Jurors in Fort Worth now must decide whether Tanner Horner will be sentenced to death or to life in prison without parole.
FORT WORTH, Texas — A former FedEx driver pleaded guilty Tuesday to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping in the 2022 killing of 7-year-old Athena Strand, a surprise move at the start of trial that sent the case straight into a life-or-death punishment phase.
The plea changed the case in seconds, but it did not end it. Because prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, jurors in Tarrant County still must decide whether Tanner Horner should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison without parole. The hearing now centers on two competing pictures of the same crime: prosecutors say Horner abducted Athena, lied about how it happened and killed her after taking her into his delivery van, while defense lawyers say severe developmental and mental health problems should spare him from execution.
The case began on Nov. 30, 2022, at the Strand family home near Paradise, a rural Wise County town northwest of Fort Worth. Athena had been outside after a package delivery when she disappeared. Her family reported her missing that evening, and a wide search followed across the county. Two days later, officers found her body in the Bobo Crossing area along the Trinity River after Horner led investigators there, according to authorities. At the time of his arrest, Horner told officers he had accidentally hit Athena while backing up his van, then panicked, put her inside and killed her because he feared she would tell her father what happened. That account became the backbone of the early criminal case. It also shaped public understanding of the killing for years, until prosecutors opened the punishment phase this week by telling jurors the central claim in Horner’s story was false.
Wise County District Attorney James Stainton told jurors that the one true thing Horner said was that he killed Athena. He said the claim that Horner struck her with the vehicle before abducting her was “an absolute lie,” and he argued that evidence will show the child was uninjured when she was taken into the truck. Prosecutors said jurors were shown an image taken from inside the van that captured Athena alive, on her knees behind the driver’s seat. Stainton also told jurors that the first words Horner said after putting her in the vehicle were, “Don’t scream or I’ll hurt you.” He said DNA evidence placed Athena in a violent struggle and tied Horner to that fight. Public summaries of the testimony say his DNA was found under her fingernails and elsewhere on her body, details that prosecutors used to argue the attack was not a sudden mistake but a brutal crime carried out inside the van. They also told jurors they would see video and hear audio recorded during the route, including material so disturbing that the state warned them about it before playing it.
Athena’s stepmother, Ashley Strand, gave the case one of its most painful details when she testified that the package Horner delivered that day was a Christmas gift for Athena: a box of Barbies. In court, she described a child who loved country life and liked to “run wild and free” on the family’s land. That testimony helped frame why the case has stayed raw in North Texas long after the arrest. Paradise is a small community, and the child’s disappearance in late 2022 quickly drew volunteers, deputies and state and federal investigators into a fast-moving search. When Athena’s body was found, memorials of flowers, stuffed animals and handwritten notes appeared, and the case drew statewide attention. This week’s courtroom testimony has reopened that wound by placing jurors and the public back inside the timeline of the killing. It has also sharpened the contrast between the ordinary details of that day and the violence that followed: a delivery stop, a Christmas toy, a child outside near home and a route that, prosecutors say, turned into a kidnapping and murder.
Horner was indicted in February 2023 on charges of aggravated kidnapping and capital murder of a child younger than 10. Soon after, Texas said it would seek the death penalty. That decision is the reason the guilty plea did not settle the case. Under Texas law, jurors in a capital case still must hear evidence and choose a sentence when prosecutors pursue death. Horner’s attorneys had originally pleaded not guilty on his behalf, and the matter was expected to begin with a full guilt phase this week. Instead, once the jury was seated Tuesday morning, Tarrant County Judge George Gallagher asked for Horner’s plea, and Horner answered, “Guilty, your honor.” The case moved immediately into punishment testimony. The trial itself is being held in Fort Worth rather than Wise County after defense lawyers argued that the publicity and emotion surrounding Athena’s death in her home county would make a fair trial difficult there. Beyond the criminal case, Athena’s parents also filed civil wrongful death lawsuits in 2023 against Horner, FedEx and Big Topspin, the contractor that employed him at the time.
The defense has not tried to dispute that Horner killed Athena. Its work now is aimed at persuading jurors that death is too severe a penalty. Horner’s lawyer, Steven Goble, told jurors the evidence against his client was overwhelming and terrible, but he argued that Horner’s brain and development matter when deciding punishment. Goble said Horner’s mother drank while pregnant, that he has autism, that he was exposed to very high levels of lead and that he has dealt with mental illness for much of his life. In one of the defense’s sharpest lines, Goble told jurors, “When someone’s brain is injured, you don’t see it.” Prosecutors, however, are pushing in the other direction. According to public accounts from the first two days of testimony, they are leaning hard on what they call planning, deception and future danger. They say Horner lied repeatedly after the killing, continued parts of his route and gave investigators a version of events that does not match the physical and digital evidence now being shown in court.
By Wednesday, the punishment phase was still underway at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center, with jurors expected to keep hearing testimony and to watch more video, including law enforcement interviews with Horner. Former Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin testified that Athena’s body was found in the Bobo Crossing area, about 13 miles from her home by car. An FBI agent also testified about obtaining dash camera video from the truck, which prosecutors say showed Horner placing a small girl into the back of the van. Those details matter not only because they fill in the record, but because they go directly to the questions capital jurors must answer in Texas: how the crime happened, whether the defendant poses a continuing danger and whether any mitigating evidence should outweigh the state’s call for execution. No public date had been announced Wednesday for when jurors might begin deliberating on punishment. Until then, the case remains suspended between a guilty plea that removed any doubt about responsibility and a sentencing fight that will decide whether Horner is put to death or lives out his sentence in prison.
For Athena’s family, the legal process has moved far more slowly than the crime itself. More than three years passed between her death and the start of this week’s trial. The guilty plea spared them a courtroom battle over whether Horner was the killer, but it did not spare them from hearing the state’s account of what happened inside the van or from seeing the case turned again into public evidence. The prosecution has used that evidence to present Athena as a child who fought back and a victim whose last known moments were captured in material jurors are now being asked to weigh. The defense has asked jurors to look instead at Horner’s damaged background and decide that life without parole is punishment enough. Those are the two stories now facing the jury. The verdict to come will not revisit guilt. It will decide only the final penalty, and with it whether this case ends in a death sentence or in permanent imprisonment.
As of Wednesday, April 8, the case remained in the punishment phase in Fort Worth, with testimony still continuing and no sentencing verdict yet announced. The next milestone will come after the evidence closes, when jurors are instructed and begin deciding between death and life without parole.
Author note: Last updated April 8, 2026.