Twisted FedEx killer Tanner Horner allegedly sexually assaulted two underage girls and told them about his rape fantasies, a jury in Texas has heard, as it prepares to decide whether to sentence him to death for the murder of 7-year-old Athena Strand.
On Tuesday, two separate women described how Tanner had sex with them when they were underage, adding that drugs and alcohol were involved, FOX 4 reported.
One witness told the jury in Fort Worth, Texas, how she was sexually assaulted twice by Horner in 2013, when she was 16, and he was 22.
She testified that on the first occasion, Horner took her back to his house, where he asked her to lie to his grandmother about her age.
He then allegedly took her back to his shed to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana, before he had sex with her while she tried to sleep.
“That night when I decided it was time to go to sleep, I laid down, and Tanner Horner started grabbing a hold of me, kissing me, and proceeded to have sex with me,” said the witness.
The next day, the witness said she told Horner that she didn’t want to have a sexual relationship with him.
A few months later, the witness testified, she was in Horner’s bedroom when she fell asleep after a night of smoking weed and drinking.
She awoke to Horner grabbing and touching her before he had sex with her again.
“I froze. I completely froze, shut down, did not know what to do, and just let it happen,” she said, adding that she felt gross and violated, and hated herself for allowing it to happen.
She said that if she had reported the sexual assaults sooner, “things may not have happened to other people,” the jury heard.
A second victim told the jury how Horner raped her in 2014 when she was 16.
She said the pair were in a band together and saw each other often at practices, and had mutual friends.
Horner began their interactions by talking about “Doctor Who” and music, before he quickly moved on to his sick rape fantasies, the witness said.
She described Horner’s conversation topics as deeply inappropriate, given their almost decade age difference.
She added that she never agreed to a sexual relationship with Horner, and said drugs and alcohol were involved in their interactions.
While staying at a friend’s house overnight, she and Horner shared a bed, but she told him that she just wanted to sleep.
She alleged that she woke up in the night to Horner on top of her.
“I became conscious and came too to Tanner Horner raping me,” she told the jury.
She publicly accused Horner of raping her in 2018, after a second encounter helped to jog her memory, she said.
“I was posting that he was a rapist and that he had raped me when I was 16,” the woman said, adding that Horner had responded with a private message accusing her of “slandering my name.”
Under cross-examination, the second witness said she “went along with it” after Horner made the first move, but was too young to consent legally.
Horner admitted to murdering Strand near her home in Paradise, Texas, on his delivery route on Nov. 30, 2022, on the first day of the trial last week.
On the day after the murder, he searched online to find out whether FedEx delivery truck cameras record nonstop.
He has denied sexually assaulting her, telling his mother that he couldn’t have because his new medication had given him a “low libido.”
Horner is set to learn whether he will face the death penalty or life in prison without parole by the end of this week.
