Monster FedEx driver Tanner Horner sang along to “Jingle Bell Rock” while he murdered 7-year-old Athena Strand in the back of his truck, according to bone-chilling audio played for jurors.
Athena can be heard screaming in pain after what sounds like Horner, 34, slammed her against the truck floor when the Christmas carol came on the radio — with the confessed killer singing along as she moaned, according to WFAA.
“Shut up,” Horner tells the girl as she continues to moan. “If you don’t shut up, I will hurt you worse.”
The gut-churning moment came about 30 minutes into a recording from the truck’s surveillance camera after Horner abducted the little girl from her rural Texas home in 2022.
The video, which caused jurors to openly weep, revealed audio of the girl choking, as well as indistinct banging in the truck. Strand’s parents left the courtroom before the video was played.
“Where are you taking me?” Athena, clearly terrified, innocently asked Horner before he covered the camera lens, footage shows. He also asked him if he was a kidnapper and asked for her mother.
Horner is facing the death penalty after he pleaded guilty on April 7 to kidnapping Athena from her driveway in Nov. 2022 while delivering her Christmas present to her father and stepmom’s home in Paradise.
He admitted to strangling her and dumping her naked body, which was found days after she vanished.
Horner denied doing anything “weird” to Strand on a jailhouse phone call with his mother that was presented in court, according to KDFW-TV. But the audio captures him demanding she take her shirt off.
A DNA analyst who testified last week said male DNA was found in Athena’s vaginal and anal regions, WFAA reported. The girl’s sweatshirt also tested positive for semen, forensics expert Jacqueline Ferrara told jurors.
Footage later showed him cleaning up the delivery truck.
After eight days of harrowing evidence presented by the state, Horner now is awaiting his fate as the jury weighs whether to send him to death row or life behind bars.
The trial is briefly on pause until Wednesday as the judge and attorneys on both sides will meet without the jury present, as part of so-called Daubert hearings.
The judge will determine the admissibility of expert witness testimony before the jury is able to hear it.
Under Texas law, the decision from the jury must be unanimous before the death penalty is granted.
