Unknown Caller.

 This blog contains a spoiler about the identity of the Unknown Number. I think everybody knows, but just in case....

                                               

Like many people, I sat and watched Unknown Number: The High School Catfish – A Chilling Dive into Digital Deceit. The Netflix documentary explores a disturbing case of cyberbullying in a small Michigan town, with a terrible sense of unease.

Lauryn Licari is a teenage girl who, along with her boyfriend Owen McKenny, became the target of relentless harassment via text messages from the ‘unknown caller’.

In October 2020, during preparation for a Halloween party, Lauryn and Owen start receiving strange texts. They are in the realm of; he’s going to split up with you, he’s with me now and other such statements that could be put down to teenage hormones and immaturity.

Then the messages escalate in frequency and intensity. Twelve months later the couple were receiving up to 50 texts a day, and they are now sexually explicit, manipulative and suggesting self-harm. The unknown caller knew times, dates, nicknames, events… even the basketball scores of the school team.

So, the sender was somebody close to them.

The documentary follows the investigation as Lauryn and Owen’s families start with the school, then the Sheriff’s Office and eventually the FBI. It was the FBI who traced the IP address behind the anonymous number.

It was Lauryn’s own mother, Kendra Licari.

It was a young criminology student who asked me to watch it, so we could discuss the case.

Like most people I had many, many questions.

The first question I had ‘was when Kendra was jailed, was she also given treatment?’  Her actions to her daughter were vile in the extreme, but they were also, I feel the actions of a deeply, deeply troubled soul. (I've read that she has been given counselling, and that her mental health issues were not explored in the documentary as fully as they could have been.)

The student was thinking about Munchausen’s by proxy.

I have only seen the documentary, which is a snapshot on what was a very complex situation, so it’d be unfair to comment.

But, as a writer, I like to think of the protagonist and the antagonist being on opposite sides of a fine line. In those circumstances, what would Person A do? What other pressures would have to be bought to bear for Person A to act as Kendra did?

Kendra gave a couple of reasons/ excuses as to why she did what she did, and why she did it for so long.

If we start swimming in the realms of fiction, how could a writer write a character and justify such behaviour to the reader. And make the reader believe that in those circumstances, who knows that I would do.

 

One story;

The youth and the long-term relationship of the daughter and her boyfriend. Thinking that through, I know of one woman who would be alive now if her mother had intercepted the relationship when it started at school and split them up. A teenager who is persistently warned that the boyfriend is no good? Warning her will only drive the couple further together. So, the unknown caller approach might be a painful and disturbing one, but it might work. The couple split up. Daughter escapes a lifetime of domestic violence; she escapes with her life.

( I’ll re-state here that this is my fictional brain talking, based on a case of my personal knowledge.  The young man in the documentary, was totally charming.)

 

Second Story

What life has mum had? What relationship did mum have with her own mother? Maybe mum wants to be a better mum without the tools and experience of what good motherhood is. Maybe she finds that causing a little friction between her young teenage daughter, and her daughter’s boyfriend, drives the daughter back into her mother’s arms. They have late night chats over cocoa, the mum takes the daughter's corner, defends her against the constant barrage of abusive texts. Mum becomes her daughter’s champion, her friend, the only one she can trust, maybe in a way that her own mother never did. If nobody ever came to defend her, mum might make sure that she can defend her daughter. If nothing happens that requires such defence, well she’ll just create it.

Third Story

Some trauma that the mum went through, that she wanted the daughter to avoid at all costs. Keeping her close by, keeping her a child, keeping her terrified of the big wild world.

 

The quote "In love we feel that we are greater than we know" is attributed to William Wordsworth. I think it is supposed to reflect that through love we can achieve a deeper understanding of yourself.

Or could it mean that love can blindside people into thinking that if their actions are done through love, they are  acceptable.

I have no real insight into why Kendra did what she did.

It’s a fascinating as a basis for discussion. But who are we to judge on a 90-minute documentary, filmed to be entertainment?

Rooting for the bad guy

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

All crime fiction has a protagonist and at least one antagonist. Quite often, the antagonist is the most interesting character. What makes them do the things they do? Sometimes our sympathy is with the bad guys at least to some extent. We don’t support their crimes, but we understand why they feel forced to commit them and wish there was a way out for them.

Deon Meyer is one of South Africa's top crime writers. I’m a big fan of his Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido thrillers, and it’s great news that his latest book, Leo, is now available in the US. Not only is it up to Deon’s usual standard, but this one won the prize for Best Adult Fiction at the South African Book Awards last year and was also SA Book of the Year. Publishers Weekly pigeon-holed it with his usual books, writing, “This intelligent page-turner confirms Meyer’s reputation as a master of the police procedural”.

In fact, Deon’s not so sure this is a police procedural, and at least half the book is from the viewpoints of the bad guys – characters engaged in two massive robberies. What’s more, we’re rooting for at least one of them, Chrissie Jaeger, a woman with a complicated past and unclear objectives, who is a key player in both heists.

Deon Meyer

In his piece What really defines the subgenres of crime? (https://crimereads.com/deon-meyer-leo/) Deon used a helpful AI system, Claude, and came to this conclusion:

“Leo probably is heist/caper fiction, amongst other things. But eventually, neither clever system Claude nor the vast amount of information I gathered during the interaction, changed my basic philosophy: focus on the story. Make it captivating. And let other people worry about its place on the ever-extending genre family tree.”

Fair enough.

In parallel, detectives Griessel and Cupido are trying to break what seems to be another case altogether. Deon loves parallel plots. He explains it like this:

“We all write the books we’d like to read, and I love books with lots of things going on. When I start writing a book and I get these ideas, I think: it will be cool if they connect. Each must be strong enough and have a convincing conclusion to be satisfying. You have to be very careful not to force it and lose credibility. But if it does happen, it can give an extra little thrill.”

It certainly happens in Leo. Chrissie and her partners discover a stash of money in a secure warehouse belonging to criminals involved in the South African state capture corruption, and they set out to steal it. It seems a victimless crime and a pretty safe one since no one can afford to involve the police. What could possibly go wrong?

Beautiful Stellenbosch mountains where much of Leo is set
Photo Deon Meyer

Some months later, Griessel and Cupido are investigating the death of a young woman who was biking in the mountains near Stellenbosch. It seems that her death wasn’t deliberate, but resulted from an attack by dogs belonging to a jogger who tried to cover it up. Then the jogger is killed by a professional hit team but no one knows why. His sister suspects she knows the answer, but wants to keep it to herself and two of her brother’s associates. As the murders mount, the loop closes, and Chrissie and her team see the chance of a heist much bigger even than the not-so-successful first one.

The escape plane. Or did it?
Photo Deon Meyer

One wants Crissie to get away with her share of the loot so that she can live her dream and retire to her small apartment in an Italian village and help a kind friend there start a restaurant. And she has two stray cats to support. Yes, it’s a crime and yes, people get hurt, but they are not nice people. Deon carefully constructs this ambivalence, leaving it to the reader to decide whether they want to see her caught or not. If you want to find out, you'll have to read the book.

Do you have a favorite antagonist? One you wanted to get away?

All the Countries, or Why Diversity Works

Sujata Massey 

With Jeff Siger, Annamaria Alfieri and Wendall Thomas, Arizona 2023

If you are reading this column, you could have found it at a number of spots. 

You might be on my author website or by Goodreads or Amazon pages; however the OG location for this column is the Murder is Everywhere blog, which is a collaborative writing project of currently ten mystery authors, with at least half a dozen former contributors, including the late author Leighton Gage, its founder. Since the blogsite’s origination in 2008, I’d been an admirer. I was admitted into the ranks in 2012 when I started my Perveen Mistry series and began filing dispatches about my research adventures in India and my more prosaic life in Baltimore, Maryland. To date, this blogging group has included writers with personal backgrounds, or story settings, on all continents except Antarctica. We’ve shared commentary in countries including France, Greece, England, Ghana, South Africa, Singapore, Botswana, Finland, New Zealand, Scotland, Japan, Italy, Spain, and more. 

What we do at Murder is Everywhere has been on my mind because of the recent American uproar against the idea of diversity. “DEI” is the acronym that brings together three goals: diversity, equity and inclusion. DEI probably started as workplace jargon, but based on 2023 and 2025 Supreme Court Decisions, and Trump polices, it’s become a red flag. Citing DEI has become a reason to outlaw various programs or fire people from positions of authority. 

With Cara Black, Caro Ramsey, and Stan Trollip in Florida, 2018

I’m sure there are people who might believe I’m DEI all the way: an immigrant who got a green card as a young child, part of a family group anchored by with a scientist father. But as the government saw it, this foreign professor father could do his research at an American university and further the nation's well-being. Ah, the old ideas about diversity's benefits! Today, I've heard more than 2600 people have lost jobs because of supposed connections to DEI: and hundreds of thousands more--many of them African American--because of elimination of so many federal jobs. 

I lost my Northumbrian accent growing up in America, and when it was time to start college, I had scholarship offers based on high test scores and a stack of essays and extracurricular activities. I yearned to leave the Midwest and wound up in Baltimore, Maryland, where I still live. I started as a freshman at a women’s liberal arts school, Goucher College, transferring to the exciting, co-educational Johns Hopkins University my junior year. In the mid-1980s, the undergraduate population at Hopkins was only 35 percent female and (I’m guessing) fewer than ten percent students of color (a term not yet invented)I remember a question of both admissions forms about whether I had a parent who’d graduated from the institution. Kids who could claim legacy status had a few extra points in their favor. 

We all believed that there were tricks to the admission process. 

My husband Tony and I met at Hopkins, and we still joke about being the scholarship kids who got in because of our underrepresented home states--Louisiana and Minnesota. College admission materials often included statistics about state and international backgrounds of students. It’s a policy that probably results in more people back in the faraway states learning about the school from the student’s family; and it also made the campus more vibrant. I treasured listening to music introduced by a friend from Brazil, and hearing the accents of my buddies from small-town Tennessee and Manhattan and New Jersey. We heard about life in Johannesburg from a South African student who was wary about returning. One downside was a lack of African American students from public school backgrounds. It wasn’t until after 2012 that Hopkins started a robust scholarship program for all qualifying students from Baltimore City Public Schools that still continues.

With my husband Tony in Greece, 2025 

I graduated to work at a daily newspaper in Baltimore. Journalism jobs are notoriously hard to get, and in those days, most editors were white men. I was hired at the Baltimore Evening Sun, the now defunct sibling afternoon paper that competed with the morning paper named the Baltimore Sun. Probably the competition was just a good-natured one between the reporters, since the money all went into the same pot. During my time, the Evening Sun had a particularly strong bench of Maryland-raised, Black reporters. Many of these friends had undergone the paper's  four-year, paid summer internship program offered to University of Maryland journalism students who hailed from the newspapers' circulation area. The program was clearly in the newspaper’s interest, because it meant developing strong young reporters who already knew their way around and had social connections giving them access to sources that an out-of-state reporter might take years to cultivate. 

My route to the Evening Sun also came through an informal internship meant for Baltimore college students during the school year. I loved the work doing general assignment stories for the city desk and felt warmly welcomed by the energetic young reporters. When the internship year ended, I jumped at the the chance to come in and help on Sundays with a reporting job done mostly by phone: contacting the police and fire department to tabulate the weekend’s tragedies; and news broke, speeding to the scene to report on it. Ironically, I interviewed for a full-time job at the Raleigh News&Observer where I mentioned my police reporting background. The editor told me: "We don't have women reporting on police stories because the cops don't like talking to them." Even though it wasn't my life ambition to be a police reporter, I took the editor's statement as a sign not to take the job they offered. Instead I took a job at the Evening Sun, the happiest workplace of my life.  

I am sharing these personal experiences as my own brush with what can happen when under-represented people are welcomed in. Bringing the idea to a higher level, we see that Google and Apple and Amazon exploded into success due to using smart and capable IT workers from around the world, along with American citizens. It's not right that H1b visa workers are often paid less than an American worker for the same job; but we also have to acknowledge that these salaries are more than in the home country, and fewer Americans pursue math and computer science than do students in China, India, Russia and Germany. This means: fewer qualified people.

Currently, America has a growing challenge of unemployment. The Pew Research Center finds that in the 25- to 34-year-old bracket, 47% of college degree holders are women, while 37% are men. 

The reasons for this seem to be varied. For example, we’d carefully saved for our son’s college education, but he wasn’t particularly interested in going and also had the bad fortune of starting freshman year in 2020, the pandemic year. He lasted three semesters and only decided to return to studies this year. But this time around, his motivation is strong, and his brain is a few years further down the road in terms of development. 

Slightly more females than males work at part-time jobs during high school; and they are often tasked with care of family members as well. Does having ability to manage multiple roles lead to better focus in college? A lot of studies on video game interest show that boys are more attached to this pastime than girls. And everybody I know seems to have a relative or friend whose son who doesn’t work at a job but matures into adulthood stuck in the basement gaming. Why would anyone want to live like this? Does long-term gaming alter the brain’s pleasure centers that make it harder to feel satisfied by studying, or undertaking complex intellectual tasks? 

In the past, teenagers had very different paths. Parents expected their sons to apprentice, enter trade school or university during a time that some daughters unfortunately had circumscribed choices for higher learning. It may sound radical, but I’ll argue that some boys and young men could benefit from diversity programs. They too can be supported as students, workers and human beings, and in this sphere get genuine connection with people who don’t look like them. 

As I said at the start of this essay, there are different places to arrive at the essays published by Murder is Everywhere. Platform diversity helps writers connect with readers, just as a diversity of workers supports the world. 

Paths, Pages and a Circle to Meow

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

We've been renovating our bedroom. At last. After sixty-plus years of ignoring interior décor and living like perennial grad students, we now have closets. Unfortunately it feels like I'm tearing down more stuff on the page than in the bedroom!
The good side is, I think the space kind of looks nice (Before and after pictures below).
And it feels like a small but definite victory.

This is Before--same metal shelving as we used in our office spaces.

And after. Yes, that's me in the mirror I wasn't aware of before!

This definitely cleared some physical and mental clutter; we discovered the television is larger than we'd realised and that we have games we bought but never played.
Which is where the Circle to Meow comes in:

'Stray' is a PS5 game where you play a little cat exploring dark alleyways, chased by swarming things called Zurks. Those glowing spots in the photo are Zurk eyes. They're like really nasty bloated-on-blood ticks that pile onto to your cat character until it dies.
And yes, we died again and again and again.
It seemed like a hopeless case till we discovered the Circle Button on the Controller.

I realise that in the West, the circle button tends to mean Cancel, but here it often means Confirm and, more importantly--in this game anyway--it means Meow. And that Meow turns out to be the survival action here. When you press the circle button and Meow, the Zurks get surprised and shaken off.

It's something I'm going to try to apply when I feel overwhelmed and stuck. Till now the only options seemed to be rage/despair quitting or battering blindly through (while the blood sucking Zurks pile on and simultaneously suffocate and exsanguinate you) but now there's the option to stop and Meow and see if there's the option to zigzag.

Because as long as I'm on the path, I'm still alive, even if I feel stuck. Or maybe it's that as long as you’re still alive, you’re still somewhere on the path.

And there's the book path too.
I'd thought I was almost done--and then I saw how one little shift could make it a hundred times better. Even if that slight shift means chucking/rewriting most of the 65,000 words I've got down so far.

I know it's crazy stupid (especially with the deadline coming up next month) but once you see the magic 'it' there's really no choice.

So I'm be staying on the book path and meowing (and zig-zagging) instead of quitting.

Galapagos 1991

 Annamaria on Monday

First a few introductory words about the photos.  David Clark took almost all these wonderful pictures on a trip he and I took in 1991.  He  was an enthusiastic photographer before digitals.  He preferred to take 35 mm colored slides.  Later, it became possible to converting his thousands of shots of our many trips into digitals. I jumped at the chance.  A company was offering to do so at a not so bad price. I sent them a bunch of photos from some of our most interesting destinations.

I bundled the slides, carefully. labeled by destination and date of travel, and shipped them off.  What I got back were 14 CDs with photographs in no particular order, all of them labeled as having been taken on 31 December 1903.  I can assure you that none of the pictures you will see here were taken on New Years Eve 1903.

Many of you probably have heard or read my rants about never making a bucket list,.  I say start fulfilling your deams NOW! This trip was one of those once in a lifetime experiences, the kind people often have on their bucket list.  David and I took it six months after I turned fifty and he was about to turn 55.  

We saw Galapagos before such tourism exploded into a multi-gazzilion dollar industry.  The boat we traveled on was only big enough for 36; on our trip we were 24 -two groups of 12.  David and I were the youngest passengers, more the same age as the crew.

Each evening after dinner, one of the lovely Ecuadorian guides gave a lecture on the island(s) we would see the next day.

The each morning and afternoon, we boarded a small boat that took us to see the animals and birds and flora of a unique place.

The most astonishing thing was that, because local animals did not see humans as predators, on those islands, the animals were not afraid of people.  We could walk very near them and they did not run from us.

Blue-footed Booby

Book nerd that I am, of course I was reading Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle as I traveled.  My good luck was that we went see this lake on the 147th anniversary of his visit.  

I love this photo of David.  I keep it right over my desk.  The tree he is standing under is a Prickly Pear Cactus, a garden plat of about two feet high anywhere else.

I loved watching the Blue-footed booby hunt.  They fold their

 wings, crash into the water, and catch a fish on their way up.

The frigate birds don't hunt. They harass a booby until it drops

its fish, and then the frigate catches it before it falls back in the water 

Of course, the Galapagos Giant Tortoise is a wonderful 

creatures to see up close.

A Vermillion Flycatcher stealing a ride.

Marine Iguana

When I say call in the Marines, I mean this guy!

Thank you, Greece, for the Honor of a Lifetime

 

Saturday–Jeff  

 

 My past twenty years of writing about the mysteries of Greece have taken my life on a fascinating journey. Make that forty if we're talking about how many years the sheer beauty of the land and grace of its people have kept bringing me back for more. 

But a beyond my wildest dreams celebration of my work held in Athens this past Wednesday evening and attended by 180 guests brought home in a rush all that Greece has meant to me.

On that occasion I was honored by the Greek National Tourism Organization's Secretary-General Andreas Fiorentinos at an event held at the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum in the heart of the city close by the Acropolis. 

What follows is a brief photo essay of the evening compiled by photobomber Barbara -- followed by a copy of the introduction I received that still has me blushing.

Before the event starts on the Museum's rooftop

With Museum Executive Director Ioanna Lalaounis on a truly banner day

Spain’s Ambassador to Greece & Ioanna Lalaounis

 Film makers on the make. :)

Australia’s Ambassador to Greece holding "Not Dead Yet" and waiting for me to sign "At Any Cost."

 Me with matriarch of one of Greece’s best known bakeries

Me splitting signing duties with Greece’s Secretary General of the Greece National Tourism Organization, Andreas Fiorentinos

The crowd begins to assemble

The seated part of the crowd waiting to be spellbound by Aikaterini Lalaouni’s introduction of me. :)

Now it’s my turn at the microphone.

Followed by Secretary General Andreas Fiorentinos run at me. :)

+Youthful readers shall be served

Sudha Nair Iliadis, Publisher of Athens Insider Magazine.

The beautiful ending to a magical night in the heart of Athens.

Hope this gives you flavor the night.

Introduction of Jeff Siger by Aikaterini Lalaounis:

 

Today, we have the special pleasure of hosting an author who does not belong to just one homeland, but to the entire world — Jeff Siger.
A true citizen of the world, with an open mind and heart, Jeff travels beyond geographical borders, carrying with him a deep love for Greece and its culture.

Through his books, he offers us not only captivating stories but also a guided journey through the places, monuments, and hidden corners of this country, showcasing its unique beauty and rich historical heritage.
Every page he writes serves as a bridge connecting literature with our cultural identity, and each of his vivid descriptions becomes an ambassador of Greek light and Greek soil.

We share with him the same passion and love: to highlight the material culture of Greece, to illuminate our history and art, so they may travel beyond borders and inspire people across the globe.

Today, we welcome him with great joy, not only as an author who honors Greece through his work, but also as a friend who shares our vision — to keep our heritage alive and to share it with the world.

Mr. Siger, we thank you for being here with us today.

 

––Jeff

Small acts of kindness

The world seems to have gone a bit mad, but there is a place somewhere of honesty, respect and generally people being nice to each other.

At the World Athletic Championships.

Here's a few bit and bobs of loveliness.

There was a weather warning in Tokyo. It was announced just before the evening session that included the men's 10000 metres. The marathons went off early doors as they do, but it was still painfully hot and humid. The runners passed water bottles and ice packs around, runners from different countries checking in to make sure everyone was okay. Lots of wee thumbs up as they passed each other on opposite sides of the road. In competition, but looking out for each other.

My sister was in Tokyo at the time and said that about 5 pm, it suddenly became hard to breath, the heat and humidity rocketed. The roof tops bars and restaurants were closed. 

In a 3000m metre steeplechase heat one runner saw another one falter, struggling to get over a barrier. (They are brutal races, don't understand it. If you really want to steeplechase, use a horse!). Belgian runner Tim Van de Velde saw that fellow runner Carlos San Martin was really in trouble, injured, tired, dehydrated. His 'legs had gone'. So what did the Belgian do? He jogged back, picked the other guy up,  half lifted, half dragged him over the line- to massive applause from the crowd.

Many athletes collapsed on the track after crossing the line, and a few before. The commentators were questioning that the medics weren't quite quick enough to move from trackside to track. The water station was at the bottom of the steps- many athletes couldn't even get that far after leaving all their energy on the home straight. So those who were able picked up some bottles and took them back down to the track, to finish line to where it was needed. Some delaying their own victory celebrations to do so.

22 year old gold medallist from the Paris Olympics, Letsile Tebogo false started and was DQ'd in the 100 metres. He simply nodded and walked off- no protest, no recriminations. Quiet, dignified off he went. He did it because the runners had been out on the track for long enough and he didn't want to delay them any further. Runners from other countries hugged him, consoled him. Some even shared a prayer on the track.  We wish him luck in the 200.

One pole vaulter (not American) had her poles delayed/lost/misplaced on their way to the stadium. A rival from the US gave her a spare as it was the same weight and flex that the other vaulter used- she qualified for the final.

In the longer races, it became a trial of adversity; runners lapped, everywhere on the track. The crowd, and the other athletes who weren't on the ground gasping for breath, cheered every single one home, especially the one who crossed the line last.

One of my favourite moment was the winner of a heat going back to help the runner who had finished behind him. The second placed runner had collapsed on the track with terrible cramp in his hamstring. The winner of the heat went over and lifted his legs in the air and giving him a stretch, as of to say 'Been there, it's awful'

The entire stadium stayed behind at night to watch 'Mondo' Du Plantis break the world record again - he vaulted  6.30 metres!  All the other pole vaulters waited, gave advice, support and hugged and kissed him when he got over it on the 3rd attempt.

And what about Gout Gout? The young Australian is faster than Usian Bolt was at 18 years old, not phased by anything. I think he's through to 200m final. 

The men's marathon had the closet finish of any championship race- 0.03 sec, by Tanzania’s Alphonce Felix Simbu  who out dipped Germany’s Amanal Petros. Me, I think they should have shared the medal after 26 .2 miles, probably 25 of them were torture.

The woman's marathon was close, but nobody will forget the 3rd place - a debut runner from Uruguay, who father is a professor at Cambridge Uni. She  had no idea that she got third as there was nobody else on the track in the stadium. How many had passed her? Who was in front of her? Who was behind? There was no flag for her to take a lap of honour so somebody gave her a white thermo, and she did the lap of honour with that! Just google Julia Paternain on the net and you'll see her run in, asking an official, is this the finish, do I stop here? Oh, Where are all the rest? I was third??? Oh my god!!!

Great to see.

The Glasgow half marathon is back next year. I'm tempted. The Half is the  most horrible of races and there an expectation of a time. The  marathon is easier because it's you against the distance -  and en mass, the runners almost as one entity. If they could harness the feel good factor, the empathy across countries, the big picture of it all,  then the world would be a better place.

Caro