A Texas jury sentenced a former FedEx delivery driver to death on Tuesday for the 2022 kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Athena Strand, whom he abducted from her home while dropping off a Christmas gift—a box of Barbies meant for her.
Tanner Horner, 34, showed no visible reaction as the judge read the sentence, according to a livestream of the proceedings. Horner pleaded guilty to capital murder last month just as his trial began.
Jurors concluded that there was a probability Horner would commit criminal violence, and that he posed a continuing danger to society. This comes after the jury heard over a month of testimony, including devastating audio from inside his delivery van of Athena's final moments. A medical examiner testified she died from blunt force injuries, smothering, and strangulation.
Athena's body was found two days after she was reported missing from her home in Paradise, a rural town near Fort Worth.
The jury determined there was nothing in the circumstances of the crime or in Horner's personal history that justified a sentence of life without parole over death.
Jurors were shown video of Horner lifting Athena into his delivery van and driving away. He then covered the camera, but the audio kept recording—capturing more than an hour of what unfolded inside.
On the recording, Horner can be heard asking Athena how old she is and where she goes to school. He tells her they are going to "hang out." When he instructs her to remove her shirt, she begins to cry and asks if he is a kidnapper.
"Why are you doing this?" she asks him.
"Because you are pretty," Horner replies.
"My mom says I can't do that to somebody," Athena tells him. "And you can't do that to me either."
Her screams are audible throughout the recording. In one instance, Horner warns her: "If you don't shut up, I will hurt you worse.” Several jurors wept as the video and audio played.
"The only truthful thing that Tanner Horner told law enforcement was that he killed her," Stainton said during opening statements.
Stainton told jurors Athena was uninjured when Horner placed her into the vehicle, and that his DNA was found under her fingernails. According to an arrest warrant, Horner told investigators he first tried to break the girl's neck, and when that failed, strangled her with his hands. He then led investigators to where he had left her body.
Horner's defense attorney, Steven Goble, acknowledged the evidence against his client was "overwhelming" and "terrible," but urged jurors to spare his life. Goble told the jury that Horner's mother drank alcohol during her pregnancy, that Horner has autism, suffered from "various mental illnesses throughout his life," and was exposed to a "massive amount of lead." Goble asked jurors to sentence Horner to life in prison.
Athena's stepmother, Ashley Strand, testified that the package Horner had delivered that day was a Christmas present—a box of "You Can Be Anything" Barbies. She told jurors Athena loved living on their rural property, where she got to "run wild and free.”
The trial was relocated from rural Wise County to Fort Worth after Horner's attorneys successfully argued he could not receive a fair trial there.