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 blamed his boss for switching up his delivery routes and triggering meltdowns, according to reports.
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.
Killer FedEx driver Tanner Horner blamed the murder of Athena Strand, 7, on his alter ego “Zero.”FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth
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 went on to describe how he lives with Asperger’s syndrome and does not do well with “unpredictable” changes — citing that he had been given an ideal singular route when he started working as a FedEx driver, CBS News reported.
But after his employer started “making random changes” to his route “so they could make more money,” he did not adjust to the switch-up in his routine, and it nearly sent him into a suicidal episode, Horner wailed.
His unnamed boss ignored Horner’s request for a consistent route and instead made him a “floater,” placing him on different routes every day, the outlet reported.
The killer bemoaned that the change in route led his mental health to spiral and caused meltdowns.
“I’m sorry I allowed my mental state to be unstable,” he wrote.
Horner claimed that he thought his crimes were a “nightmare,” a jury in Texas heard.The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images
“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 with coping 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.
Horner claimed that his other personality “took over” when he strangled the young girl after kidnapping her from outside her house.Facebook/Maitlyn Presley Gandy
“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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