Jason Thornburg is facing the death penalty. He took the concept of that “old time religion” to extremes. Most people hear those words and think of tent-meeting revivals. Thornburg was more of an Old Testament kind of guy. He self-described as a devout adherent to ritual blood sacrifice. The Texas resident was convicted November 20 of “killing, dismembering, and burning three people for ritualistic sacrifices in 2021.” That was just his latest offering.
Death penalty on table
The big factor affecting whether Jason Thornburg will get the death penalty or life in prison will be his mental status evaluation. On Wednesday, November 20, he “was found guilty of capital murder and is waiting for his sentencing.”
If the court does end up handing down a life sentence, there won’t be any possibility for parole.
There’s no longer any question about whether or not Thornburg did it. The jury confirmed he killed three people “in cold blood,” in September of 2021. David Lueras, Lauren Phillips, and Maricruz Mathis. Gruesome death was only the beginning of the story.
“He then went on to dismember their bodies, storing them inside a Euless hotel, under his bed.” He confessed to police that he “ate one of the victim’s heart as well as other body parts.”
The inconvenience of decomposing bodies under his bed soon became unbearable. The unmistakable stench of death would eventually attract unwanted attention.
“He finally set the three bodies on fire in a Fort Worth dumpster.” Police managed to trail the clues back to Thornburg and hauled him in. He had some interesting new things to say about a couple of closed files from his past.
Two previous murders
While kicking things around in the interrogation room, Thornburg casually mentioned a couple of other murders he committed. They had his ex-girlfriend, Tanya Begay, listed as a missing person. The death of his previous roommate was reported but police had no idea Mark Jewell had been murdered.
Thornburg had been happily babbling along about the latest ritual sacrifice and hardly noticed he slipped into old news that hadn’t been linked up to him.
It seems that in May of 2021, he murdered his roommate. He was able to convince cops that Mark Jewell’s death was an “accident.” He created a gas explosion to cover the evidence. It was really a “human sacrifice to God,” The voices of angels told him exactly what to do.
Police learned a lot, swearing in an affidavit, “that he had extensive knowledge of the Bible and had attended a leadership conference led by one of his victims.” That would be Lauren Phillips. On a worksheet they asked him to fill out, he noted “that he wanted to be a missionary.”
Thornburg killed Tanya Begay “in Arizona in 2017.” At his trial, “two psychologists testified that Jason Thornburg admitted to drinking the blood of his victims, sexually molesting one victim’s corpse, and eating a bite of another victim’s heart before placing it back in the chest.”
Death and cannibalism, he told investigating detectives, gives him “a sense of purpose” and “a sense of destiny.“
