One of The Most HEARTBREAKING and STRANGE Cases You’ll Ever See.

A young girl went into her room and vanished without a trace. The police initiated a search utilizing drones, helicopters, and hundreds of volunteers. But despite all efforts, they couldn’t find any clues to her disappearance. Surprisingly, new details emerged on the third day of the extensive search, instantly turning this case into one of the country’s most sensational topics as no one expected such a turn of events.

Athena Strand was born on May 25th, 2015 in the small American town of Duncan, Oklahoma. Her parents divorced and her father moved to Texas while Athena remained living with her mother. Despite the distance, her father maintained regular contact and visited her whenever possible. Sometimes her mother also brought Athena to see him as they got along well and she wanted her daughter to spend enough time with her dad.

Later, both her mother and father remarried. Athena was blessed with two younger sisters and they shared a close bond, always trying to spend as much time together as possible. Athena was a typical happy child, always radiating positivity, loving to play and spending as much time as possible outdoors. In late 2022, when Athena was 7, she temporarily moved to live with her father in Texas until the New Year holidays when she would return to her mother in Oklahoma.

During this time, Athena attended a local elementary school. Her father’s house was situated in a remote rural area surrounded by woods and fields. She loved spending time in nature with her dad and had a good rapport with his new wife, Elizabeth. On November 30th, just like any other day, Athena returned home from school around 4:15 p.m.

 Her father and grandfather were out hunting, leaving Athena at home with Elizabeth. That evening, Athena wasn’t in the mood which led to an argument with Elizabeth. Eventually, Athena got upset and went to her room while Elizabeth headed to the kitchen to prepare dinner. After about 20 minutes, she went to the girl’s room to call her for dinner.

But Athena was nowhere to be found. Elizabeth searched the entire house and even checked the yard, but the girl was nowhere in sight. Following that, Elizabeth called her husband’s relatives who lived just a few hundred yards away. Sometimes Athena would visit them, but this time they said they hadn’t seen her.

After that, Elizabeth called her husband and told him what happened. He immediately told her to contact the police and headed straight home. At around 6:40, Elizabeth dialed 911 and officers arrived at her home within 14 minutes. She explained the situation and shared her version of what happened. She believed that Athena might have run away from home because of the argument they had.

However, the girl’s relatives strongly doubted this. Firstly, Athena was only 7 years old and had never wandered far from home before. Secondly, it was already evening outside and she was afraid of the dark. Initially, the police treated Elizabeth with suspicion, mainly because she reported the child missing 40 minutes after she realized it.

 But after listening to her account of how she searched the entire house and contacted relatives, they concluded she was likely telling the truth. The officers immediately began searching the area. Despite the darkness, they combed the forests and fields within a radius of several kilometers from the house.

 According to their main theory, Athena could have left the house and gotten lost in the darkness, so they focused all their efforts on covering that area. They also considered the possibility of abduction, but found no evidence to support that. There were no signs of forced entry into the house. Elizabeth didn’t hear any noises or screams.

And none of the neighbors witnessed anything suspicious that evening. The police were assisted in the search efforts by the girl’s relatives and concerned residents of the town. Athena’s mother rushed there as soon as she learned about her daughter’s disappearance. The search continued until almost 5:00 a.m. but they still couldn’t find any traces of Athena.

The situation was complicated by the fact that the area around the house was quite inaccessible, especially during the dark hours. At 7:00 a.m. the police resumed the search, involving even more officers. Additionally, when news of the girl’s disappearance spread throughout the county, hundreds of volunteers joined the search efforts.

Some of them scoured the area on horseback and ATVs, while the police utilized drones and helicopters with thermal cameras. Unfortunately, they still hadn’t found Athena by the end of that day. The police were concerned for her life, as it was already the beginning of winter. Although Texas is a southern state, the temperature during those days dropped to 50°.

Given that the girl was wearing light clothing, it would have been really challenging for her to endure such weather. On the third day, the search continued, and the police expanded the area to miles around the house. They also involved their colleagues, exploring the possibility of a criminal aspect to the case.

Despite the initial lack of evidence of abduction, the police increasingly doubted that Athena had left the house of her own accord. During these days, they combed several miles in all directions, but they couldn’t find the girl. The idea that she could have walked such a distance without encountering any civilization seemed highly doubtful.

Investigators tried to identify everyone who was near Athena’s house that evening. This task was quite challenging since the residence was surrounded by trees and located a few dozen yards away from the main road. Moreover, there wasn’t a single surveillance camera in the area. Nevertheless, they quickly obtained their first lead.

 It turned out that on the same evening, a courier service had delivered a package to the girl’s home. Investigators immediately contacted FedEx, where they were informed that the delivery to that address was handled by an external contractor. They reached out to the organization responsible for package deliveries, and they identified the specific van that had arrived at Athena’s home that evening.

Fortunately for the police, each of these vehicles was equipped with surveillance cameras, so they immediately requested the footage from November 30th. After rewinding to the time when the van arrived at the house, investigators saw very alarming footage. It showed the driver pulling a girl resembling Athena into the vehicle.

They quickly identified the driver as a 31-year-old Tanner Horner, and the police went to his address. Soon, the man was arrested on suspicion of abduction, and he was taken in for questioning. As soon as investigators mentioned the video evidence, Horner began talking. He explained that on that evening, he had indeed delivered a package to Athena’s house.

When he was backing up his van, he felt a strike and went to check what had happened. Horner found the girl on the ground and realized that he accidentally hit her with his vehicle. Upon approaching, he noticed that she hadn’t sustained any serious injuries. The girl was conscious, not crying, and even spoke to him.

According to Horner, she told him her name was Athena. Feeling unsure of what to do in this situation, he panicked. After that, he put the girl in his van, trying to figure out how to resolve the situation. She continued talking to him and said that she will tell her father about it, and Horner became even more anxious.

He didn’t know what to do with the whole situation, as he understood that if the girl will tell adults about the incident, he could face legal trouble. And after that, he continued telling the investigators something that, to put it mildly, puzzled them. According to Horner, he couldn’t come up with anything better than to kill her.

He said that he first tried to break her neck, but it didn’t work. Then he strangled the victim, took her body to a river near a neighboring town, and dumped it in the water. Of course, such a version of events raised significant questions for the police, but the suspect provided them with the exact location where he left Athena.

The investigators immediately went there and indeed found her body. The news of the girl’s murder shocked not only her relatives, but also thousands of people across the country. By that time, all major media outlets were covering the case and people were appalled by such cruelty. After the body was found, Horner was charged with abduction and murder.

 While waiting for the medical examiner’s report, detectives scrutinized the criminal’s identity, trying to better understand his motives. The version of events presented by Horner seemed utterly implausible. According to his account, he had lightly hit the girl with the van, causing her no serious injuries. However, the man was so terrified that he immediately decided to kill her.

Considering that hitting a child without causing harm might only lead him to losing his job, Horner’s story appeared highly strange. The police found that the man was engaged and had a child born a year before these events. Besides delivering packages, he occasionally worked as Uber driver. Horner was also involved in music and played in a band performing at various cafes in the neighboring city of Fort Worth.

On social media, he posted multiple photos with his child, musical performance snapshots and other things that, upon viewing, didn’t portray Horner as a true monster. Before his arrest, he had no previous legal issues and the police couldn’t find any hints that this person was a cruel killer throughout his biography.

Just 2 months before Athena’s death, the man had posted photos of spending time with his son and his grandparents. The wait for the medical examiner’s report, which was expected to shed light on the actual sequence of events, lasted for several weeks. In the meantime, Athena’s parents filed a lawsuit against FedEx and the contracting company, accusing them of allowing Horner to work.

They demanded higher standards for employee screening to prevent such crimes in the future. One fact that came to light made this whole story even more devastating. It turned out that the package Horner delivered that evening was a Christmas present for Athena. Her parents had ordered a Barbie doll, something she had long wanted.

When the medical examiner’s conclusion became public, even more questions arose in the case. According to the document, the victim died within the first hour after being abducted. Her body bore injuries of varying severity, and the cause of death was asphyxiation. However, the main version held by the detectives didn’t stand.

They believed that Horner noticed the girl near the house and decided to abduct her to sexually assault her, but the medical experts found no evidence of that. This puzzled the police, as this motive seemed the most obvious. None of them believed that events unfolded according to the killer’s account, as it lacked any logical explanation.

Then the investigators speculated that the perpetrator initially planned to sexually assault the girl, but something deviated from his plan. According to the detective’s version, after the argument between Athena and her father’s wife, the girl went outside and was in the yard. At the same time, Horner arrived at the house to deliver the package and noticed the girl.

According to this version, he saw an opportunity to fulfill his depraved fantasies. Athena was alone near the house, surrounded by trees, completely isolated from prying eyes. Horner could have either lured the girl into the van through deception or deliberately hit her to place her in the vehicle without resistance.

What happened next is unclear. There are two main versions that seem most logical. Horner might have planned to take the girl far away from the house to commit his intended acts, but she either started screaming or attempted to escape. Fearing capture, the man killed her and then took her body to the river. According to the second version, Horner might have engaged in some deviant actions towards the victim that did not involve direct contact.

In such a case, medical experts would not have found evidence of sexual assault. Soon, the detectives came across indirect and rather unexpected clue that this crime indeed could have had a sexual motive. Horner had no previous legal issues before this murder, which is relatively rare. In most cases, people capable of deliberately taking someone’s life begin with much less severe crimes.

For many weeks, the detectives meticulously studied Horner’s past. They spoke to his relatives, friends, and acquaintances trying to find any hints that the man might have been involved in other crimes. In the end, they made a breakthrough. The police managed to find several individuals who claimed to have suffered from Horner’s actions when they were children.

The police didn’t disclose their identities in the interest of the investigation, nor did they reveal all the details of what happened. It’s only known that one of the victims accused the man of assaulting her 9 years ago. Additionally, Horner was charged with three more incidents of sexual assault involving minors in 2013.

It’s unknown at this time whether these incidents involve one child or three different victims. But that’s not all. One of Horner’s victims had been publicly speaking for years about how he assaulted her when she was 16. She wrote about it on her social media trying to bring attention to the fact that Horner was a dangerous criminal.

For some reason, the man faced no consequences for this act and wasn’t even considered a suspect. The girl accusing him of this crime wrote that for all those years, nobody believed her. However, after Horner killed Athena, these allegations received much more attention. They exposed the true nature of this individual and his possible motives.

 Now, Horner will also face separate trials for these four incidents apart from the legal proceedings for Athena’s murder. There’s one more aspect that, on its own, might not seem significant. But in the context of all of Horner’s crimes, it provides further insight into his true character. After his identity became known to the public, internet users discovered his TikTok account.

 There were only a few videos, with the last one shot a few weeks before the murder. In this video, Horner recorded his reaction to a clip where someone captured a bug in a glass and then slowly poisoned it with a spray. Watching the bug die, Horner’s face displayed a rather eerie expression, as if he genuinely enjoyed the process of killing.

If the man was indeed a sadist who derived genuine pleasure from witnessing someone’s death, his account of Athena’s murder comes into question once again. Horner claimed that the only reason he killed her was the fear of facing punishment for a much lesser crime. But if we consider that he had such sadistic tendencies, his account appears even more absurd.

 As part of the preparation for the trial, the authorities announced that they would seek the death penalty. Horner himself hired a lawyer who advised him to withdraw his confession and declare his innocence. But this is unlikely to help him avoid punishment. Considering that the police have video footage from the van, as well as Horner’s testimony about the exact location of the body, his guilt is more than evident.

Moreover, additional evidence might be presented during the trial, the existence of which is currently unknown. Most likely, they found Athena’s DNA traces in the van, and genetic material from the killer could have been collected from her clothing and body. We can only follow the course of the trial and wait for further details to become known to the public.

Until then, feel free to share your opinion on this story in the comments, and don’t forget to like the video if you enjoyed it. Thank you for watching.