The clock is ticking down to 9 a.m. on December 5, 2025, when Brevard County’s Viera Courthouse will become ground zero for a family implosion that’s already claimed one life and threatens to shatter another. At stake: custody of two minors caught in the crossfire of a bitter divorce, but lurking beneath the legalese is the unsolved homicide of 18-year-old Anna Kepner, the bubbly Titusville cheerleader whose lifeless body was discovered stuffed under a bunk bed on the Carnival Horizon cruise ship just weeks ago. And at the center of it all? Christopher Kepner, Anna’s father – the man who’s dodged process servers like a ghost, leaving whispers that he knows more about his daughter’s final, desperate moments than he’s ever admitted.
It’s been exactly 28 days since Anna was found on November 7, wrapped in a bloodied blanket and buried under orange life vests in the cramped cabin she shared with her 16-year-old stepbrother – the same teen now fingered in court docs as the FBI’s prime suspect in her strangulation death. The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner ruled it homicide by mechanical asphyxia: an arm-barred chokehold that crushed her windpipe with brutal, sustained force, leaving twin bruises blooming like accusations on her neck. No drugs, no alcohol, no sexual assault – just a young woman, braces aching from a bad day at sea, retreating to her room for rest, only to never emerge alive.
Chris Kepner, 48, was there on that ill-fated “family bonding” cruise – a blended brood of his three kids (including Anna), his second wife Shauntel Hudson, and her three from a prior marriage, all crammed into three staterooms on the 133,596-ton behemoth sailing from Miami. What was billed as a new tradition for the Kepner-Hudsons turned into a floating nightmare. Surveillance footage, leaked in snippets to local outlets, shows Anna stumbling toward the elevator around 10:45 a.m., clutching her jaw, blue sundress rumpled from seasickness. Her stepbrother, identified only as “T.H.” in sealed filings, is captured swiping into the cabin alone at 10:52 a.m. He emerges 17 minutes later, sweating, eyes darting, before vanishing down a service corridor. Anna’s keycard never pings again.
By 11:17 a.m., a housekeeper’s scream echoes through Deck 9: Anna’s body, blue-lipped and rigid, wedged beneath the lower bunk like discarded luggage. The ship’s captain radios the Coast Guard mid-ocean; Carnival alerts the FBI under the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act. As the Horizon limps back to PortMiami, Chris Kepner huddles with Shauntel in the ship’s chapel, their son – Anna’s blood brother – pounding fists on stained glass, howling, “Who did this to my sister?” The stepbrother? He’s whisked to the infirmary, vomiting seawater, before being shuttled to a “safe house” with maternal relatives in Hernando County. No charges yet, but whispers from federal sources say the kid’s phone data and the cabin’s swipe logs are a ticking bomb.
Enter the custody cyclone. Shauntel Hudson, 42, Anna’s stepmom and the stepbrother’s bio-mom, has been locked in a venomous divorce with ex Thomas Hudson since 2024. Thomas, a burly construction foreman from Cocoa, filed an emergency motion November 20, branding the cruise a “death trap” enabled by Shauntel’s “reckless neglect.” He alleges she handed the teens booze in international waters (“to keep the peace,” per a bartender’s affidavit), shoved Anna and the stepbrother into one room to “save on cabins,” and ignored Anna’s complaints about her stepson’s “creepy vibes” weeks prior. “This boy strangled my stepdaughter like roadkill,” Thomas thundered in a sworn statement, demanding full custody of their two kids and a psych eval for the 16-year-old. “Shauntel’s silence is complicity.”
Shauntel fired back, invoking the Fifth in a frantic filing: “A criminal case may be initiated against one of the minor children.” She begged to seal the docket, citing the FBI probe, but Judge Michelle Pruitt Studstill wasn’t buying it. On November 21, she greenlit a marathon four-hour hearing – whittled to three by logistics – subpoenaing Chris Kepner as the star witness. Why him? He was the family patriarch, the one who booked the cruise, who shared a suite next door, who claims he heard “nothing but waves” that morning. Thomas’s attorney, slick Palm Bay litigator Mark Athanason, plans to grill him: “Mr. Kepner, why’d you cremate Anna’s body before the autopsy cleared? Where were you when your daughter gasped her last? And why’s your new son-in-law whispering about ‘family secrets’?”
But Chris? He’s playing hide-and-seek with the law. On November 28, process server Leslie V. Kinsey swore in an affidavit that she staked out the Kepners’ modest Titusville rancher on Parmly Circle. At 7:42 p.m., Chris’s black Ford Explorer idled in the driveway, headlights slicing the dusk, interior lights blazing like a beacon. Kinsey knocked for five minutes – doorbell, shouts, even a flashlight beam through the blinds. Crickets. The SUV peeled out at 7:49 p.m., vanishing into the night. “He was home. He chose to run,” Kinsey wrote, her notarized statement now circulating like wildfire on TikTok true-crime feeds under #JusticeForAnna.
Insiders say it’s not the first dodge. Chris skipped a voluntary FBI interview on November 15, citing “grief counseling.” He no-showed a DCF welfare check November 22, prompting a welfare ping to his work at a local auto shop. Yet, come Thanksgiving, he’s spotted carving turkey at a candlelit spread with Shauntel and the surviving kids – blue ribbons pinned to chairs for Anna, her senior portrait beaming from the mantel. Anna’s bio-mom, Heather Wright, 45, a part-time paralegal estranged since the divorce, erupted on Facebook Live: “He buries our girl in secret ashes, ghosts the feds, but feasts with the suspects? Chris, if you loved her, show up tomorrow. Or are you protecting the monster who choked her out?”
The hearing’s stakes couldn’t be higher. Thomas wants the kids yanked to his Cocoa home, under GPS monitoring, with Shauntel’s visitation “supervised by angels.” Shauntel counters with psych reports painting Thomas as “volatile,” but her star – Chris – might tank it all. If he bails, contempt looms: fines, jail, even a bench warrant that could drag the FBI back in. Subpoenas also summon a DCF caseworker, two Temple Christian School admins (Anna’s cheer coach and guidance counselor), and – bombshell – an FBI agent prepped to testify under seal about “keycard anomalies.” The stepbrother? He’s 16, so Fifth Amendment shield, but his no-show could sway the judge toward Thomas.
As dawn breaks over the Space Coast on December 5, Viera buzzes: TV vans jockey for curb space, #AnnaKepner trends with 2.3 million posts, and Heather Wright rallies 200 blues-clad supporters outside the courthouse, pom-poms waving like war flags. “Anna flipped for her squad, fought for her dreams – graduating summa next spring, eyeing FSU on scholarship,” Heather tells the scrum, voice raw. “She texted me from the ship: ‘Mom, this family vacay’s weird, but I’m making the best.’ That ‘weird’ was her warning. Chris ignored it. Now he’s ignoring her grave.”
Will Chris Kepner stride through those oak doors at 9 sharp, Bible in hand, ready to spill? Or will his empty chair echo louder than any testimony, fueling theories he’s shielding Shauntel’s son – the boy Anna once called “annoying little bro” in family pics, now a shadow suspect with a chokehold legacy? Sources close to the prosecution whisper charges could drop by Christmas if the hearing cracks the facade.
In Titusville, where Friday lights still flicker for Temple Christian’s playoff run (sans Anna’s megawatt cheers), the community holds its breath. Blue ribbons flutter from every porch on Parmly Circle. And somewhere, in the humid Florida haze, a father’s evasion hangs like a noose: one more dodge, and the truth about Anna’s last breath might slip away forever. Gig ‘em, Anna – from heaven, keep fighting. Your squad’s got the front row.
