Left inset: Kendall Ramsey (Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office). Right inset: Kayla Holder with her baby son, Kainoa Ramsey (GoFundMe). Background: The Hawaii apartment complex where authorities say Kendall Ramsey fatally stabbed Holder and 6-month-old Kainoa (KITV/YouTube).
A Hawaii man has been found guilty of killing his girlfriend and their infant son in a devastating domestic violence case, with prosecutors saying he stabbed the victims more than 50 times after he “reached a breaking point.”
After the fatal attack, 28-year-old Kendall Ramsey left a chilling message written in blood on the walls of his apartment: “I’m sorry,” prosecutors said. “I stabbed her. She choked me.”
Ramsey, a Chicago native and former U.S. Army soldier, was convicted Friday by an Oahu jury of first-degree murder in the 2020 stabbing deaths of 23-year-old Kayla Holder and their 6-month-old son, Kainoa Ramsey.
He is now facing life in prison without the possibility of parole, with sentencing scheduled for November.
Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm described the killings as “an extraordinarily brutal act of domestic violence” that claimed two innocent lives and left lasting grief for the people who loved them.
“Kayla Holder and her infant son should still be alive,” Alm said, adding that prosecutors hope the verdicts bring some degree of justice to Holder, Kainoa and their grieving family.
At trial, prosecutors described the scene inside the second-floor studio apartment as something officers were “unprepared” to encounter, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, where Holder and baby Kainoa were discovered dead.
“One officer smelled it before he saw it,” Deputy Prosecutor Scott Bell reportedly told the court during his opening statements.
“Blood had splattered the walls, soaked the sofa and caked the carpet,” he said. “The infant lay on his back near the trash can, arms to his side, dressed only in a diaper. His body was smeared in dried blood. Brain matter bulged from the devastating wound to the top of his head.”
Describing how Holder was found, Bell said she was lying “nearby on her back” with her eyes “wide open, their vacant stare skyward,” according to the Star-Advertiser.
“Her thick hair [lay] in a pool of blood that had congealed around her head,” Bell recounted.
Holder had 38 stab wounds, while the baby had 17.
“He reached a breaking point,” Deputy Public Defender Hayley Cheng told jurors in her opening remarks about Ramsey. “This was a man in crisis.”
According to Cheng, Ramsey was dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts at the time of the killings. His issues stemmed from “childhood abuse, abandonment, trauma, shame,” and other hardships related to ongoing stress and unemployment, Cheng said.
Ramsey allegedly caused a car crash after fleeing the scene of the murders, which Cheng claimed was an attempt to take his own life. Ramsey told a hospital worker afterward that he was drunk, got into a fight with Holder, lost his temper, then blacked out and woke up to find Holder dead, along with their son.
“When the final confrontation occurred, it triggered something far deeper,” Cheng told jurors. “The years of trauma, suicidal thinking converged. It was not carefully planned; it was a complete collapse.”
Ramsey is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 18.
The post ‘Smelled it before he saw it’: Horrified cop finds the words ‘I’m sorry’ smeared in blood on couple’s walls, bodies of baby stabbed 17 times and his mom stabbed 38 times first appeared on Law & Crime.
