting him personally on a deeper level.

And of course, the moment he opened up and gave any sort of validation to this person, they screenshotted it.

They sent it directly to Lauren.

Again, just to kind of twist that knife to show, you know, I'm the one pulling the strings.

I'm the one in control.

Look, I just ended your relationship and look how miserable I'm making him.

And, you know, I'm in control.

Now, did Owen just say that to this person because the sender had pressured him to say it?

Kind of like when they got him to say that he hated Lauren earlier?

Possibly.

A bit unclear.

But what we do know is that later he did start begging the stalker to leave him alone as well.

He just wanted peace.

He just wanted out of all of it.

So it's like, I want to get off the ride.

I'm out of this relationship.

I'm not even with Lauren anymore.

Stop texting me.

I don't want any part of this.

But here's the thing.

Even though the relationship ended, Owen and Lauren stayed friends.

They had grown up together.

They were very close.

And here's the thing with all that.

For a whole year, over a year, actually, the stalker had pushed and pushed for them to break up, to hate each other, to fall apart.

And now, hello, it finally happened.

So you would think that this harassment would finally stop, right?

This stalker would move on.

They got what they wanted.

What more do you want?

Like, why would you continue these text messages and this harassment?

Well, they didn't stop.

It continued.

Instead, the stalker now was gloating, even sending Lauren messages mocking her, saying, you know, you lost, you're pathetic, I won.

Look at, I broke you guys up.

And look, I'm not going to read all of these messages because, again, there were hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.

But here are a few of them, just so you can hear how truly vicious they were.

For example, on Christmas Day, right after the breakup, one of the messages that Lauren got read, Merry Christmas.

You breaking up, we winning.

You're ugly, ugly anorexic ass.

He wants a popular girl, breaks the rules, dresses sexy, shows shit off, and is athletic.

Your anorexic toddler body in JV is worthless.

A mistake.

Never get any attention.

You're nothing.

These are the kinds of text messages that Lauren was receiving on Christmas Day.

It's awful.

And like I said, it didn't stop with Lauren.

Anytime Owen so much as even talked to another girl, whether he flirted a little, asked somebody out, even just seemed interested in the slightest, this stalker would find that girl online and they would start sending her harassing text messages too.

And it also, it didn't matter if the girl actually knew Owen or Lauren.

The stalker was just now messaging girls from all sorts of other schools, girls completely outside of their inner friend circle, just harassing them and texting them and asking them to, quote, help them make Lauren and Owen's life a living hell.

It seemed like that was the purpose.

It wasn't even a goal of breaking them up or, you know, blowing up their relationship.

It was more deeply rooted.

It was more personal.

This person wanted to destroy their lives, not only together, but independently.

And it was like this person too wanted to enlist this entire army of bullies, all aimed at two teenagers who had no clue what was happening or why this was even happening.

And even with how nasty this person was being to Owen, what they did to Lauren was so much worse because she just kept getting message after message, tearing her apart her looks, her body, her stats, her skills, her worth as a person, telling her she was nothing, that she should kill herself.

Again, relentless.

And now, finally, after she finally opened up to her mom and was leaning on her for support, she just was telling her mom everything.

sharing every message with her, every single mean thing that was said to her, just really finally having having a support system in place to have her back.

Every message, every new account that popped up, every threat, every insult, all of it was shared with her mom.

And her mom, Kendra, to her credit, she did not shrug any of it off.

She wasn't gonna chalk it up to just teenage drama anymore.

She documented everything and she took it straight to these school officials every single time.

But here's the crazy part.

Even with all of that evidence, the hundreds of text messages, the screenshots, the usernames, the email accounts, the school could not figure anything out.

And by New Year's Day, they were just completely stuck.

They had no idea what to do.

And look, this is where a lot of schools may have given up.

Okay.

They could have just written it off as teen drama, as people just whatever, trying to stir things up and create drama, whatever it is.

They could have just told Lauren and Owen, you know, block the numbers again, ignore the accounts, move on.

But the school didn't.

They weren't going to shrug this off.

They knew that this was serious.

So they called in the police.

And the officers also were not about to treat this like some silly high school argument either.

The sheriff himself came to the school.

They were going to take this very seriously.

He talked to Lauren, to Owen, to their friends, their teachers, the principal.

He wanted to hear from everyone.

And the whole time, Kendra was right there, standing supportive of her daughter, fighting for her daughter.

And she even handed over 50 pages of printed out text messages.

She also told them, like, hey, look, someone also broke into Lauren's gym bag recently and they stole a necklace.

She said, I don't know if it's connected, but I'm not going to let any single clue go ignored.

Here's all of the information I can think of.

Find this person.

And Kendra wasn't just handing over the text messages.

I mean, like I said, she was handing over everything.

She knew the names of all of Lauren's friends, the kids that she hung out with.

She even had her own theories about who might be behind it.

Maybe it was a classmate who had a crush on Lauren.

He had asked her out.

She turned him down.

I mean, could this be some sort of twisted revenge plot?

Or maybe it was somebody who was bitter about basketball.

Maybe somebody on the same team or from an opposing team.

Kids who didn't make varsity, who saw Lauren take the spot that they wanted.

There was also a rumor about somebody who hacked into Lauren's school computer so that they could steal her homework and cheat.

So I mean, none of it was a smoking gun, but there were a lot of options and possible leads.

And Kendra knew all of those leads, every detail.

She was relentless in this.

But things kept escalating.

The harassment didn't stop.

It only got worse.

And now the police started digging deeper.

And one day, the police went in hard.

They filed warrants for everything, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

I mean, they wanted full access to all of the DMs and all of the text messages that Lauren and Owen had been bombarded with over the years.

They even pulled all of the data directly from their phone, just extracting everything, doing a full data dump, which you would think that would scare the stalker off, right?

They'd be freaked out, like, oh shit, they're on to me.

I'm about to get caught.

The police are involved, you know.

Once the police are involved, I would think that they would think that things were getting serious and they would start to back down.

But the truth was, that wasn't even close to being true.

They even started taunting Lauren with text messages being like, the cop said it's not us.

They're not even onto me.

You know, the police are telling Mr.

Boyer, the school principal, it's not me.

Just kind of being like, your efforts are wasted.

They're not onto me at all, which it was weird, right?

Because if this person really wasn't a suspect, as they're indicating in these text messages, being like, the police don't think it's me.

They're telling Mr.

Boyer that it's not me.

Why would the police supposedly go out of their way to reassure this person?

We obviously know cops don't do that.

They don't go like knocking on random doors of people who they don't suspect of anything and saying like, hey, you know, just so you know, we don't suspect you.

Pass the word.

So when Lauren was getting these text messages, she saw right through it.

She knew that they were bluffing.

But the truth was, the investigation was dragging.

And look, social media companies can take forever to respond, even to law enforcement.

Sometimes if a single form isn't filled out perfectly, the entire process has to start over again from scratch.

So weeks were starting to slip by, months.

And when the records finally did get in, when they finally did turn them over, there was nothing.

The stalker had covered their tracks.

They had covered their tracks so well.

There were no names, no faces, no smoking gun.

It was kind of like deja vu, just like before, because the police had no idea who was behind all of it.

So now they had to escalate it even further.

And that's when they decided to call in the big guns.

They called in the FBI.

And now these federal agents were bringing in their cyber experts.

I mean, the kind of people who are trained to track down criminals who think that they can't be found.

I mean, it's very difficult to get past them.

So they spent months digging through the data, tracing accounts, following digital footprints, things that most people don't even know exist, like things that track you that you have no clue or even an option.

And finally, around April 2022, they found what they were looking for.

The exact device, the exact location.

And after years of relentless psychological warfare and torture, this stalker's digital mask was about to just come flying off.

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Now, what the FBI pulled off was actually pretty impressive because, see, in the beginning, detectives had been chasing this online troll's IP address, which, if you're not super techie, think of an IP address kind of like a home address, but for your phone or your computer.

It tells the investigators exactly where that device is located when it goes online.

However, with this tech savvy troll, there was a problem.

The stalker was using a VPN.

And for anyone listening who doesn't know what a VPN is, a VPN essentially scrambles your location.

You could be literally sitting in your living room in Michigan, but the VPN makes it look like you're in California or Florida.

or even halfway around the world to South Korea, and it can bounce from location to location every few seconds.

So at first, it kind of looked like this stalker was everywhere.

Different devices, different numbers, different locations.

But the FBI knew what they were looking at.

They were trained, so they didn't buy it for a second.

They suspected that it was all smoke and mirrors, that this wasn't some big conspiracy of all sorts of people involved in this group of people, and they're just scattered around the world, but rather one person,

one device.

just hiding behind layers and layers of fake locations, all to make it look like there was in fact this digital army that was coming after Lauren and Owen.

But again, the FBI knew better.

They've seen things like this.

They knew that it was more than likely just one person who was orchestrating all of it, pulling the puppet strings.

So after months of digging, the FBI cracked it.

They got the past VPN.

They found the real IP address and they found the real location.

And that's when the bottom of this case completely just like dropped out because this device, it wasn't across town.

It wasn't at a rival school.

It wasn't at some ex's house in a different state.

It wasn't even outside of Lauren's home.

It was in Lauren's home.

The computer sending these messages was inside Lauren's house.

And even worse, the FBI traced the text messages to the exact iPhone that had been sending them.

And it was a phone that belonged to someone in Lauren's family.

Her own family.

Now, at that point, the investigators had questions for everyone in the house.

Lauren, her parents, any siblings, because the truth was about to blindside the entire community.

Now, as a quick side note, the police reports suggest that either Lauren or Owen may have had one older sibling.

But because the authorities were so strict about protecting the identities with everybody being minors as all of this, you know, shook out, there's no way to know whose sibling it was, who they were referencing, how many there were, or even their names.

But what we do know is that the police did question everyone.

Anyone who had access to that computer, family, friends, neighbors, anyone who might have been around at the house even for a visit.

They also wanted to know: like, did anyone outside of the family come over a lot?

Did anybody have a grudge against Lauren?

Could someone have been sneaking into the house and using the computer to send messages?

Like, they weren't, they wanted to turn over every single stone to make sure that they weren't just like narrowing in on the obvious answer, but really trying to think, like, this is a complex case.

Somebody went to great lengths to try to protect their identity.

Who's to say they couldn't have broken into the house to use the computer to frame somebody, right?

So when the investigator sat down with Lauren's mom, Kendra, she had a theory.

She pointed the finger at a student from Lauren's school.

However, the police shut down that theory almost immediately because they told Kendra, you know, no, the evidence is clear.

The messages came from your house.

So unless this student basically lives here, there's no way that they're behind it.

So then Kendra started pivoting to another theory.

Okay, well, if it's not some kid from school, could it possibly be my husband, Sean?

He has access to the computer.

Though she didn't have a motive for him, she had no reason at all why he would do this to his own daughter.

But as the conversations were continuing, the pool of suspects in that house was shrinking fast.

Investigators ultimately dismissed Sean as being a suspect.

They said that there was absolutely nothing pointing to him.

And so as they keep talking, Kendra then started to offer a theory that nobody saw coming.

She told the police, you know, maybe Lauren herself is behind it all.

Maybe her own daughter had been catfishing herself.

Kendra suggested that Lauren might have been messaging herself all for attention.

creating these fake accounts, staging this entire thing just to make it look like she's a victim, to get attention from Owen, from her friends, from her parents, just

being the girl who's stirring up the drama herself.

Now, her mom didn't give a clear reason as to why Lauren would do that, but you do hear about cases like this often.

For example, there's the Renee Marsden case where someone did create fake identities online and manipulated people for years just so that she could feel a sense of control.

And sometimes that's what it all boils down to.

It's about power, sometimes attention, sometimes power, but sometimes it also is about something even darker.

Whether it's for online sympathy, again, control and manipulation, money,

you know, love and affection, there is a variety of reasons as to why people do this.

And so, again, they were kind of entertaining all of the theories, just trying to make sense of it.

But of course, now with Lauren being a suspect in this, the officers couldn't just take her mom Kendra's word for anything.

If they were going to build a real case, they needed evidence, hard proof.

Because here's the thing, setting up a VPN, hiding your IP address, creating fake accounts, it at least takes some level of technical knowledge.

Sure, there's teenagers who know their way around all that kind of stuff, especially in this day and age.

But the investigators had absolutely zero evidence that Lauren knew how to do that, knew, you know, all this tech-savvy stuff and how to hide her digital footprint and her online identity.

She just didn't have the technical skills.

She didn't have the background.

And honestly, it just didn't fit her personality.

But you know who did have that kind of technical expertise?

Kendra, Lauren's mom.

Before she was a high school coach, she worked in I.T., fixing computers, setting up networks, dealing with the exact kind of tech problems that most people can't even explain, let alone solve.

And for someone in IT, I'll just say setting up a VPN would have been nothing, could have done it in her sleep.

And so that is when things really started to shift and look bad for Kendra.

Because think about it, Kendra knew how specialized this skill set was.

She also had to know that it would sound absolutely ridiculous for her to point the finger at Lauren or at her husband Sean.

Neither one of them had the knowledge to pull this off.

So when she started throwing out those theories, Lauren catfishing herself, Sean secretly tormenting his own family, It kind of made her look like she was getting boxed into a corner, like she was scrambling, trying to come up with any viable excuse.

It It also just kind of made her look outright like she was lying.

And remember how the investigators had traced the messages back to a phone that was inside the house?

Well, what I did not tell you earlier was that that phone belonged to Kendra.

She had the technical experience.

She had the exact equipment that was needed to pull it off.

And sure enough, when the investigators dug deeper, they found evidence that Kendra had created fake profiles.

On Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, she created accounts using the names and the photos of Lauren's real-life friends.

And she did this so that all of those messages would seem more authentic, more personal, like it was coming from them.

So now the walls started closing in.

Now, at this point, the investigators realized something even darker in all of this.

Kendra wasn't just catfishing her daughter.

She was framing other kids, teenagers, making it look like they were the ones behind all of this harassment.

Innocent bystanders were getting dragged into this just complete and utter nightmare.

Now, something else that kept nagging at me when I was doing my initial research on this case about a year ago, and I can't say for sure whether the police considered it or not because they've never commented on it publicly, but remember how the stalker was obsessed with Lauren's basketball stats?

her games, her playing time, the points that she scored or points that she didn't score?

Well, Kendra was a basketball coach.

So was this just random cruelty to make it seem like

Lauren was being watched?

Or were these messages in fact personal?

Were some of those taunts coming straight from her own thoughts about the team and about her daughter's performance?

I mean, I know it's just speculation, but it does stand out, doesn't it?

So either way, the investigators now believed that Kendra had been the one catfishing Lauren all along, all while simultaneously pretending to play the role of of this supportive, protective, concerned mother.

But the suspicion, that wasn't enough.

They needed evidence.

So on August 10th, 2022, the officers came back to the house with a warrant, and they were there to seize everything.

I'm talking phones, laptops, any device that could hold the digital trail of what Kendra had been doing.

And when their car pulled up, Kendra was already outside.

She was taking out the trash.

And this irony wasn't really lost on anyone because that's exactly what the cops were there to do, to take out their trash, to go through things, to seize evidence, collect evidence.

They had pulled up in an unmarked car so that Kendra wouldn't panic and wouldn't take off and run or dispose of anything.

But even with that, when they got there and she saw them, Kendra didn't run at all.

She just very calmly, very matter of factly agreed to talk with them.

So an officer explained why they were there, just laid it all out for her.

And then knowing full well that she was the prime suspect in all of this, he asked her point blank if she had any new thoughts on who might have been behind this harassment.

It was now her chance to come clean.

But Kendra just shook her head.

She just said, no, I don't.

Playing dumb, just taking it to the grave.

The officer didn't waste any time though.

He told her point blank that they were close to making an arrest.

He also warned her not to skip town, said, you know, things are going to get a whole lot worse if you even try.

He even suggested that Kendra, Sean, and Lauren all start family therapy because, I mean, clearly something in that house was very, very broken.

Then, after talking with Kendra, he called Sean and asked him to come home from work.

And when he did, he pulled him aside so that he could talk to him, just fill him in on everything that he had found, that the device came from their house, that it was Kendra's device, that she was the one behind it.

And when Sean heard what his wife had allegedly been doing, I mean, he was floored.

This was the woman that he shared a home with, a life with, and she had been living this entire double life.

Because investigators also learned that Kendra had lied to Sean, her husband, about a lot of other things too.

For example, she had told Sean she quit her job voluntarily, but she actually had been fired.

And it took the investigators four more months to comb through everything.

I mean, Kendra's phone, her laptop, every single scrap of data.

But when they were done with it, they had all of it.

Hundreds of pages of text messages, TikTok DMs, Snapchats, Instagram messages, Facebook conversations, and every single message traced directly back to Kendra.

So on December 8th, 2022, when the officers finally came to arrest her, Kendra didn't fight it.

She surrendered peacefully.

But then once she was in custody, things started to change because the excuses all started pouring out.

She said that the reason she did this was because she was trying to like coax out the real harasser, the real stalker, that she had sent the initial messages in 2020, but then stopped.

And then somebody else started harassing her daughter.

So she created all these fake accounts to try to like get clues and break the case and figure out who it was, which it just absolutely made no sense whatsoever, especially given like the context of these messages.

And finally, she told the officers, you know, the whole thing had just, quote, according to her, gotten out of hand and that she only meant to send a few messages, but that she got caught up in the thrill of it all and that once it was going, things just started to spiral.

As if that somehow makes tormenting your own daughter for nearly two years more reasonable.

Obviously not.

She even had the audacity to ask the police if they could keep it quiet.

She didn't want other parents finding out, which can you imagine?

I mean, as a parent, being so detached from reality that you not only do this to your own child, but then you act like the real problem in all of of this is whether or not people are going to find out.

And think about Owen's parents too.

Think about the parents of all of the kids who had been blamed, tormented, harassed, and now this adult wants it to be hush-hush to protect their own sanity and privacy.

And look, when you break down who Kendra was and her past, here is the strange part.

She had no prior record.

No arrests, no warning signs.

She kind of went from this upstanding citizen to just catfishing her own daughter like it was her full-time job.

And maybe that's why she didn't realize how deep in trouble she truly was, because when the charges did come down, I mean, they were serious.

She ended up being charged with two counts of stalking a minor for what she did to Lauren and Owen.

She also was charged with two counts of using a computer to commit a crime and one count of obstruction of justice.

Now, she was released on a $5,000 bond while she awaited trial that took place in 2023.

But if she was going to be convicted on every charge and given the maximum sentence, she was looking at 35 years in prison.

So, of course, the big question that everybody wanted answered was why?

What could possibly motivate a mother to torture her own child like this?

What did she want so badly enough that she would risk decades behind bars?

And the motive?

The real motive?

It was about to shock everyone.

The other day, I was out like hiking around on the beach.

I mean, like, and for me, it's a hike because sand is hard, but you get what I mean.

And you know, that feeling when you're like convinced somebody is watching you, whether it's like a little brush of the sand or like a snap of a branch.

I mean, I was getting that feeling, and my heart was racing.

My senses were like on overdrive because it was also the sun was starting to go down.

I was just a little nervous.

And all I could think is, like, okay, this is why I need to be alert.

Annie, this is why you need to stay sharp.

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When the case finally went to trial, the prosecution had one major big problem.

It wasn't proving that Kendra did it.

They had over a thousand pages of evidence tying to, you know, every text, every DM, every single message.

It all tied back straight to her phone and her computer.

But the real challenge was proving why.

Because Kendra wasn't some like shadowy figure lurking in the background, trying to be undetective and fly under the radar.

In fact, she's the one who pushed pushed Lauren to tell the school about these messages.

She's the one who stood by her daughter's side, hugging her, comforting her, telling her that they were going to figure this nightmare out together.

She was also the one fighting to get the police involved when she was really the one doing all of it the whole time, which it's like, what?

It made no sense.

Why would a mother torment her own daughter for months?

but then play the role of the rescuer?

Why create the fire just to then pretend to be the one to put it out?

And Kendra never gave a straight answer, but the prosecution did develop a theory.

Apparently, Lauren and Kendra had always been extremely close.

Lauren was a mama's girl.

She would tell Kendra everything, leaning on her for advice, you know, talking about boys, friends, relationships, spending all of her free time with her.

That is until Owen entered the picture.

Because suddenly, Lauren wasn't running to her mom with every problem.

She wasn't venting about school, about sports, about drama with her friends.

Instead, she was doing what a lot of teen girls do.

She was venting to her boyfriend, texting him, laughing with him, spending weekends with him.

So the prosecutors believed Kendra hated that, that she wanted to be number one again.

And maybe losing her job had something to do with it too.

Maybe being fired bruised her ego a bit and kind of left her angry or bored or with too much time on her hands.

But for whatever reason, that's why they believe she started sending the messages.

Not necessarily necessarily to break Lauren and Owen up, but to give Lauren a problem that is so major, so big, so terrifying that she would have no choice but to come running to her mom for help.

And I mean, to their credit or whoever's theory this is, and if that is the truth, it worked.

The harassment did consume Lauren's life.

Her grades slipped.

She cut off friends because she didn't trust them anymore.

She was paranoid, exhausted, just completely falling apart.

And every time she felt like she was drowning because of this, she turned to her mom, Kendra.

Exactly like the prosecution says Kendra wanted.

She got to play the hero, the protector, the mom fighting for her daughter, when really, she was the one who was making her daughter's life a living hell.

When the case first came into our office, it was very bizarre and almost hard to believe, talking about several hundreds of text messages, meaning over a thousand pages of discovery in the case.

But by and large, it was mostly just harassing type text messages, demeaning, demoralizing, and kind of mean text.

If at any point this became something that they didn't want to engage in or continue, they could have stopped.

But rather than stop, it continued to snowball into this

sophisticated plan where they try to conceal their identity and throw the police off their tracks.

Someone else coined this term, it wasn't myself, but they called it a version of cyber Munchausen syndrome in the sense that this seems to be that type of behavior where you're making somebody feel bad or

need you in their life because of this behavior.

Now, other people believe the motive was much darker than that, that it wasn't some sort of munchhausen's by proxy attention-seeking kind of thing, but rather that it was an obsession rooted with Owen.

Especially given the context of the text messages, because not only were they saying how no girl was good enough for Owen and how he wanted someone who was sexier and hotter, but there were like some really gross sexual text messages sent to talking about like cream pies.

If you know what that is, if you don't Google it, I'm not going to explain it.

It's disgusting.

But like all sorts of like gross sexual things with this teenage boy.

Okay.

So apparently she also would go to his games, ones that Lauren didn't go to.

So it's not like she was trying to be like, you know, his girlfriend's supportive mom and supporting him.

Like she would go on her own.

She would text him for random reasons.

It kind of seemingly was like she was obsessed with him, according to some people.

So the other allegation there is that Kendra became so fixated on Owen and was kind of living for that thrill of teenage lust and romance, like wanting that feeling as a middle-aged bored housewife and that she really was grossly attracted to him and that she was jealous of her own daughter and that she wanted Owen to herself too and that she was tearing her daughter down.

Remember, she would tell her daughter to take her own life, that she was ugly, that she looked like a boy, that her body was ugly, all of these things.

So it's like, you don't do that unless there's some other motive in there, in my opinion.

If you're just trying to create a problem so big that your daughter has to come to you, you don't need to attack their looks.

You don't need to push them to self-harm.

You don't need to talk about their sexuality.

I could think of a million different things you could talk about.

Friends, grades,

you know, anything.

But the fact that these messages were so

aimed and crafted as though Lauren wasn't good enough for Owen, that Owen deserves so much more of it.

Again, the sexual messages, it really does seem like the infatuation was with Owen.

But what was the truth?

Nobody really knew.

There were a lot of things flying.

And there's another allegation, which I'm going to bring up in a moment here that is going to truly floor you.

And I don't know why they didn't talk about it in the Netflix doc, but we're going to go into it.

But yeah, nobody really knew what the truth was.

So Kendra's trial was scheduled for April 2023.

But right from the start, it was very clear that she knew she didn't stand a chance in this.

Okay.

She didn't even try to fight the charges, not at all.

Instead, she took a plea deal, which was probably the smartest move that she could have made because there were over a thousand pages of messages that tied everything directly to her phone and laptop.

So there was really no chance and no jury on earth that would have believed that she was innocent in all of this.

And under this plea deal, Kendra pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor.

And in exchange, the state dropped the other charges, the ones of using a computer to commit a crime and obstruction of justice.

So that meant that the possibility of 35 years behind bars was now off the table.

And instead, the most that she could get was 10 years and maybe some fines.

And when Kendra had a chance to speak, she claimed she was sorry.

She said she was remorseful for the pain that she caused and she knew that she had hurt her family.

I never want to hurt anyone else like I have already done.

I actually look forward to continuing my work and continuing my progress daily.

I have caused a lot of damage to my family.

Now, I will say, this didn't really sit well with me because it kind of felt like she was trying to downplay the reality and the true horror of what she had done.

And that really makes my blood boil.

Like you affected so many kids' lives, including your own.

So much so that I would imagine there are a lot of trust issues that everybody is going to be suffering from, like repercussions that you can't even imagine.

And she kind of acts very casual and cavalier.

Again, in my opinion, tell me if you disagree.

Now, as for the judge's decision with the sentencing, Kendra was sentenced to a minimum of 19 months and a maximum of five years in prison.

Which you might hear that and think, wow, that's it?

After everything that she did.

But I will say the judge wasn't confused about how serious this was.

They knew that it was serious because after the trial, they said, this is a truly horrible case.

It's the kind of case that makes me glad that at the end of my term, I'm retiring.

So they fully understood exactly what Kendra had done, but they still didn't give her more than five years for it.

It was kind of like a slap on the wrist.

And she ended up being released on parole on August 8th, 2024.

She'll be supervised as a parolee until February 2026, which that's not very long.

This all went down, remember, from 2020 to 2022.

And in what?

Five months, she's going to be out.

She's going to be, you know, well, she's already out.

She's been out, but like she'll be off parole in five months.

It's kind of crazy, right?

Now, as for Lauren and Owen, I mean, I hope that they are getting therapy and building normal lives, finding some peace after all of this, because the truth is, all of that is enough to destroy a person.

And when the person behind that cruelty is your mother, the one person that you should trust the most, that kind of betrayal doesn't just go away.

It leaves scars that you'll always deal with, you'll always see.

Now, the other theory that I wanted to mention here, and a loose allegation that has been out there is that Lauren and Sean, her dad, knew more as this was going on, possibly even that Lauren was involved.

And I want to be very, very careful to clarify here that it is not proven.

It is just conversation that is out there, but that Kendra trying to now protect Lauren and be a good mom, decided to take the entire blame.

And there are not only some people in the public, but also some family members who have been involved in this case that think that Sean either knew what his wife was doing or had seen something and told her to stop, but she never did, but like had some sort of awareness about it.

And or that Lauren was thriving off the attention too, and that her and her mom did this together.

Maybe not that they were in on it together the entire time, but to some degree.

Now, I don't personally know if I believe that.

I don't think that a young girl could be that that diabolical, possibly.

I mean, I guess now that I say that out loud, I have seen some stranger things happen,

but I don't know what the motive would have been for Lauren other than just wanting attention, which to be fair, teen girls do a lot of crazy things for attention.

But the reason I wanted to at least bring that up is because it is something that's out there.

And again, it is something that even family members of the kids involved in this case have vocalized, that

they think it doesn't just end with Kendra and that the investigators should have looked more closely into Sean and to Lauren to see what extent they were involved with this in or what they even knew about all of this as it was ongoing.

So I don't know, take that for what it is.

I'm curious to know what you think and if you think that is a possibility.

But again, I just wanted to throw it all out there for you.

And I kind of find it odd that Netflix didn't really touch on that because it is a big piece of the conversation.

So I'm going to end end this episode by saying this.

Be nice.

Don't bully people.

Don't catfish people.

And don't catfish your own friends and family, especially, because even if it's not physical abuse and torment, even if you don't leave, you know, broken bones or bruises, you can still destroy somebody's entire world, their entire life.

Words are powerful.

They are extremely powerful.

And catfishing and all of this, it is a whole different level.

I've used the term already in this episode, but I'm going to say it again.

It's a whole other level of psychological warfare, making people doubt themselves,

have deep-seated insecurities, wonder who they can trust.

Can they even trust their best friend, their partner?

It is so diabolical.

It truly is.

So thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode.

I will be back with you in a couple of days with headline highlights where we are breaking down everything happening this week in true crime, but wanted to at least get this episode out there so that I could give you the full story, some of the details that weren't included, and just break it down for you.

All right, guys, thanks again.

And until the next one, be nice, don't kill people, and don't catfish anyone.

And don't fall for any Nigerian princes that want to wire you $20 million.

All right, bye, guys.

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