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 taking away their “little angel” and begged for forgiveness for his heinous crime.
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, according to WFAA.
“I pray that my death eases your suffering in some way.”
The letter was among a handful of rambling writings uncovered in Horner’s cell after he tried to kill himself while awaiting trial.
Horner, who has already admitted to abducting and killing Athena after delivering a Christmas gift in 2022, also had the gall to lament how his own son would be forced to grow up without a father, the letters show.
“Just know I have found God through all of this,” Horner insisted to his victim’s loved ones. “I love you all and I’m sorry.”
Horner’s trial is to rule on if he gets the death penalty or life in prison over the little girl’s slaying 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.
“The only truthful thing that Tanner Horner told law enforcement was that he killed her,” Stainton said. “The pattern and web of lies that he put together, it’s going to be hard for y’all to keep up with. It is lie upon lie upon lie upon lie.”
Defense attorneys, for their part, have blamed his heinous crimes on a brain injury and having autism.
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