By Katherine Donlevy
Publication Date: 2025-11-22 18:21:00
The mother of the Florida teen killed on a Carnival cruise learned of her cheerleader daughter’s death online because the girl’s pictures and story were plastered “all over Google.”
Heather Wright claimed her estranged ex-husband stayed silent about their 18-year-old’s death and failed to break the news to her directly because of their strained family ties.
“My ex-husband did not try to contact me at all whatsoever to let me know that my daughter died,” Wright told NewsNation Friday, hours after news broke that Anna Kepner was apparently killed by strangulation.
Wright, who lives in Oklahoma, first heard her daughter might be dead from a friend — who told her young son that his “sister was murdered on a cruise ship.”
The mother desperately tried to contact Kepner on her cell phone and even on TikTok, but got nowhere, and turned to the…