The murder verdict closes the trial phase of a case that began after Kayla Holder and her infant son were found dead in 2020.
HONOLULU, Hawaii — The last ordinary conversation Michelle Chamberlain remembered having with her daughter was a FaceTime call about dinner, plans and everyday life. Hours later, 23-year-old Kayla Holder and her 6-month-old son, Kainoa Ramsey, were found dead in their Ewa Beach apartment. More than six years later, a jury has convicted Kainoa’s father of first-degree murder.
Kendall Ramsey, now 28, was found guilty July 31 after a trial that returned the case to the circumstances of the March 2020 killings and to Ramsey’s mental condition at the time. Holder suffered 38 stab wounds and Kainoa suffered 17, according to evidence described in court. Ramsey admitted causing their deaths but sought a manslaughter verdict on the ground that he had acted under extreme emotional or mental disturbance. Jurors rejected that argument and convicted him of first-degree murder. They also found him guilty of attempted first-degree assault in a later car crash.
For Holder’s family, the verdict followed a legal process that stretched across most of Kainoa’s childhood had he lived. The criminal case began when police responded to the Sun Rise apartment complex on Hanapouli Circle shortly after midnight March 26, 2020. A friend had found Holder and her son and called 911. Both were pronounced dead at the apartment. Ramsey was arrested after a crash near Wahiawa later that morning. Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm said after the 2026 verdict that the deaths had permanently devastated the people who loved Holder and Kainoa.
Early reporting about the case captured a life outside the later courtroom descriptions of the killings. Chamberlain told Hawaii News Now that she and Holder talked frequently and had been on FaceTime around 7 p.m. before her daughter was found. Holder had moved to Hawaii in 2014, where she got a job, joined the military and enrolled in school. She later became a mother. Chamberlain had traveled from New York for Kainoa’s birth, her first grandchild, and remembered him as a calm baby with a good personality who was easily contented when his basic needs were met.
Holder and Kainoa had also made a trip to the East Coast before their deaths, giving relatives and friends a chance to meet the baby. Chamberlain told the station that she had organized a gathering rather than asking Holder to fly while pregnant for a baby shower. In retrospect, that trip became the final occasion on which many relatives saw mother and son. Holder’s family emphasized her bond with Kainoa, with Chamberlain saying after the killings that her daughter had found a profound love in being his mother.
Holder’s military service formed another part of the life interrupted by the killings. She was a U.S. Army reservist and part of the 25th Infantry Division Main Command Post-Operational Detachment. Brig. Gen. Timony Connelly wrote after her death that Private First Class Holder was an active member who loved being a soldier. The 9th Mission Support Command said it had been in contact with her parents and offered its condolences. Those facts were largely separate from the later arguments about Ramsey’s own former Army service, mental health and personal history.
The 2026 trial brought the focus back to what happened inside the couple’s studio apartment. Prosecutors described extensive blood evidence and writing on a wall that included an apology and a statement that Ramsey had stabbed Holder after she choked him. Deputy Prosecutor Scott Bell said police officers had not been prepared for what they encountered. The state presented the number of wounds and evidence of Holder’s resistance as important to its contention that Ramsey intentionally and knowingly killed both victims. The most graphic details aired in court are not necessary to understand the jury’s task: Two people, including an infant, suffered repeated fatal knife wounds inside their home.
Ramsey’s lawyers did not ask jurors to find that someone else killed Holder and Kainoa. Instead, their case focused on whether his mental and emotional state changed the degree of his criminal responsibility. Deputy Public Defender Hayley Cheng told jurors that Ramsey had reached a “breaking point.” The defense described a background of childhood abuse and abandonment and said he suffered from complex post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicidal thinking. An expert presented by the defense discussed psychic numbing and long-standing trauma, while Ramsey’s attorneys said financial strain and unemployment added to the pressures he was experiencing.
The defense also cited a confrontation with Holder as the immediate trigger for what followed. Ramsey had told a hospital worker after the killings that he was drunk, had fought with Holder, lost his temper and blacked out. His attorneys argued that the events were not carefully planned and that his mental condition supported reducing the offense to manslaughter. Prosecutors pushed back. Bell questioned whether the defense expert had gathered a sufficiently broad picture and argued that Ramsey’s personal history did not remove his responsibility for decisions made inside the apartment.
Jurors ultimately accepted the prosecution’s position. First-degree murder in the case was tied to the deaths of more than one person, and the verdict rejected the lesser result sought by the defense. Alm described the case as an act of domestic violence and said Holder and Kainoa “should still be alive.” Rather than treating Ramsey’s mental-health evidence as sufficient to alter the offense, the jury returned the most serious murder verdict placed before it.
The jury also considered conduct that occurred after Ramsey left the apartment. Prosecutors said he drove the wrong way on Kunia Road toward an oncoming vehicle and struck it while its driver tried to avoid him. The collision injured the other driver. The original case included an attempted murder allegation arising from the crash, while Ramsey’s defense linked the collision to suicidal behavior. At trial, jurors convicted him instead of attempted assault in the first degree, giving prosecutors a second conviction separate from the deaths of Holder and Kainoa.
The long interval between the killings and the verdict was not simply the result of a trial taking years to begin. Ramsey initially faced charges filed by criminal complaint in April 2020. In 2022, those charges were dismissed after a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling held that serious felony prosecutions had to proceed through grand jury indictment. The ruling affected numerous cases. Prosecutors then presented Ramsey’s case to an Oahu grand jury, which indicted him in September 2022 on first-degree murder, two second-degree murder counts and second-degree attempted murder, restoring the charges through the required procedure.
That procedural history meant Holder’s relatives lived through an initial arrest, dismissal of the original charging mechanism, a new indictment and eventually a trial. None of those steps changed the underlying loss Chamberlain had described in 2020. Her daughter had been 23 and pursuing work, school, military service and motherhood. Kainoa had been alive only six months. The courtroom arguments necessarily concentrated on Ramsey’s intent and mental state, but the conviction also marked the end of a long period in which their family waited for a jury to decide the criminal case.
The sentencing phase is now the remaining major court proceeding. Ramsey is being held at the Oahu Community Correctional Center without bail and is scheduled to return to court Nov. 18. Prosecutors have said he faces life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and the jury made an additional finding that could support an extended term on the other conviction. The judge will determine the sentence. For Holder and Kainoa’s relatives, the verdict provides a legal judgment more than six years after an everyday family conversation became the last one Chamberlain would have with her daughter.
Author note: Last updated September 9, 2026.