Day 1 recap: Tanner Horner pleads guilty to killing 7-year-old Athena Strand
Just minutes before evidence presentation in his capital murder trial was set to begin Tuesday morning in the strangulation killing of 7-year-old North Texas girl Athena Strand, former FedEx driver Tanner Horner pleaded guilty.
Before the jury was brought into the courtroom at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center in Fort Worth, Horner and his attorneys told Judge George Gallagher he was pleading guilty to capital murder in the course of kidnapping.
The trial has now moved on to the sentencing phase. The jury was brought in about 9:30 a.m.
Wise County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Horner, 34. The other punishment option is life in prison without parole.
The guilty plea allows the case to move past the guilt-innocence phase, but the state will still present its overwhelming evidence against Horner including a confession, DNA, and an hourlong audio recording from inside the FedEx truck where he killed the child before dumping her naked body in the Trinity River in rural Wise County in November 2022.
In his opening statement, Wise County District Attorney James Stainton told the jurors that the prosecution will show them all the evidence against Horner, which the jury will consider when deciding punishment.
The trial is being livestreamed. Watch Tuesday’s video here, and follow Star-Telegram.com for updates.
In his opening statement, Stainton said that the only true thing Horner told investigators during his interrogation was when he admitted he killed Athena.
Horner planned the abduction and killing and then spun a web of lies, including saying that he hit the girl with his FedEx truck and then “freaked out” and kidnapped her, Stainton said.
The story that Horner panicked “is an absolute lie,” Stainton said. “There is no truth to that in any form or fashion.”
“She was very much alive and very much uninjured when he put her in the truck,” the prosecutor said. “The first thing Tanner Horner says to Athena when he picks her up and puts her in his truck, he leans down and says, ‘Don’t scream or I’ll hurt you.’ He says that twice. ... That’s the first thing out of his mouth. He made good on it.”
Horner covered up the video camera inside his truck, but the prosecution will play the audio recording for the jury, Stainton said. “You’re going to hear what a 250-pound man can do to a 67-pound child. And when I say it’s horrible, I mean it. I’ve been doing this 25 years, and I promise you, buckle up.”
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Jurors also will hear on the recording that Athena “fought with the strength of 100 men,” Stainton said. “One thing that you can’t unhear is the level of fight in a 7-year-old girl when she’s facing certain death,” he said. Stainton said Horner tried to kill the child “over and over again.”
As law enforcement and hundreds of volunteers searched around the clock for two days, hoping that Athena was still alive, Horner continued to deliver packages for FedEx and made sure he got the same truck “so he could have his mobile crime scene with him the entire day,” Stainton said. “This is the level of cold heartedness that you’re going to see.”
Horner, who was working as a contract driver for FedEx, delivered a Christmas gift of Barbies intended for Athena to her father’s home near the Wise County town of Paradise on Nov. 30, 2022. The 7-year-old went missing at the time of the delivery.
Discussing the planning of the crime, Stainton said that Horner “was there 24 hours before on the same road, at a different house with a different girl. It looks eerily similar to what you’re going to see on Athena’s video.”
According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Horner confessed to authorities. But prosecutors said that his story that he backed into the 7-year-old with his FedEx truck was a lie. He told investigators that the child wasn’t seriously hurt, but he kidnapped her and strangled her inside the truck so she couldn’t tell her father about the accident.
During his interviews with law enforcement, Horner only seemed concerned about what was going to happen to him and conjured “a whole other persona out of thin air,” apparently pretending to have multiple personalities while continuing to lie about what happened to Athena, Stainton said. “When we ask people what happened, sometimes they take responsibility,” the prosecutor said. “Not this guy. Everything was woe is me.”
Horner misdirected investigators and “made it as difficult as possible” to find Athena, Stainton said. Authorities eventually recovered her body on Dec. 2 at a site along the Trinity River less than 10 miles from her father’s house.
The indictment charged Horner with strangling, smothering or asphyxiating Athena while in the course of kidnapping her.
Horner also was indicted on unrelated charges of sexual assault of a child involving other victims. At the start of the trial, the judge and attorneys discussed what evidence from those cases may be presented to the jury.
Horner’s attorneys have argued the defendant shouldn’t face the death penalty because he has autism spectrum disorder, saying the condition reduces his moral culpability. Judge Gallagher denied the defense’s motion to remove the death penalty as a sentencing option at a Jan. 21 pre-trial hearing.
In his opening statement Tuesday, defense attorney Steven Goble said Horner’s mother abused alcohol while she was pregnant with him and throughout his childhood, and Horner’s father also had substance abuse problems. Horner suffered from various mental illnesses and was “exposed to a massive amount of lead” during childhood, and the defense will present evidence about the effects of lead on the brain, Goble said.
Goble acknowledged that the state’s evidence against Horner is “overwhelming” and “terrible.” He said that Horner has accepted responsibility by pleading guilty and “accepting that he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
In a pending motion, the office of the regional public defender for capital cases asked Judge Gallagher to order that experts refrain from using the terms psychopath and sociopath in reference to Horner. That motion, filed by Goble and defense attorney Susan Anderson, asks the judge to exclude in the punishment phase “any and all psychiatric or psychological expert testimony offered by the state that incorporates a prediction” on whether Horner is a future danger or will constitute a continuing threat to society.
Future dangerousness is one of two questions at the core of sentencing in death penalty cases, along with whether there are any mitigating factors that jurors believe would merit a sentence of life in prison instead of death.
The case was originally set in Wise County but later moved to Tarrant County after defense attorneys argued for a change of venue, saying the defendant wouldn’t receive a fair trial in Wise County.
The trial is expected to last about three weeks.
The first witnesses to testify in the case were Athena’s first-grade teacher, Lindsey Thompson, who saw her at school for the last time on Nov. 30, 2022; her stepmother, Elizabeth Ashley Strand, who testified about reporting Athena missing when she couldn’t find the child at dinnertime; and Lane Akin, who was Wise County sheriff at the time of Athena’s death and spoke about his role in the investigation.
Akin testified about seeing Athena’s body and having to inform her family that she was dead.
“It was heartbreaking,” Akin said. “They were just devastated. We were hoping she was alive and well.”
During Ashley Strand’s testimony, prosecutors showed an image of Athena in the FedEx van with Horner. They were seen together on the vehicle’s dashboard-camera video before Horner covered the lens.
Ashley Strand said Athena’s mother, who lives in Oklahoma, had been sick, and Athena had been staying with Ashley and her husband and their other two children since the summer of 2022. Ashley testified that after Athena arrived home on the school bus, her father left on a hunting trip and the stepmother was cooking dinner and watching her baby while Athena was supposed to be sorting laundry in her room. She didn’t notice the girl go outside but said it was normal for the children to play on the family’s 10-acre rural property.
At first, she thought the 7-year-old might be playing hide and seek, but when she searched the property and still couldn’t find Athena, she called police. After law enforcement and members of the community arrived to help search, Ashley noticed a blue Walmart box containing the Barbies for Athena had been delivered and left near the driveway.
Many observers in the courtroom, including Athena’s mother, Maitlyn Gandy, were wearing pink, which was her daughter’s favorite color.
The final witness on Tuesday was FBI Special Agent Patrick McGuire. He testified about following up on the lead to find out who delivered the package to the Strands’ home after an investigator realized the box arrived about the same time Athena disappeared.
After speaking to FedEx officials at the company’s Alliance location in Fort Worth, McGuire and another agent obtained details of Horner’s route and found him making deliveries in Wise County on Dec. 1, McGuire said.
The agents first interviewed Horner inside his FedEx vehicle. In a phone call with a FedEx supervisor, Horner said he didn’t remember delivering the package to the Strands’ home. But when the FBI agents talked to him, Horner said he had recently driven past the crime scene and had seen law enforcement officers there searching, and that refreshed his memory about the delivery.
During the first interview, Horner became emotional, near tears and mentioned having his own child, McGuire said.
Horner claimed he saw a green van leaving the Strands’ property as he arrived on Nov. 30 and agents spent time looking for a green van but never found any evidence that a vehicle matching that description was in the area, McGuire said.
The agents interviewed Horner twice on Dec. 1 and then were asked to do more interviews with members of Athena’s family, McGuire said. Their attention turned back to Horner on Dec. 2 when they received more FedEx records, including video that showed Horner putting Athena into his van.
FedEx records showed that Horner was supposed to make more deliveries on Nov. 30, but he didn’t finish his route after leaving the package outside Athena’s house. He also did not mark that delivery as completed.
The trial will resume at 9 a.m. Wednesday, when the jurors are expected to watch several hours of video showing law enforcement interviews with Horner and the discovery of Athena’s body. The lead investigator, Texas Ranger Job Espinoza, will testify.
This story was originally published April 7, 2026 at 5:50 AM.
