“A barbaric, intentional, thoughtful act.”

That is how prosecutors described the final, fatal move that the person who killed Anna Kepner used to end her life.

The transcript comes from a February hearing to determine whether the accused killer — Kepner’s 16-year-old stepbrother Timothy Hudson — would be placed in custody or allowed to remain under house arrest at his maternal uncle’s home prior to his trial.

According to the transcript, Timothy’s arrest came after investigators determined his DNA was allegedly a match to that found on his stepsister, resulting in the federal charges he is now facing of murder and aggravated sexual abuse.

Prosecutors accused Timothy at that February hearing of sexually assaulting Anna before killing her inside the cabin they were sharing aboard the Carnival Cruise Line’s Horizon.

Timothy “[asphyxiated] her through a chokehold,” alleged prosecutor Alejandra Lopez of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.

“While she struggled to breathe for minutes, he continued to hold her neck in that manner so that she would die from lack of oxygen. Minutes go by,” Lopez alleged, per the transcript. “At any time [Timothy] could have let that hold go. He could have allowed the victim to breathe. But instead, for minutes, he held that position in order for her to die and kept squeezing.”

It is that action which Lopez called “barbaric.”

She later alleged, while arguing that Timothy should remain in custody ahead of his trial: “Without any warning, without any hint, without any prior indication, this defendant raped and killed his stepsister while on vacation.”

Anna’s half-brother, who was sharing the room with Timothy and Anna, was also tested to see if his DNA was a match to that found on his sister, but it was not, according to the transcript. Prosecutors further argued that the half-brother made just two brief visits to the bedroom on the night of Anna’s death, and both were too brief to have allowed him the time to asphyxiate his sister.

Surveillance footage also allegedly captured Timothy sporadically leaving the cabin the morning after Anna’s death, including just before her body was discovered by a member of the cleaning staff on the morning of Nov. 7, 2025.

“[A]s he walks by the cabin, he makes no effort to look and see what is happening inside, even though so many people are still inside the cabin with the door open. He looks straight ahead and walks away,” Lopez alleged, according to the transcript.

Timothy was first taken into custody in early February and arraigned as a minor on charges of murder and aggravated sexual assault.

A grand jury then indicted him on those same charges, which were then refiled so that Hudson would be charged as an adult. As a result, he is now facing the possibility of two life sentences if convicted of both crimes.

The grand jury wrote in the superseding indictment that Hudson “did knowingly and unlawfully perpetrate” the “willful, deliberate, malicious and premeditated killing of [Kepner] with malice afterthought.”

The jury also found that the killing occurred during the “perpetration” of an “aggravated sexual abuse.”

Timothy remains in the care of his maternal uncle after a judge rejected a motion from prosecutors to remand him into custody at a May 27 detention hearing.