Netflix's New Documentary, "Unknown Number: The High School Catfish", Might Have Identified The World's #1 Ranked Crazy Person (SPOILERS)
SPOILERS
WARNING
If you haven't watched this documentary, and you enjoy a good true crime "whodunit?" type of doc, I would recommend not reading any further. This documentary was everything I look for in a Netflix doc that you just kinda throw on, on a whim. It was jaw on the floor type stuff. And there's truly no way for me to blog about this without immediately spoiling the entire thing. So if you want to avoid spoilers, and watch this documentary as a mystery, DO NOT SCROLL PAST THIS LARGE PICTURE OF A MAN HOLDING A CATFISH IN 1979.
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What a documentary. What a crazy person. I ended up writing for way longer than I set out to (and I could have kept going). So I apologize for the length of this. But holy shit... of all the crazy depraved stories Netflix has done documentaries about... of all the lunatic human beings they've profiled... I think this lady might just be the craziest of them all.
The gist of the story is that a 14-year old high school girl started getting threatening text messages from a mystery person. All from one person using various unknown numbers. They were primarily about her boyfriend. They said that her boyfriend hated her. That he was actually in love with this mystery texter. Her boyfriend would receive these mystery texts as well. Eventually the texts escalated to telling the girl to kill herself. And that if she didn't kill herself, this mystery texter would do it for her. The texts got sexual. They were vile (see video below). This girl and her boyfriend were at times receiving hundreds of them a day. It was the talk of the town for almost 2 years. Cops were involved. Multiple different high school students were accused. Multiple sets of parents got wrapped up into it. Eventually the FBI got involved. In the end, when they finally got a warrant to look into these phone numbers... it turned out to be the girl's own mother the whole time.
Note: I don't get the take people have about "Netflix is trying to humanize these crazy people". In my mind, Netflix letting her explain herself only made the world further realize how terrible she is. Netflix simply gave her more rope to hang herself.
The documentary kept referring to this mom as a "catfish". Apparently I don't know what "catfishing" means. I thought catfishing involved stealing someone else's identity. Or at least assuming a fake one. This "unknown number" was specifically not identifying themselves. This mom did everything in her power to remain unknown as she harassed, terrified, threatened the life of, and tried to get her innocent 14-year old daughter to kill herself. It was all from behind a curtain. Maybe catfishing is a broader term than I realized. Maybe Netflix was intentionally using it to throw us off the scent. But I wouldn't call this mom who spent 2 years trying to ruin her daughter's life a "catfish". I'd call her something more like a terrorist.
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For the daughter's sake, I hate to be too overly aggressive about how abhorrent of a human being her mom is. For some reason, the daughter still wants to have a relationship with her. I'd imagine this girl is already having so much crazy said to her by people online. So many people telling her what she should or should not be doing. I feel kinda bad piling on in that regard.
But in a weird, twisted way… when the cops finally informed her that it was her own mom behind these texts, it almost seemed like the daughter was relieved. Which on some level I understand. She had spent the better part of 2 years thinking someone unknown was stalking her. That some mystery person knew every little detail of her life, was getting pictures from inside her house, and was actively threatening to "end her". To learn it was your own mom is SO MUCH MORE fucked up for SO MANY DIFFERENT reasons. But in a strange way, I bet there was a weight of "fearing for her life" that was lifted off her shoulders. She probably thought, "Oh thank god. It was just my batshit crazy, pathetically-desperate-for-attention mom this whole time."
In reality, that probably should have scared her even more. But the enemy you know is always better than the one you don't. It was probably a little comforting to know there wasn't some strange man standing over her bed with a knife watching her sleep every night. And I have to imagine the daughter already knew her mom was crazy to some degree. If she didn't already have an inkling that the texts were coming from her, when the cops finally confirmed it, I'm sure there were A LOT of things that suddenly made sense. Don't get me wrong. None of that explains why she's so forgiving. But that relationship is something she's going to have to deal with for the rest of her life. I'm not sure there's enough therapy in the world for that.
It's sad that this family even sat down with Netflix in the first place. They couldn't have wanted to do that, right? I mean, obviously the mom did. She's a full-blown sociopath + narcissist + all the crazy self-centered mental illnesses a person can have wrapped into one. The mom probably LOVED this attention. But that story sure doesn't seem like something the father and daughter would be dying for the world to know about. That documentary didn't strike me as a, "We really just wanted to tell our story" type of thing. So I have to suspect they did it for money. If you watched the doc, you know their family has financial problems (because of the mom). I at least hope Netflix paid them well.
The dad of the family is a total saint. He might be an idiot. Clearly he's very gullible. His wife was constantly lying to him. She was unemployed the whole time without him knowing. He let her handle all of the family finances (and seemingly never looked at them himself). And oh yeah… she "may have" burned down their house for insurance money. That last part was only alleged by her sister, but I know what I believe…
Still… as oblivious as that dad may have been, when the cops finally showed up to their house to break the news, I thought the way he handled things with their daughter in the room was pretty admirable. He seems like a very loving (albeit maybe kinda dumb) father.
The minute the documentary dropped their big reveal, and we learned it was the mom the whole time, it all became so apparent how out of her mind she truly was. You quickly realized that this woman was never going to give us anything close a satisfying explanation for what she did. She was never going to give a satisfying admission guilt. She actually tried to claim that the original texts didn't come from her. That she simply "took on the persona" of this mystery texter, then told her daughter that her boyfriend makes her cream and begged her to kill herself, because she thought that would somehow lead her to the real culprit…
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Perhaps the craziest part of the whole doc was when the mom was defending herself and tried to play the, "Who among us has never broken a law before?" card. She literally compared herself to a drunk driver. In her mind, people who have drove drunk are NO DIFFERENT than her. As soon as she started explaining herself, I thought, "Ohhhh I get it. This person is clinically insane. She's not capable of realizing how fucked up she is. She's not capable of putting words to this in a way that makes sense."
That's just the tip of the ice berg. I could go on about so much more. Like how it took the cops WAY too long to get a search warrant for the phone numbers. How the mom tried to use her past trauma as an excuse for her behavior. How Netflix clearly downplayed this mom's reputation as the town crazy person until the end of the documentary. How she was outwardly obsessed with her daughter's boyfriend, to the point that the boyfriend could tell she was in love with him. I'm not even fully convinced the dad and daughter didn't suspect more than they led on. Again… if you live with someone like that… you MUST see the signs of crazy on some level…
In the end, the mom pleaded guilty to 2 charges of stalking and spent only 19 months in prison. Which isn't nearly enough. She threatened to kill her daughter. She was sexually harassing her daughter. There was a point when she essentially tried to frame one of her daughter's teammates. She wreaked havoc on Beal City High School for nearly two years. For months, if not year long stretches, she completely dominated the cop's time. There's no telling how many times she lied to them. A couple stalking charges doesn't come close to describing what this lady put her daughter, her husband, and the entire community through. Just a truly despicable and crazy person. I'm not sure how her daughter could ever feel comfortable in the same room as her again.
Hell of a documentary though…