Suspected Serial Killer Convicted After He Mutilated Victims’ Bodies, Ate Heart As Part Of ‘Ritualistic Sacrifices’

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OAN Staff Abril Elfi
9:23 AM – Saturday, November 23, 2024

A Texas man has been convicted after being accused of killing and dismembering a man and two women. 

On Wednesday, Jason Thornburg was found guilty of capital murder, now jurors will decide if he will be sentenced to death as prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

In September 2021, Thornburg committed murdered three individuals, dismembering their bodies, and concealing the remains under his bed in a motel in Euless, Texas. 

Later, he set the dismembered bodies ablaze in a dumpster located in Fort Worth.  

Thornburg admitted to investigators that he felt driven to perform “ritualistic sacrifices” and confessed to consuming a victim’s heart along with other body parts.  

His defense attorneys claimed that he was insane at the time of the killings, citing a severe mental illness as the root of his actions.

In December 2021, Thornburg was formally indicted for the murders of David Lueras, Lauren Phillips, and Maricruz Mathis, whose dismembered bodies were discovered burning in a dumpster in Fort Worth in September 2021.  

Authorities also revealed that Thornburg had confessed to two additional murders committed years earlier: his girlfriend, Tanya Begay, in Arizona in 2017, and his former roommate, Mark Jewell, during a suspicious home explosion in May 2021.

Thornburg said it was all a “human sacrifice to God.”

According to an affidavit, Thornburg claimed to have an extensive understanding of the Bible and believed he was divinely called to carry out human sacrifices. He even attended a leadership conference led by one of his alleged victims. On a worksheet from the event, he expressed aspirations to become a missionary and identified his greatest strength as “a sense of purpose, a sense of destiny that must be achieved.”  

In 2021, a Tarrant County judge determined there was reasonable cause to believe Thornburg suffered from a mental illness or intellectual disability.

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