On Tuesday, a Texas jury sentenced a FedEx driver who kidnapped, raped and murdered a little girl to death by lethal injection.
It’s a decision that jurors usually agonize over for many hours, sometimes days.
But not this jury.
It took jurors under three hours to condemn Tanner Horner, 34, to death for a case that horrified the nation.
I sat just a few feet away from Horner in the Fort Worth courtroom, where the most heinous details played out over a four-week trial.
Horner, a new father and fiancé at the time, was delivering packages in rural Paradise, a town of fewer than 500 people about 60 miles outside Dallas, on November 30, 2022.
He was dropping off a box of Barbie dolls meant to be part of Athena Strand’s presents that Christmas – one she never got to experience.
Horner saw Athena playing alone near the driveway and pounced. He grabbed her and forced her into his delivery truck.
What unfolded next is the stuff of nightmares.
Horner had been delivering a box of Barbies that were due to be Strand’s Christmas present when he took the youngster, strangled her and dumped her body miles from her home. The two are pictured in his FedEx truck following the kidnapping
He covered the truck’s internal camera to hide the depravity he was about to unleash.
But before he could, the lens captured a haunting image that has now become synonymous with the case.
It would become the last picture of little Athena alive.
It shows the tiny girl, wide-eyed and confused, standing behind the hulking 6ft-tall Horner in the driver’s seat – his eyes wide and alert, like a predator on a hunt (he also later claimed to have been high on cocaine at the time).
While the camera view was obscured, it continued recording audio of the attack.
Judge George Gallagher warned those present they could leave if they did not wish to see it.
‘If you think you cannot watch it or listen to it, leave now. Now’s your time to get out,’ Gallagher said.
Athena’s parents, Jacob Strand and Maitlyn Gandy, both testified during the trial but did not remain in the courtroom during the video.
Jurors sobbed as they were forced to listen to nearly an hour of excruciating sounds while Tanner sexually abused and tried to strangle Athena.
Only sniffing and the sound of jurors reaching for tissues could be heard when the audio stopped playing.
A jury in Fort Worth sentenced Tanner Horner, 34, to death by lethal injection Tuesday
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice on Wednesday released the booking photo of Tanner Horner, 34, as he transferred to death row. The man who admitted to the horrific killing of 7-year-old Athena Strand was sentenced to death Tuesday in Fort Worth
When his initial attempt to kill her failed, Horner beat Athena viciously.
The court was shown his muddy shoes, with soles that matched marks found on Athena’s face.
‘You just don’t know when to give up,’ Horner could be heard telling Athena in the audio.
Throughout sentencing, Horner repeatedly stared at me as he was escorted from a holding cell to the defendant’s table.
He locked his eyes on me until he reached his seat, then repeatedly craned his body around to look back at me once seated.
Looking at him stare at me made me realize I was looking into the same face of evil that Athena last saw in her final moments on Earth.
It was unclear why he focused on me or what he was thinking, but each time I met his cold, lifeless stare it sent a chill through me.
A mental health expert who interviewed Horner on behalf of the prosecution testified to something similar.
‘His stare just went right through me and I didn’t challenge him again,’ said psychiatrist Michael Arambula, M.D. on Monday.
Strand was snatched by Horner as he dropped off a package containing a Christmas gift for the youngster, a box of Barbie dolls
The box of Barbies that Athena was supposed to receive on Christmas
The defense tried to frame the case as one of opportunism.
They claimed Horner had mental health issues and was a victim of childhood sexual abuse.
Not in his right mind, they argued, when he took Athena after Tanner claimed the first grader saw him snorting cocaine and he worried he would lose his job and things snowballed in his mind.
Psychiatrist Dr. Michael Arambula, an expert in sex offenders, offered a far more sinister assessment.
He suggested Horner had planned to abduct someone that day and had chosen a location where he believed he would not be seen.
‘When I reviewed the audio recording, it was very clear to me that he abducted her primarily for sex,’ Arambula testified.
‘Soon after he drove to the secluded spot that he had picked out, that’s when he started engaging in sex with Athena.’
The video of Athena’s abduction and the audio of the attack were the key pieces of evidence that decided Horner’s fate when jurors had to choose between life in prison or death row.
But there were other pivotal moments.
During closing arguments, the prosecution showed the jury the black sneakers Horner was wearing on the day of the murder.
Wise County District Attorney James Stainton took them from an evidence bag and dropped them onto a table in front of the jury.
‘This is what it took (pointing at shoes) to beat the life out of her,’ Stainton said.
‘If the facts were not bad enough, if the sexual assault was not bad enough, the level of violence that one person can inflict on a child, including stomping them with a pair of shoes.
As the investigation unfolded, detectives said Horner (pictured) began repeatedly referring to an alter ego called ‘Zero’
Horner, 34, has pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping in the case of seven-year-old Athena Strand (pictured)
‘I’m not wondering where that tread-like print (on her body) came from anymore, because we know.
‘If you want mercy, if you want someone to consider giving you life in prison when you gave no life here (pointing at a photo of Athena) when you gave no mercy here,’ the district attorney said, before handing the case over to the jury.
There was also powerful testimony against Horner, including from several family members.
‘He knows right from wrong,’ his grandmother Jackie testified last week while apologizing to Athena’s family.
No one in Horner’s family attended sentencing.
On the final day of testimony, a man named Billy – who was raised alongside Horner – told the court he had been raped by him as a child.
Horner, clearly disagreeing with what was being said during testimony, shook his head and passing notes to his attorney.
That was the most animated he appeared during the entire trial.
On sentencing day, he showed no emotion.
Even as the entire courtroom – including the judge – wiped away tears after an emotional victim impact statement from Athena’s uncle, Horner remained expressionless.
Less than 24 hours after he was sentenced to die, Horner arrived in Huntsville, Texas after he was transferred from Fort Worth to death row.
