TANNER HORNER PLEADS GUILTY: WHAT THE JURY IS DECIDING

0:03 Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, Monday, April thirteenth, twenty twenty six. I'm Garrett Fisher. This is Daily Crime Injustice. Last Tuesday, we introduced you to Athena Strand, seven years old, Cottondale, Texas. November thirtieth, twenty twenty two, a little girl who went home from school started sorting laundry in the bedroom she shared with her sister and never came out. We told you about Tanner Lynn Horner, the FedEx contract driver who hit her with his delivery van, panicked, put her in the truck, and killed her. We told you about the confession he gave to police, and we told you that the trial had just begun. Today we are going deeper because since Tuesday, the courtroom in Fort Worth has produced four days of testimony that are, frankly, some of the most devastating evidence I have ever covered on this show.

1:01 And there are things we did not know on Tuesday that we know now. So today's entire episode is Athena's case. One case. Because some stories are too important to give thirteen minutes to share with two other stories and move on. This is one of those stories. Let's get into it first. What happened when Tanner Horner walked into that Fort Worth courtroom on April seventh. Jury selection had taken almost a week. The case had been moved from Wise County, where Athena lived, where she died, where three hundred people showed up the next morning to search the fields with dogs and horses and four wheelers because they loved her. Moved because the judge concluded that Horner couldn't get a fair trial in a community still drowning in grief, which is understandable. You cannot see an impartial jury in a room full of heartbreak.

1:58 So Arrant County Fort warred fresh jury and the trial was supposed to begin with the question of guilt. That question lasted about five minutes. Tanner Lynn Horner walked into the courtroom on the morning of April seventh, and before anyone delivered an opening statement, before a single witness was called, he stood up and pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping. Guilty, just like that. Now, I want to be precise about what that means, because it matters for everything that follows. Under Texas law, capital murder of a child under ten years old is what's called a capital felony. That means the possible sentences are two death by lethal injection, or life in prison without the possibility of parole. There is no third option, there is no early release, there is no path back. By pleading guilty, Horner removed the question of whether he did it from the jury's hands entirely.

2:55 He gave them that answer himself. What he left for them. The only thing left is what to do with him. The jury now has to make two findings in sequence. First, is Tanner Horner a continuing threat to society? Would he be dangerous in the future? Second? Is there sufficient mitigating evidence in his background, his upbringing, his mental state, his circumstances to warrant something less than death. If they say yes to the first question and no to the second unanimously both times, he gets the death penalty. If they cannot agree at any stage, the sentence becomes life in prison without parole. That is where we are. That is the only thing being decided now. And the prosecution and defense spent four days this week making their cases not about what happened to Athena Strand, because Tanner Horner just stood up in open court and confirmed that for everyone, but about what his life is worth. Let me tell you what the prosecution told the jury about Athena Strand.

4:01 She was seven years old, she was in first grade. Her teacher, a woman named Lindsay Thompson, took the stand and described her as a free spirit. She loved to draw, she loved to write, she loved to color. She was full of life, the kind of kid who talked too much in class because she had too many things to say and not enough patience to wait her turn. Lindsay Thompson told the jury that Athena was in school the day she died. She had a rough day, she was a little chatty. She went home at approximately three twenty five in the afternoon, same as always. And then Lindsey Thompson said something that I want you to sit with. She told the jury that the six and seven year olds who were in Athena's class that year, who were with her the last day she was alive, they knew what happened. They understood in whatever way a six year old understands that their classmate had been taken against her will.

4:52 And some of those children are now in fourth grade. They are still talking to counselors. They still won't sleep in their own beds. They don't like to play in their front yards anymore. Athena Strand's first grade class is still carrying this let that land. Her stepmother, Elizabeth Strand, testified about that afternoon. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Athena went to school, came home, was supposed to be sorting laundry while Elizabeth cooked dinner. When dinner was ready, she went to call Athena and she wasn't there. Elizabeth searched the house, checked the yard, called her name. She thought maybe she was playing hide and seek. She wasn't.

5:32 Elizabeth noticed a Walmart box sitting on the property, a package that had been delivered that afternoon, Barbie's Christmas presents for Athena. Someone had ordered her a gift. She had never seen the man who delivered it. A retired Wise County sheriff named Lane Aiken testified about the night everything changed. He got the call around seven pm and thought it was a routine missing child case. She'd turn up with a friend or hiding somewhere. He remembers the next morning, December first, when about three hundred people came out, neighbors, strangers, anybody who could help dogs, horses, four wheelers, three hundred people who showed up because a seven year old girl was missing. What investigator's piece together. A FedEx package had been delivered to the Strand home right around the time Athena disappeared. The package was traced to a contracted delivery company called Big Top Spin, operating under FedEx. The driver of the truck that day was Tannerlinn. Horner. FBI special agent Patrick Maguire testified about how they found Horner. When agents located him at another delivery stop and asked about the Strand package, Horner denied any memory of it, but then he became emotional when they pressed him on inconsistencies in his timeline. He claimed he'd gotten sick and vomited several times. He mentioned a green van in the area, the detail that went nowhere, and then at some point during the encounter he stopped, pretending the delivery van had a camera inside. Investigators obtained the footage, and there in

7:06 the back of tanner Horner's van was Athena Strand alive, sitting there talking to the man who would kill her. Prosecutors told the jury in their opening statement that Athena had told him her name. He knew exactly who she was, and the prosecution said something in that opening that stopped the courtroom. They said she fought for her life with the strength of one hundred men, and they said video and audio recorded her death. The prosecution also told jurors that Horner prepared for this. He was in the area of the Strand home twenty four hours before the incident. That's not a detail that fits an impulsive panic. That's a detail that complicates the entire narrative. The defense would later try to build. Texas Ranger Job Espinoza, the lead investigator, took the standover multiple days and walked the jury through the timeline in excruciating detail. He testified about the bodycam footage from Horner's transport driving around stopping at trash cans searching for evidence. He testified about how Horner, once he began talking, kept lying. Horner initially told investigators he had left Athena in a bamboo forest. Search teams went to the bamboo forest nothing. He gave inconsistent accounts of the state of her clothing. He gave inconsistent accounts of where her body was. At one point, investigators were asking him

8:39 about Athena's clothing, specifically whether he had stripped her, and Horner's response, as played in court, was are you saying you stripped her naked to throw her clothes out the window on the highway? That phrasing are you saying when investigators were describing what the evidence showed. Eventually, Horner led police to a place called Lobo's Crossing on the Trinity River, approximately twelve to thirteen miles from the Strand home. That's where Athena was found face down in the water. He also told investigators he had stopped at a Love's truck stop to clean up. He said he needed to clean vomit his own and feces from Athena from the back of the vehicle. FBI Special Agent Taylor Page testified about geofencing, the process of creating a digital boundary around an area and identifying which phones were inside it during a specific time window. Her team ran a geofence for tmobile in the area near where Athena disappeared. Two devices showed up, both identified as connected to Horner, both showing the same movement patterns, traveling together stopping together. The digital record of what he did that night was precise. FBI agent Kurt de Ross led the evidence response team that searched Horner's home.

9:54 What they found there children's clothing, a sock, a pair of jeans, underwear. They were photographed and entered into evidence. Now I need to tell you about Zero. Over the course of two days of interrogation footage played for the jury, Tanner Horner introduced investigators to an alter ego. He called it Zero. He said Zero came to him about six months before Athena's death. He said Zero was inspired by Christian rock music. In the interrogation video, hours of it shown to the jury, Horner shifts back and forth between presenting as himself and presenting as this other persona. He speaks about the night Athena died in the third person, as if he was watching it from somewhere else. At one point, he told investigators, I was in the back seat watching everything happen, and I'm kind of freaking out.

10:46 He told police, it's not Zero, it's Tanner, and then immediately continued describing the events as if Zero was the one making decisions investigators trying to get information that might help them find Athena's body. He eventually adapted they started addressing Horner directly as zero, and it was only when they did that, when they played along, spoke to zero, engaged with the persona on its own terms, that they were finally able to get the location of Athena's body. He also negotiated, or tried to. During one of the jail interviews played for the jury, Horner asked investigators for a deal release him to house arrest with an ankle monitor so he could spend one last Christmas with his son.

11:31 In exchange, he said he would tell them everything they wanted to know. Investigators told him no promises or guarantees could be made. He did eventually provide information, but not before Athena was missing for two days and her family spent those two days not knowing. Horner also attempted to harm himself after his arrest in May twenty twenty three. While in the Wise County jail, he tried to hang himself. He had asked investigators at one point to shoot him. He had referenced p suicidal thoughts. I want to be honest with you about the Zero persona because I think you deserve an honest accounting of what it likely is and what it likely isn't dissociative identity disorder, what was once called multiple personality disorder is a real and recognized diagnosis.

12:19 People who suffer from severe, repeated trauma, particularly in childhood, can develop separate identity states as a coping mechanism. It is documented, it is studied, It exists. It is also, in the context of criminal trials, one of the most contested and frequently misapplied defenses in American law. Courts almost never accept it as a full defense to criminal liability. The bar is extraordinarily high, the expert testimony is genuinely contested, and juries even when they believe the diagnosis, almost uniformly conclude that responsibility cannot be divided between identities. More to the point, look at what Horner did. He negotiated with detectives.

13:02 He asked for Christmas with his son. He gave wrong locations first, and then under strategic pressure, gave the right one. He said, it's not Zero, it's Tanner, and then describe the events as if Zero was responsible. He cleaned up at a truck stop. None of that is the behavior of someone who genuinely had no awareness of their actions. All of it is consistent with someone who understood exactly what they had done and was trying to find a way out of accountability for it. I'm not a psychologist, but I've been watching criminal cases long enough to know that zero isn't really the point. The defense isn't trying to use zero to win the guilt phase. They already lost that Horner pled guilty. Zero is a sentencing argument.

13:49 It's a portrait of a damaged, fractured man who should, the defense hopes, be allowed to live in a cage rather than die. Let me tell you what the defense is arguing, because it deserves to be heard plainly. In their opening statement, Horner's attorneys told the jury that he has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, that autism affects his ability to read social cues, to understand consequences of the way neurotypical people do, to put himself in another person's shoes. They argued that these limitations reduce what they call his moral blameworthiness. They also told the jury that Horner's mother was a woman who drank alcohol while she was pregnant, that the damage to his developing brain was real, measurable, permanent.

14:46 They introduced evidence of lead poisoning from his childhood, which has well documented effects on cognitive development, impulse control, and behavior. They said he suffered from mental illness his entire life, and they told the jury plain life without parole is a terrible thing. They weren't asking for mercy in the sense of minimizing what happened. They were asking the jury to consider whether the worst punishment the state has available is appropriate for a man this damaged. Look, I'm gonna be honest with you about this too. The autism argument is real. The fetal alcohol exposure is real, the lead poisoning is real. Childhood trauma and neurological damage are real factors in how people develop, in what they're capable of, in who they become. And I also know that Athena Strand was seven years old, that she told this man her name, that she fought for her life with everything she had, and that her first grade classmates are still in therapy three and a half years later. The defense's job isn't to excuse what happened. Their job is to give the jury a reason to choose one form of permanent removal from society over another. That's a legitimate legal function.

15:58 The jury will do what jury do. They'll weigh it, all of it, and they'll decide. Day four of the trial was underway as of this recording, Friday, April tenth. We'll follow the sentencing verdict when it comes before we go. There are two things I want to tell you that exist outside that courtroom. The first, the state of Texas passed a law in athena Strands memory. It's called the Athena Alert, a new tier in the child abduction alert system designed to notify the public when a child is believed to have been abducted and is in imminent danger, even when the details don't meet the specific criteria for an Amber alert. Children falling through the cracks of that system is part of why Athena's story became what it became.

16:43 Texas tried to fix it. Her name is the fix. The second, Athena's father has filed a civil lawsuit against FedEx and the contracting company Big Top Spin. The argument is straightforward, Horner was their employee operating their vehicle under their track. What he did while on that route with that truck happened in the course of work they assigned to him. Whether FedEx and Big Top Spin bear legal liability for what Tanner Horner chose to do is a separate question from the criminal case. But Athena's father is asking it. He should be allowed to. Here's where I leave you today. Athena Strand had a rough day at school on November thirtieth, twenty twenty two. She came home.

17:26 She was sorting laundry, her stepmother was cooking dinner. Her classmates would grow from first grade to fourth grade and still not want to sleep alone. A jury in Fort Worth, Texas is now deciding whether the man who took her from all of that will be executed by the state or spend the rest of his natural life in a cell. That's the only question left. We will be here when they answer it. I'm Garrett Fisher. Do Better. Disclaimer. Daily Crime and Justice is produced with the ass distance of AI research tools. We work hard to get things right, but this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only.

18:07 It is not a substitute for legal reporting or professional legal advice, and it may contain errors. If we get something wrong, we want to know. Source links are in the episode notes