Legally Brunette: Unknown Number

Emily and Shane are diving into the case that’s featured in Netflix’s latest documentary, “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish”.

**SPOILER** Kendra Licari was cyberbullying her own daughter, but why? Was it Munchausen’s by internet or an obsession with her daughter’s boyfriend? Why wasn’t she charged with child abuse?

We’re dissecting this case through the lens of parents and lawyers alike. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, guys, welcome to another episode of Legally Brunette. I'll
be your host today Emily Simpson and Shane Also very
exciting news. We have done so well and you guys
have enjoyed Legally Brunette so much that we are now
moving to our own feed so you'll be able to
find us easier. I know a lot of you got
confused because you were like, it goes to two teas.

(00:21):
Now when you search legally Brunette, it will go to
our own feed and we will be bringing you episodes weekly.
But for today, we are going to go into the
case of the Catfish mom Kendra Lacari. Originally we weren't
even gonna we were going to talk about a different case,
but this has become so huge everybody's talking about it.

(00:41):
It's a Netflix series that's called Unknown Number the High
School Catfish. So let's just go through. Let's just first
do like a brief overview of kind of what we're
talking about. If you have not watched it yet, I
suggest that you do. Not only is it shocking and
different than anything you've probably ever heard before, but it's

(01:02):
actually entertaining and has a lot of interviews of all
the people involved in it. So this is a case
that started in twenty twenty two with two Michigan teenagers,
Lauren Lacari and Owen McKinney, and they began receiving anonymous
text messages from an unknown number. Over time, the communications
escalated into persistent harassment, with dozens of messages arriving daily

(01:25):
that included cruel insults, explicit remarks and when I say explicit,
like grossly explicit, like sexually explicit, and also threats. Most
text messages focused on Lauren and Owen's relationship, targeting Lauren's
insecurities and eventually forcing them to break up. But the
harassment did not stop there. The cyber bully persisted with

(01:47):
the text messages and eventually told Lauren to take her
own life. And that wasn't just a one time thing.
I mean it was multiple times of like die bitch,
and side say how to kill yourself, just to kill yourself,
just to kill yourself. The behavior caused significant distress for
the teens and drew the attention of parent, school officials,
and local police. As the harassment continued, outside agencies were

(02:11):
brought into assist. After almost an entire year of these
relentless messages, and I believe at one point they were
getting up to fifty messages a day. The FBI investigators
trace the messages back to none other than Lauren Lacari's mother,
Kendra Lacari. All right, let's just talk about where this
took place, because I think it's important to kind of

(02:32):
get a background of this small town. Everybody knows everybody,
which is where this took place. So the dynamic of
what happens happens in this small town called Beal City, Michigan.
And when they describe bal City, it literally has like
two bars and one stoplight, and it's a dairy town,

(02:53):
lots of flat fields. It reminds me. Look, I grew
up in Ohio, so when they're describing beal City, Michigan,
I feel like I relate.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
It's basically like these are your people, these.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Are my people. It's like Middletown, Ohio. I mean, I
went to a very small high school. There were only
ninety nine people in my graduating class.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
So then clearly you got validatorian.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
No, I mean, which is sad I should have but no, Okay.
So Beal City is a farming community with two pubs
and one flashing intersection. They have one school that is
all kindergarten through twelfth with about fifty kids per grade.
The McKinneys. This is Owen McKinney. His family was an
established family in that area, while Kindred grew up about

(03:34):
a two hour drive away in the suburb or excerbs.
I don't know what excerbs are. Is that the opposite
of suburb and excurb?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I guess, so I can look it up if that's
what you're asking.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
It's an exurb of Detroit. Locals can see that Beal
City can be a tough place for transplants, that anyone
who didn't go to the school or doesn't have one
of the known last names will always be considered not
from around here. And although Sean Lacari, who is Kendra's husband,
was from Beale, he wasn't considered to be part of
the end crowd within this small town community. So Kindra

(04:08):
was not. She did not grow up in Beale's city.
She grew up two hours outside of it, So I
guess she never was like considered an insider within this
small town where there's non last names, Like she.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Was a foreigner of the town. Kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
So let's just get through a little bit of the
timeline of events. Let's just break this down.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Ask question, are you man? I might go ahead, what
you say, high school? But wait, it's it ninth grade,
tenth grade, twelfth grade. I think actually it's are they
of driving age?

Speaker 1 (04:36):
No? No, Actually when the text messages, when the harassing
text messages first start. So there's actually two rounds of
text messages. There's some text messages that come through from
an anonymous person when they're in the seventh grade and
they're dating, you know, whether how you date in the
seventh grade or whatever.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
They're like, you sit in the same lunch table, like.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Right, they're like boyfriend and girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
You know, she's very into same hanging out at the
stop light.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Right, they hang out at the stoplight and the dairy fields.
She's very into sports, he's into sports. They seem to
have that connection. They're in the seventh grade, and I
think the first round of text messages that come from
some anonymous source are mean, but they're not explicit, and
it's more of like, haha, you didn't get invited to
this Halloween party. It's like poking, yeah, and like Owen

(05:21):
doesn't really like you and he doesn't want to go
with you, and blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
It sounds like junior high text messages as opposed to
an adult exactly.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
But if you look at the language and the way
that the words are spelled in that first round of
text messages, it doesn't use slang. Everything's spelled correctly, it
has punctuation. It's very different than when the second round
of text harassing text messages start. So if you really
want to analyze it and look.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Deep into it, to me, oh, what does that mean?

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Well, to me, it just means that like when she
first she claimed so, the mother claims that she didn't
send the first round to text messages, that she only
got the idea from when these first harassing messages occur.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
So other people were asking my daughter, and I decided
to join them. Yeah, I didn't come up with the
idea of myself, right.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
But I mean my educated guests would be she clearly
sent the messages in the first place, and I think
she sent them as a mother, well, even if she
as an.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Adult, Even so, she's no less guilty of no I
think harassing her daughter to this point, even if she
is joined in on others doing it right.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
I think that was a non issue that they didn't
really get into much in the documentary because it didn't
matter whether she sent the first round. It was clear
that she said the second round that lasted, you know,
over a year. That was up to fifty a day.
That was horrible. So anyway, back in October twenty twenty,
Lauren and her boyfriend Owen, who they were aged at thirteen,
began receiving odd, anonymous text messages. One read HI, Lauren

(06:47):
Owen is breaking up with you. At the time, the
teens assumed it was just a prank. Then in late
twenty twenty early twenty twenty one, after that initial burst
of messages, the messages stopped for several months, giving the
couple hope that the harass was over. Then in September
of twenty twenty one, the message is resumed, this time
with alarming frequency, and the teens began receiving thirty to

(07:08):
fifty text messages per day. These messages were graphic, sexually explicit, insulting,
and life threatening. One message included a homecoming photo of
Lauren with a vomiting emoji paced it over her head
and the words this is the mother skink and hoe
plastered on her body. In a group thread, the texter
asked Owen to help take Lauren down and told her

(07:29):
that Owen had quote said his life would be better
if you were dead end quote and quote no one
will care if you gone. Now, this is when she
starts using slang, and she starts texting like like a
high schooler. Would you know what I mean? She doesn't
spell words out, She's like sorry, not sorry. Yeah, she's
like hip, she's like learned the slang, so her texting

(07:52):
style changes significantly, so every day for months, the harassment
continued under immense emotional stress. Lauren and Owen eventually break up,
partly in hopes that the messages would stop, but even
after they split up, the messages intensified. Both Lauren and
Owen's parents became deeply concerned about the teens well being. Now,

(08:12):
first of all, she's sending these text messages under anonymous numbers,
which I didn't know you could do, but I learned
this that there's certain software or apps, like she used PingER,
where you can text but your numbers covered up, so
every time you text, it just comes up as a
different number each time. That's why you don't know who's
doing it, so it consistently just keeps changing the number,

(08:37):
so your number is hidden and then every time you
send a text.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well yeah, but she else could have just gotten a
random phone or what's app app or something. There's lots
of ways to have a number that's not tied to you.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Yeah right, I don't know, because I don't harass people.
But I mean I don't have you do directly to me.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
I just ask people directly to their in person, not
through I don't.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Have to cover to cover that.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
No, I don't have one of those. So anyway, she's
using a PingER account.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Agay, But I was just getting at regardless that that's
again a non issue. She just found a way to
not expose her number her daughter. So Lauren's mom kisses
since seventh grade.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, so then we're now to December of twenty twenty one,
Lauren's mom, Kendra and Owen's mom Jill gather in the
school principal's office, demanding that action be taken. Towards the
side of the.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Principal's office's demanding action.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
She's demanding action, that action be taken. And you know,
it's also interesting when you watch this documentary. Because this
documentary was clearly filmed in two parts. They filmed it
without Kendra Lacari because she initially did not want to
be a part of it, and I believe she was
in prison at the time when they were filming it. Okay,
so she's not part of it, and they filmed the

(09:55):
majority of it. Then she does decide to be part
of the documentary. So now they have interviews with her.
But what they've done, which is actually brilliant, is they've
gone back and inserted her into the documentary where she's
literally talking about how they're trying to find out who
this person is. So that's why if you know nothing

(10:16):
about this story and you've never heard.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
So they kept her from giving spoilers. There's no spoiler
in the documentary or like a confessional that you do.
It's like they brought her in like we need three
looks and come in and then tell in time of
the recording what's going on?

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Right? But how is that? Like me, I don't understand
that because they bring you in the studio after you
feel everything, after the crimes are committed, they bring you
in and then.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
You talk about it. Right, Yes, So this is a
prison confessional.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yes, so she's in the documentary speaking and the way
that she does it, I mean talk about not having
any like conscious because she speaks about it with like
full force of like we're going to find out who
it is. We're gonna you know, we got to.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Get to the Well, that's funny because this makes sense
because you were telling me as you were researching and watching,
like do they not know it's her? Remember you didn't
know if it was the mother, like the production like,
what's going on? Now we know? Oh, she came in
after the fact and recorded as if Yeah, and without
spoiling anything.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Right, Well, after I watched the whole thing, I did
more research and read interviews with the with the producer
or director sky Borgman, and it was basically it came
down to they filmed the majority of it. Then when
she was released from prison she finally decided to be
a part of it. They filmed her, filmed her interviews,
added them back in, and then it ended up being
amazing TV because what happened is you don't think it's

(11:43):
her because she's giving interviews about how she's trying to
find out who it is, and then there's a moment
where it's revealed that it's the mom, and it's shocking
if you don't know the story at that point. So
the Texter knew and trigger it details about Owen and
lawrence relationship, duh because it's the mother, for example, like
what short shirt Lauren was wearing the school that day,

(12:04):
specifics of the school's basketball or football games, Lauren not
being invited to a Halloween party, et cetera, leading them
to believe that it had to be another student at
the school who was there. That would be a logical thought, right,
So I think Kindred really goes out of her way
to frame it being a different student. And there's a
girl that goes to the school who's friends with Owen

(12:26):
named Chloe Wilson. And Chloe already has a reputation of
being kind of a bully. She's had a couple complaints
against her. She's very strong, she's very outgoing, so.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
She's a likely candidate.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
She's athletic, her dad's a police officer. Her mom, I
see where maybe she gets this bowling allegations.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Because her her mom's a character, a character.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
I'll just say that. So Chloe Wilson, a well known
popular girl, in Lauren and Owen's grade was initially being
framed as a cyber bully. In one message, the bully
claimed that she scored twelve points in a basketball game.
Kindra Lacar, this is the mom who was the scorekeeper
for women's basketball, was able to run and retrieve the
stats from that game in order to find out that

(13:07):
Chloe was the only one who scored twelve points. So
I remember this. I believe they were talking about it
in the principal's office and the text explicitly talked about
scoring twelve points in a game, and Kindra was like,
let me go run and look at the stats, and
she pulls up the stats and then she's like, it's
Chloe Wilson that scored twelve points. So she's clearly framing

(13:30):
these text messages around intimate details that have to do
with Chloe Wilson. Lauren had always speculated that Chloe had
a crush on Owen, and despite Owen and chloeing Chloe
being close friends, Lauren never had a close relationship with her.
This is Lauren and Chloe. They were never really friendly
with each other. The Wilson family always has this huge

(13:50):
Halloween bash at their house every year, and Lauren wasn't invited,
and this cyber bully used that specific information to portray
her as a loser. In one instance, the cyber bully's
airs code would change to a nine h six area code,
which is Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which happened to be exactly
where Chloe was snowmobiling with her family at the time.
So you can tell that Kender was very savvy. Not

(14:15):
only was she sending text messages through this PingER app
that she was using, but she also knew how to
change the area code from where these messages were coming
to to directly correlate where Chloe was located physically.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
And she was very serious about this. Yeah, phishing.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
I mean it was really methodical and meticulous and thought
out and obsessive. I mean, when you really think about
how much time and energy she.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Put into it scary.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Despite Owen and Lauren's parents zeroing in on Chloe as
the perpetrator, Chloe denied the accusation. She even claimed that
she had lost friends because of these false accusations. Now
we get to January of twenty twenty two. Despite the
school's best efforts and trying to track down the student
responsible for the text they got nowhere. I do know that,

(15:02):
and I thought this was interesting because I don't know
how schools handle this or what the policy is. But
in my mind, I was thinking, Okay, these parents go
into the principal's office and they're like, look, our kids
are getting cyberbullid. It's probably by someone in the school.
It has to be because they have intimate knowledge of
these friend groups and things that are going on. And
then at what point, like the school becomes involved. I

(15:23):
liked the principle.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
How so how do they become involved?

Speaker 1 (15:25):
They actually set up some sting operations to a certain point.
They the principal asked the like Lauren and Owen, if
they got these messages during school school hours, to text
him and tell him, and then he would look at
the recording. What is it, you know, the video of

(15:48):
the surveillance, Yes, the surveillance video, and the school to
see if they could see if any students was texting
at that same time. I believe teachers were aware of
what was going on, so they were also on the
lookout of any students that look like they were texting
at all the times. I mean, I feel like the
principal really made an effort to.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Help these Yeah, it sounds like it.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
And you know, they also made the suggestion of taking
the phones away from the kids, and then the parents
were like, this is their lifeline, this is how we
get ahold of them.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Why wouldn't at what point would you just change your
phone number to at least have that? Now? Had she
I know? Had she I know? You say, had she
changed your number? And the mom would know? But why
wouldn't did they change the number? Because that would be
my thought if it was my kid.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
No, because that was a question that was asked of Jill,
who is Owen's mother, and she said that they felt
like it would be fruitless to change his number because
his number was always in group text with other kids,
and they would have just said that Owen's mother Jill,
not Lauren's.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, kendraux I was like, well, of course the criminals
go be like, no, don't change it.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
No, it was Owen's mom that said she didn't think.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
They never Well, that's crappy. Sorry, that's crappy. You're like, oh,
it's an inconvenience in our group chats. So what.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
It wasn't that it was an inconvenience it was that
his number would end up with all his friends and
group chats again, so this person who's inside this group
would just end up with the number anyway. Because they
were so convinced that it was just one of their friends,
they didn't know who, so they felt like changing the
number would just be pointless.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Which is true because the mom would have gotten the
new number right.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Despite the school's best efforts in trying to track down
the student responsible, they got nowhere. And this is when
they decided to bring in the sheriff, Michael Maine. And
this is in January of twenty twenty two. The sheriff
came to the school and questioned ten high schoolers and
parents that could be related to the case, but again
he got nowhere. At this point, the bully began texting
a girl that Owen was seeing at a different high

(17:59):
school and a different town. That's very interesting and very
significant because I think we'll have to we'll talk about
that again later. But even after Lauren and Owen break up,
so they're not together anymore, Owen is now dating a
girl he met somewhere, I don't know, through sports or
something that goes to a different school. She's in a
different town. That girl starts getting bullied by the cyber bully,

(18:21):
and that girl's mom starts receiving How does she get
those numbers? I don't know, but somehow she did and
she's bullying those people now. So was there any suspicion
towards anyone else other than just these kids at the school.
In early February twenty twenty two, Craig Wilson, who is

(18:42):
Chloe's dad, he's a police officer, texted a tip to
the sheriff and he said, honestly, Mike, I don't know
if you know Kenja or not, but you really need
to be cautious. There is a pretty good part of
me that thinks that she may very well be doing this.
So that was interesting, but it didn't go anywhere. At
that point. The Ball school secretary Diane Fussman told Principal

(19:05):
Boyers she also she also suspected Kendra, which Boyer, this
is the principal, found implausible. The secretary stated, quote, I
always thought she was a little obsessive, obsessive with her child.
My gut told me this just isn't one of our kids. However,
when Sheriff Mike Maine asked the McKinney's if Kendra would
be capable of such a thing, they immediately turned the

(19:28):
theory down. And remember the McKinneys is Owen's family, and
these two families were very close. Even though I don't know,
I think it's kind of weird when there's like a
relationship in the seventh grade because to me, I wouldn't
as a parent, I wouldn't want to be facilitating a relationship.
My daughter is in the seventh grade.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
M h solls mine.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh yeah, really, you have a daughter in the seventh grade.
Let me rephrase that our daughter is in the seventh grade.
If she comes home and has a boyfriend, I am
not going to entertain into that she's young, she's twelve.
I'm not going to be asking about him. I'm not
going to be taking her to his game.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
You're going to download the PingER app.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
I'm going to down and I'm going to harass him,
not her. Yes, but I just think it's I don't know,
you're a dad, don't you think?

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Don't you think what you're want to hang out? Hang
out in groups, right, mix and mingle. That's all great,
but I mean, do you really want the added pressure relationships.
I mean, forget the fact that they're young, but right,
but no, thank you.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
It was very much Kindra was very into their relationship
and she was always taking photos of them together. And
then you know, having Lauren off.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Of their their relationship, right well, because then she got
to get in the middle of it.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Right right. So I don't know, I just think it's
weird when parents become so obsessive or integrated or they
try to be the.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Cool parent, right yeah, like over here you can drink
as long as it's in my house. Well, I'm weird.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
I mean they're young and they're in the seventh grade,
and it's like she's taking Lauren to his games and
she's planning family trips when he has a.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
She's gathering intel, she's gathering intel. She's like, what's he wearing?

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Now?

Speaker 2 (21:10):
What are they doing now? Because I'm going to bully
them on that, and I'm going to bully them on this.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah. So these two families were very tight. They vacationed together,
they traveled together, they went to games together, they did
all these things together, and then they became even more
close during the whole COVID nineteen shutdown. I guess they
had their own little bubble where they were hanging out
a lot. So when Jill, who was Owen's mom, was
asked if Kendra could be the one sending the text,

(21:34):
she said absolutely not, there's no way.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Though local law enforcement and the school were trying their
best to solve the case, they were getting nowhere. Jill
and Kendre were relentless, so law enforcement finally asked an
FBI affiliated task force to step in and investigate. Officer Brad
Peter was assigned to the case. Now, it's interesting to
me that Kendro in the beginning, when you're watching the documentary,
and if you don't know anything about the ending, it

(21:59):
makes sense that would be so involved in the case
because she's the mother. So you're thinking, Okay, this mom
is involved and asking questions, calling the police and asking
where they are in the investigation, and wanting to be
involved with the FBI and going to be yest. So
but now that you know it's her and you look

(22:21):
back at all these things that she did, it's i
mean clear to me at that point that she's staying
on top of it as much as possible so that
she knows where they're at and how far they've gotten
and how much knowledge they have and how close they are.
And then maybe she she's an IT person. That was
her undergrad, So her undergrad had something to do with

(22:42):
computers in IT. And then I believe her career path
she coached at this high school, but she also worked
in IT and worked in like cell phones or something,
and so she clearly has a more intimate and professional
knowledge of how all of this works, and she used
it to her advantage while also while also embedding herself

(23:06):
into this investigation so she could tell exactly where it
was at. So Officer Pete Bradley is the FBI person
that was assigned to the case. He acted quickly, knowing
that Berner Apps only held onto new subscriber records for
about two weeks. Jill McKinney was asked to send him
the cyber bully's latest phone numbers daily. During this time,

(23:27):
Jill started picking up on strange signals from Kendra. Months
after their children's breakup, Kendra kept prying into Owen's love
interests and asking if he was dating Chloe. In mid May,
the bullies sent a text to Lauren that read quote
and in all caps, kill yourself now. Bitch geez. A
week after this text message, Officer Peter got a hit

(23:48):
on it. Well, first what he did, and I read
this more detailed, he figured out that the messages were
coming from a PingER app. So the first thing he
does is he sends a search warrant to PingER. PingER
then returns the information and it shows up that these
IPNs are related to a Verizon phone.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
So they're they're cooperative.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
They're cooperative. Then after he gets that information, he sends
a search warrant to Verizon, and then Verizon returns some
numbers associated with these IPNs. So it was a very
I don't know how long this took, but it was
a very convoluted search warrant type of situation where he
had to do PingER first and then he had to
do Verizon. So then once they get the information back

(24:27):
from Verizon, they're cross referencing these numbers, these phone numbers
with all the kids in the contacts list, right, and
they're not getting any hit.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
No, because it's not a student.

Speaker 3 (24:38):
Right.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
So a week after this text message, the one saying
kill yourself now, bitch, Officer Peter got a hit on
the Verizon ip addresses that he was digging into and
he found that only one number had matched his records,
and it led back to Kendra Lacari. So that's when
they know, and I know I in the documentary. Maybe
I read it because I did a lot of research
outside the documentary, But I think initially he thought this

(25:01):
can't be right because this is the mom. So they
kept he kept cross referencing right, and it just kept
coming up that it was her number attached to her.
So on August tenth of twenty twenty two, Sheriff Maine
appeared at Sean's mother's residence, where Sean, Kendra, and Lauren
were residing at the time. Now there is a cut

(25:22):
article out there if you want to read it. It's
super long. I read it twice. It goes into detail
about this whole situation, the saga. It's way more detailed
than the documentary is. The documentary takes you through the timeline,
but this article written by the cut it's very detailed
as to things that happened, conversations that took place. You know,

(25:43):
and when they go to arrest Kendra, I couldn't. I
was confused whether she and Sean were together or they
were separated. I know they were having financial problems, and
you find out a lot when the police officer shows up,
and apparently the house he shows up to is Sean's parents' home,
which I believe they were probably living there, maybe for free,

(26:05):
because they had lost several other homes, they had been evicted,
they had foreclosed on, and all these financial things that
kept happening. Kendra kept telling her husband it was because
of scammers, and he was clearly believing her. It was like, oh, well,
our house fore closed on us because someone stole my
identity and stole our money, or you know, I couldn't

(26:27):
pay these bills, and the you know, the storage unit
where all your two tools were got taken away because
someone scammed us, And it was just scam after scam
was her excuse, where clearly we know now that she's
just she's a pathological liar. The sheriff had a search
warrant and approached Kendra outside of the house while Lauren

(26:50):
was in the backyard and Sean was at work. The
confrontation was captured on body camera footage and is featured
in the Netflix documentary. After Kendra admits to the crime,
the sheriff calls Lauren into the house to discuss everything.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
However, okay, this she admits. So when they approach her
body camp foot, she confesses.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Well sort of. I found this whole situation really frustrating.
I'm going to read you what the officer says.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Okay, but at this time, when they're approaching her, they're
approaching her as a suspect.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
They're approaching her, well, they have a search warrant to
get her cell phones, right, okay, so she's not being
arrested at this time. They're approaching her as basically like,
we know you did it, we have a search warrant,
we need your phoney. But and I like to give
grace to police officers. I'm not in that position. I
don't know what that's like. And maybe I feel like
maybe when he went to talk to her and to

(27:42):
he has a search warrant and he's going to get
the phones. Maybe his approach with her was more of
a soft approach to get her to confess, most likely
because he never actually is direct with her. And I'll
read you the conversation, and I feel like he's playing
a very good cop role so that she feels a rapport.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Well that and it's easier to do that and then
she hands over the phone rather than you have to
tackle her and arrest her for not cooperating with the
warrant and then take the phone. You know what I mean.
So you want someone to comply.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
So this is what he says when he walks up.
I'm going to start the conversation. You guys have been
under a lot of stress recently, some moves going on,
some financial issues and everything else going on. Mom got
wrapped up in some stuff and she didn't start it,
but she will continue it. So we have found some
evidence and have a search warrant. We're gonna take her
phone and stuff. Sometimes when we aren't thinking straight, we

(28:34):
do some things that aren't right, Like I it's just there's.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Never no that's That's like cops always when they interrogate,
they always say, you're not a bad person. You just
made some mistakes. Now tell us where the bodies are. Yeah,
you know what I mean. It's like, yeah, because you
got you want cooperation. At the end of the day,
it doesn't matter what the cops says. That he says
you're not a bad person. That's not gonna be use
in jail or in a courtroom or anything like that.
So they say whatever, and the opposite is sure they'll

(28:59):
lie to you as well, right to get you to confess.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
I don't know. I just I was so when I
was watching that scene, I was just I was frustrated
because I wanted him to explicitly say, you were the one.
We know, you know, the person texting your daughter, we
know you were the cyberbully. But like he never says that,
it's embarrassing.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
How you are. You always want to just confront and
just yell at someone right then and there. And that's patience, lady, patience.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Okay, he's giving me a reunion tips right now.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
I'm giving you life tips.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
Okay, all right, So then the officer calls Lauren. Also,
by the way, I noticed this, and I saw a
lot of other people talking about this. When they go
inside this house, they're behind them or behind the counter.

(29:53):
There is like eight thousand bottles of alcohol. Like I
don't know, I don't know if they're empty or full,
but it's like, and I'm not talking like beer bottles.
It looks like a full on like like bar, like
a liquor. Like yeah, it's like a bevemo in her
living room or in the kitchen area, and I'm like,
what is going on back there? But that's just an

(30:13):
interesting point that I felt like I should bring up. Okay, Anyway,
then the officer asked for Lauren to come into the house.
Now here's my other question. They are about to tell
Lauren that her mother is the person who has been
cyber bullying her for two years and telled her to
kill herself and called her every name under the book,
and made fun of all her insecurities and said bang

(30:36):
bang dead, suicide, kill yourself, bitch, skink hoe and sent
sexually explicit like discussing text messages about BJ's and all
kinds of stuff. Okay, so this is what this child
child has been dealing with for two years.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
I just felt like in that moment, that wasn't the
way to do it.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
That wasn't the way to tell her.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
She's probably a family member around, right, like her dad.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
They called her dad Sean, He's an innocent, he doesn't
know any of this. Uh. They call him and tell
him to come home. So he's on his way home.
He has not gotten there yet, And.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
I just felt I think they just waited a little bit.
I felt they should have told she's a miner too, right, Yes,
they should have told the father right and then and
then let him tell her right or or they wanted
the reaction. They're like, oh, I got to see this. No,
I want to tell her, No, I want to tell her.
I'm going to tell her.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
I don't know. I just I just felt like it
was just a really and I don't know what's And
again this is what annoys me. Again. When he tells Lauren,
he uses very vague language, so I don't even know.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
What I mean, Like he doesn't want to be direct,
like he's he's dancing around.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah, this is what he says to Lauren. We're gonna
take her phone and stuff. Sometimes when we aren't thinking straight,
we do some things that aren't right. Your mom doesn't
want this to get out, but it is some public information,
so it's not going to not get out. I want
to be honest about that, all.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Right, Like this is yeah, No, I don't know what
that means.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
So when Lauren's sitting there next to her mom, her
mom is hugging her and crying, and Lauren is just
sitting there and she has no emotion on her face.
And this is what the police officer says to her.
And I've heard so many people say, why isn't she mad?
Why is it she doesn't know what the heck's going on?
And in my mind, I'm thinking, does she even understand that.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
This officer is telling No, I wouldn't by what you
were reading, I wouldn't know what that means. Right, Yeah,
he was dancing around the issue he was. I mean,
we already said he shouldn't have told her anyway in
that forum. But if he was in a tell her
to be like, hey, we found the catfish. She's sitting
right next to you, hugging you, right.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
But I it's two things for me. Either one, Lauren's
reaction is based on the fact that she did not
understand exactly what was going on and what he was insinuating,
because there is no direct laneguage saying no, mom is
the cyberbully that's been sending you these texts. We have evidence,
we found out it's her, So there's there's nothing direct

(33:08):
that and we're talking again about a child or two.
If she does understand somewhat what he's talking about, I
feel like she's been traumatized for so long that she
was just disassociating.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
And there's no You could ask her at a list
one hundred people who she thought it might be, and
it wouldn't be her mom. So then here you are
dancing around the issue, kind of making light of it
or not being direct, and then all of a sudden,
she's supposed to put all that together and think it's
her mom.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Right. Then the dad shows up and he comes. Well,
first of all, I don't remember exactly what he said,
but someone could tell me if you watch it recently.
But I found this really interesting. When the dad shows up,
he gets out of the car. They have the bodycam
footage of him. They're talking to him before he goes
in the house. They tell him that it's his wife.
He's shocked by it. Shocked. They also tell I want

(33:58):
to see right. They also tell him that not only
is she the cyberbully that's been, you know, bullying his
daughter for two years, but that Kindra has been lying
about having a job and she hasn't been working. She's
been telling her husband that she works for like a
Farris university.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
And what does she do with the paychecks? They supposed
a paycheck.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
That's what I'm saying. And that's why they've gotten evicted.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Everything.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah, she had had she had not worked for a year,
she had been let go from her job. She had
told her husband that she had gotten a higher paying
job and she was working at it.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
But she might didn't work for one day. You would
be like, what's.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Going on immediately, like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Sean, she might didn't get a paycheck in the mail
or drek pozi, you'd be on top of that.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
They talk about it in this cut article that I
was referencing. They go deep deeper into this relationship and
their financial problems. So Sean worked at he like changed
oil at a auto place, one of those you know,
like probably fast places and whatever it's called quick lube
or whatever. You know what I'm talking about. But anyway,

(35:03):
Kendra was supposedly the breadwinner because she had this IT background.
But I'm thinking, how were they even managing how First
of all, she had three cell phones? How is she
paying for three cell phones?

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Well? The thing the thing isn't his job. The thing
is if they're dependent on the two, if they're two
income family and she only has one, like, you'd question
even more if finances are an issue.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
I don't know why he didn't question it more. I
don't know why he didn't ask to look at things.
I don't know why he couldn't pull up bank records
or ask for something that showed him her work deposits
being made. I tell you you you have a job.
I'm on the case. I am on the case. I
want to see the checks. I want to see the deposits.
I want to know exactly how much money you're making
and bringing home. I don't understand this whole well. Kendra

(35:48):
has a job and she's taking care of it. However,
we've been evicted four times in the past year, and
I lost all my tools because we didn't pay the
storage fee. And I mean, he just seemed to I
think maybe he was just checked out in that marriage.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Is this their only child?

Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, they only have the one daughter. When Shawn comes
up and the police tell him, not only does he
learn that his wife has been bullying his daughter, but
he also learns that she hasn't been working for a
year and she got fired and she's been lying about everything,
and he says something to the cop. I don't remember
the exact thing, but when they tell him that she's
the one that's been cyber bullying the daughter. He says
something to the effect of are you going to arrest her?

(36:27):
And and the way he said it made me think
he wanted her to be arrested. Like the way he
asked was like, so you're gonna arrest her, right? And
I just thought that that was interesting. I don't remember
exactly what he said, but the sentiment was like, so,
so you're here to take her away, right? Right? So anyway,
Sean walks into the house and he's livid, obviously, and

(36:50):
he's telling Kendor she needs to get out, she has
to take her stuff and go, and he tells her
to call her parents and have her parents come get her.
And he says, I can't do this right now, to
talk about it in front.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Of the way. So they said no, we're not going
to arrest her, and then he goes in and kicked
her out.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if they said no
where yes at.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
That moment, Well, they didn't arrest her.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
They didn't arrest her because they get up.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
He says, go go a little with your parents.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
No he does. He walks in and he says, I
don't want to be around you, and you have to
leave and you've been lying and you're not working, and
I thought you were working. He's more really, honestly, the
questioning of his wife is more about the jobs and
not working as opposed to the cyber bullying. So I
saw a lot of people making comments on Reddit about
how they didn't like that he.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Was more focused on our outcome and.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
That she wasn't working and she'd been lying about having
a job as opposed to what she'd been doing to
their daughter.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Well, maybe it's just more like like you're this fake
person in this household overall right with your job and
the way you're you're hiding and pinging my daughter or whatever.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
It is, right, But I did I did think that
the way he handled it was mature because he did say,
this is going to escalate and I don't want it to.
So you need to call your parents and have your
parents come and get you, and you need to go somewhere.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah we need to eliminate. Yeah, we need to take
you out of this equation.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
And I felt like that was a mature, safe way
for him.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
To handle it, handle it at that moment and.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
To be away from her. Also, they don't say in
this documentary or not whether they ended up divorced, because
I'm like, surely he divorced her after this, right, And
I couldn't find a lot.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
You asked me to look it up. I remember that.
Yeah at least, No, you didn't ask me to look up.
You just kept walking around the house forever wondering how
that if they're married or not. So I was like,
I'll just look it up.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Finally, No, I did search, and I did finally.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, what do you find?

Speaker 1 (38:36):
I found articles that confirmed that he did divorce her
and he got full custody of Lauren, so right.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
I mean their financial statements was just a big zero.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah, I mean there's no money to divide up, so right.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
No, no house apparently, no tools, nothing.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
No, his truck got repossessed too, or his car whatever
it is that he drove was repossessed as well.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
So yeah, he's good to get rid of her.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
My question to you, as a dad, if you found
out that, let's say Annabel went through two years of
cyber bowling, because she's the same I found out it
was you, and then you found out it was me.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
I'd have the same thought. Are you going to arrest her? Really? Please?
Take this woman away?

Speaker 1 (39:18):
From us, I assume you would divorce me. Yeah, of course,
Oh oh, you didn't even have to think about it.
It's not even like a let me just hear her
side of it.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Well, the first those wouldn't be the first thoughts. My
first thoughts would be my daughter, what is going on?
Why are you doing this? You know, like why?

Speaker 1 (39:34):
It would probably be the big question, right, which we
will get into because I think it's important to discuss
the why.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Oh do we have an answer?

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Well, I think there's a lot of different theories. So
what was Kendra's reasoning for doing this? So per her
interview in the Netflix documentary, You know, I think I've
seen other people that didn't like that the documentary gave
her a voice, But I thought that that was that
was good. I mean, you already know she's a mom.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
It's really she's already in jail, she goes.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
To prison, she gets nineteen months in prison.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Yeah, that's it. But you already know by the end
of the documentary, what a horrible, horrible I can't even
think about it.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
That's perfect.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
So the fact that the documentary maker allowed her to
come in and tell her own story, regardless of whether
you like what she says or not. It makes for
good TV for this woman to decay.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
I wouldn't want to pick her brain and know what
was going on. So told me they do that all
the time. They always interviewed criminals, right.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
I think a lot of people found her so repulsive
and so discussing that they felt like she shouldn't have
even been given a platform to even try sensing.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
She also require like no phone cell phone usage for
like twenty years or something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Kindred told detectives that she did not send the original
batch of messages that the kids received back in October
of twenty twenty, but rather she just fed off of
it and began to send them herself in September of
twenty twenty one. She says she got caught up in
sending the messages and that it just continued. Kindra claimed
to have started her own texting campaign to try to
catch who was allegedly harassing her daughter in the first place.

(41:15):
Well that's an excuse. It's basically like, remember those first
round of messages that came through, But she's like, oh,
I started harassing her and sending messages with the second
round because I was trying to you know, figure out
who it was, like someone would reveal themselves or something.
I mean, it doesn't really make sense.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
It'd be like if there's five thousand messages that she
sent her daughter and she's like, hey, but those four
I didn't send. It's like, well, who cares? Right, damage
is done.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
She claims. I was sending messages in the hopes that
they might send something back, saying is this so and so?
She says in the series, I started with the thought
we need some answers, and then it just kept going. Then,
Kendra said the trauma that she experienced as a teen
fueled her desire to protect her daughter from harm at
all costs. She claims allegedly when she was seventeen that
she was and as my daughter was hitting those teenage years,

(42:02):
I got scared, very scared. I didn't want her to
go through that process that I did, and I think
that really led me to not knowing how to handle things.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Now, you know, not buying it.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
I'm not buying it either. I feel like that's just
some retro actions. Has turned it back on to her
type of.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Exp I wanted to be a good mom and I was,
you know, I had trauma and I just wanted to
be a good mom and I didn't know how to
do it. Now she's turning it back on her.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
You know. I thought it was really a brilliant comparison
that the principle made when he said it's Munchausen by
computer or whatever. He said, Munchausen by internet. And if
you think about Munchausen syndrome, if you don't know what
it is, it's basically the root of the Gypsy Rose
Blanchard case. It was the mom that was pretending that

(42:47):
her daughter was sick and the reasoning for her doing it.
I don't think the attention was to get attention. It
was to get money.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Intention. It could be attention to money, feelings, time, recognition,
or you know, recognition like you're a great mom, you're
taking care of this sick child.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Right. So that's called Munchausen by proxy. It actually has
a different name now, but at that time it's Munchausen
by proxy because the Munchausen is when you pretend yourself
to be sick for attention.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
I think that it's like fictitious disorder or something.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
But Munchausen by proxy is when you pretend someone close
to you like a daughter in this case is sick,
and then you feed off of that because you get attention.
And I don't know if that's I think it Munchausen
by proxy sounds exactly like what Kendrick's doing, because she's
not she's not making her daughter sick, but she is.

(43:39):
She's stressing her daughter out.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Well, she's making her daughter a victim of something. Yeah,
and then everyone.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Has and then everybody's rallying around her and giving them
attention and all these things. The behavior often feeds on itself,
becoming addictive or compulsive, according to patients. Clearly Kendra was
addicted to this. I mean, there's no doubt in my
mind that whatever she's.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Told the job she was doing this twenty four securs well.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
I think she lost the job before she started doing it,
or maybe she lost the job because she was doing it.
I don't know of the exact timeline there, but she
clearly didn't have a job, so she had all day
to send these messages, to think about what she was
going to say, to follow these kids around, to be
in the school parking lot, to coach, all these different things,
so that she's highly involved in the school and all

(44:21):
these kids. So these ruses are easy to do on
the Internet. We were talking about this last night when
I said they've now they've said that now there's a
Munchausen by Internet now that they use that term because
now with the digital age, it's easy to get attention
sympathy by pretending.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Going into a chat room or something, and we're creating
a website saying I'm sick and go fund me and
all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Right, Like, if anybody's watched Coamanda, that's another one, if
you know anything about that. That's a girl that fakes cancer,
sets up a website and goes to great links to
con people into thinking she has cancer, and then she
takes hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. So I
don't know. I mean, it's it's interesting because they do
talk about Kendra's personality a lot. They interview her cousin

(45:08):
and then some of the other moms, and they talk
about how she had this innate need all the time
to be the center of attention, like she was always
dancing in front of cameras and always talking about her
daughter and always being everywhere. And so I don't know,
I think she suffered from something that made her feel
like she had to have all this attention all the time.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
It was the daughter doing now. Was there an update
like daughter and father?

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah, what I've read is Lauren's doing well. There's actually
if you watch the documentary phone number, she has a
new phone number now, a new phone. She's with her dad.
They have a very close bond. They do hunting and
sports and all this stuff together. He seems like a
great dad. I have to give that guy a lot
of credit.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
They probably can now build a relationship that they couldn't before.
It's difficult to do before.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Now, when you watch the documentary, there is Lauren when
she has on Pink that was filmed about two years before.
So this is there's Lauren and a gray hoodie. That's
when she's like eighteen. So there's two different versions of
Lauren in the documentary. And when you see the Lauren
when she's interviewed in Pink, she's very meek, very timid.

(46:12):
She doesn't have a big, strong personality. She still claims
to love her mom and wants to see her mom
and wants to be around her mom. And it doesn't
really make.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
It anything fast.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
They don't really say that what the time frame is.
They don't give that away. But when they show Lauren
and like the gray hoodie, that's the Lauren that's the
most today, and that seems to be the Lauren that
looks to me as if she's processed through it. She
understands what her mom did, she understands how horrific it was.
She's pulled away from her, she hasn't seen her. She

(46:43):
says that she's kind of ready to see her when
the time is right, but that's not now. So she
seems to be more I don't know, mature about yeah,
and understanding more of like how horrible her mother was
and what she did to her. Another reason that people
think it's impressive that possibly Kendrew did this was because

(47:05):
she was actually obsessed with Owen. So through the Netflix documentary,
it doesn't dive much into this theory, and that's probably
because in order to get people to participate in the
documentary and to give interviews, they probably don't dive into
things that people are uncomfortable talking about. But the Cut
article proves that many signs lead to this, and the

(47:26):
McKinney family believes this story to be true too. After
Lauren started dating Owen, Kendre would come along too. At
every opportunity, she would ask them to wrap their arms
around each other for photos and she would turn them
into presence for Owen. Kendra signed up to coach Owen's
track team. I thought that was odd, not her daughter's track.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
I figure she just wanted to keep alling around so
she could have something to harass her daughter about.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
I think she was obsessed with Owen.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
She's probably well, she has a nut anyway, who cares?
Put her in jail? Lock her up.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
At a volleyball match in August of twenty twenty one,
Owen and Lauren sat apart from each other. Their relationship
was extremely strained at this time due to the cyber bullying,
and Lauren started getting text from her mother, who could
see them across the gym, not sitting together. And this
is what she said. This is the text messages. Sit
next to him, answer me, come here now. I'm pissed.

(48:15):
Move your ass now now, I am fuming, pissed off.
This is freaking ridiculous. Answer me and move your ass.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Like next to Owen. Yeah geez.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
As the cyber bully, Kendra sent sexually explicit text messages
regarding Owen. He wants sex BJ's and making out. He
doesn't want your sorry ass. It is obvious he wants me.
His attention is constantly on me. Not sure what he
told you, but he's coming to the Halloween party and
we are both DTF. You know what DTF is?

Speaker 2 (48:46):
No, yeah, I think so. Do you have fun? Yes?

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Down to have fun? And as the cyber bully, Kendra
harassed Owen's girlfriend that he was seeing after he and
Lauren broke up. I think you know, you can break
it down all day long at the end of the day.
I don't know the real reasons. It probably was to
get attention. It probably was some type of munchause and
syndrome which would drive Lauren closer to her mom because

(49:13):
she's being cyberbullied. I think Kendra was obsessed with Owen.
There might be some kind of weird thing there. I mean,
that's not unheard.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
None of those theories mitigate, right, the criminality and the immorality.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Of what she did exactly, none of it. Just before
we end this episode, because we've been talking, I could
talk forever about this. I could just sit here and
analyze Kendra all day long. But there are some other
points that I wanted to just ask or just discuss.
You know, she was only charged with two counts of
stalking a minor and two counts of communicating with another

(49:48):
to commit a crime.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Why not abuse or something?

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Then she ultimately cut a deal and pleaded guilty to
two counts of stalking a minor in exchange for the
other charges being dropped. She was sentenced in April of
twenty twenty three to a minimum of nineteen months in jail.
My question is, and I'm not I don't know the answer,
but I don't understand why she wasn't charged with child abuse.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
That's yeah, that's what I was wondering.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
I mean, I went to Michigan's statue for child abuse,
and I mean a person is guilty of child abuse
if you know they cause serious physical or mental harms.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Was a child or did she plead?

Speaker 1 (50:22):
She pleaded, and everybody went to her sentencing, but she no,
she was never initially charged with child abuse. I'm saying
the DA and the case like never charged her with
child abuse. And I don't understand that other than maybe
he was just trying to be sympathetic to a mom
and daughter, or.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Maybe before the charges were oppressed, they they had discussions
and it was.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Yeah, I mean she did. She isn't. She did go
to therapy, and she did take parenting classes.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Over good for her. Yes, I'm sure she's turned a
new lead, right.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
I'm sure maybe that was part of some initial conversations.
You know, I don't know that she would do those things.
So while kend Her was in prison, she was constantly
in contact with her daughter, trying to continue their relationship
like normal. During that time that she's in prison. Kendra
also wrote back to Lauren. Her name's Lauren Smiley. She's
the one that wrote this article for The Cut. And

(51:13):
from the article, Kendra thanked me for seeking her side
of the story and said she'd be ready to talk
after her release. But then she never replied again. However,
she did send an email and this is what the
email said. I found this email interesting because I felt like, again,
it's just typical Kendra. She says to this is a
person that wrote the Cut article. I do ask that

(51:34):
you truly think about the kids that are involved in
this situation, including my daughter, who is trying to move
forward and has a bright future ahead of herself. These
stories are doing additional harm to her I can handle
her powerful right, I can handle the pain, but she
cannot and does not deserve it. She is moving forward
with life and doesn't deserve to be put in the

(51:54):
spotlight anymore or having people thinking her mom is a villain,
as that is very hard ment and emotionally for her.
So I don't know. I've read that email and I
was just like, are you kidding me again? It's just
what a narcissist. Kendra was released on parole and is
on supervise, released until February eighth of twenty twenty six.

(52:17):
We do know that Shawn divorced her and receive full
custody of Lauren, and Kendra is living with her parents
near Detroit and reportedly has even less contact with her
daughter than when she was in prison. I think that
has a lot to do with what I said about Lauren,
where I feel like she's now matured and has maybe
a better grasp of the actions that her mom took.

(52:39):
Doesn't want anything to do with her. But we'll see,
we'll see what happens. I don't know. I don't know
how you ever repair a relationship like that.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
I would say, you don't.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
I mean, i'd hate for a mother and a daughter
not to have a relationship, but in a situation like that,
I don't know if a daughter could ever have a normal, functioning,
healthy relationship with the mother after something like that. Yeah,
and the text messaging went on for so long.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
Oh yeah, it would have gone on for the rest
of her life probably, and was so methodical and so
thought out first degree, right, I mean it's not you
just can't not like, oh.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
I got caught up, right, or oh I was initially
trying to help and then it turned into this. It
was just it was just bad from the beginning, and
there's no good reason for her to have done what
she did. None.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
This is just one last little thing that I learned
from the cut article that they didn't put in the documentary,
which I find interesting. So I feel like we'll just
end the episode with this. At the Wilson's last Halloween party, now,
remember the Wilson's is Chloe Wilson, the girl that she
was trying to frame. It's her parents that have this
annual Halloween party every year. The mom, Tammy, dressed a

(53:54):
scarecrow in a prison jumpsuit and had a mask of
Kindra's mugshot on it with cell Phones club in its
gnarled hands. At one point, she pondered gathering friends and
beale for a big watch party of the documentary. Then
she changed her mind. Maybe it would be too emotional
to relive this whole thing again. Maybe best, she said,
to just watch it as a family.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Yeah, so there you go. That is the saga of
Kendra Lacari and the Catfish Mom.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
So she will not be nominated for Mother of the Year.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
No, she's not going to get that nomination. But anyway,
thank you guys so much for listening. Again, if you
have any other cases that you would like us to
dive into, I'm thinking that since we're going to do weekly,
I'd like to do the Delphi murders, So if you
have any thoughts on that, please let me know because
I'm not sure if they have the right man, and
I'd love to dive into that deeper and discuss that
with all of you, So let me know your thoughts

(54:46):
on that, And thanks so much for listening.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Thank you,