Anna Kepner’s stepbrother was arrested for her murder largely based on evidence found on her cellphone — which was discovered in the cruise ship’s lost and found after being smashed and tossed in the trash, according to new court filings.
Investigators had started looking for the 18-year-old girl’s missing phone as soon as they boarded the Carnival Cruise Line’s Horizon in Miami, Fla., on Nov. 8 because her grieving family told them she was never without it, according to an FBI agent’s testimony reported by People.
They initially assumed it was lost forever — until they casually asked at the cruise ship’s lost and found, the filing showed.
A staffer said the phone had been found in a trash can and it was “seriously damaged, as if it had been smashed, and the screen was broken,” the agent testified.
Even so, the FBI was able to download the phone’s contents and trace its apparent journey from Kepner’s cabin to where it was dumped in a trash can on the other side of the ship, according to the transcript of FBI agent Andrew del Valle’s testimony in federal court
It connected to four different routers in the space of 20 minutes — and surveillance footage showed her 16-year-old stepbrother, Timothy Hudson, was at all four locations, the report said.
That included footage of him lingering for some 22 seconds by the trash can where his murdered stepsister’s phone was found, the filing said.
He then returned to his room, when his phone connected to another router, but Kepner’s did not, according to the FBI.
Agents also tracked data from the Florida high school cheerleader’s still-missing Apple Watch, according to del Valle.
Although the device was never found, it stopped reporting Kepner’s vitals sometime between 7:50 p.m. and 10 p.m. on the night of Nov. 6, del Valle testified.
Hudson — whose mother, Shauntel Hudson, married Kepner’s father, Christopher Kepner — was first taken into custody in early February, when he was arraigned as a minor on charges of murder and aggravated sexual abuse.
The teenager, who was reportedly “obsessed” with his older stepsister, was then indicted on those same charges by a grand jury on March 10.
The charges were subsequently refiled so Hudson could be charged as an adult, and, as a result, he faces the possibility of two life sentences if convicted of both crimes, according to an adult indictment officially unsealed and made public on April 10.
Hudson, who has been in the care of a maternal uncle since his arraignment, will remain with relatives after a judge rejected the prosecutors’ motion to remand him in custody at a May 27 detention hearing.
