The step-grandmother of Anna Kepner's accused murderer Timothy Hudson has called for the teen's father to also be charged as she said he created a 'recipe for disaster' on the cruise ship where she was killed. 

Sonya Ziske slated Hudson's step-father Christopher Kepner in a scathing CBS News interview, saying she blames the father for allowing Kepner and Hudson to drink and share the same room on the cruise. 

She said she '100 percent' believes that alcohol and 'missing meds' played a role in the tragedy, which Hudson has claimed he has no memory of. 

Anna Kepner was found dead and wrapped in a blanket under her bed on a Caribbean Carnival Cruise in November, inside a cabin she and Hudson had been sharing on the week-long vacation.  

Ziske called for Hudson's stepfather Christopher and mother Shauntel Kepner to face charges for 'lack of parental supervision' on the cruise, which she described as a 'floating city that is usually like Sin City.' 

She said Christopher Kepner created a 'recipe for disaster' on the vessel before the alleged murder. 

'Not giving medication, or making sure you have the medication before you leave, and the drinking and putting three teenagers — two boys and a girl — in a room together that were not raised together,' she said. 

Hudson is facing murder charges and is being prosecuted as an adult, with authorities alleging that the 16-year-old sexually assaulted his step-sister in a violent attack. 

Ziske is Shauntel Kepner's stepmother, and said she helped raise the alleged killer. 

She told CBS that despite reports about Timothy Hudson and Anna Kepner being close as children, she said he was not 'raised to think of (her) as a sister.' 

Ziske said she believes Timothy's claims that he has no memory of what happened, and said she 'absolutely' believes the alleged murder was a result of alcohol and a lack of his medication. 

'He truly does not remember,' she said. 

'Timothy has said that they were drinking. I believe 100% those kids were drinking on the ship.' 

Christopher and Shauntel Kepner have previously denied that they allowed the children to drink on the cruise, including denying the allegations at a custody hearing in December 2025. 

But Ziske slammed the parents and accused them of being unfit to care for their other children, and said they kept them 'isolated' from the rest of the family for years before the alleged murder. 

'So, I don’t know the past two years. Like, if he was angry, or his mental state, I don’t know any of that,' she said.  

Hudson has pleaded not guilty, and he was controversially given pre-trial release and allowed to stay with an uncle ahead of his murder trial. 

It comes as Hudson's pre-trial hearings were complicated by allegations that Anna also had sex with another unidentified juvenile on the cruise ship, whose DNA was collected by investigators from her body. 

Prosecutors have said Hudson was the only person in the room with the cheerleader when she was strangled to death before her body was hidden under a bed in the cabin she was sharing with him. 

However, according to an unsealed 145-page detention hearing transcript revealed earlier this month, prosecutors disclosed that Kepner had sex during the cruise with a different juvenile, referred to as 'minor witness two' in court documents.

Prosecutors included the disclosure as they laid out DNA evidence collected from Kepner's autopsy, which included vaginal swabs from a rape kit.

Two of them produced male DNA, one of which tested positive for sperm. The findings allowed the FBI to obtain a search warrant for Hudson's DNA, as well as the second minor who allegedly had sex with Kepner.

After the DNA samples were compared to the swabs, it was determined that Hudson was almost certainly the contributor, rather than the second juvenile, according to prosecutors.

The FBI lab results found Hudson was 120 sextillion times more likely to have produced the DNA on the swab that tested positive for sperm, and 1.2 septillion times more likely to have produced the male DNA on the other swab as well.