• What Happened: Tanner Horner, who pleaded guilty to kidnapping and strangling 7-year-old Athena Strand while delivering her Christmas Barbies in 2022, is now facing the death penalty as jurors watch chilling interrogation footage. In one video Horner complained to investigators about going to prison.
  • Why It Matters: Prosecutors have told the jury that Athena fought "with the strength of 100 men" as Horner first tried to break her neck, then strangled her with his bare hands. DNA evidence suggests she was sexually assaulted. He stripped her body for "humiliation" because he thought it was "funny." He then returned to work and kept delivering packages while the community searched for her.
  • Bottom Line: Tanner Horner wants the jury to feel sorry for him. Athena Strand's family has been waiting over three years for justice. Texas prosecutors are asking for death.

Athena Strand was seven years old. She was sorting laundry in a converted storage shed that served as her bedroom when a FedEx driver pulled into her driveway and delivered her Christmas present. It was a box of Barbie dolls her stepmother had ordered for her.

Tanner Horner, 35, delivered the box. Then he took Athena and murdered her,

On Tuesday, April 7, 2026, as his capital murder trial was about to begin in a Fort Worth courtroom, Horner pleaded guilty. The jury that had been seated to hear evidence will now decide one thing only. Life in prison without parole. Or death.

The footage jurors have been watching since then is unlike anything most people will ever see inside a courtroom.

Body camera video played Wednesday and Thursday showed Horner in interrogation rooms, in the back of police vehicles, and on the side of a Texas road smoking a cigarette just minutes before leading investigators to where he had left Athena's body. In one video Horner appeared as himself. In the next he would tilt his head, roll his eyes back, and "become" Zero, the alter ego he claimed was responsible for what happened to the little girl in the back of his truck.

"I didn't do this, but he did," Horner told investigators, referring to Zero.

Investigators played along. They had to. It was the only way to find Athena.

"I know Tanner didn't sexually assault this girl. I know Tanner didn't hurt this girl. But I know you did," a detective told Zero in footage played for the jury.

The lead investigator, Texas Ranger Job Espinoza, testified that Horner had been untruthful about virtually everything except the location of Athena's body. He gave investigators multiple conflicting accounts of what happened. He lied about how Athena was positioned. He lied about where he left her clothing. He lied about the state of her body. When pressed on motive, he said stress was "getting too much" and insisted he was "not a bad person" who had "done the right thing" his whole life. He described Athena as being in the "wrong place at the wrong time."

What prosecutors have told jurors Horner actually did: He leaned down to the seven-year-old and said "Don't scream or I'll hurt you." Twice. He tried to break her neck. It did not work. She cried. He strangled her with both hands. She fought back. She tried to kick him. She fought, according to the prosecutor, "with the strength of 100 men." The prosecution also presented DNA evidence from locations on the child's body where, as Wise County District Attorney James Stainton told the jury, "you shouldn't find DNA on a 7-year-old girl." Athena's body was found naked. When investigators asked Horner why he had removed her clothing, he said it was for "humiliation." He said he thought it was "funny."

After killing her, Horner told investigators he "just kind of tossed her" into the woods. Then he drove the same truck back to work and kept delivering packages as hundreds of community members, volunteers, and law enforcement searched desperately for Athena for two days.

In the interrogation footage, between the lies and the alter ego and the negotiating, Horner found time to feel sorry for himself.

"This isn't one of those probation things," he told investigators on body camera. "This is one of those I'm going away for a long time things, and I'm going to miss out on all of my son's life. I would rather die."

He asked investigators to release him with an ankle monitor so he could spend one last Christmas with his son. In exchange, he said, he would tell them everything. Investigators told him no. He lamented missing his son's Christmases and birthdays. "All because I listened to some stupid voice," Horner said.

The voice, he claimed, was Zero. Named, according to court testimony, after a Christian rock band.

Horner's defense team is asking the jury to spare his life. They have argued he has Asperger's syndrome, suffered brain damage, was exposed to lead as a child, and that his mother drank while pregnant. They told jurors he has accepted responsibility by pleading guilty. Wise County District Attorney Stainton opened his case with a quote from 2 Corinthians: "Satan masquerades as an angel of light."

Athena's stepmother testified that the blue Walmart box she found on her property that evening was the Christmas present she had ordered. Six Barbie dolls. Meant for a seven-year-old girl who never got to open them.

The jury is deciding whether Tanner Horner lives or dies. Athena Strand did not get that choice.