Tanner Horner admitted in a Tarrant County courthouse on Tuesday morning that he kidnapped and strangled 7-year-old Athena Strand after hitting her with his van, ending the trial before a seated jury could hear the case. Judge George Gallagher asked Horner to stand and enter a plea to capital murder, and Horner said guilty.
A courtroom photo released by prosecutors showed Athena standing behind Horner on the day she was killed in November 2022, a stark image of the child at the center of the case. Gallagher responded, “Thank you. I will accept your plea.”
Horner, 34, had been accused of killing Athena while delivering a package of Barbie dolls meant to be her Christmas present to her father’s home in Paradise, about 60 miles northwest of Dallas. He later told investigators, according to the arrest warrant, that he backed into the child, panicked, put her in his van and strangled her after realizing she was not seriously hurt. Athena had been staying in Wise County with her father, Jacob Strand, and stepmother, Ashley Strand, and was set to return to Oklahoma with her mother after the holidays.
Her body was found on Dec. 2, two days after she was reported missing, less than 10 miles from the property where she disappeared. That timeline had already made the case one of the most painful child-killing prosecutions in north Texas, and Tuesday’s plea removed the need for jurors to decide the basic facts that Horner himself had already described to police.
The case still left one grieving family member to carry the aftermath into court. Ashley Strand testified on Tuesday, April 7, about the moment she realized her stepdaughter was gone, a reminder that the legal end of the case does not reach the end of the loss. Horner’s plea closed the central question in the tanner horner trial: he admitted he abducted Athena Strand and killed her.
