He calls himself only “Marco” and he hasn’t slept in twenty-four days.

A 29-year-old Filipino cabin steward on Deck 7 of the Carnival Horizon, Marco was the last known person, besides the killer, to see 18-year-old Anna Kepner alive. And on the night of November 7, 2025, from a darkened hallway 7420–7480, he witnessed something that turned a routine turndown service into the stuff of lifelong nightmares.

Speaking exclusively through an encrypted messaging app from an undisclosed port in the Mediterranean, where he has been hiding since jumping ship in Barcelona, Marco finally broke his silence.

“I was pushing my cart at 12:47 a.m.,” he typed, voice trembling through text. “Lights were low, music from the Lido deck still thumping. I see the door to Cabin 7423 cracked open, orange light spilling out. Then I hear her, Anna, crying, ‘Stop, you’re hurting me!’ American accent, young voice. I freeze. Next thing, the stepbrother, Dylan, he comes out backward, dragging her by the hair into the room. She’s barefoot, wearing only the Navy T-shirt and shorts. Her mouth is bleeding from the braces. He hisses, ‘You tell Mom and I swear…’ then slams the door.”

Marco says he stood paralyzed for almost a full minute, heart hammering so loud he thought security would hear it. He considered knocking, calling his supervisor, anything, but fear won. “I have a wife and two babies in Manila,” he wrote. “If I speak up on ship, Carnival fire me, blacklist me forever. I think maybe just sibling fight, they fix it. I go back to my crew area and pray.”

Less than eleven hours later, at 11:17 a.m. the following morning, another steward found Anna’s body wedged under the bed, wrapped in a soaked blanket, orange life vests piled on top like a grotesque burial at sea.

Marco was questioned that same day by Bahamian police and FBI. He lied. He told them he saw nothing, heard nothing. “They show me photo lineup. I see Dylan’s face and I almost vomit. But I say, ‘No, sir, everything normal on my rounds.’ I am coward.”

For three weeks he carried the guilt like ballast. Then, on November 29, when the autopsy ruled homicide and the news exploded worldwide, Marco says he broke down in the crew mess, sobbing uncontrollably in front of coworkers. That night he stole a crew laptop, downloaded the hallway security footage he’d secretly copied onto a USB the day Anna died (the one angle Carnival claims was “malfunctioning”), and fled the ship in Spain with nothing but his passport and the clothes on his back.

The footage he sent us is only 38 seconds long, but it is devastating.

Grainy night-vision shows Dylan, hoodie up, dragging a struggling Anna down the corridor at 12:49 a.m. She is trying to scream, but his hand is clamped over her mouth. Her bare feet kick uselessly against the carpet. At the 22-second mark, she manages to bite his palm; he slams her head against the wall hard enough to leave a dent later found by forensics. By the 30-second mark they disappear into Cabin 7423. The door clicks shut. The hallway goes silent.

Marco claims he has already forwarded the full file to the FBI’s Miami field office through an anonymous tip line, but he fears Carnival’s lawyers will bury it. “I send to journalists too,” he wrote. “If something happen to me, you know why.”

Since the video surfaced on a private Facebook group for cruise employees last night, everything has detonated.

Christopher Kepner, Anna’s father, saw the clip at 2:14 a.m. and had to be sedated. He posted a single line on the family’s GoFundMe: “My baby begged for her life and no one helped her. I will never forgive myself, starting with myself.”
Shauntel Hudson, Dylan’s mother and Christopher’s wife, has now lawyered up and gone completely dark. Neighbors say sheriff’s deputies removed boxes of electronics from the family home at dawn.
Carnival Cruise Line issued a terse statement: “We are cooperating fully with authorities and cannot comment on ongoing investigations.” Their stock fell 9 % in pre-market trading.
The FBI confirmed late Monday that Dylan Hudson, 16, has been taken into federal custody as a material witness and is being held in a juvenile facility in Miami. Sources say charges are “imminent.”

Marco’s final message arrived at 4:03 a.m. Eastern:

“I see her face every time I close eyes. She look at me through the crack in door, like she begging ‘help.’ I didn’t. Now I give everything to make it right. Tell Anna’s papa I am sorry. Tell the world: the monster was not stranger. He slept three feet from her bunk bed.”

Tonight, somewhere in Europe, a cabin steward who once folded towel animals for smiling children stares at the ceiling, waiting for a knock that may never come. And in Titusville, Florida, a father clutches the last photo of his daughter alive, taken poolside just hours before the hallway video, and whispers the same sentence over and over:

“He dragged her by the hair… and the ship kept sailing.”

The Carnival Horizon is scheduled to leave Miami again this Saturday. Cabin 7423 has already been re-booked.