Killer FedEx driver Tanner Horner once wrote a groveling letter to the family of his 7-year-old victim, Athena Strand, in which he apologized for:
The twisted 34-year-old penned the note just before he tried to take his own life in 2023 while already in jail for the helpless girl’s death, a Texas jury heard Monday.
“I’m sorry I took your little angel away from you. She didn’t deserve it. Ya’ll didn’t deserve it,” he wrote,
“I pray that my death eases your suffering in some way.”
“My son didn’t deserve to lose his father. My mother didn’t deserve to lose her son. My fiancé didn’t deserve to have her wedding day stripped away from her.”
“The only thing I ask is for forgiveness and for you to remember my son and show him some grace and mercy,” Horner wrote, “for he no longer has his father. I love you all, and I’m sorry.”
People with Asperger’s syndrome, which is an autism spectrum disorder, often struggle to cope with deviations in their routines and everyday rituals, according to the National Autistic Society.
Horner’s trial is to rule on whether he gets the death penalty or life in prison over the slaying of the little girl in the rural town of Paradise, near Fort Worth, some four years ago.
Horne has blamed his alter ego, “Zero,” for the cowardly act.
Initially, Horner had told authorities he’d accidentally struck the 67-pound child with his van and then strangled her in a fit of panic after delivering her gift.
But prosecutors have repeatedly branded Horner a liar, especially after surveillance video captured the child sitting inside the delivery truck — largely unharmed — shortly after her abduction.
“The first thing Tanner Horner says to Athena when he picks her up and puts her in that truck, he leans down and he says: ‘Don’t scream or I’ll hurt you.’ He says that twice,” Wise County District Attorney James Stainton said during opening statements.