The teen stepbrother of Anna Kepner, an 18-year-old found dead under a bed on a Carnival cruise ship in November, was reportedly arrested this week.
Federal officials have not publicly named a suspect or announced charges in the teen’s death, which was deemed a homicide by asphyxiation, but the alleged suspect’s stepfather, Chris Kepner, told ABC News he had been charged.
Court records in the case are sealed because the suspect was charged as a juvenile, according to filings obtained by the outlet.
The Independent has contacted the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida for comment and confirmation.
The stepbrother was reportedly seen on Friday walking into a Miami federal court flanked by public defenders and U.S. Marshals.
On November 7, a maid found Kepner wrapped in a blanket and covered in life jackets underneath a bed in a room she shared with her stepbrother.
Prior to the alleged charges and arrest, there were multiple indications that Kepner’s stepbrother was a focus of the investigation into the death aboard the Carnival Horizon cruise, which was bound for the Caribbean at the time of the Florida teen’s death.
Chris Kepner has previously suggested his daughter’s stepbrother could be responsible.
“I want him to face the consequences … I will be fighting to make sure that does happen,” he told People last year.
“I cannot say that he is responsible but I can’t decline,” he added. “He was the only one that was in the room and the FBI has an ongoing investigation in which they will have to provide the evidence to say that he did do it or did not do this.”
The stepbrother was described as a “suspect” in the death in November court filings as part of a custody dispute between Thomas Hudson, his father, and Shauntel Hudson, his mother. The pair finalized their divorce in 2023, prior to the cruise where Kepner died.
The teen’s mother told her ex-husband that the boy had no memory of events surrounding Kepner’s death, according to text messages submitted to the court as part of the dispute.
Shauntel Hudson testified in December that the teens were good friends and wanted to room together, along with Kepner’s biological brother, rather than stay in a room with their grandparents.
“They wanted to stay together,” she said, News 6 reports. “The three of them, like the Three Amigos, are best friends.”
Kepner, of Titusville, Florida, was set to graduate from high school this year and dreamed of being a cheerleader for the University of Georgia. She had considered joining the military or serving as a K9 police officer after school.
