7 Yr Old Girl Asks Killer "Are You A Kidnapper?" 1 Hr Tape of Her Murder Played To Emotional Jurors

Rotten Mango

Stephanie Soo

Comedy, True Crime, Society & Culture

4.8 • 28K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2026

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

35 year old Tanner Horner, a delivery driver with a route in Paradise, Texas writes a letter to the police, “Detective, my family is in danger…” He goes on to claim that the pants in his backpack, although they do belong to the kidnapped and murdered 7 year old girl that recently went missing in Paradise, Texas, were in fact planted there. But that’s just one version of the events Tanner Horner confessed to the authorities. Detectives know it’s not true but how else can they find out what really happened to Athena in the last hours of her life? The true extent of his crimes will not be fully known until simultaneous audio and visual footage plays at his sentencing trial; his delivery truck had an interior dash cam that was recording the entire time. Will Tanner Horner be given life or be put to death? This is the kidnapping, SA, and murder of 7 year old Athena Strand. Full show notes available at RottenMangoPodcast.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is part two of the audio podcast for the case of Tanner Horner and Athena Strand.
0:08.1	It's Texas v. Tanner Horner.
0:10.5	He is up for capital murder and aggravated kidnapping to which he has pled guilty to.
0:15.6	This is the FedEx driver that kidnapped a seven-year-old girl by the name of Athena Strand essayed her and murdered
0:23.1	her while he's on his shift. He's pled guilty to the charges. However, when you're talking about
0:28.6	a capital murder case, there has to be a trial where they go through the punishment phase.
0:33.3	So right now, there are jurors that are deliberating and they are seeing the evidence of what he's done.
0:38.4	He's not denying it.
0:39.7	He's saying, yes, I did this.
0:41.3	And it's up to them to decide whether or not he's going to die for it, whether he will be sentenced to death or he will face life in prison for the rest of his life.
0:49.6	In part one, we went over all of the events and the irrefutable evidence of how there is
0:55.1	audio evidence of Athena Strand being put into his car, into the FedEx fan, being what sounds
1:01.5	like essayed and evidence of male DNA inside of her.
1:06.1	There's a lot of forensic evidence, DNA evidence that links the two together.
1:10.2	He's even confessed to it. But with that,
1:12.8	this is the defense's side. It's not about guilt. It's about dying. Right now, Tanner Horner is in
1:18.2	court fighting to live. The ship has sailed for the insanity plea. Any sort of argument he's making
1:23.5	right now, his defense is making right now, is mitigation on why he should not be killed
1:29.1	by the state. And one of the first things the defense brings up is the broken brain defense.
1:34.4	He ate coins as a kid. That's what they're saying. A relative even comes up to testify,
1:39.7	stating that she would babysit him and he would be chomping down on them coins, eating these coins,
1:44.5	munching them up.
	...

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