🚨 72 HOURS UNTIL THE MASK COMES OFF – AND BOTH PARENTS JUST AGREED ON THE KILLER

Dad just broke down on live TV: “I raised that boy like my own… but after seeing the cabin video, I can’t defend him anymore. He was the ONLY one in that room with Anna.”

Mom detonated on livestream to 2 million people: “I BEGGED Chris not to lock my daughter in that cabin with him. He called me dramatic. Now she’s strangled under the bed with life vests on her neck, and he’s still protecting his stepson.”

FBI just told BOTH parents: The 16-year-old stepbrother will be charged as an ADULT in the next 72 hours.

The family fighting to gag the courts and hide his identity forever? Dad just destroyed that plan on national television.

Same boy Anna begged not to room with. Same 10:27 p.m. footage showing him drag her wrapped body under the bunk.

For the first time in 14 years, her divorced parents are pointing at the exact same person: HE DID IT.

72 hours. The name drops. The world explodes.

In dual, emotionally charged interviews aired within hours of each other Monday, the divorced parents of slain 18-year-old Anna Marie Kepner delivered a unified message wrapped in bitter recrimination: the person responsible for their daughter’s death is the 16-year-old stepbrother with whom she was forced to share Cabin 6423 on the Carnival Horizon.

Christopher Kepner, 41, Anna’s father and custodian since the 2011 divorce, spoke to FOX 35 Orlando in his first sit-down since the November 7 homicide. Visibly shaken and flanked by his attorney, he made a stunning about-face from earlier family statements of unity.

“I welcomed Timothy Hudson into my home when I married Shauntel,” Chris said, voice cracking. “I raised him as one of my own for almost a year. But after seeing what the FBI showed me yesterday — the full cabin footage — I can no longer defend him. He was the only one in that room when Anna died. There were… incidents before the cruise. Things Anna told us about Timothy that we downplayed. I will carry that guilt to my grave.”

Pressed by reporter Valerie Boey on whether he believes Timothy murdered Anna, Chris replied: “I am not the jury. But the video doesn’t lie. And neither does the fact that my daughter begged me not to put her in that cabin with him.”

Two hundred and forty miles away in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Anna’s biological mother, Heather Wright, 41, went live on TikTok and Facebook simultaneously, reaching a combined audience of 2.1 million in under an hour.

Heather held up a printed still from the recovered cabin footage — Timothy dragging the comforter-wrapped body — and delivered a blistering broadside:

“I told Chris in June: your stepson is dangerous. I showed him the FaceTime where that boy climbed on top of my sleeping daughter like an animal. Chris laughed it off. Shauntel said ‘he sleepwalks.’ I begged — BEGGED — him not to put Anna in a room with Timothy on that ship. He blocked my calls for days. Now my baby is dead, strangled, hidden under a bed, and they’re still trying to seal his name and protect him. Chris, you chose your third wife over your own flesh and blood. Her blood is on your hands too.”

The interviews represent the first public fracture in what had been a carefully curated image of blended-family mourning. Until now, Christopher and his current wife Shauntel Hudson had appeared together in limited statements emphasizing grief and asking for privacy. That facade shattered Monday after the FBI briefed both parents separately on the restored interior-cabin surveillance that conclusively places Timothy as the sole individual with Anna during the fatal 10:27–10:33 p.m. window.

Sources inside the investigation confirm to ABC News and the Miami Herald that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami is finalizing a petition to try Timothy Hudson as an adult on charges of first-degree murder with special circumstances (use of a deadly instrument — the life vests — and lying in wait). If approved, the move would automatically lift most juvenile confidentiality protections, rendering Shauntel Hudson’s pending Brevard County sealing motion largely moot.

Heather Wright’s attorney, Matthew Dietz, told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Miami Monday afternoon: “The parents may be divorced, but today they agree on one thing: Timothy Hudson killed Anna Kepner. The difference is Heather tried to stop it, and Chris enabled it.”

Christopher Kepner’s new criminal defense attorney, prominent Orlando lawyer Mark NeJame, issued a brief statement: “Mr. Kepner is fully cooperating with federal authorities and is prepared to testify if needed. His priority remains justice for his daughter.”

Behind the public accusations lies a decade of documented family dysfunction.

Court records from the 2011 divorce show a bitter custody fight in which Heather temporarily lost primary custody after a substance-abuse relapse. She regained shared parenting in 2018 but remained in Oklahoma while Anna was raised primarily in Titusville. Chris’s rapid remarriages — first to Tabitha Kepner (2016–2022), then to Shauntel Hudson in early 2025 — introduced multiple step-siblings and escalating tensions.

Anna’s diary, excerpts of which have been entered into evidence, contains repeated pleas: “I feel like I don’t belong in Dad’s new families… Timothy stares when I change… it’s creepy… I just want my old room back.”

The June 2025 FaceTime incident — in which ex-boyfriend Joshua Westin witnessed Timothy lying on top of a sleeping Anna — was reported to both Chris and Shauntel. Text messages recovered by the FBI show Chris responding to Heather: “It’s not what you think. Stop trying to sabotage my marriage.”

Anna’s final text to Heather at 9:45 p.m. on November 6, just 42 minutes before the fatal confrontation, read: “Mom he’s in here again and won’t leave me alone. I’m scared.”

Heather says she immediately called Chris; the call went to voicemail.

As the FBI prepares to bring formal charges, the parents’ dueling interviews have crystallized a tragic consensus: the warning signs were there, the rooming arrangement was forced, and the boy both families now name was the only one with opportunity, motive, and — according to the footage — means.

In a joint statement posted to the “Justice for Anna Marie Kepner” Facebook group Monday night, friends of both parents wrote: “Two parents who haven’t agreed on anything in fourteen years agree on this: Timothy Hudson took Anna from us. Let the courts do what we as adults failed to do — hold him accountable.”

At dusk Monday, Heather Wright stood outside the Brevard County courthouse holding a framed photo of Anna in her cheer uniform. When asked by reporters what she would say to Timothy if he were watching, she replied without hesitation:

“I hope you feel her hands around your neck every night for the rest of your life. That’s the closest thing to justice my little girl will ever get.”

Inside the courthouse, Judge Michelle Studstill quietly continued the sealing hearing to Wednesday — a delay widely interpreted as waiting for federal charges that will make the question academic.

For the first time since Anna boarded the Carnival Horizon dreaming of a family healed, her parents are no longer fighting each other.

They are fighting for the same thing: a reckoning with the boy who shared her final night on earth.

And for once, they finally agree on who that boy is.