@GaryAndShannon - #TrueCrimeTuesday

#TrueCrimeTuesday – “Unknown Number” and Munchausen's by internet

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is time for True Crime Tuesday. The story is true?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Sound true? No, it sounds made up. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Gary and Shannon present True Crime.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Stephanie Ledecker is one of the hosts of True Crime
Tonight and has a particular specialty in terms of why
it is that we've invited her to come along on
a Tuesday for this journey, and this specific journey is
about the new Netflix documentary called Unknown Number.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
This is part of the trailer from that show.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
A high school girl in Michigan was cyberbully for more
than a year, and who turned out to be the
suspect shocked everyone.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
It was so bad to the point where I didn't
want to even go to swing more.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
It was relentless. I mean one in the morning, three
in the morning, I would question how I thought about myself.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
There's some sick messages.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
They were enough to make a fifty three year old
man blush.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
It's crazy, I'm having a phone and become the worst
thing that happened to me.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Things are about to get so much worse, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
So to introduce you to kind of the main characters
early on, it's Ashley and Owen started, you know a
boyfriend girlfriend when they were kind of like twelve, thirteen,
fourteen years old, something like that, very small town in Michigan.
And during their relationship, when they get into high school,
the group text that they were in started receiving text

(01:31):
messages from an unknown number, hence the name of the documentar.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, good title, good title.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
They really reached far for that one.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
But the cyberbully, whoever it was, was picking specifically on
Ashley's insecurities. I'm talking about her body. She was skinny,
she had a flat butt, she was ugly, nobody liked her,
Owen didn't like her, Owen wants to break up with her. Whoever,

(02:00):
this whoever, this cyberbully was was saying things like Owen
wants me, I'll do things with Owen that you won't
do sexually, that sort of stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
And by the way, Lauren and the girlfriend at the time,
she was thirteen years old when she and Owen first
developed their relationships, so they're really young.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
It's a okay. So some of those pictures, by the way,
were darling. I mean, these two kids together, they kind
of looked like brother and sister early on.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
And it's like puppy love, right, they're each other's best friends,
they grew up together.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
They're happy. It's young, happy, innocent love.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
The problem is they can't figure out who's doing this,
and it continues. There was a time it went on
for a while, the kids ignored it. Basically, they got
their parents involved. The kids ignored it, and it stopped.
But about a year later everything picked back up again.
The same kind of messages, the same you know, trying

(02:59):
to drive away edge between between the boyfriend girlfriend, to
try to spur some sort of conflict between them. And
the thing is they were sharing the information with each other,
so it's not like she was saying to him, why
are you doing this?

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Or do you know who this is?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
They were trying to figure out who it was because
they're both receiving the messages for the moment exactly.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
And again, when we say messages, they're like up to
fifty texts a day specifically being aimed towards the girlfriend Lauren,
and yeah, again very hideous, highly sexualized things. And it
seemed as though it must be somebody who was sweet
for Owen, because yeah, it looked like the intention of

(03:41):
this unknown caller was to split them up.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
They asked their friends to help out also, which I
thought was interesting because Lauren and Owen would the friends
had kind of developed this thing where they're trying to
figure out who it was. They would say specific keywords
in front of specific people to see those keywords would
show up in those text messages they could narrow down
who it was.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
And by the way, remember this is a very small town.
The population at that time I believe was like three
hundred plus people, so it is one of those unique
places where everybody does sort of know everybody. So to
imagine that you're in school and a fellow classmate that
you may have grown up with and known your whole life.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Is targeting you is really scary stuff.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
So yeah, the kids get involved and they're trying to
almost lure in this air quote stalker online.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Right.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
So obviously, because it rises to the level of a
Netflix documentary, there is a twist.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Twist might not be the right word.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
There is a surprise that comes along as they get
into this investigation. But the parents are involved, the principles involved,
the superintendent of schools are involved, the sheriff gets involved
in this investigation, and then they pull in the FBI,
and the FBI is able to do some of the
information for the technology forensics that were unavailable to the

(05:03):
local cops. We're talking today specifically about this new Netflix
show called Unknown Number A high School the high School
Catfish is the subtitle, if you will. And again, the
two main characters right now are Lauren and Owen, boyfriend girlfriend,
and they start receiving these messages that are targeting Lauren

(05:26):
more so using her nickname, referring to things she wears
at school, stuff like the points that she would score
in a basketball game.

Speaker 4 (05:36):
Somebody knew very close, it seemed like, or who was
obsessed with her and their relationship.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
It seemed so.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
The parents, obviously, Lauren and Owen's parents are concerned. They
go to the school they are involved. At one point,
Owen basically turns his phone over to his parents and
they're going through and reading these messages that are coming in,
like you said, thirty forty fifty times a day, and
they're trying to read into them whatever they can or

(06:04):
suss out of them, any small detail of the language,
of the timing of anything. There was even a point
where the principal in the high school was having Lauren
text him whenever she would get one of these random messages,
these unknown messages, and he would then go back and
cross reference video surveillance from inside the school to see

(06:27):
who was on their phone in those moments before the
message was sent.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
And can you imagine again, both sets of parents are
now fully invested. Everybody in the town has invested. The
parents are now teaming up together, becoming buds to try
to solve this. And you could imagine for little Owen
having to hand his phone over to mom. You know,
that's a lot of trust in that. And again, these
messages were racy and x X They're just they were

(06:54):
very sexual.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
So at one point I think I within in the
first probably ten or fifteen minutes of this hour and
a half documentary, my wife said, just take.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
The phone away.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
I had that same thought, take the phone away. It's
like a loaded gun.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
At this point, because it was really affecting their mental health.
The kids were really withdrawing. You know, Young Lauren was
nervous and fearful and starting to feel very badly about herself.
She's being criticized again and again and again and again
and again by this alleged online stalker.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
And again it starts to take a toll.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
It took a toll on the relationship.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
They broke up because they couldn't do it, which I
could absolutely understand. And if you're a parent, you'd be
so frustrated by this because there's no answer to whatever
was going on. Now, it got a little weird when Owen,
after this had been going on for a year and
a half or two years, he moved on and he
actually got another girlfriend or started dating a girl better

(07:53):
way to put it, in some other town. But then
that girlfriend in the other town he started getting messages
from this unknown number exactly, which will basically like stay
away from knowing. It's okay, Well, here we go. Let's
let's let's peel back to curtain here for just a second. Yeah,
because this will be the big spoiler alert. And again

(08:15):
I apologize if anybody hasn't seen it yet, it's still
worth watching.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Once I tell you who did this.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
The FBI gets involved because the local cops can't find
the information that they need. They've downloaded multiple phones, they're
trying to find out who's who's responsible for these unknown numbers,
et cetera. They've interviewed everybody in the school. When the
FBI gets involved, they're able to backtrack some of the
phone numbers, which are generated by a random number generator

(08:44):
app which hides who you are, right, They trace that
back to a couple of Verizon IP addresses and then
cross reference basically everybody that's involved in this case to
come up with.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
The phone number of Lauren's mother.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
The mother, her actual mother who has been on the
front lines of seeing her daughter in so much anguish
and the destruction that it was causing on both lives,
and by the way, is participating as a consoler, like
she's the one caring for her daughter, yet she's the
one sending these texts.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Dundunton, the phone call came from within the house.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
The house, So when you see that, it's like, wait
a minute. The most explicit, X rated, disgusting things that
this unknown number was saying about she was gonna do
with the boyfriend.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Hmmm, what was the girl's mom?

Speaker 4 (09:47):
Was the creepy, disgusting mom. And by the way, just
to add to that, not only was it disgusting and
sexual in tone and just really graphic, it also told
Lauren this young girl who was suffered to kill herself
right multiple times, So imagine you're a young girl You're
getting hit after hit after hit after hit. You have

(10:08):
a flat butt, criticized for your looks, your boyfriend and
you break up because of this. You're being told to
literally commit suicide. Imagine that. And then it turns down
it's this wacka doo mom.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
So that leads us into probably the last twenty minutes
or so of this documentary, where you now know that
she's nuts, that mom is off a rocker, I mean,
just gone and calm through all of it. It raises
a lot of questions right away, number one. And you
may have some experience with this, considering what you've done
in terms of production of behind the scenes on some

(10:42):
of documentaries like this is you didn't if you think
back to the first hour of the show and you think,
why did this woman, knowing that she was going to
be unveiled as the perpetrator of this crime, why would
she sit for these interviews?

Speaker 4 (11:00):
Why in the world would she sit with these interviews.
So that's a great question, and it's unanswerable. I've never
been in a situation really when the perpetrator was also
featured alongside the victims, let alone a mother daughter combination.
I mean, this woman's obviously very unwell. There's this extraordinary
bodycam footage where you see police basically busting mom live

(11:23):
and then kind of telling the daughter, hey, look know
we figured out who did it. Surprise, it's your mom,
And you know her daughter had such a blank, disassociated look,
and it was terrifying, really, and she only ended up
doing eighteen years eighteen months. I think eighteen years sounds better, honestly, Like,
this is serious stuff and it's shocking, and I felt

(11:46):
like I wanted to know more, and I felt like
Mom should have been held at the carpet a little
bit more too. If you're going to be in a
documentary and talk about something so graphic, at least to
own up to it and tell me where to go
from here.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
She still seemed like she was a full denial of it.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Yeah, that raised a lot of questions at the end
of At the end, be mad mad is a great
way to put it, especially as a parent. And by
the way, the husband, at least, or at least Lauren's father,
he was rightfully outraged by the actions of the mother

(12:22):
and was very I thought it was a very telling
moment where he's confronting her he'd been called basically to
pick up Lauren because they're going to take the mom
to jail, and he basically said, you need to get
out of here now because if these cops leave, I
don't know what's gonna happen, and I'm gonna we're both
gonna end up in trouble.

Speaker 4 (12:41):
We're both gonna end up in jail, and can you imagine.
And again, she had been the consoler this entire time.
And by the way, there was also that family in
the town who had also been targeted because they started thinking, oh,
it must be this classic Chloe and Chloe went through it,
and Chloe's parents went through it, and it just seems
like an impossible one to believe. But apparently they're calling

(13:03):
this now. Munchausen's online is sort of this disorder or
you know, thing that is.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Basically a disease.

Speaker 4 (13:13):
I guess that oftentimes caregivers I shouldn't say oftentimes, it's
actually very rare, thank goodness. But in this case, Mom
is inflicting the pain onto her child and then receiving
the praise of being such a devoted hero Mom.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Continuing our True Crime Tuesday conversation about this Netflix episode,
Netflix documentary called Unknown Number The High School Catfish, and
again the reveal was Mom was texting and cyber bullying
her own daughter and for years, for years, and got

(13:51):
so far as not just you know, talking about her
physical appearance or how whether her boyfriend liked her or not.
She went on to tell her own order to kill
herself now.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
And then would console her after and.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Would console her afterwards.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
And when asked about that by the producers of the documentary,
they they kind of tiptoed around it. They didn't put
a lot of pressure on her, but basically said, how
did you know she wouldn't And Mom said, well, I've
you know, I've had conversations with her and I and
I thought, or she said, she was confident that that's
not where Lauren was. You know that she wouldn't ever

(14:27):
hurt herself like that. And I thought, how could you
possibly as a parent, come anywhere close to taking that gamble?

Speaker 4 (14:34):
What and why are we taking the word of a
woman who's clearly very off right. This is an actual thing.
She did something that I think is downright criminal. I
think eighteen months is a cake walk that seems like
a traffic you know, violation compared to telling her own
daughter to harm herself, kill herself at that point. And

(14:55):
by the way, Mom it seemed like at least was
also a little sweet on Owen, because we later find
out that Mom was like always going to Owen's games.
Oh right, even when they were broken up, she would
still be the mom that showed up, can you imagine?

Speaker 2 (15:08):
So how weird is that?

Speaker 4 (15:10):
So she was sort of stalking and maybe sweet for
this young boy. So that's also disgusting and all obviously
sending these horrible things to her daughter. This is a
very uh, this is a very deranged woman, and I
don't think she should be free.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
The Munchausen by proxy syndrome or Munchausen syndrome by proxy
gypsy Rose Blanchard was probably one of the more current
or more recent examples of that, and she's had TV
shows and documentaries about that. Now they officially call Munchausen
syndrome by proxy. They call it a factitious disorder imposed
on another. This would obviously fall under a category, whether

(15:51):
it's that specifically or something like that, because again, she
was imposing this hardship on her daughter so that then
she could come in as the hero, as the consoler
and get all the credit in the world for being
the one who helped champion the you.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Know, the.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
School board and the law enforcement to help find the perpetrator.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
In all this, she makes best buds with the other
parents of Owen and is really again getting a lot
of you know, high fives for being so devoted. You know,
you bring up Gypsy Rose Blanchert. Famously, her mother, Detie Blanchert,
you know, put her in a wheelchair, shaped her head,
made her undergo many many surgeries, and listen, you know,

(16:36):
Gypsy Rose was living like a very sick little girl
when in fact she was perfectly healthy. Mom causing this
and then also mom being the hero six stuff. I
just felt like she should have been. I was screaming
at the TV. I was literally screaming at the TV.
And we do murder stuff all day. I feel like Kendra,
mom got a cake walk of a deal, and that

(17:00):
little Lauren.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Deserves better and she should be locked away.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
And I hope we're not glorifying her by giving her
more of a stage it.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
Was, you know, and then for her to fall back
on her own childhood trauma as one of the things
Dave it and one of the other moms in the
show did say basically that she's like, I understand childhood trauma,
and I get why it could, you know, cause some
conflict later in life, but to somehow use that as
an excuse, an excuse for imposing this kind of hardship

(17:29):
on your own teenage daughter. Listen, being a teenage girl,
I've never been one, but I assume is probably already brutal.
You don't need mom coming down on you from behind
the eight ball.

Speaker 4 (17:39):
Over there, from behind the eight ball, trying to get
sneaky with your boyfriend. And also all the pictures she
was always around so much. She seems like she just
seems plain off her rocker, And it bums me out
because again, I think eighteen months does not sound like
enough time. Even just based on what I saw in
her interview, it didn't seem like she had a ton

(17:59):
of ac on ability. She was still making excuses for herself.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
In fact, she was like, oh what you guys, everybody
does something illegal? Wait? Is that the takeaway from all
the all.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
The therapy that you received in your eighteen months behind bars?
I say justice for Lauren and throw away the key
on Kendra.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Oh and band, cell phones in schools period.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
The end here, I mean it's like everybody has fomo.
So I would have been the worst as a teenager
with a phone. It would have, you know, honestly, probably
been the death of me. So like, I get it.
But if everybody doesn't have it, you know, at least
there's no fomo.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, good point.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
Stephanie Leidecker Katie Studios of course, one of the hosts
of True Crime Tonight. You can hear Tonight throughout the
land when it comes to the different iheartstations that the air
of the show live, but you can also catch tonight's
episode after the show and then all the past episodes
as well. Just True Crime Tonight is how you search
for it on the iHeart app for the podcast. Thank
you so much for this so much fun.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, please
tune in to True Crime Tonight. I have the best
co hosts, Courtney Armstrong and Body move in and it's
a call in show, so we would love to hear
from you as well.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Eight eight eight three one crime.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Eight eight three one crime. Yes, got it is that?
What's tattooed on your wrist right there?

Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yeah, it's not to report a crime. No, I tattooed
it on the front of my hands. It's not to
report a crime or to commit a crime, but it
is to just join the show.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Well again, thank you for that. It's been a great,
great morning and early afternoon.