NEARLY a month has passed since the mysterious death of Anna Kepner, the high school cheerleader who was fatally suffocated on board a Carnival Cruise Line ship while vacationing with her family.
The grisly details surrounding Kepner‘s death have dominated the national news coverage since the bubbly 18-year-old’s body was found wrapped in a blanket, covered in life jackets, and stuffed under a bed in her cabin on November 7.
Anna Kepner, a senior at a high school in Central Florida, was strangled to death on board a Carnival Cruise Line shipCredit: TikTok/@fl.anna18
A housekeeper reportedly found Anna Kepner’s body stuffed under a bed in her cabin on the morning of November 7Credit: Getty
A family picture featuring Anna Kepner, her father Christopher, and her stepmom, ShauntelCredit: Facebook/Shauntel Kepner
However, nearly a month since FBI officials boarded Carnival’s Horizon as it returned to the Port of Miami from its six-day sail across the Caribbean, questions remain unanswered as to what led to Kepner’s death.
Federal investigators have not publicly disclosed any information regarding Kepner‘s death.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
The FBI has not formally named a suspect in the case.
Kepner’s 16-year-old stepbrother was identified as a suspect in the cheerleader’s death only in unrelated custody battle documents filed by his parents in court.
“The sixteen year old child is now a suspect in the death of the step child during the cruise,” court documents filed by the boy’s father, Thomas Hudson, read.
The boy was briefly taken into custody before being released, and is now staying with a relative of his mother.
Details surrounding the stepbrother’s time in custody are unknown and it’s unclear why federal investigators have not filed charges against the boy.
Kepner’s father, Christopher, has been outspoken and critical about wanting justice for his daughter’s death.
“I do not stand behind what my stepson has done,” the father, who is married to the boy’s mother, Shauntel, told People, adding, “I want him to face the consequences.”
“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.”
A copy of Kepner’s death certificate obtained by ABC News showed that the high school cheerleader died from asphyxiation.
Federal investigators have ruled the death a homicide.
However, what remains unknown is what led up to Kepner’s death.
The date of the injury was reportedly listed as November 6.
But a time for when Kepner sustained the injury was not recorded, according to ABC News.
The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office has not publicly disclosed Kepner’s cause of manner of death.
What also remains a mystery are Kepner’s final moments and what led to her death.
Anna Kepner’s death has reportedly been ruled a homicideCredit: facebook/@amber.donohue.842620
‘CABIN CLASH’
The FBI are reportedly probing several avenues, including whether there may have been an altercation between Kepner and her stepbrother.
Kepner’s ex-boyfriend, Joshua Tew, told news outlets that his ex-girlfriend’s youngest sibling, who was staying in the same cabin as Kepner and her stepbrother, allegedly heard a violent altercation between the older teenagers on the night of November 6.
The young sibling allegedly told Tew that he was locked out of the room and heard “yelling and chairs being thrown in the cabin.”
“[He] heard him yelling at her in a harmful way, like, ‘Shut the hell up,’” Tew alleged.
“And that’s when he knew something was going on. There was something going on.
“Something was banging around, like chairs were getting thrown around in the room.”
Kepner’s grandparents, Barbara and Jeffrey, are also pushing to uncover what occurred in the cabin that led to their granddaughter’s death.
“Whatever happened in that room the only person responsible is the person that was in the room with Anna,” Barbara said of the 16-year-old boy.
