By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2026-06-18 18:10:57 | Updated at 2026-06-18 19:50:51
1 hour ago
The baby-faced teen accused of sexually assaulting and killing his stepsister Anna Kepner is set to spend the next several weeks in a notorious Florida jail – a privately-owned co-ed facility that has faced accusations of staff corruption, inmate rape and wrongful death.
Timothy Hudson, 16, was recently ordered by a federal judge to be taken into custody by the US Marshals and held at the Citrus County Detention Center, which is the only privately-run county lockup in Florida.
The accused murderer’s parents tried to keep him out of jail while he awaiting trial, having him live with family members as part of his supervised release.
However, this week, a federal judge ordered him to be locked up after citing the ‘depravity and psychopathy’ of his alleged crimes. He was originally charged as a juvenile, but the case was later sent to adult court.
That led the judge to reconsider his bond conditions.
Hudson will be kept in the juvenile wing of the facility, which is about 75 miles north of Tampa.
The 760-bed facility, run by private prison operator CoreCivic has been the site of several lawsuits and complaints of wrongdoing by staff.
In March, five staffers – three correctional officers, a commissary worker and jail nurse – were indicted on federal bribery and contraband charges, the Justice Department announced.
Two of the officers are accused of smuggling phones in for inmates – to the tune of $4,000 per cellphone – while the prison nurse and a third guard were allegedly caught with drug-laced paper and 400 oxycodone pills, respectively, that they planned to sell to jailbirds, the indictment documents state.
The nurse, Nicole Knecht, had allegedly raked in $8,800 in bribes to her CashApp account before she was nabbed, according to the docs.
Less than a month after the indictments, Citrus County Sheriff David Vincent held a public hearing to discuss the the possibility of terminating the county’s longtime contract with CoreCivic and having the sheriff’s office take over the jail.
During the meeting, Vincent said that bringing the jail back under local operation would be cheaper and would result in better oversight and expanded rehabilitation programs, the Citrus County Chronicle reported at the time.
“These are still Citrus County citizens in that jail,” the sheriff said. “I don’t think CoreCivic looks at it like that.”
Vincent’s criticism came years after county officials voted to begin fining the Tennessee-based jail operating company $2,500 per day for failing to meet staffing requirements in February 2022. The daily fee then rose to $3,750 in 2023.
The lockup has repeatedly been at the center of troubling jail incidents over the years.
In 2017, a minor inmate’s mother filed a lawsuit alleging that jail employees failed to prevent her developmentally-disabled son from being raped by another inmate inside the facility, and were negligent in their screening of him, according to court documents and a Chronicle report.
“Despite having the knowledge that [the boy] was mentally disabled and highly vulnerable to sexual assault, [the boy] was placed in an adult jail facility where other inmates were provided the opportunity to bully [the boy],” the complaint in that case read.
He was raped by at least one male inmate, a gang member, over the course of several days in the adult lockup, the doc claimed.
The case was settled with CoreCivic coughing up $425,000 in January 2019, Prison Legal News reported.
Alleged staff negligence was also the catalyst of an elderly female inmate’s death in November 2021, according to a federal wrongful death lawsuit later filed by her son.
An internal investigation into 63-year-old Valerie Susan Bogle’s death from dehydration – which occurred in an isolation cell where she’d reportedly been left for four days after her arrest – led to the termination of the facility’s warden and three other employees in early 2022, the Chronicle reported.
An undisclosed number of additional staffers were “disciplined and/or counseled” following the disturbing incident, a CoreCivic spokesperson told the outlet at the time.
The company “identified instances where employees violated policies that relate to monitoring and reporting” during their probe into the death, the spokesperson added.
The son’s lawsuit against CoreCivic was settled for an undisclosed amount last August, according to court records.
Bogle’s death was just one of at least nine that were recorded at the jail between 2020 and 2023 – none of which were attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Prison Legal News.
In addition to county inmates, CoreCivic is paid about $5 million to hold federal detainees there, according to the Chronicle.
Hudson is expected to be transferred to a juvenile facility in south Florida next month, ahead of his trial in Miami federal court.
He will undergo yet another mental health evaluation at the county jail.
The teen is being tried as an adult on murder and aggravated sexual abuse charges after Kepner, 18, was found strangled to death inside a Carnival cruise cabin she shared with Hudson and her 13-year-old brother.
He has pleaded not guilty.
CoreCivic referred The Post’s inquiries to the US Marshals Service, which did not respond by the time of publication.
