Shauntel Hudson still wakes up at 3:17 a.m. every night, the exact minute Carnival Horizon’s security knocked on her door to tell her Anna Kepner was dead.

In the weeks since that knock, the 42-year-old stepmother has carried a secret heavier than grief: the moment she decided her own 16-year-old son could never come home again.

“I looked at my 9-year-old sleeping down the hall and I thought, ‘If he did this once, what’s to stop him from doing it again?’” Shauntel told a Brevard County judge on December 5, her voice barely above a whisper but loud enough to shatter what was left of two families. “I love my son. But I was terrified he’d hurt my baby next.”

That single sentence, delivered under oath in an emergency custody hearing, has become the most devastating public fracture in a case that already feels like a Greek tragedy on the high seas.

Anna Kepner, 18, the radiant cheerleader with college acceptance letters in her suitcase and a future brighter than the Caribbean sun, was found strangled and hidden under a bed in the cabin she shared with her two stepbrothers on November 7. The last person seen entering that room alive was Shauntel’s oldest boy, T.H. (16). By the time the ship docked in Miami, the FBI had taken him for questioning. By the time the family buried Anna in a pink casket covered in pom-poms, Shauntel had quietly arranged for her son to be driven 90 minutes away to live with his aunt, address sealed, phone number changed, social media scrubbed.

She didn’t tell Anna’s father, Chris Kepner, her husband of five years, until the day before the funeral.

“I knew he would fight me,” she admitted in court. “But Chris had just lost his daughter. I couldn’t ask him to choose between his grief and my fear.”

The custody war exploded the following week when Anna’s biological uncle petitioned for emergency guardianship of the youngest Hudson child, the 9-year-old half-sister both families share. In open court, Shauntel’s attorney laid out the chilling timeline:

November 7, 2:11 a.m.: T.H. swipes back into Cabin 1423 after an hour roaming the Lido Deck alone.
2:47 a.m.: Cabin camera catches him leaving again, hoodie up, hands in pockets.
6:04 a.m.: Housekeeping finds Anna’s body, blanket over her face, life jackets piled on top like someone was trying to make the bed look normal.
8:12 a.m.: T.H. allegedly tells grandmother Barbara Kepner, “I blacked out. I don’t remember hurting her.”
November 9: Released from psychiatric hold with no charges, yet.
November 10: Shauntel signs voluntary relocation papers. Her son has not set foot in the family home since.

“I didn’t kick him out because I believe he’s a monster,” Shauntel cried on the stand. “I sent him away because I don’t know what he is right now, and I have a little girl who still asks why her big sister won’t wake up.”

Chris Kepner, sitting across the aisle in a dark suit and hollow eyes, didn’t look at his wife once during her testimony. When it was his turn, he spoke only nine words: “Anna trusted him with her life. And she lost it.”

The judge ruled the 9-year-old could stay with Shauntel for now, no immediate danger found, but ordered the 16-year-old to remain in exile until the FBI finishes its investigation. Charges are expected as early as January, sources close to the case say: second-degree murder at minimum, possibly worse if prosecutors argue premeditation.

Outside the courthouse, Anna’s cheer squad stood in complete silence holding a giant pink ribbon that read “Forever 18.” No chants. No tears loud enough for cameras. Just the soft sound of pom-poms brushing together in the wind.

Shauntel walked past them without stopping. Someone whispered, “How do you sleep at night?” She paused, turned, and answered the only way she could.

“I don’t.”

Somewhere in a quiet Orlando suburb, a 16-year-old boy who once called Anna “sis” now eats dinner at a stranger’s table, waiting for a knock that could be freedom or a lifetime behind bars.

And in Titusville, a mother keeps her youngest daughter’s bedroom door locked from the outside, just in case the monster she’s afraid of isn’t out there, but still inside the child she raised.

The Carnival Horizon sails again this week. Cabin 1423 has been deep-cleaned, re-carpeted, and re-assigned.

But some stains, it seems, never really come out.