I hope that little girl wasn’t raped to death. I hope he killed her painlessly and that she wasn’t scared or afraid. And that she just thought she was on an adventure. I wish so much love and light for this family. There’s no amount of justice or closure in the world for this type of crime. I hope the step mom can forgive herself. Preying on a 7 year old? I hope this monster gets what he deserves in prison. I just got back from Dallas yesterday and the last couple days were news reports and Amber Alerts about Athena. I am in no way comparing this to the horrific story here. But your comment reminded me so much… My aunt died suddenly 11 years ago, on December 23. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. After a few months, I started worrying I’d never stop crying. Anyway, I remember jumping in the car and driving the 3 hours to get to my grandparents house where I knew everyone would be once they heard the news. I walked in and saw my grandmother in the kitchen baking cookies. It caught me so off guard. I asked what was going on and she just said, “well it’s still Christmas, isn’t it?” She was the second child that my grandparents outlived. I don’t know how they survived that. My grandma used to tell me that she’d talk to my aunt all the time after she died. She told me not to tell anyone so she wouldn’t end up in the nuthouse….I talked to her all the time, too, so I reassured her that we can be crazy together :) Adulthood feels like a gradual parade of saying goodbye to everyone you hold dear. I miss those women so much. I’m so thankful for that memory of my grandma baking our family through tragedy. In my town they recently posted a picture of some 18 year old caught with child porn. The amount of people coming to defend him and saying it’s probably just pictures of his 17 year old gf were astounding. How he’s such a good Christian, student, and friend and there’s no way. Next day they updated his sentence to 2,000 charges due to the amount of child porn he was caught with. Ranging from infant to teenagers. Everyone defending him sure is silent now. Killers with kids confuse me more than others, for some reason. Is he a good dad? Does he love his baby? Is one person capable of nurturing and loving a child, and then torturing and killing another? I live about 20mins from this. I've been keeping up with it since she was still missing, and this family is gonna be struggling for years with more than just the obvious. Everyone was going on the step mother's FB calling her "another Casey Anthony". The father was on a hunting trip when it happened, so a lot of people were calling for searches to be made a long his route. Athena was only supposed to be with the dad and step mom for a semester and go back for Christmas break, then goes missing 11/30. The community turned on them in an instant, I don't know how they'll be able to live there anymore tbh. Athena Strand was said to have been outside of her home following an argument with her step-mom. When she could not be found shortly afterwards, the alarm was raised Oh my god, this is heartbreaking. Little girls should be able to go on their fucking front porch for a few minutes to decompress without worrying about some animal taking them away and killing them. She died within 2 hours. This guy had one thing on his fucking mind. I hope they torture him to fucking death in prison. I honestly think a life sentence served alongside rapists and murderers would be far more suitable and fair. When you're a child-killer, the other inmates will at least get a bit of a kick out of making this guy suffer. He needs to feel every ounce of pain and fear that this poor little girl felt, every day for the rest of his natural life. Ya know those random scary thoughts we get? "what if x happened to they/them". We push those thoughts out because they can be horrific to imagine, but our brain dose that for a reason. We imagine those things so we can be prepared to prevent them, (or deal with their aftermath). It's going to be uncomfortable, but you may read some detail that prepares you for the future. It's sad and you see it everywhere, but exactly what will come as we care less for education, put barriers between mental and physical health care, destroy communities, and widen the wealth gap. The police are here to put down protests and protect private property, we deal with mental health problems by jailing them after they break bad enough to be caught for a crime. It's a law/procedure thing. In Texas you can only be held without bail for capital cases and it doesn't look like they've charged him with capital murder yet. At $1.5 million for a FedEx driver, he's effectively already being held without bail. No way he's getting the money together to get out. I lost my 5 year old for no more than 5 minutes at an indoor jump park last week. The panic escalated exponentially as the reality set in that I didn't actually know where my kid was. It felt like an hour, and the relief I felt when I turned around and he came running up with a smile on his face was undescribable. I can't comprehend that terrible feeling only getting worse and the happy smile not coming back. I forgot the name of the movie, but there was a scene in a movie where a woman suddenly realizes her little girl is missing in this huge crowd and the camera work / acting was so good that you could feel the tension rise quickly and then the sudden adrenaline dump she had as she started screaming for her kid with her heart beating out of her chest. It was actually one of the most emotional scenes I've ever "felt" from a movie -- you could just feel the panic and sense of helplessness as things quickly escalated. The camera would pan into stranger's faces walking by as she is screaming and people were just looking at her as if she were some crazy woman. this is a tragic story, an unthinkable crime, and i cannot imagine what the family is going through but i really hope people don't use this as an opportunity to make delivery drivers lives even harder than they already are (esp given the season) Good question. Another good one: why is MSNBC referring to him by his job? They know his name, and he's confessed. They tell you his name on like the fourth paragraph. Most people skimming this article walk away only knowing his employer, not his name... Crazy way to write an article, unless you want to harm FedEx brand or stock price, which seems like an egregious way to use this tragic story. Apparently he raped a woman in the past. How’d he get a job there delivering packages? Often pedophile predators will kidnap a child, as the child resists and doesn’t respond positively to their sexual advances the perpetrator becomes frustrated and turns violent. Disturbingly they’ll “discard” of the victim by murder in an attempt for the victim to not tell on them. So they figure it’ll be missing kid case and they’ll get away with it. While it would feel good, there has to be a clear distinction between the sort of evil perpetrated by monsters like him and a decent civilized person. Eye for an eye was tried out and ultimately we moved on. Then you have the possibility of someone truly innocent being framed for something they didn't do. Given all that, I'm pragmatic and I'm not going to act like I'm above all this -- Fantasizing about it does feel good. Reddit...the only place on the internet where I can go from feeling pretty good seeing that LeVar Burton is getting honoured for his work in childrens literacy, to a big goofy smile as a dog waits patiently in line at a drive-thru for a biscuit, to absolutely gutted and angry and enraged by the evil that some asshole did to a child. We need to start taking extreme punishment measures with sick fucks like this. I'm talking torture levels of execution methods. Skinning alive, dice up their bodies slowly while using modern medicine to keep them alive for as long as possible, be as creative as you want. Fearing the punishments of getting 3 meals a day and a roof over their head, or a 10 year long process to receive a painless injection for death penalty...clearly isn't enough of a deterrent. Everyone complaining Amazon platformed cameras gave access to law enforcement, those cameras helped solve this case and got a sexual predator and murderer off the street in hours. [Edit] This was in reference to doorbell cameras like ring and blink who are owned by Amazon now. This was not referring to the Cameras ON delivery vehicles. I had a laptop stolen by a FedEx driver. When I called FedEx and spoke with a supervisor, he didn’t believe me that it hadn’t been delivered. I asked for proof of delivery and was stunned to see that the driver had forged my signature, even spelling my name incorrectly while doing so. And they STILL didn’t believe me. Like I can’t even spell my own name?? That supervisor refused to believe that one of their drivers would do such a thing. However, a few weeks later, I received a phone call that my laptop was going to be returned and the driver had been dismissed. Still no apology. Some FedEx drivers can't read, I'm certain of it. There is another house with the same house number on a different street in our subdivision. We get their packages, they get ours. The two street names couldn't be any more different. I have actual ring camera footage of them driving by the house and the tracking said that no one was home to accept delivery. There was a package release on that particular delivery, they could have just left it. That said, the FedEx dude who delivers to my workplace is A+. If I have to choose FedEx, I get my shit delivered to my work because I know I will actually get it and on time. I don't remember the exact names or location but ages ago there was a delivery driver who raped and murdered a young woman in her home, I saw it as an episode when I was a kid and it made me wary of anyone coming to my house, so even nowadays I still just wait till I see their trucks leave to grab my things. So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone is even extra careful now. Especially with their kids. So he's working and then is just like, fuck it. Wtf man! Very al chance he'd get away with it, even though random crimes are hard to solve. I have small children they are so sweet. To do any harm to them seems unimaginable to me. Then you read shit like this and I just loose my mind. Like when I'm changing my position again the death penalty then read this. I'm like, "well....." More