Why Did Anna Kepner’s Stepbrother Smash Her Phone and Toss It On Cruise Ship?
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For months, almost everything about the death of eighteen-year-old Anna Kepner aboard a Carnival cruise was locked behind a sealed court file. Now that file is open — and what’s inside is chilling.
On this episode of Hidden Killers, we dig into the evidence prosecutors unveiled against Anna’s sixteen-year-old stepbrother, now charged as an adult in her death. The centerpiece, for me, is the phone. Anna’s cellphone allegedly disappeared the night she died, was carried through the ship, and turned up smashed in a garbage area where a crew member found it. The irony? On a cruise ship, a phone is constantly pinging the Wi-Fi — so the very thing he allegedly tried to destroy may have quietly recorded his every move.
We also get into the security footage, the DNA results prosecutors describe as overwhelming, the autopsy findings, and the detail almost everyone skips past — the second person investigators tested, and what ruling him out might mean.
He’s facing the possibility of life behind bars. A judge sent him home until trial. And the biggest question of all is still wide open.
Come sit with this one. We follow the evidence wherever it goes — and we don’t pretend to have the answer the family is still waiting for.
END WITH (exactly as written):
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Transcript
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