The mother of admitted child killer Tanner Horner took the stand in a packed Texas courtroom and delivered emotional testimony that painted a grim picture of her son’s troubled upbringing — while making clear she is still furious over the murder of 7-year-old Athena Strand.
As jurors decide whether Horner should spend the rest of his life behind bars or be sentenced to death, his mother described years of behavioral struggles, failed medical treatment, family dysfunction, addiction, and abuse that she said marked his life from an early age.
She told the court she knew something was wrong when Horner was still a child.
According to her testimony, he would have intense meltdowns and later began hurting himself after being bullied at school. Doctors reportedly diagnosed him with ADHD, but she said she never believed that explanation fit.
“They kept telling me it was ADHD, but it wasn’t,” she said, adding that the medications he was given would “change him and make him something he wasn’t.”
Horner’s mother, who asked not to be identified publicly and appeared with her face blurred on camera, also opened up about her own devastating childhood. She testified that she dropped out of school around the ninth grade, battled addiction for years, and endured horrifying abuse as a child.
She told the court her stepfather sexually abused her when she was just 4 years old. Later, she said, she turned to drugs and alcohol to cope and spent nearly a decade working as a stripper.
She also described how she met Horner’s late father when she was 17 and he was 29, claiming he violently assaulted her after she resisted him the night they met.
The courtroom grew even more emotional when the defense turned to the crime that brought everyone there: the murder of little Athena Strand.
Witnesses inside the courtroom said Horner’s mother broke down sobbing when asked whether she was angry with her son.
“I’m so mad at him. I want to just tear his a– up,” she cried. “She was just a baby.”
When asked if she still loved him despite everything, she gave an answer that appeared to stun the room.
“Of course, I love my son,” she said through tears. “I don’t love who did that, though. I don’t know who that was.”
Her testimony came during the sentencing phase of Horner’s case after he pleaded guilty on April 7 to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping, just as his trial was about to begin. That plea means the jury is no longer deciding whether he killed Athena Strand. Instead, jurors must now determine whether he should receive life in prison or the death penalty.
Prosecutors say Horner abducted the 7-year-old while he was working as a FedEx driver delivering a Christmas package. They told jurors he killed the child inside his delivery truck before dumping her body in a creek.
A forensic expert testified that when Athena’s body was found, markings on her face matched the floor of Horner’s FedEx vehicle.
Medical examiner Jessica Dwyer told the court the little girl was found naked in the water with plastic bags covering her hands. She also testified there were no signs of sexual trauma, but said Athena suffered injuries to her head, neck, chest, and back.
Her body was ultimately recovered from waist-deep water in a creek, where investigators say Horner left her after the killing.
The wrenching testimony from Horner’s mother added another layer to a case already filled with heartbreak and horror. But for many watching, it also underscored a darker question that often shadows crimes like this one: how generations of trauma, abuse, untreated mental health struggles, and systemic failure can collide with devastating consequences.
Now, Athena Strand’s family — and the jury — are left facing the painful final chapter: deciding how the state should punish the man who admitted to taking a little girl’s life.
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of course he should spend the rest of his life in jail!!!!