Episode 2: Fedex Delivery Murder

Transcript

Speaker 0:01

I know when I left you last time, I told you I'd be discussing the White House Correspondents' dinner shooting, and I will briefly at the end. I don't really want to comment too much on politics unless a crime is involved. And in this case, a crime was involved, and everyone was talking about it in some form. I'll say a couple of things about it at the end of this podcast, but what I really want to focus on is this death penalty trial of Tanner Horner, the FedEx driver out of Texas who murdered that precious seven-year-old little girl in the back of his FedEx truck. And they have it all on audio and video. If you aren't familiar, on November 30th, 2022, seven-year-old Athena Strand was playing in the front yard of her home in Paradise, Texas, about 40 miles from Fort Worth, when a FedEx delivery truck drove up to deliver a package to her home. The package was actually for Athena for Christmas, but she would never get a chance to open it. Two days later, her little body, nude, beaten, bruised, was found dumped in a body of water nine miles from her home. It wasn't long before police zeroed in on Tanner Horner, that delivery driver. At first, he told investigators, according to the court testimony, that he accidentally ran over Athena, panicked, and took her dead body to get rid of it because he was scared. But that wasn't the evidence. Police learned the FedEx truck was equipped with both audio and video. And when they pulled that evidence, it was shocking what they saw and heard. Little Athena was very much alive when he put her in that truck. He is seen on video inside the truck picking up Athena and putting her inside, and you can hear her asking him, What are you doing? Are you a kidnapper? She is seen in news reports and still images riding in the back of the truck as he's driving. Then you see him cover up the video camera, but the audio was still running. At some point, you hear his chilling words to her. You are really pretty. You know that? Not long after that, he tells her to take off her shirt, and you can hear her saying no and saying she wants her mommy. And what comes next will keep everyone who had to listen to it up at night. Reportedly, there is a long period of her screaming and crying, and you hear a lot of banging as he is trying to kill her. According to court testimony, he tells investigators he first tried to break her neck, but that doesn't work. Then you hear him punching and kicking her, and they're saying he kicked her so hard in the face that he leaves a boot imprint from the bottom of his shoe on her face. At some point, he strangles her. She put up a huge fight, and at one point, as he's killing her, you can hear him singing along to Jingle Bell Rock on the radio, according to news reports. It doesn't get any sicker than that. Overall, the audio and video last an hour. After he dumps her body, he goes to a gas station where he is seen cleaning out the back of his truck to try and erase the evidence. After his arrest, he lies to police repeatedly, misleads police, but then finally he takes them to her body. Prosecutors decide that they are seeking the death penalty on the case. Then shockingly, on the first day of the trial, Horner pleads guilty. But that doesn't take the death penalty off the table because he didn't enter into a negotiated plea to try and do that. It's not clear why he pled guilty at that point, but my guess is prosecutors weren't going to offer a plea deal and they weren't going to take the death penalty off the table. I mean, it's not very often, if ever, you have a murder caught on tape. So perhaps he believes that his plea will give him some sympathy with the jury, that he is taking responsibility for his actions, and that will help him during the death penalty phase. After hearing that little girl, I doubt it. The joke has always been that in Texas, they don't just have the death penalty. They have a fast track to the death penalty, so to speak. They don't mess around letting someone linger once those appeals run out, is the message. When he entered his plea, it started the death phase of the trial. I've covered at least eight death penalty trials in my day. The first phase is the guilt and innocent phase. So a normal trial where all the evidence is laid out. The second phase, if a jury reaches a guilty verdict, is called the death phase. And that's where a jury hears mitigating circumstances, basically families telling all the dirty secrets of the troubled childhoods of the killer, all the mental health issues, all the reasons, anything that they can use to play on a jury's sympathies in order to get a life sentence instead of death. There is no presumption of innocence because he's already found guilty at this point. In this case, it's very similar, but they still had to put up a lot of evidence during the death phase on the crime because his plea circumvented the trial. So basically, they had to hold a trial within the death penalty phase. They've put up family members, his mother and grandmother, evidence that he has autism, specifically what used to be called Asperger's. Then they put up mental health professionals who say he has PTSD, autism, can't regulate his emotions, but all agree he knows right from wrong. Frankly, at this point, I think they could put the Pope up and I don't think it'd help him. Not after that audio. The judge gave people in the courtroom a chance to leave before the audio played because of how graphic and upsetting it was. Some did leave, including the child's family, and rightly so. But the jurors can't leave. They have to hear it. Reporters covering the case can't leave because they have to report on it. Court personnel can't leave. After that audio, according to news reports, jurors were sobbing. They will hear that little girl's screams for the rest of their lives. I've only seen two death penalty cases out of the eight to ten I've covered where a person got life instead of death. In one case, his family members saved him. In the second, they believe a juror who was adamantly against the death penalty got on the jury deliberately. And because the verdict has to be unanimous, that lone juror saved the man and he got life without parole. I will be talking about one of those two cases in one of my next podcasts because it is back in the news. But that guy didn't kill a seven-year-old and have it on audio. That's why I predict when the death phase ends next week, you will see them vote for death. And that puts him on the Texas freeway for lethal injection. The death penalty is reserved for the most heinous crimes and the most heinous offenders. If any case fits that criteria, this is it. The case is expected to wrap up sometime next week and go to the jury. I would be shocked after the jury heard that audio they wouldn't vote for death. I guess we will see. On another note, I've seen all the comments both across social media and on some news sites that the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner was staged. At some point, common sense needs to kick in, frankly. There is video of the man running through the checkpoint and toward the agents outside the ballroom. There is a muzzle flash where shots are fired clearly on the screen. One agent was struck, but his vest deflected the bullet. There are a room full of seasoned journalists inside the ballroom that are both liberal leaning and conservative leaning. You can ask them if it was real. And I read at least one long account from an editor there that night who was from a left-leaning publication who states this was all too real. Staged doesn't end with shots fired and people arrested and manifestos and family members saying he had gone off the beam lately, as news agencies have reported. As for security, well, the security team, though obviously initially caught off guard, still worked. They prevented him from entering the ballroom. Although they were all so close together and in the line of fire that it's surprising someone wasn't hit by friendly fire, and it's a miracle no one was killed. Many have asked why he was stripped naked, and that's to make sure he didn't have explosives on him or was being used as some type of suicide bomber. So I think unless common sense is completely checked out, people should be able to admit this was actually real. The security at the event was the same as it had been in all previous events for the correspondents' dinner, according to media reports. Should they have increased and locked the hotel down in light of recent events? Maybe. But hindsight is always 2020, and it's easy to Monday morning quarterback. Are there things they could have done better? I'm sure. And that's what they'll look at, and of course they will find. That's always the case in these events, and it will affect how they secure this the next time. The news should be an attempt was made, it was stopped, no one was seriously injured, and they are looking at the failures in the security protocols as is standard procedure in these situations. That's just the straight up version. Instead, we have all this rabbit hole mentality going on that is just exhausting on all levels. Just think about every time you have stayed at a hotel. Do you walk through metal detectors to check in? No, you don't. Do you have people checking your room when you check in? Only housekeeping, and that's only if you don't put the do not disturb sign on the door. Could they have done all of that? Sure to some degree that they aren't completely violating someone's civil rights, but they never have done it before for this particular event, and they didn't see a need this time either, evidently. No matter what your politics are, you don't have to die for them. But it seems we have more crazies committing violent acts than usual, and we have more vitriol than usual, and that's just a deadly combination. Should everyone in government on all sides act like grown-ups and not check their IQs and self-involved grasp on power at the door? Of course they should, but this is apparently the politics we are seeing these days, and frankly, it's not a pretty view. Politics has always been a dirty game, but it wasn't this deadly and it wasn't ever so divisive. What happened to the days when people could discuss their differences civilly or even heatedly, and everyone was still on the same overall page of distrusting the government. Now they have some people not only cheering for assassination attempts, but actually thinking it's okay. It's not. It never has been and it never will be on any side of the political spectrum. If people went around killing everyone they didn't like, no one eventually would be left. And that's all I have to say about that. This is Real Talk with Stacey Kelly. Don't forget to follow and subscribe so you never miss an episode.