Chilling CCTV reveals Anna Kepner’s last hours before she died ‘inside cruise cabin she shared with suspect stepbrother’
Investigators are actively examining whether an altercation between Anna and her stepbrother occurred before her death
CHILLING new details in the death of an 18-year-old cheerleader aboard a cruise ship have been revealed after reports that surveillance footage captured the girl’s fateful last hours.
Anna Kepner was found dead under the bed in her cabin aboard the Carnival Horizon cruise ship on November 7.
Anna Kepner was found deceased under her bed on a cruise shipCredit: TikTok
The blended family of Christopher Kepner and Shauntel HudsonCredit: Facebook/Shauntel Kepner
Kepner, who was on six-day cruise with her father, stepmother, her 16-year-old stepbrother, and a younger sibling, was sharing a cabin with the minors, according to the Daily Mail.
Inside the compact cabin, the two minors reportedly shared bunk beds while Kepner had her own bed.
The night before she was found dead, Kepner told her family she wasn’t feeling well after dinner and returned to her cabin.
The FBI obtained footage from inside the vessel that showed Kepher walking as she headed back to her room, according to the outlet.
A short while later, the minors also reportedly returned to the cabin.
Footage reportedly captured the youngest sibling leaving the room and wandering the vessel, capturing photos.
The young child noticed Kepner was not in the room when they returned but assumed she was up late with other family members, the Daily Mail reported.
However, when the family gathered for breakfast on the morning of November 7, Kepner never showed.
Her father, Christopher, searched the ship for his daughter before returning to Kepner’s cabin to find the cleaning crew had just discovered the teen’s body stuffed under her bed, the outlet reported.
Legal documents revealed FBI investigators are looking at Kepner’s 16-year-old stepbrother in connection to her mysterious death.
It has been reported that investigators are actively examining whether an altercation between Kepner and her stepbrother occurred before her death.
Other possibilities, including a medical episode or overdose, have not been ruled out.
Kepner’s body was reportedly discovered wrapped in a blanket, stuffed under her bed and covered by life vests after her frantic family had spent the morning trying to find her.
The Miami Dade Medical Examiner’s Office said Kepner’s time of death was 11:17 am on November 7, but have not revealed a cause or manner of death.
The FBI has now advised Kepner’s stepmother, Shauntel Hudson, that one of her children may face criminal charges in relation to her step-daughter’s death.
Documents submitted to court by Shauntel as part of a request to delay a custody hearing revealed the surprising update in the investigation.
“Any testimony the respondent may give, either written or oral, could be prejudicial to her or her adolescent child in this pending criminal investigation,” the filing read.
In a second court filing, Kepner’s step-brother was identified by the initials T.H. and was said to be currently living with a relative at an undisclosed location.
The step-sibling’s father, Thomas Hudson, accused his ex-wife, Shauntel, of putting his son’s future in “jeopardy.”
“The respondent took the remaining minor children on a cruise with a stepchild of her paramour,’ the filing obtained by The U.S. Sun read.
“The sixteen-year-old child is now a suspect in the death of the stepchild during the cruise.”
Who was Anna Kepner?
Anna Kepner attended Temple Christian School as part of the graduating Class of 2026.
She has two full-siblings, a brother, 14, and a sister, nine.
Her father Christopher married her stepmother Shauntel, mother of two, in 2024.
The blended family relocated to Titusville.
Kepner was a high school senior and cheerleader who loved kids, dolphins, butterflies, arts and crafts, and doing puzzles with her Memaw.
She earned her boater’s license before she could drive, and she was PADI certified to dive alongside her family.
Kepner loved all kinds of music (except heavy metal) and had a soft spot for Shawn Mendes.
She planned to join the U.S. Navy after graduation and later become a K9 police officer.
A Georgia Bulldogs fan through and through, just like her family. Kepner dreamed of one day becoming a cheerleader for the Bulldogs.
Source: North Brevard Funeral Home
Shauntel had previously said the family would not comment further on her step-daughter’s death.
She shared a heartbreaking link to a poignant obituary ahead of a ceremony celebrating Kepner on November 20.
“This is something I never imagined I’d have to post,” Shantel said on Facebook.
Christopher said the family was confused about the cause of Kepner’s death.
“The FBI hasn’t shared anything with me yet,” he told the Daily Mail days after his daughter’s death.
Anna Kepner was only 18 and an aspiring professional cheerleader when she diedCredit: Instagram
“I would imagine they’re going to be in contact with me about it – but I know as little as everybody else.”
Kepner’s father also said that everybody who “came off that ship” had been “questioned.”
“I don’t know who they are looking at or what their investigation is,” he added.
Carnival Cruise Line said in a statement after Kepner’s death, “Our focus is on supporting the family of our guest and cooperating with the FBI.”
COMPLEX PROBE
The FBI’s probe into her passing is “very complex — it falls under what’s called special maritime jurisdiction laws that mandate this,” ex-special agent Nicole Parker told Fox News Digital.
“For example, if a cruise departs from Miami, that gives FBI Miami jurisdiction if it’s returning in or out of a U.S. cruise port.
“And if the alleged crime occurred in international waters, then that’s the FBI’s responsibility,” she added on November 11.
Parker, who has years of experience investigating maritime cases, said such cases often required complex coordination between agencies and cruise line officials.
“I can confirm that the FBI has responded to the scene,” a spokesperson told Fox.
“Because this is an ongoing matter, no further information is available at this time.”
The service did not say why it was investigating Kepner’s death or whether foul play was suspected, Fox added.
The family was on a six-day Caribbean cruise was the tragedy occurredCredit: Carnival Cruise Lines
The sun-drenched decks of the Carnival Horizon promised escape and family bonding for the Kepner-Hudson clan, a multigenerational getaway from the humid sprawl of Titusville, Florida. But beneath the tropical facade, shadows loomed—obsessions festering in silence, boundaries blurred by blood not fully shared. On November 7, 2025, those shadows claimed 18-year-old Anna Kepner, the vibrant cheerleader found asphyxiated and concealed under a bunk bed in her cramped stateroom. Now, as the FBI’s probe deepens, exclusive insights into her 16-year-old stepbrother, Matthew Kepner—previously shielded as “T.H.” in court docs—reveal a portrait of calculated fixation that escalated from whispers to a fatal chokehold. Investigators, drawing from leaked psych evals and CCTV breakdowns, describe his actions as “methodical, predatory escalation,” a pattern none in the blended family fully confronted until the sea turned red with regret.
Anna, captain of her high school squad and a straight-A dreamer bound for the Navy, boarded the six-day Caribbean cruise with eight relatives: her father Christopher, stepmother Shauntel Hudson, 14-year-old half-brother, Matthew, a younger stepsister, and her doting grandparents, Barbara and Jeffrey Kepner. What should have been a celebration of unity—marking Anna’s impending graduation—unraveled in Cabin 8341, a tight quarters where she bunked with Matthew and her younger sibling. The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s report, first detailed in court filings, confirmed homicide by mechanical asphyxiation: bruises circling her neck from a brutal “bar hold,” an arm locked across the throat in a rear-naked choke that silenced her screams in under two minutes. No drugs, no alcohol in her system—just the imprint of intimate violence, her body hastily shrouded in a blanket and buried under life vests, as if to mock the ship’s safety drills.
Matthew, a lanky 16-year-old with a history of volatility, emerges from the fog of redactions as the epicenter. Sources close to the FBI, speaking off-record, confirm his full name in internal memos, tying him to the Hudson custody saga that’s bled into this tragedy. Court docs from Shauntel’s emergency hearing—unsealed amid the probe—paint him as the lone figure swiping into the cabin at 10:45 a.m., minutes after Anna texted friends she’d retreated early, her braces aching from the swell. He exited 28 minutes later, stone-faced, rejoining the family buffet as if nothing had fractured. Housekeeping’s grim find at 11:15 a.m. triggered code black: the ship locked down, FBI choppers buzzing as Horizon limped into Miami.
The obsession, per a leaked psych profile from Dr. Lena Voss, a forensic adolescent specialist consulted by Hudson’s attorneys, didn’t erupt overnight. It simmered for years in the petri dish of their 2023 blended marriage. Matthew, uprooted by his parents’ bitter divorce—Shauntel vs. ex Thomas Hudson in a war over custody—latched onto Anna as anchor and idol. School records, subpoenaed in the probe, note his “intrusive fixations”: doodles of her cheer routines in margins, anonymous likes flooding her Insta at odd hours, a locker shrine of pilfered pom-poms. Voss terms it “erotomanic delusion lite”—not full-blown erotomania, but a possessive haze where sibling affection warps into ownership. “He viewed her as extension, not separate,” her 22-page report states. “Rejection? That’s the spark to his powder keg.”
Witnesses, including Anna’s ex Joshua Westin, corroborate the creep factor. In a FaceTime glitch nine months prior, Westin watched Matthew slink into frame at 3 a.m., mounting Anna’s sleeping form like a predator testing prey. She jolted awake, shoving him off with a yelp that ended the call. Westin alerted Christopher; Shauntel dismissed it as “roughhousing.” But Anna confided to friends: “He’s always watching. Carries that damn knife everywhere.” The blade—a hefty tactical folder Matthew flaunted—surfaced in psych notes as a “security totem,” wielded to intimidate rivals for her gaze.
Isolation was his scalpel, carving Anna from her world. Pre-cruise, Matthew lobbied hard for the cabin split, citing “bonding” to corner her in 200 square feet of steel and sea. Voss’s eval flags priors: deleting her Snapchat streaks to “keep her focused,” tailing her to practices, feigning allergies to nix group dinners. Aboard Horizon, it peaked. Crew logs, leaked via FBI channels, show him shadowing her poolside, spiking her mocktails with his smuggled rum (international waters’ lax loophole), murmuring, “Stay with me, sis—no one else gets you.” Anna’s last Snapchat, timestamped 10:20 a.m.: a forced smile, caption “Cabin fever hits different 🌊.” Experts like Voss see the ship as accelerant: “Enclosed vectors—hallways like veins, doors like valves—amplify control freaks. Escape? Mythical. For him, utopia.”
CCTV, the probe’s crown jewel, captures the prelude in pixels. Grainy Deck 8 footage, enhanced by FBI techs, shows Anna shuffling back alone, ponytail limp, rubbing her jaw. At 10:42, Matthew materializes in the doorway— not entering, but loitering like a sentinel. Subtle aggressions flicker: a hand twitching toward his pocket (the knife?), shoulders rolling in a boxer’s hunch, eyes locked as she brushes past. “Aggressive deference,” Voss calls it post-review. “He yields space but claims air—testing, telegraphing dominance.” Inside, audio mics picked muffled thuds, a gasp cut short. No screams; his hand clamped fast. The bar hold? Textbooks say it’s intimate, requiring trust turned toxic—arm slipping from “hug” to homicide in seconds.
Post-discovery, Matthew’s facade cracked. Questioned dockside, he blanked: “I remember nothing—just breakfast plans.” Dissociation, Voss posits, or rehearsal. Hospitalized for 72 hours psych hold, he scrawled “Sorry, A” on a napkin, per a nurse’s affidavit. Barbara Kepner, voice quavering on GMA, invoked “demons” haunting him—outbursts at school, a shoved classmate over a “stolen” locket of Anna’s hair. “We thought therapy tamed them,” she wept. Yet warnings ricocheted: Westin’s frantic texts, Anna’s diary entries (“Matt’s too close—make it stop”). Christopher, torn, told People: “He was there, alone with her. Evidence will tell.” Shauntel, gagged by her own filings, invoked the Fifth, fearing leaks would “torpedo” Matthew’s juvenile defense.
Voss’s profile, spanning interviews and digital dredges, escalates the alarm: “Methodical, calculated—obsession as blueprint.” His browser history? Searches for “chokeholds safe play,” “sibling boundaries blurred,” mingled with Anna’s TikToks on loop. Blended-family stressors—divorces, relos—forged his entitlement, Voss argues, but inaction lit the fuse. “Families see quirks; pros see trajectories. Here, isolation primed the pump, confinement pulled the trigger.” No sexual assault, per tox screens, but the intimacy chills: a boy’s love curdled to lethal grip.
The fallout ripples. Thomas Hudson, Matthew’s bio-dad, yanks for custody of their 9-year-old, branding Shauntel “enabler-in-chief.” Anna’s bio-mom, Heather Wright, erupts on FB: “You bunked my girl with a stalker? Blood on your hands.” Carnival, mum on protocols, faces suits for “negligent oversight”—no minor-risk checks, booze blind spots. Polygraphs loom; Matthew’s in seclusion, Voss-recommended therapy stalled by the probe.
Anna’s memorial, awash in her faves—neon pinks, balloon drops—drew Titusville in waves. “She lit rooms,” her obit reads, Navy-bound with K9 dreams. Friends serenaded her fight song; Jeffrey choked, “We failed her vigilance.” As Horizon sails anew, scrubbed of ghosts, the Kepners haunt policy: mandatory cabin audits, obsession-screening for kin cruises? Voss urges: “Spot the tick—before the bomb.”
In Anna’s last reel—flipping mid-air, braces flashing—she embodied flight. Matthew clipped those wings, his dark devotion the snare. Secrets revealed, the sea whispers justice: for the girl who dreamed beyond horizons, may truth anchor her peace.
