Jurors rejected Kendall Ramsey’s bid for a lesser manslaughter verdict after hearing competing accounts of his mental state and the 2020 killings.

HONOLULU, Hawaii — An Oahu jury convicted former Army soldier Kendall Ramsey of first-degree murder in the deaths of his girlfriend, Kayla Holder, and their 6-month-old son, Kainoa Ramsey, resolving a trial that centered not on whether Ramsey caused their deaths but on how the law should judge his state of mind when he did it.

Ramsey, 28, had acknowledged responsibility for killing Holder and Kainoa inside the family’s Ewa Beach apartment in March 2020. His defense asked jurors to find that he acted while under extreme emotional or mental disturbance, which would have supported a lesser manslaughter verdict. Prosecutors argued instead that the evidence showed intentional and knowing killings of two people. Jurors sided with the state and also convicted Ramsey of attempted first-degree assault over a crash that occurred after he left the apartment. He remains jailed without bail and is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 18.

The distinction the jury was asked to draw gave Ramsey’s mental condition a central role in the trial. Deputy Public Defender Hayley Cheng described him as a man in crisis whose history included childhood abuse, abandonment, depression, suicidal thoughts, unemployment and mounting stress. The defense presented testimony that he suffered from complex post-traumatic stress disorder and what was described in court as psychic numbing. Cheng told jurors that the confrontation preceding the killings was not part of a carefully planned attack but represented a psychological collapse after years of trauma and emotional strain.

Deputy Prosecutor Scott Bell urged jurors not to treat that history as a legal excuse for what happened to Holder and Kainoa. The prosecution emphasized the number and location of the wounds, evidence that Holder had tried to defend herself and Ramsey’s conduct after the killings. Holder, 23, suffered 38 stab wounds, according to testimony reported from the trial, while Kainoa suffered 17. Prosecutors said the evidence established the deliberate killing of more than one person, the basis for the first-degree murder allegation that ultimately went to the jury.

The apartment itself became important evidence in the state’s account. Officers responding to the second-floor studio encountered an extensively bloodstained scene and found Holder and her baby dead. Prosecutors also presented writing left on a wall in blood that included the words “I’m sorry” and statements saying Ramsey had stabbed Holder and that she had choked him. Bell used the condition of the apartment and the physical evidence to challenge the defense account that Ramsey had simply lost awareness during an emotional collapse. News reports of the trial described the scene in far more graphic terms, but the central evidentiary point was that both victims had sustained numerous wounds inside the home.

The defense focused on what happened before Ramsey left the apartment. According to accounts presented during the trial, Ramsey told a hospital worker after the killings that he had been drinking, fought with Holder, lost his temper and later came to awareness with Holder and their son dead. His attorneys said he had experienced suicidal thinking before that night and argued that a confrontation with Holder triggered deeper trauma. The prosecution disputed the significance of that explanation and challenged aspects of the defense expert’s work, including the scope of the interviews and information used to reach conclusions about Ramsey’s condition.

The jury’s verdict meant those mental-health arguments did not persuade jurors to reduce the killings to manslaughter. The panel found Ramsey guilty of first-degree murder, a charge tied to causing the deaths of more than one person. The verdict came July 31 after the case had remained unresolved for more than six years. Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm called the killings an “extraordinarily brutal act of domestic violence” and said Holder and her son should still be alive. He said prosecutors hoped the verdicts would provide some measure of justice to their family.

Ramsey’s actions after leaving the apartment formed a separate part of the prosecution’s case. Authorities said he drove on the wrong side of Kunia Road directly toward another vehicle and struck it despite the other driver’s effort to avoid the collision. Earlier charging documents treated the episode as attempted murder. The jury ultimately convicted Ramsey of attempted assault in the first degree. Prosecutors said the panel also made a finding that could support an extended prison term, leaving the final sentencing decision to the judge.

The case began in the early hours of March 26, 2020, when police were called to the Sun Rise apartment complex on Hanapouli Circle in Ewa Beach. A friend discovered Holder and Kainoa and called 911. Emergency medical personnel pronounced both dead at the scene. Ramsey was arrested following a vehicle crash near Wahiawa several hours later. At the time, authorities charged him with first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder and second-degree attempted murder, and bail was initially set at $2 million.

The tragedy reached far beyond the criminal case. Holder’s mother, Michelle Chamberlain, told Hawaii News Now in 2020 that she had been speaking with her daughter by FaceTime the evening before Holder was found dead. Their conversation had seemed ordinary, she said, with no indication to her that anything was wrong. Holder had moved to Hawaii in 2014, joined the military, enrolled in school and later became a mother. Chamberlain described Kainoa as an easygoing and “angelic” baby who had recently traveled with Holder to the East Coast, where relatives and friends were able to meet him.

Holder was also serving as a U.S. Army reservist. After her death, Brig. Gen. Timony Connelly told members of the 9th Mission Support Command that Private First Class Holder was an active participant in the unit and “loved being a Soldier.” The command expressed condolences to her parents. Those details offer a different picture of Holder than the crime-scene evidence that dominated much of the later trial: She was 23, building a life in Hawaii, raising her first child and maintaining close daily contact with her family before both she and Kainoa were killed.

The prosecution itself encountered a procedural setback before the case reached trial. Ramsey was first charged by criminal complaint in 2020, but those charges were later dismissed following a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling affecting the way serious felony cases had to be initiated. Prosecutors returned to an Oahu grand jury in 2022, which indicted Ramsey on one count of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder and one count of second-degree attempted murder. That new indictment placed the case back on a path toward trial without resolving the underlying question of Ramsey’s legal responsibility.

Six years after Holder and Kainoa were killed, the jury supplied that answer. Ramsey’s admission that he caused the deaths did not end the case because jurors still had to decide whether the defense had established circumstances warranting the lesser manslaughter outcome it sought. Their first-degree murder verdict rejected that result and left punishment as the next major stage. Ramsey remains at the Oahu Community Correctional Center without bail. His sentencing is set for Nov. 18, when the court will determine the prison term and address the jury’s findings concerning an extended sentence.

Author note: Last updated September 9, 2026.