Latest / NO FILTER / The Terrifying Case Will Leave You Speechless _ True Crime Documentary(M4A_128K)

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The Terrifying Case Will Leave You Speechless _ True Crime Documentary(M4A_128K) · NO FILTER

• 0:13
  Speaker 1: There are some moments in life that feel completely ordinary,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: right up until the instant everything changes. A package gets delivered,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: a child steps outside, A family assumes they still have time,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and then suddenly they don't. On the afternoon of November thirtieth,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, in the small town of Paradise, Texas,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: seven year old girl disappeared from outside her home. At first,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: it did not look like the beginning of a nightmare.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: There was no shattered window, no forced entry, just silence.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: A little girl was suddenly gone. By the time the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: first patrol units turned onto County Road thirty five seventy
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: three in Paradise, Texas, darkness had already settled across Wise County.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: It was Wednesday evening, November thirtieth, twenty twenty two. Cold
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: air move moved across the open fields surrounding the Strand
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: family property, the kind of cold that settles into rural
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Texas after sunset in late November, sharp wind, empty roads,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: and long stretches of silence between neighboring homes. Deputies arriving
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: at the scene were told they were searching for a
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: missing seven year old girl Athena Strand. At first, the
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: situation did not appear unusual enough to suggest violence. Children
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: wander away, sometimes they hide when they're upset, they lose
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: track of time, and according to investigators, Athena had become
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: upset earlier that evening, following a minor disagreement inside the home.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Authorities later described it as an ordinary family argument, the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: kind that happens every day in households across the country.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: But as the first hour passed, something began to feel wrong.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Family members searched the property themselves before calling law enforcement.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: They checked nearby areas around the house, gravel roads, open pasture,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: tree lines surrounding the proper no sign of Athena. As
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: more deputies arrived, the concern escalated quickly, because in small
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: towns like Paradise, children do not usually disappear without explanation.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: That night, however, the atmosphere across Wise County changed completely.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Search teams moved through fields carrying flashlights, drones lifted into
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the dark sky. Volunteers gathered near the property despite dropping temperatures.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: But as the minutes stretched into hours, something about the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: situation stopped feeling normal. Athenas strand had vanished, and somewhere
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: beyond those dark rural roads investigators would soon discover a
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: horrifying truth. The last person known to have seen her
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: alive was a delivery driver who had arrived at the
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: house with Christmas presents. What authorities uncovered over the next
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: forty eight hours would devastate an entire community. But before
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the search helicopters, before the national headlines, before the courtroom confessions,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: there was a little girl who loved to sing, dance
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: and make people laugh. A child, her family says, trusted
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: people easily, a child who should have been safe in
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: her own driveway, and investigators would later learn that her
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: killer had been standing just feet away from her family's
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: front door. Athena Strand was born on May twenty thir
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: twenty fifteen in Duncan, Oklahoma. She was raised by her parents,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Jacob Strand and Maitland Gandy. She came into the world
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: with a personality that, by all accounts matched her name,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Larger than life, bright, impossible to ignore. Her obituary described
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: her as a child with an ever present smile that
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: brought joy and happiness to everyone She encountered, someone who
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: made friends as easily as a butterfly can flap its wings,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and who would light up any room she walked into.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: By the fall of twenty twenty two, Athena was a
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: first grader at Paradise Elementary School, a small school in
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Wise County, about an hour northwest of Fort Worth. She
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: had landed there under bittersweet circumstances. Her mother, Maitland Gandy,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: had become ill in the spring of twenty twenty two,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: and in May of that year, Athena moved in with
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: her father, Jacob and her stepmother, Elizabeth Ashley Strand, in
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: rural Wise County, Texas. What began as a short term
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: arrangement gradually extended, and Jacob enrolled her in the local school.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: The two households, Maitland's in Oklahoma and Jacob's in Texas,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: had worked out a routine. Athena moved between them. She
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: knew both places as home. On November twenty seventh, twenty
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: twenty two, three days before Thanksgiving weekend ended, Maitland drove
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Athena to their usual meeting point, a gas station in Bowie, Texas,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: and handed her off to Jacob. It was a quick
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: drop off. Jacob had plans to take the kids to
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: see the Christmas lights that night. Maitland told her daughter
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: she loved her and that she would see her on Friday.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: It was not the goodbye she would have wanted. Athena's stepmother,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Ashley Strand, later described the little girl as wild, and
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: she said it with a laugh, the way you do
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: when you're describing someone you adore. Athena loved running around
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: outside in the country. She loved horseback riding. She loved
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: doing makeup and playing princess and spending time with her sisters.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: She was the kind of child who made every ordinary
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: day feel a little more alive. On the morning of
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: November thirtieth, twenty twenty two, Athena got dressed for school.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: According to testimony later presented in court, she wore jeans
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: that day, jeans with red flowers on the pockets. She
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: went to school, she came home in the afternoon, and
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: then sometime in the hours that followed, the world as
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: her family knew it ended. By sunset, the little girl
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: with the red flowers on her jeans would be gone,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: and less than twenty four hours later, investigators would discover
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: that the last person to see her alive had arrived
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: carrying Christmas presents. At around five thirty on November thirtieth,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, a delivery van pulled up to the
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Strand property on Country Road thirty five seventy three in Paradise.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: The driver was thirty one year old Tanner Lynn Horner,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: a contract delivery driver working for a Dallas based logistics
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: company called Big Topspin, which fulfilled deliveries on behalf of FedEx.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Horner was on his route that afternoon, carrying packages to
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: homes across rural Wise County. At the Strand residence, he
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: had one delivery, a Walmart box addressed to Ashley Strand
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: containing a set of Barbie dolls from the U Can
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Be Anything collection, a Christmas gift purchased for Athena. He
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: dropped off the package by an abandoned trailer on the property.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: What happened next, according to investigators, began as an accident,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: or at least that was what Horner would later claim.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: As he was backing his delivery van out of the driveway,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: he struck Athena with the vehicle. Investigators later concluded that
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Athena did not appear to be seriously injured from the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: initial impact, but Tanner Horner panicked and in that panic
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: he made a choice that no accident could explain away.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: He placed the seven year old child into his van
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and drove away. Inside the house, Ashley Strand was cooking dinner.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: When the meal was ready, she went to find Athena.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: She checked the room where she was supposed to be
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: sorting laundry. Athena wasn't there. Ashley looked around the house.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: She called out nothing. She began to search more urgently,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and at first she told herself that Athena was playing
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: hide and seek. That was the kind of girl Athena was.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: She was wild. She liked to hide. But the search
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: went on, and then the helicopter started flying over the property.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: That was the moment. Ashley later said it truly sank
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: in when she saw those helicopters in the sky over
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: the rural Texas land where her stepdaughter had been just
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: hours before. She called for help. Law enforcement was notified.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Maitland Gandhy, still in Old Oklahoma, learned that her daughter
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: was missing and immediately drove back to Texas. It was
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: November thirtieth, twenty twenty two. Athena's Strand had been gone
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: for less than an evening, and already nothing would ever
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: be the same. Somewhere on the roads outside Paradise, Texas.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: A FedEx delivery van kept moving through its route as
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: if nothing had happened. The disappearance of Athena Strand triggered
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: one of the most urgent search operations Wise County had
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: seen in years. Law enforcement volunteers and federal investigators poured
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: into the area. Texas Rangers were called in. The FBI
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: provided resources, funding and coordination. More than two hundred community
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: members eventually joined the search, combing through fields and rural
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: properties in the dark and cold of a Texas December.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Athena's parents tried immediately to get an AMBER alert issued.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: The answer they kept receiving was the same, she did
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: not yet meet the criteria under Texas law. At the time,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: authorities needed to confirm that an abduction had occurred before
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: a statewide Amber alert could be issued. In the critical
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: first hours after a child vanishes, that confirmation can be
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: agonizingly slow to obtain. As Maitland Gandhi would later testify
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: before a state legislative committee, every time she asked, she
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: kept getting met with the same response that Athena did
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: not meet the criteria for an amber alert to be issued.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until roughly twenty four hours after Athena disappeared
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: that the alert finally went out. Meanwhile, investigators were working
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: quickly on a lead that would break the case open.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: On December one, twenty twenty two, the day after Athena
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: went missing, Texas Ranger Sergeant Job Espinoza, the lead investigator,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: shifted his focus to the delivery that had been made
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: to the Strand property the afternoon Athena disappeared. His thinking
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: was direct, who delivered it and what did they see.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Investigators with the FBI learned the package, which had been
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: delivered by FedEx through the third party contractor Big Topspin
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Digital Records, quickly pointed them to Tanner Horner as the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: driver who had been on that route. Horner came forward
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: and spoke to investigators. He told them he remembered the address.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: He offered a story. He mentioned seeing a vehicle, an
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: older green Astro van with a missing panel on the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: driver's door, leaving the property around the time he made
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: his delivery. That detail, presented to investigators as a potential lead,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: appeared to be a calculated deflection, but it also gave
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: investigators reason to focus on Horner more closely. What they
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: found when they pulled the digital evidence from his delivery van,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: destroyed any cover story he might have had. Camera footage
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: from inside the van, footage that Horner had attempted to
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: obscure by covering the front facing camera with sticky notes
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: earlier that day, showed Athena in the back of the vehicle.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Ashley Strand, when later shown that photograph in court, confirmed
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: it plainly she did not give Athena permission to be there.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Athena's clothing, including her pants and underwear, were later recovered
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: from Horner's home. The medical examiner who examined Athena's body
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: would testify that she had suffered blunt force injuries to
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: her head and had been strangled. The footage inside the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: van changed everything, because from that moment forward, investigators were
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: no longer searching for a missing child. They were hunting
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the man who had taken her. On December second, twenty
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: twenty two, just two days after Athena disappeared, Wise County
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Lane Aiken stood before cameras and announced that authorities
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: had arrested Tanner Lynn Horner. He was charged with capital
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: murder of a person under the age of ten and
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: aggravated kidnapping. Aiken confirmed that investigators had identified Horner through
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: both digital evidence and a confession. That same day, searchers
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: discovered Athena's body approxyly nine miles from her home near Boyd, Texas.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: The sheriff was visibly affected when he faced the press.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: He said it hurt their hearts to know that child
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: had died, so much so that she was on her
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: way to the medical Examiner's office with a Texas ranger
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: in front of her and a Texas ranger behind her.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: In his confession, Horner told investigators that after striking Athena
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: with his van while backing out of the driveway, he
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: panicked and placed her in the vehicle. He said he
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: feared she would tell her father what had happened. He
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: described trying to break her neck and then strangle her
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: with his hands. Audio from inside the delivery van played
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: for the jury during the sentencing phase of his trial,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: captured over an hour of what happened to Athena after
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: she was taken. Her screams were part of that recording.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: At one point in the audio, Horner could be heard
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: telling her, if you don't shut up, I will hurt
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: you worse. On December fifth, twenty twenty two, Horner was
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: formed charged on December twenty second, twenty twenty two. He
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: faced three additional charges of sexually assaulting a minor tied
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: to incidents from twenty thirteen. On February nineteenth, twenty twenty three,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: a Wise County grand jury formally indicted him for the
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: kidnapping and capital murder of Athena Strand. Three days after
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: that indictment, on February twenty second, twenty twenty three, Wise
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: County District Attorney James Stainton announced that he would seek
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the death penalty. But even after the confession, even after
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Athena was found, the story was far from over, because
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: her mother was about to turn unimaginable grief into a
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: fight that would reach the Texas state Capitol itself. In
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the weeks and months that followed Athena's death, her mother,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Maitland Gandhi, did not retreat into silence. She stood at
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: press conferences, She filed lawsuits, She went before the Texas legislature.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: She became, in her grief, a relentless advocate for the
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: child she would never get to watch grow up, standing
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: before reporters. In December twenty twenty two. Maitland said that
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Athena had been robbed of the opportunity to be anything
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: she wanted to be. She described the box of Barbie
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Dolls that you Can Be Anything collection as a gift
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: ordered out of innocence and love, a present her daughter
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: would never receive. She said she had been robbed of
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: watching Athena grow up by a man that everyone was
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: supposed to be able to trust to do just one
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: simple task, deliver a Christmas present and leave. Maitland's last
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: words to her daughter had been at that gas station
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: in Bowie, Texas, on November twenty seventh. She had told
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Athena she loved her and that she would see her
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: on Friday. It was not the goodbye she would have wanted.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Both Maitland, Gandhy, and Jacob Strand filed wrongful death lawsuits
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: against Horner, Big Topspin and FedEx in December twenty twenty
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: two and February twenty twenty three. But perhaps the most
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: lasting thing Maitland did in the aftermath of Athena's death
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: was turn her grief into legislation. In May twenty twenty three,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: the Texas House passed House Bill three five five Fee
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: six the bill, known informally as the Athena Alert. This
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: bill would allow law enforcement to issue a regional alert
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: within a one hundred mile radius of where a child
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: was last seen, even without confirmed evidence of an abduction.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Maitland Gandhy testified before a state committee in April twenty
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: twenty three. She told lawmakers that if a localized alert
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: had been issued as soon as Athena went missing, it
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: might have made a difference. She acknowledged they would never
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: know for certain, but she said she knew one thing clearly.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: She never wanted another parent to feel the helplessness she
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: had felt. On June thirteenth, twenty twenty three, Texas Governor
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Greg Abbott signed House Bill thirty five five six into law,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: effective immediately. Maitland said of that moment, it had been
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: six months since Athena was killed, and every day had
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: been an indescribable struggle. It gave her comfort to know
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: that Athena's legacy would live on and help save the
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: lives of other Texas children. The law would eventually carry
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Athena's name, but before that happened, the man responsible for
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: her death still had to face a jury, and the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: evidence waiting inside that courtroom would horrify even seasoned investigators.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: For more than three years, the legal case against Tanner
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Horner moved through the courts. He had pleaded not guilty
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: at arraignment in March twenty twenty three, even after confessing
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: to investigators he drove a van with a logo on
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the side, and when he encountered a seven year old
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: child alone, he made a series of choices, deliberate, escalating
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: choices that ended her life. Tanner Horner now sits on
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Texas's death row, awaiting an appeals process that could take years,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: and Athena's name lives on in state law in an
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: alert system designed so that the next time a child
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: vanishes in Texas, law enforcement has the legal authority to
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: tell the world immediately. Her mother, Maitland Gandhi, had a
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: simple and devastating way of putting it. She said she
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: didn't want someone to feel how she feels. She didn't
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: want any mother to carry home an empty heart. Athena
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: was seven. She was supposed to be anything she wanted
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: to be. Thank you for watching Murder Ledger. We explore
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: real cases, unanswered questions, and the details that refuse to fade.
• 17:26
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• 17:30
  Speaker 1: your thoughts in the comments.