Family of 18-year-old who died on cruise speaks out as stepbrother deemed ‘suspect’

What began as a dream vacation soon led a close-knit family to shock and heartbreak when one of their own, a beloved teenage girl, was discovered dead on a cruise ship earlier this month.

Even more disconcerting and heartbreaking, her grandparents said in an interview with ABC News, the person authorities told the family is a suspect in Anna Kepner’s death: her stepbrother.

“We all had a great time,” grandmother Barbara Kepner recalled of the trip. “I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt my baby.”

Her grandparents said 18-year-old Anna Kepner had her whole life ahead of her. She was an independent and “powerful” young woman who was graduating high school in May and aspired to join the Navy, the Kepners said. Those hopes came to a halt when Anna’s body was found aboard the Carnival Horizon, where she and eight other family members were vacationing.

Authorities have not announced the cause of death, but the Kepner family says the FBI has told them that Anna apparently died of asphyxiation, possibly caused by a bar – an arm over her neck.

“We were looking forward to watching her grow up,” said grandfather Jeffrey Kepner. “The cruise itself wasn’t what excited me. It was the fact that I was going to spend another week with my youngest son, his family and all my grandchildren.”

On Sunday, the FBI continued to decline to comment on the ongoing investigation, and ABC News has not independently confirmed the details of Anna’s death.

‘There are no steps’

The Kepners, their son, their three children, including Anna, his new wife, and her children from a previous marriage, made the trip together. It was a new tradition they hoped to keep, Jeffrey Kepner said. The three generations had three cabins on the ship.

“The two youngest girls stayed with the parents and then the three teenagers decided among themselves that they wanted to stay in the room together. But we had a bigger room and we made it very clear that at any time, if they didn’t get along or didn’t want to be together, we had an extra bed in our room that they could come to,” Barbara Kepner said.

The Kepners painted a picture of a happy group, where family ties went beyond blood and where “there are no steps” for brothers.

“It’s all family. It’s a blended family, yes, but our family isn’t like that.” Jeffrey Kepner said. “Our dynamic is that we’re all just family.”

When Anna’s father remarried, the Kepners said they had two new grandchildren.

“I loved them like I loved the rest of my grandchildren. They called us Memaw, Peepaw, they told us they loved us,” Mrs. Kepner said.

“They were like brother and sister,” Barbara Kepner said of the stepbrother now named “suspect” in Anna’s death, according to court documents filed by her mother and Anna’s father in an unrelated matter.

Anna’s grandmother described the two teenagers as “two peas in a pod.”

“I know those two kids cared about each other in the right way,” Barbara Kepner said. “I can’t accuse him because I don’t know what happened in that room.”

No formal charges have been filed.

Anna’s grandparents said authorities told them the family that The stepbrother, according to security cameras, was “the only one seen entering and the only one seen leaving” the room he had been sharing with Anna.

Kepner said he couldn’t understand why anyone would do something like that to Anna and wants justice to be served.

“That’s for the courts to decide,” Kepner said.

The Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office declined to comment Friday. The Kepners said the family had been told that preliminary information indicates there were no signs of sexual assault and that there did not appear to be any drugs or alcohol in Anna’s system.

Autopsy and toxicology reports that could confirm those details have not been completed.

‘I couldn’t stop screaming’

The last night her grandparents saw Anna alive, her braces had been bothering her at dinner, Barbara Kepner said. But Anna was still determined to join in the fun.

“She just said, ‘Meemaw, I think I’m going to go back to my room for a little while, I’m not feeling well.’ And she must have felt better because she dressed better. And she came down, we were playing in the casino. And she sat down and played $20. And she didn’t win anything. And she said, ‘Meemaw, I love you guys, I’ll see you later,'” Mrs. Kepner said. “She came in and out to talk to us. And we never saw her again after that.”

The next morning, Jeffrey Kepner said he was buying bingo cards when a medical alert sounded over the ship’s speakers. He recognized the room number.

“I went blank,” Jeffrey Kepner said. “I was hoping it would be something minor.” Instead, what he saw when he entered haunts him. “I still wake up watching that,” he said.

Anna’s body was discovered by a room attendant “hidden under the bed” and she had bruises on the side of her neck, according to the Kepners and a security source briefed on the investigation.

When her son, Anna’s father, walked into the room, Barbara Kepner said, “all he had to do was look at her and he knew she was gone. And then my husband came and took them out of the room. Like he said, they can’t see what they saw.” Then her husband came to tell her what had happened.

“When he came into the room I knew something was wrong,” Mrs. Kepner said. “And all he could say to me was, ‘Anna’. The last thing I can remember for probably hours that morning is that I just screamed. I couldn’t stop screaming.”

The sheer shock of the situation hasn’t left much room for grief yet, the Kepners said, but it has made them yearn for understanding and rack their brains for clues.

“Those are the questions we’ve been asking ourselves: What did we miss?” Mr. Kepner said.

Barbara Kepner said she thought Anna would have told her if she had any concerns about her safety.

“With my grandchildren, I have one rule, and it’s the only rule I have with all of them. Be honest with me, I’ll be honest with you and we’ll figure this out,” Kepner said.

She said that on the boat, the stepbrother told her: “In your own words, let’s say you don’t remember what happened.” And he added: “I think that for him that is his truth.”

The stepbrother was questioned along with other family members by authorities, who also pored over footage from the ship’s security cameras and key card swipes to get a picture of who was where at various times before the death, according to Kepner. family and a security source informed about the investigation.

“He was an emotional wreck. He couldn’t even speak. He couldn’t believe what had happened,” Mrs. Kepner said of the stepbrother. After the ship docked in Miami, the stepbrother was hospitalized for psychiatric observation and then released to stay with a family member, Kepner said.

Appearing virtually in Florida family court in connection with a custody matter unrelated to Anna’s stepmother’s divorce from her ex-husband, Kepner’s stepmother’s attorney told the court Thursday that immediately after the incident on the cruise ship, the stepbrother was “hospitalized.” He has since been released from the hospital and is now living with a relative of the mother and receiving counseling, the lawyer said. The lawyer did not explain the reason for the hospitalization.

“The biggest question I want answered is why. And that’s the answer I don’t know if we’ll ever get,” Jeffrey Kepner said.

Along with the pain of the unknown, the grandparents said, also came the feeling that they have lost not one, but two children they cared for.

“Now I know how he died. It helps a little bit, but it’s not going to bring Anna back,” Barbara Kepner said. “No matter what we find out, no matter what they tell us, none of these kids are coming back.”