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In a tragic turn of events, a Florida mother’s world was shattered when she discovered her daughter’s death in the most impersonal way possible—via the internet. Heather Wright, the mother of the 18-year-old cheerleader who died on a Carnival cruise, found out about the tragedy when she saw her daughter’s photos and story circulating widely on Google.
Wright expressed her distress over her estranged ex-husband’s silence during this devastating time. She claimed that he did not reach out to inform her directly of their daughter’s death, a consequence, she believes, of their strained family dynamics.
Speaking to NewsNation, Wright shared her anguish: “My ex-husband did not try to contact me at all whatsoever to let me know that my daughter died,” she said, shortly after the news surfaced that Anna Kepner had apparently died from strangulation.
Residing in Oklahoma, Wright was initially alerted to the possibility of her daughter’s death by a friend. This friend had broken the news to Wright’s young son, telling him that his sister had been murdered on a cruise ship.
Desperate to confirm the harrowing news, Wright attempted to reach her daughter through her cell phone and even tried contacting her on TikTok, but to no avail. Left with no other options, she turned to the internet, where she finally stumbled upon the tragic headlines.
That’s when she saw reports that the high school senior had been found dead in the cruise cabin she was sharing with her two stepbrothers.
“Then I Googled ’18-year-old died on cruise ship,’ and that’s when my daughter’s face popped up all over Google,” Wright said.
Even law enforcement failed to reach out to her, Wright claimed, alleging they still haven’t contacted her in the weeks since Kepner’s Nov. 7 death.
The woman had a fraught relationship with Kepner’s father, Christopher Kepner, telling NewsNation he even banned her from attending their daughter’s memorial earlier this week.
“He said he knew for a fact Anna would not want me there and I said, ‘That’s a lie, but whatever,’” Wright recalled.
“He said if I step foot in Florida, ‘I will have you arrested immediately for back child support,” she continued, adding she snuck into the service regardless.
“I wore a wig and I wore some really tall high heels so that way if he was looking for somebody short, he wouldn’t see me. Nobody spotted me, I kinda stayed in the back close to the door so if I needed to make a quick getaway, I could.”
Wright admitted she and her daughter did not have a relationship as a result of the rocky history between herself and Kepner’s father, which most recently involved a screaming match and exchange of obscenities between the pair.
“He made it extremely difficult for me to even have a relationship with my daughter,” said Wright, adding that she spoke with the teen only on birthdays and holidays.
The relationship was so strained that Wright did not know anything about the 16-year-old stepbrother being investigated in connection with Kepner’s death, though no suspects have yet been named.
He reportedly had a creepy obsession with Kepner and once allegedly climbed on top of her in bed, according to an ex-boyfriend of the slain 18-year-old — but the two were fighting in the hours before her death.
Kepner’s body was found wrapped in a blanket, covered by life jackets and stashed under a bed.
Anna Kepner died from asphyxiation from a bar hold — an arm across her neck — and had two bruises on the side of her throat, a source close to the investigation told ABC News Friday.