US6 min(s) read
Jason Thornburg: cannibal killer's six-word confession after 'human sacrifice' murders in Texas
.jpg_I4Ebof?tr=cr-0.338.2730.3068,f-webp,q-70,w-100)
Jason Thornburg killed three people in a motel room in Fort Worth, Texas, over the course of a single week.
He dismembered all three in the bathtub, ate parts of their bodies, stored the remains in plastic bins under his bed, drove them to a commercial area, dumped them in a skip, and set the whole thing on fire.
When detectives asked him why, his answer was simple but terrifying.
He said he had been 'called to commit human sacrifices'.
What's more, he said that God had told him to do it.
Thornburg, now 45, was sentenced to death in December 2024.
He is currently on death row at the Polunsky Unit in Texas. His legal team has filed a notice to appeal.
Who did Thornburg kill?
David Lueras, 42. Lauren Phillips, 34. Maricruz Mathis, 33. All three were killed at a motel in Euless, a suburb of Fort Worth, between approximately September 15 and September 22, 2021.
Lueras had been staying with Thornburg at the motel for several days. According to the arrest warrant, Thornburg believed Lueras 'needed to be sacrificed'.
He slit his throat and dismembered the body in the bathtub, then kept the remains in bin bags under his bed for several days before buying Rubbermaid storage tubs to put them in.
He ate part of Lueras's heart and cut off his penis.
Two days later, a woman arrived at the motel room.
Thornburg slit her throat and dismembered her the same way.
Two days after that, a second woman showed up.
He stabbed and strangled her, violated her body after she was dead, then dismembered her and added the remains to the bins.
The two women were later identified as Phillips and Mathis.
Thornburg told police he knew them both casually.
How were the bodies found?
On September 22, 2021, at 6:15am, firefighters in west Fort Worth responded to a dumpster fire behind a business on Bonnie Drive.
When they put the blaze out, they found human body parts inside.
Badly burned and heavily dismembered - some parts missing entirely.
Thornburg had loaded the storage bins into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, driven to the site, transferred everything into the dumpster, and torched it.
Then he went back to the shop where he had bought the Rubbermaid bins, cleaned them, and returned them.
How did police catch him?
CCTV from the area showed a Jeep Grand Cherokee near the dumpster around the time of the fire.
There were 7,000 of the same make and model registered locally. But an officer going through the list recognised Thornburg's name. He had come up as a suspect in an apartment fire a few months earlier.
That fire, on May 21, 2021, had killed Thornburg's 61-year-old roommate Mark Jewell.
At the time, the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death because of the fire damage. Thornburg later confessed he had slit Jewell's throat, uncapped a gas line, and lit a candle in the room.
Detectives tailed Thornburg for several days. On September 27, they approached him as he left a house in Arlington. He agreed to talk.
He confessed to everything in what police described as 'intimate detail'.
Then detectives asked if there had been any more sacrifices.
"He responded that he had sacrificed the body of his girlfriend in Arizona," the arrest warrant states. That was 36-year-old Tanya Begay, killed in 2017.
Five confessed murders. Two states. Four years.
Who is Jason Thornburg?
A 41-year-old electrician's apprentice from the Fort Worth area.
He had a minor criminal record, a 2018 conviction for evading arrest that got him six months before parole - but nothing that would have flagged him.
He told investigators he had 'an in-depth knowledge of the Bible' and that his reading of scripture had led him to believe God wanted him to carry out ritual killings.
He had attended a Christian leadership conference taught by one of the people he later murdered.
On a worksheet at that conference, he wrote that he wanted to be a missionary and that his greatest strength was 'a sense of purpose, a sense of destiny that must be achieved'.
Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes said the crime scene was 'not something anyone should ever have to see'.
What happened at trial?
Thornburg was indicted in December 2021.
A judge found reasonable cause to believe he had a mental illness or intellectual disability and ordered a psychiatric evaluation. The case took three years to reach trial.
His defence team argued he was insane when he carried out the murders, citing mental illness and partial fetal alcohol syndrome.
The jury rejected the insanity defence.
On November 20, 2024, Thornburg was convicted of all three counts of capital murder. He sat motionless as the verdict was read.
On December 4, the same jury sentenced him to death. They were sobbing as they delivered the sentence. Thornburg showed no reaction.
Family members addressed him directly during the sentencing phase.
Norma Harris, whose sister Maricruz Mathis was one of the three victims, told him: "Your actions have caused a lot of pain.
"The worst part of all this is that even after we do get justice, we will still be missing our loved ones."
Court records show Thornburg's attorney has since filed a notice to appeal.
Given the pace of capital cases in Texas, legal experts have said the appeals process could take years, potentially decades, before any execution date is set.
Thornburg is being held at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas, the state's death row facility.
Texas has carried out more executions than any other state since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
More like this
- Everything we know as 16 bodies are pulled out from the same bayou
- Chris Watts revealed disturbing details about his crimes in letters from prison
- Where is Chris Watts now? Details released about killer dad's life in prison
- Chris Watts had another secret lover and she's speaking out about their 'unsettling' encounter
- Man sentenced to 85 years after accidentally recording murder on voicemail
- Father shot and killed his son's rapist live on television and walked away without prison time
.jpg_7GrJVM?tr=cr-0.0.1422.800,f-webp,q-70,w-525,h-200)
.jpg_I4Ebof?tr=cr-0.338.2730.3068,f-webp,q-70,w-1024)
