STEPBROTHER INDICTED IN ANNA KEPNER CRUISE SHIP MURDER — NOW CHARGED AS ADULT

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Garrett Fisher. It's Wednesday, April fifteenth, twenty twenty six. This is Daily Crime and Justice. We have been following Anna Kepner's case since November, since the morning her body was found concealed under a bed in a Carnival cruise ship cabin, since her grandmother said good night to her in the casino, said see you in the morning, and then never saw her again. Yesterday, a federal grand jury indicted Anna's sixteen year old stepbrother as an adult on charges of first degree murder and aggravated sexual abuse. His name is Timothy Hudson. He is sixteen years old. He is now facing the possibility of life in federal prison. This case has moved slowly, carefully, and at times agonizingly. Today it moved. We're going to walk through everything also this morning. A story that lives in a very different register, but I want to give it its full treatment. Melanie Villion, star of the Real Housewives of Pretoria, Range Rover driver, a parent woman of means, was arrested in Boca Ratone last month along with her husband after allegedly stealing more than five thousand dollars worth of groceries from a public supermarket over the course of six months, ticket switching, failed self checkouts, distracting employees. And I want to tell you the reason she gave investigators, because it matters. And then we're closing with a case

1:33 from that same city, Boca Raton, that goes back to two thousand and seven. Involves a mother and a seven year old daughter executed in a mall parking lot and has never been solved. A retired FBI agent is speaking out. He has things to say. It's Wednesday. Let's get into it. This is heavy material. Let me take you back to November seventh, twenty twenty five. Annah Kepner was eighteen years old, a high school senior from Titusville, Florida, a cheerleader, a young woman who wanted to cheer at the University of Georgia, who was planning to join the United States Navy, who had told people she wanted to become a K nine police officer. She had a whole life in front of her, full of very specific plans and very specific dreams. She was on a family vacation, a carnival cruise the Horizon, sailing out of Miami through the Western Caribbean. And the word family here requires some unpacking, because this was a blended family in its earliest, most fragile stage. Anna's father, Chris Kepner, had married a woman named Chantell Hudson in December twenty twenty four, eleven months before this cruise. This was a new family, new step parents, new step siblings, new dynamics, new sleeping arrangements. On a ship in the Caribbean, Anna and her sixteen year old stepbrother, Chantell's son, Timothy Hudson, we were sharing a cabin along with Anna's fourteen year old biological brother. The parents were across the hall. Anna's

3:06 grandparents were one floor up. The night of November sixth, Anna left a family dinner early. She said her braces were bothering her. She went back to the cabin. The next morning, a room attendant found her. Her body was hidden beneath the bed, wrapped in a blanket covered with life jackets. Someone had concealed her there. The Miami Dade Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death mechanical asphyxiation. The manner of death homicide. Something or someone had cut off Anna Kepner's airway until she died. She was eighteen years old. In the weeks and months that followed, the case moved through the courts in ways that were deliberately opaque. Proceedings were sealed. The FBI, which has jurisdiction over crimes committed in international waters, would not comment, but details leaked out through separate custody battle that had nothing to do with Anna.

4:03 Chantal Hudson and her ex husband, Thomas Hudson were fighting over their children, and in those filings, in November twenty twenty five, Chantell herself named her son as a suspect in Anna's death. Think about what that means. Anna's stepmother, the woman who had just months ago joined the Kepner family, She identified her own son as the person investigators were looking at, and then she told a family court that he was no longer welcome in her home, the home she shares with Anna's father, Chris Kepner. Timothy Hudson left the family home. He was placed with a maternal uncle. His father, Thomas Hudson, filed in court that he supported his son. The two families, the Kepner's and the Hudson's, split down a fracture line that runs right through the middle of this case, there were details that came out about the night in question. Timothy's mother said he had not taken his insomnia medication for two nights running, including the night before Anna was found. She said he told her over a two minute phone call from a medical facility that he couldn't remember anything, kept repeating it, just couldn't remember. Law enforcement sources told CBS News they believed Anna had been strangled during an altercation and that the suspect may have been using alcohol. Those are law enforcement sources, not proven, not charged, but the direction of the investigation was clear. February two, twenty twenty six, federal prosecutors charged Timothy Hudson as a juvenile. The case was sealed. He

5:37 appeared in federal court in Miami on February sixth, wearing a camouflage hoodie, hat pulled low, face covered. He walked in with his attorney. The media watched from outside, and the case went back under seal. Then Monday, April thirteenth, twenty twenty six, yesterday, a federal grand jury returned an indictment. The Justice Department announced it publicly. Timothy Hudson, sixteen years old, of Titusville, Florida, has been indicted as an adult on two federal counts, first degree murder and aggravated sexual abuse. Both counts carry a maximum sentence of life in federal prison. The indictment, in the words of prosecutors, is based on evidence that Timothy Hudson sexually assaulted and intentionally killed Anna Kepner while the ship was sailing in international waters. Those are the government's words evidence they say they will present in court. Immediately after the indictment was announced, federal prosecutors filed a motion to revoke Timothy Hudson's release conditions. Right now, he is living with a guardian, not his parents. Prosecutors say that's not enough. They wrote in their filing that the evidence demonstrated, and I'm going to read this carefully, that he committed crimes involving the most serious, egregious, and violative acts one person can inflict upon another, that he acted without any warning against a victim he had been raised to view as a sibling. They are asking a

7:08 judge to detain him. Anna's father, Chris Kepner, told NBC News justice needs to be served. Look, this is a sixteen year old, a minor charged as an adult in a federal proceeding for the murder and sexual abuse of his stepsister. There is nothing easy about any dimension of this case. The legal and moral complexity is real. But so is Anna Kepner. So is what she went through in that cabin. So is the fact that she left a dinner early saying her brace is hurt and never came back. Her grandmother said good night to her, mem I love you guys, I'll see you later. She was a senior in high school. She wanted to cheer at Georgia.

7:52 She wanted to join the navy. She wanted to work with K nine dogs. She was eighteen years old. We will continue to follow this case as it moves toward trial. No new court dates have been set. Welcome back. The Real Housewives franchise has given us a lot over the years. Overturned tables, dramatic confessionals, women throwing things in slow motion. But I have to say this particular development is new territory, even for them. Milani Ville Joan is forty years old. She was a cast member on the Real Housewives of Pretoria, a South African iteration of the franchise that premiered in twenty twenty two and ended after one season. She owns a nail brand. She ran a podcast. Her husband, Petros vill Joan fifty seven, describes himself as a celebrity lawyer.

8:49 They drive a black Range Rover. On March tenth of this year, police in Boca Ratan arrested them both. The charge aggravated grand theft, a second degree FELLA in Florida, which carries a maximum sentence of up to fifteen years in prison. Here is what they are accused of. Beginning in August twenty twenty five, and the same month they arrived in the United States after relocating from South Africa, the Villions allegedly began stealing from a public supermarket. They kept doing it for six months. An investigation opened in late February when Loss Prevention started reviewing the footage. Public's officials and police went back and examined fifty two transactions.

9:31 They found three hundred and ninety two stolen items. The total five thousand, three hundred and two dollars and seventeen cents. The methodology, according to the arrest affidavit, ticket switching, scanning cheaper items as seasoning packets to avoid paying full price. Failing to scan items at self checkout at all, and according to investigators, Petris allegedly talked up store employees while his wife worked the register, distracting staff. They also say he pushed carts past the final point of sale without paying on multiple occasions. Police identified them through surveillance footage and license plate records the range Rover. On March tenth, officers pulled Petrus over during a traffic stop, placed him in shackles behind the range Rover. Bodycam footage obtained by NBC six shows him asking officers, you're arresting me, Yes, Petrus, they are arresting you. Meanwhile, a separate team went to the apartment. Melanie answered the door in a white robe no shoes. She was directed to turn around and place her hands behind her back. She asked what was happening.

10:42 The officer said they would explain in a second. She asked if she could make a call. No. Eventually, she was escorted to a police cruiser in a different outfit and placed in the back. In a post miranda interview, Melanie told investigators she acted alone. Petrice denied any involve Those two stories, needless to say, do not match the surveillance footage that shows them working the store together for six months. After their arrest, both Melanie and Petris were transferred into ice custody. They are South African nationals who relocated to the US last summer. They were officially charged on April eighth. Now here's the part I want to sit with for a moment. Melanie told investigators she was in survival mode. She said she had not worked since moving to the United States. She told media in South Africa that she left her home country because she felt targeted that black South Africans were coming to her businesses, intimidating her staff, intimidating her that it got scary that she couldn't wait to leave. I'm not going to litigate her experience in South Africa. I don't know what she went through, but I will say this. She drove a Range Rover, she had a nail brand, a podcast, a self identified celebrity lawyer, and the answer to financial hardship in Boca Raton was apparently to walk into a Publix with a plan and steal three hundred and ninety two items across fifty two trips. That's not desperation, that's a

12:14 system that's not a mistake. That's a choice, a choice made many, many times with a method. Over six months, the range Rover was in the parking lot every time. Melanie briefly archived her Instagram after the arrests. It's back up now, of course it is. We're going to stay in Boca for our final story. This one goes back nineteen years and I want to tell it to you the way a retired FBI agent just told it to the Daily Mail, slowly, with the weight of someone who has spent two decades not being able to let it go.

12:57 In two thousand and seven, someone turned the Town Center Mall in bo Caratan into a hunting ground. That is not my characterization. That is the characterization of former FBI agent John McVeigh, who worked the case before his retirement. He uses the word deliberately. Three incidents one year, all connected to the same mall exit, all targeting women, two of them fatal. March twenty third, two thousand and seven, Randy Gorenberg, fifty two years old, stopped at the mall to pick up a John Legend. CD surveillance showed her walking back to her Mercedes SUV around one to twelve in the afternoon. Within forty minutes, she had been shot in the face and her body dumped from the car in West Delray Beach. The vehicle was found abandoned behind a nearby home depot. She was the first. August seventh, two thousand and seven, a woman known only as Jane Doe.

13:50 She has never been publicly identified, left Sacks Fifth Avenue with her two year old son. She buckled him into the backseat, loaded her packages in to the trunk, walked around to the driver's door, and opened it. A man was already sitting next to her son, holding a gun. He had moved fast enough to be inside her car in the seconds it took her to walk from the trunk to the front door. He demanded she drive to an ATM and withdraw five hundred dollars. She told him she didn't have that much. He forced her to take what she had, about two hundred dollars, and then drove her around, handcuffed, her eyes covered with blacked out swim goggles, her son crying in the back seat. At one point, according to McVeigh, the man asked if the child wanted some water. A man with a gun asking about the child's water. He eventually released them both. Before he left, he told Jane, do I have your driver's license? I know where you live. If you call the police, tell them I'm a short, fat black man. Then he walked away.

14:52 She freed herself, ran to the sacks val at stand and called police. A sketch was released, and then McVeigh says the investigation went quiet. December two thousand and seven, Nancy Bochicio, forty seven years old. Her daughter Joey, was with her. She had been picked up early from school for a doctor's appointment, and the two had gone to the mall afterward. They were captured on surveillance footage leaving through the same exit as the previous victims. They were the last people to be seen walking out. Nancy never showed up for a planned dinner that night. Shortly before midnight, a mall security guard noticed a car idling alone in the merchandise pickup zone outside sears. Inside, Nancy and her daughter both shot once in the head, both bound with duct tape, plastic ties, handcuffs and goggles. Both dead. They had been there for nearly nine hours before being found.

15:50 Witnesses interviewed by police said they had seen two figures in the back seat throughout the day, but assumed they were sleeping after Christmas shopping. Nobody was paying at time attention to them. Nobody stopped, nobody knocked on the window. They were sitting twenty feet from people doing holiday shopping and no one stopped. McVeigh told The Daily Mail what he believes happened. He thinks Nancy withdrew five hundred dollars from an ATM. Surveillance confirmed she made the transaction and then was brought back to the mall. He believed she was placed in the back seat. He believed she may have broken her handcuffs at some point trying to get her daughter out. He believes the man reached back and shot them both and then walked away in a busy mall parking lot in the middle of the afternoon, and nobody saw him. The DNA came back empty. The forensics gave investigators one unidentified item, a manufactured object found in the car, and they spent two and a half years tracking down every single one of the more than three hundred sold They knocked on doors, they interviewed people. They could not identify a buyer. In recent years, a documentary series suggested that Swedish serial killer Peter Mangs, who was later convicted of murders in Sweden, might have been in Florida and connected to these crimes. McVeigh was not polite about this theory. He told The Daily Mail it was, in his words, bulls. He said the show was full of assumption and innuendo, that nothing in it was accurate,

17:23 that he was appalled it was allowed to air his own theory, A stranger, someone driven by a desire for control over women, or by something darker. He says, the progression of the crimes tells the story. Randy Gorenberg resisted, maybe got what the man wanted and ended up dead. Jane Doe didn't resist, She cooperated, She survived. Then came a mother with a young child older than a toddler, still controllable, and that ended in two murders in a parking lot. All three cases are still open, no charges, no arrests, no suspect. McVeigh told The Daily Mail it's the one case in my career I never solved, and it's upsetting because I still see images of them. The dates are still profound to me. Nancy Bocchicio was forty seven years old. Her daughter Joey, was a child. They went to the mall, They walked out through a door.

18:17 They should have driven home. The case is still open. The killer is by all available evidence still out there. If you have any information about the two thousand and seven crimes at Town Center Mall in Boca Raton, contact the Boca Raton Police Department. That's Daily Crime and Justice for Wednesday, April fifteenth, twenty twenty six. Anna Kepner's stepbrother has been indicted as an adult on federal charges of first degree murder and aggravated sexual abuse. She was eighteen years old. She wanted to cheer at Georgia, join the Navy, work with dogs. She left a family dinner early and never came back. Timothy Hudson faces the possibility of life in prison. The case moves forward. A real housewife in her husban were arrested for stealing over five thousand dollars in groceries from a publix over six months. She said she was in survival mode. They drove a range drover and in Boca Raton, a mother and her daughter have been dead for nineteen years. No one has been charged.

19:17 A retired FBI agent is still haunted by it. Someone should have said something, someone should have knocked on that window. Do better. This episode of Daily Crime and Justice is produced by Calaroga Shark Media Research and scripting, assisted by artificial intelligence tools. All information is drawn from publicly available sources, including court filings, law enforcement statements, and established news organizations. Nothing in this program constitutes legal advice. Alleged conduct is unproven unless otherwise stated. For information about the two thousand and seven Boca Raton mal homicides, contact the Boca Raton Police Department,