Barbara Kepner keeps her granddaughter’s last boarding photo as the lock screen on her phone: Anna in a pale blue sundress, wind whipping her auburn hair, grinning on the gangway of the Celestial Harmony with a neon-orange wristband that read “Under 21 – No Alcohol.”

Seven days later, that same girl came home in a sealed casket.

In their first in-depth interview since the November tragedy, Anna’s grandparents – the only parents she ever really knew – say they are being stonewalled, misled, and now threatened with silence by powerful interests who want the case closed as a tragic teenage mishap.

“The cruise line’s lawyer called us last week,” Ronald Kepner, 72, says, his voice trembling with rage. “Told us if we keep ‘spreading rumors’ they’ll sue us for defamation and make sure we lose the house to pay their legal fees. My granddaughter is dead, and they’re threatening to take the roof over our heads.”

What has the company so desperate to bury?

According to documents the family photographed before their attorney advised them to stop sharing, Anna’s body showed far more than the “minor bump” first described by the ship’s medical team.

Bruises in various stages of healing on both upper arms, consistent with being gripped hard, some fresh, some days old.
A patterned bruise on her left thigh that the independent pathologist hired by the family believes matches the sole of a men’s deck shoe.
Petechial hemorrhaging in her eyes – tiny burst blood vessels often associated with asphyxia.
A deleted iPhone. Every photo and message from the final 36 hours of the cruise professionally wiped, yet the phone was returned to the family miraculously “fully charged” and logged into Anna’s iCloud – something she never did because she was paranoid about battery life.

Most chilling of all: the cabin’s safe.

Anna kept a small diary in the in-room safe – a pink leather journal her grandmother gave her the day she left for the cruise. When the family finally received Anna’s belongings three weeks later, the safe combination (her birthday, 0907) had been reset to factory 0000. The diary was missing. In its place was a single Polaroid photograph: Anna asleep on the cabin bed, mouth slightly open, with an unidentified male hand brushing hair from her face.

The back of the photo was dated in blue ink: “Night 4 – she’ll never remember.”

“Who took that picture?” Barbara sobs. “Who was in the room while she was unconscious? And why did the cruise line never tell us it existed?”

Sources close to the investigation – speaking on condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation – claim that at least three crew members from the photography and entertainment staff were placed on immediate paid leave the day the ship returned to Miami. One, a 28-year-old British photographer assigned to the teen club, allegedly bragged in a crew WhatsApp group about “scoring with the redhead from Pennsylvania” hours before Anna was found dead.

That group chat, screenshots of which were briefly seen by the family’s private investigator, vanished within minutes once lawyers got involved.

Meanwhile, Madison – Anna’s traveling companion – has reportedly changed her story multiple times. First she claimed she never left the cabin after midnight. Then ship keycard records proved she re-entered at 4:18 a.m., nearly three hours after she originally said she went to the teen disco. When pressed by Bahamian detectives, she allegedly admitted to finding Anna “already sick” when she returned but “didn’t want to get in trouble” so she went back to sleep on the top bunk.

“She left my baby alone, dying on the floor,” Barbara whispers. “But I don’t even blame Madison anymore. She’s 18. Someone older, someone with authority, put her in an impossible situation.”

The Kepners say the cruise line offered them what they call “hush money” – $250,000 in exchange for signing an NDA that would forbid them from ever speaking Anna’s name in connection with the cruise again. They tore up the check in front of the company’s attorney.

“We didn’t raise her for 14 years to sell her memory for a quarter million dollars,” Ronald says. “We’ll beg on the street before we let them turn her into a statistic.”

As winter settles over Lancaster, Christmas lights already twinkle on neighboring porches, but the Kepner house remains dark. Anna’s untouched stocking still hangs from the mantelpiece.

“She picked that stocking out herself when she was six,” Barbara says, touching the faded felt reindeer. “Every year she added one more ornament to the tree for her mom and dad in heaven. This year there will be two empty spots.”

The family has launched a GoFundMe titled “Justice for Anna” that has raised over $180,000 in two weeks, mostly from strangers horrified by the story. They plan to use every penny to hire forensic experts and force the case into federal court on U.S. soil.

“Someone knows what really happened in that cabin,” Ronald says, staring out the window at the empty driveway where Anna’s beat-up Honda should be parked. “Someone watched our little girl take her last breath and decided a company’s reputation was worth more than the truth.”

Until that someone is held accountable, two grandparents say they will never stop screaming Anna’s name from every rooftop they can find.

Because out there, somewhere between the turquoise waves and the white marble atrium of a floating palace, an 18-year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her became just another “closed incident” in a cruise line’s quarterly report.

And Barbara and Ronald Kepner refuse to let the world forget her.