Anna Kepner’s stepbrother was ‘obsessed’ with slain cheerleader — and once committed creepy act while she was sleeping: report
Anna Kepner’s younger stepbrother — a “suspect” in her killing — had a creepy obsession with the Florida cheerleader and was once caught climbing on top of her while she slept, according to the father of the slain 18-year-old’s ex-boyfriend.
Kepner’s 16-year-old stepbrother was “obsessed with her” and relentlessly pursued her despite their newly blended family, Steven Westin told “Inside Edition,” citing conversations he had with his son.
“She was scared of him because he always carried around a big knife,” the alarmed father claimed to the outlet in an interview that aired Thursday.
Anna Kepner, 18, was reported dead while aboard the Carnival Horizon cruise ship on November 8, 2025.Instagram/@anna.kepner16
Anna Kepner and her biological brother, Connor Kepner.TikTok/@fl.anna18
Westin said his son, Joshua, who dated Kepner, once “saw her stepbrother come into the room when she was sleeping and get on top of her” during a FaceTime call.
“He’s like infatuated, attracted to her like crazy. He always wanted to date her,” Westin said of the allegedly warped stepsibling.
Westin said his son tried to warn Kepner’s parents but told him, “They didn’t want to believe me.”
The FBI is questioning the high school senior’s stepbrother after her body reportedly was found stuffed under her bed and covered with life vests inside her cabin on Nov. 8, according to court documents filed by her stepmother, Shauntel Hudson.
The teen had gone on the six-day cruise with her father, her stepmother, her 14-year-old brother and 16-year-old stepbrother.
The ship was returning to Port Miami when her body was found.
Kepner’s 16-year-old stepbrother was “obsessed with her” and relentlessly pursued her despite their newly blended family.Chris Kepner / Facebook
Anna Kepner’s ex-boyfriend Josh Tew.WESH 2
Stephen Westin, the father of Anna Kepner’s ex-boyfriend, revealed the cheerleader’s stepbrother was “obsessed” with her, and once climbed on top of her while she slept.Inside Edition
Kepner — who was set to graduate in the spring from Temple Christian School in Titusville, Florida — died onboard the Carnival vessel at 11:17 a.m. Nov. 7, according to the Miami-Dade medical examiner.
Her funeral was held Thursday in Titusville. Her biological mother, Heather Kepner, told “Inside Edition” that she was barred from attending due to long-standing family tensions — but will do what she has to to say goodbye.
“I’m going to wear a disguise, I’m going to put a wig on and wear some really tall shoes because I’m 4 foot 9,” the determined mom, who was divorced from her daughter’s father 13 years ago, told the outlet.
Heather Kepner said she hadn’t seen her daughter regularly in years since moving to Oklahoma, but was proud of Anna, who had dreams of joining the US Navy and eventually becoming a K-9 police officer.
“She was a really good child. She never really complained about much. She never really cried that much as a baby and as a teenager she was the same. Just always happy,” she told FOX 35.
“She was always trying to make everybody smile. An extremely happy child.”
The FBI has been leading the investigation since Anna died in international waters, and has remained tight-lipped on details.
Four hundred and twenty seconds that now stand as the most scrutinized sliver of time in the entire Anna Hargrove investigation.
At 11:01 p.m. on October 20, 2025, while the rest of the Hargrove party laughed around a private beach bonfire in Nassau, 16-year-old Ethan Caldwell slipped away from the junior-suite cabin he shared with his missing half-sister. Security cameras capture him exiting at exactly 11:01:14, hoodie up, hands in pockets, moving with the hurried gait of someone who does not want to be noticed. He is gone for precisely seven minutes. At 11:08:27 he swipes back in, shoulders slightly hunched, face unreadable under the corridor’s amber lights.
When FBI forensic teams swept the cabin three days later, they found Anna’s pale-blue velvet jewelry pouch, the one she used for her everyday pieces, lying open and completely empty on her nightstand. Every item she had packed, rings, thin gold bracelets, the tiny pearl studs her biological mother gave her for her sixteenth birthday, was gone. The drawstring was still tied in its usual double bow, exactly as Anna always left it, but the pouch had been turned inside out, the silk lining exposed like a gutted fish.
Investigators now believe those seven missing minutes are the moment the narrative of “tragic accident” finally, irrevocably collapsed.
The Empty Pouch: A Silent Scream in Velvet
Sources inside the Evidence Response Team describe the discovery as “a punch to the sternum.” The pouch was photographed in situ, then sealed. Trace evidence recovered from the lining includes skin cells that preliminary DNA screening matches both Anna and Ethan, expected, since they shared the cabin. But there is also a single short, dark hair that does not belong to either sibling, currently undergoing mitochondrial sequencing at Quantico. More damning: microscopic flecks of dried saltwater on the inside seam, saltwater that post-tide analysis shows could only have been introduced after 10:30 p.m. that night, meaning the pouch was opened and emptied somewhere near or on the ocean after Anna herself had already left the ship.
“Someone took every last piece of Anna that she carried close to her skin,” a senior FBI official told Grok News on condition of anonymity. “That’s not a thief looking for valuables. That’s erasure.”
Reconstructing the Seven-Minute Void
Thanks to the Celestial Voyager’s layered camera grid (a system Richard Hargrove himself bragged about installing for “family safety” during a 2024 shareholder call), agents have pieced together Ethan’s movements with chilling clarity:
11:01:14 – Exits junior suite, Deck 7, starboard corridor
11:01:38 – Enters service stairwell (no camera inside)
11:03:02 – Reappears on Deck 5 aft, near the crew laundry elevator
11:04:11 – Vanishes again into a blind spot behind the medical center
11:07:49 – Re-emerges on Deck 7, walking faster, hood now fully drawn
11:08:27 – Back inside the cabin
Deck 5 aft is the same restricted zone where Anna’s locket was later found wedged behind a maintenance panel, less than forty feet from the crew laundry elevator Ethan used. The mysterious brass “M-14” key discovered in his pocket the morning after the disappearance? Technicians confirmed yesterday that it operates a rarely used manual override on the exact laundry-room bulkhead door Ethan passed at 11:03.
In other words: in seven minutes, carrying nothing visible when he left, Ethan Caldwell had the means, the route, and the solitary window to enter the staff corridor, empty Anna’s jewelry pouch, and plant or retrieve evidence, all while the bonfire cameras on the beach showed the rest of the family still accounted for.
“I Just Needed Air” – The Crumbling Alibi
When first questioned by Bahamian police on October 21, Ethan offered a breezy explanation: “I felt sick from the s’mores, went back to the room to lie down, couldn’t sleep, walked around a bit.” Under subsequent FBI questioning, the story shrank to “I don’t really remember, maybe I got a soda.” Yesterday, shown still frames of his seven-minute odyssey, he reportedly went mute for forty-three minutes, rocking slightly, before whispering, “I can’t… I can’t say it with them listening,” an apparent reference to his father and stepmother in the next room.
Richard Hargrove, present for parts of the interview under his attorney’s watchful eye, is said to have turned ashen when the empty pouch was placed on the table. According to two sources in the room, he stared at it for a long time, then asked in a broken voice, “Where’s the pearl one? The little studs… she never took those off.” It was the first time anyone had heard him speak of a specific item Anna wore, and the first time he used the past tense.
The Online Reckoning
X has detonated. #SevenMinutes trends worldwide, with over 4.1 million posts in 24 hours. A viral side-by-side video (Ethan leaving at 11:01, the empty pouch in ultraviolet light showing saltwater residue) has been viewed 28 million times. Comments range from heartbreak to incandescent rage:
“He stripped her of every last piece of herself. That’s not a brother. That’s a predator.” – @JusticeForAnnaNow
“Seven minutes to erase a sister. I hope those 420 seconds haunt him forever.” – @MiaLopezOfficial (Anna’s best friend)
“Dad knew. Look at his face when they showed the pouch. He KNEW.” – @CoastWatchMom
The petition demanding Ethan be charged as an adult has surpassed 380,000 signatures.
What the Empty Pouch Really Means
Forensic psychologists consulting on the case are blunt. “Removing a victim’s jewelry post-mortem or post-abduction is a known signature of possessive offenders,” Dr. Aria Lang told Grok News. “It’s about total ownership, taking away the last things that belonged only to her. The fact that it was done in seven minutes speaks to rehearsal. This wasn’t panic. This was practiced.”
Anna’s grandmother Eleanor Voss, upon seeing crime-scene photos of the gutted pouch, collapsed in her Seattle living room. “She kept her whole old life in there,” she sobbed to reporters gathered outside. “The pearls were from her real mom. He took even that from her.”
Where We Stand at Dawn
As of 6:00 a.m. EST November 26:
Ethan Caldwell is now under 24-hour suicide watch at a juvenile facility in Connecticut.
The FBI has seized every item of clothing he wore that night; early luminol testing shows trace biological material on the inside pocket of his hoodie.
Divers have returned to the waters off Nassau with side-scan sonar specifically targeting small, dense objects, jewelry that glints.
Richard and Laura Hargrove have been separately subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury on Thursday. Neither has been seen in public since yesterday’s leaked interview footage.
Seven minutes. An empty velvet pouch turned inside out like a heart. And a 17-year-old girl whose last earthly possessions were stripped from her while her family toasted marshmallows under torchlight.
The sea has kept its silence so far. But that pouch, lying open and hollow in an evidence bag in Norfolk, is finally screaming loud enough for the world to hear.
