HONOLULU, HA - A man in his twenties has been convicted of murdering his girlfriend and their infant son, stabbing them over 50 times.
Kendall Ramsey, 28, a Chicago native and former Army soldier, was convicted by an Oahu jury on Friday, July 31, of first-degree murder for the 2020 stabbing deaths of his 23-year-old girlfriend, Kayla Holder, and their six-month-old son Kainoa Ramsey, Law & Crime reported.
"I'm sorry," Ramsey wrote on his apartment walls in blood after carrying out the slayings. "I stabbed her. She choked me." Ramsey faces a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole. His sentencing is scheduled for November.
"This was an extraordinarily brutal act of domestic violence that took two innocent lives and forever devastated those who loved them," said Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm in a statement. "Kayla Holder and her infant son should still be alive," Alm said. "We hope these verdicts provide some measure of justice for Kayla, her son, and their family."
During his trial, prosecutors recounted how police were "unprepared for the horror that awaited them" in the second-floor apartment where Holder and Kainoa were found 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. 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 reportedly stemmed from "childhood abuse, abandonment, trauma, shame," and other hardships related to ongoing stress and unemployment, Cheng added.
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."
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