MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Months after 18-year-old Anna Kepner was found dead on the Carnival Horizon, her stepbrother will be held in a Miami detention facility ahead of his trial, according to court records obtained by News 6.
In a court order, a federal judge instructed that the stepbrother — Timothy Hudson, 16 — to be taken into custody of the U.S. Marshals.
That order required Hudson to be delivered into their custody by 8 a.m. on Monday, though no details have been released confirming whether that has yet happened.
Last month, an assistant U.S. attorney told a Miami federal judge that Hudson had violently raped Kepner and likely put her in a chokehold, squeezing her so hard her eardrums burst.
A federal grand jury recently indicted Hudson on homicide and aggravated sexual abuse charges. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Now that Hudson is being prosecuted as an adult, government lawyers have asked a magistrate judge to order Hudson detained until his trial. Hudson has been living with an uncle in Hernando County under GPS monitoring since he was first charged with juvenile delinquency in February.
[RELATED: Anna Kepner’s father wants stepbrother in custody until trial]
Hoping to convince the magistrate that Hudson is a danger to others and should be detained, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandra L. Lopez detailed some of the government’s evidence against the 16-year-old during last month’s hearing.
According to Lopez, surveillance cameras on the cruise ship confirmed Hudson and Kepner entered the stateroom they shared a little after 7:30 p.m. on the night before housekeepers found Kepner’s body hidden underneath a bed.
Prosecutors believe Kepner was still alive around 8:14 p.m. when she reportedly communicated with someone using the social media platform Snapchat.
Surveillance cameras showed Hudson poke his head out of the stateroom door at 10:13 p.m., look both ways down the hallway, and then leave, Lopez said. Kepner never emerged from the room.
Wi-Fi routers located throughout the ship indicated Hudson took Kepner’s phone out of the room and carried it to another deck, where he likely disposed of it in an area where a trash can is located, the government alleged. The phone was later recovered from a trash collection bin by a cruise ship employee, according to Lopez.
[RELATED: Shocking new details in cruise ship murder case]
When Kepner’s body was discovered, the prosecutor said Kepner’s pants were on but that her underwear was twisted and partially inserted into her vaginal canal, suggesting she was the victim of non-consensual sexual intercourse.
Semen found inside Kepner’s vagina contained DNA that Lopez said had a “high probability” of belonging to Hudson.
According to court records unsealed Wednesday, a different minor who lives outside of Florida had sexual intercourse with Kepner during the cruise. His DNA was tested and determined not to be a contributor of the DNA found in Kepner’s body, investigators said.
An autopsy concluded that Kepner died from mechanical asphyxiation, which Lopez said was “likely” caused by Hudson placing her in a chokehold and squeezing for three to five minutes.
“He squeezed so hard her eardrum burst,” Lopez told federal magistrate judge Edwin G. Torres.