After watching Unknown Number: The High School Catfish an unsung hero has emerged: Shawn Licari. People on Twitter have been sharing how through the awfulness of what happened, he emerged as the realist.
“Shawn Licari is a phenomenal person and you can tell that they were both shellshocked,” one person said of him and his daughter Lauryn after watching. Another added: “Shout out to Shawn the MVP from the Unknown Number High School Catfish that man really said I’ve seen what I needed to see you’re done.”
The documentary told the story of a then 13-year-old Lauryn Licari. She had been receiving a barrage of messages from an unknown number. They were often horrible about her looks, threatened her, and told her to take her own life. There were highly sexualised messages about her boyfriend Owen, who was also underage at the time. In the twist nobody saw coming, the messages had been sent by Lauryn’s own mother.
Lauryn’s father, Shawn, had no idea what had been going on. Kendra Licari and Shawn met while studying at Central Michigan University. Lauryn is their only child, and she was born in 2007. Fast forward to December 2022, and his wife Kendra was arrested and charged with multiple counts of stalking a minor and using a computer to commit a crime.
It’s now been three years since then, so what does life for Shawn look like today?
via Netflix
Are Shawn and Kendra Licari from Unknown Number still married?
In short, no – Shawn and Kendra are not still together. Shawn divorced Kendra and received full custody of Lauryn when his wife went to prison for her crimes. She was released on August 8th 2024, and is currently on parole.
“I just can’t believe she would do something like that to her daughter that supposedly she loved dearly,” he said in the Netflix documentary. “Just makes me sick. She stabbed me in the heart — shot me in the heart — and threw it away.”
What has Shawn been up to since?
via Netflix
As of today, Shawn still lives in Beal City, where he works as a mechanic and enjoys spending time with daughter Lauryn.
Since the catfishing, Shawn has grown a lot closer to Lauryn. The Netflix documentary’s director Skye Borgman told Tudum: “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.”
As of January 2025, Kendra is living with family near Detroit. As part of her parole rules, she is not allowed contact with Lauryn. Given this, and their divorce, it could be assumed she no longer has contact with Shawn either. He’s not commented on the Netflix film since it aired.
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.
