A 16-year-old boy has been charged with sexually assaulting and murdering his 18-year-old stepsister, Anna Kepner, whose body was found hidden on a Carnival Cruise ship, authorities said Monday.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, the teen, identified by the government as T.H., was initially charged as a juvenile on February 2, but the case was sealed until U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom ordered that he would be prosecuted as an adult, the department said.
On November 7, a maid found Anna wrapped in a blanket and covered in life jackets underneath a bed in a room she shared with two other teens, including the younger stepbrother.
The cause of death was determined to be mechanical asphyxia, which is when an object or physical force stops someone from breathing.
Prior to the charges and arrest, there were multiple indications that Anna’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, the suspect’s stepfather, 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.”
Shauntel Kepner, 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.
She 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 previously told News6. “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.
