Over the span of a few days in September 2021, three people — a man and two women — met Jason Alan Thornburg at the Mid City Inn where he’d been staying.
Inside Room 113, police allege, Thornburg slit their throats or strangled them, chopped their bodies in the motel bathtub and hid the remains in trash bags or Rubbermaid tubs. After the killings, he discarded and scorched them in a dumpster. They needed to be sacrificed, Thornburg later told authorities.
Thornburg is charged with capital murder in the deaths of David Lueras, 42, Lauren Phillips, 34, and Maricruz Mathis, 33. He is scheduled to face a Tarrant County jury Thursday morning, according to court records.
A capital murder conviction carries two possible sentences: life in prison without the possibility of parole or death. Tarrant County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Two of Thornburg’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment; a third declined to comment. According to an August court filing, defense lawyers intend to raise an insanity defense.
A spokeswoman for the Tarrant County district attorney said the office doesn’t comment on pending cases. Sharen Wilson, who was the county’s top prosecutor at the time of Thornburg’s arrest and indictment, previously said the death penalty is “reserved for the worst of the worst criminals.”
“It is only fitting that we seek the death penalty in this case,” Wilson said.
Thornburg, 44, is also charged with murder and arson in the death of his roommate. At the time of his arrest, Thornburg was also being investigated in connection with the disappearance of his girlfriend, who was reported missing to New Mexico police in 2017.
Surveillance video from the Euless motel on Sept. 21, 2021, showed a man wearing a full body hazmat-like suit leaving Room 113, carrying several large containers and loading them into the back of an SUV, according to an arrest-warrant affidavit. The man drove away from the motel and returned twice, loading more tubs into the Jeep, then taking the containers back into the room.
Meanwhile, security footage near a dumpster in the 3100 block of Bonnie Drive captured the driver of a dark-colored SUV get out of the vehicle, take tubs from the trunk and dump their contents into the trash. The driver returned with more tubs a few hours later, started a fire and drove away, authorities said.
About 6:15 a.m. on Sept. 22, Fort Worth firefighters responded to the blaze and found three dismembered and scorched bodies.
Detectives matched the SUV in the videos — a black Jeep Cherokee with a roof rack, chrome accents and rims — to Thornburg and used a GPS device to track the vehicle, according to the affidavit. In pleadings to the court, Thornburg’s defense attorneys have challenged the legality of GPS data — information police then used to obtain search warrants.
In a police interview, Thornburg confessed to the killings, telling authorities he had detailed knowledge of the Bible and believed he was being called to perform sacrifices, according to a police narrative.
Thornburg said he sliced Lueras’ throat, dismembered him in the bathtub with a straight blade knife, and put his remains in trash bags then the tubs. Two days later, a woman came to his motel room and he slit her throat and cut her into pieces. Another two days later, Thornburg said he tried to stab another woman then fatally strangled her, the affidavit says.
According to the affidavit, Thornburg told police he also sacrificed his roommate, 61-year-old Mark Jewell, whose body was found in a gas explosion in May 2021. Thornburg said he cut Jewell’s throat, uncapped a natural gas line and lit a candle, igniting the Fort Worth home. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Thornburg spoke at Jewell’s funeral.
Thornburg admitted to a fifth killing: his ex-girlfriend. A relative who spoke with The Star-Telegram identified her as Tanya Begay, an American Indian woman from Gallup, New Mexico, who went missing while on a trip with Thornburg.
Begay told her mother in March 2017 she planned to travel from Leupp, Arizona, back to her family’s home near Gallup — a drive through the Navajo Nation that should’ve taken a few hours, the Associated Press reported in 2018 as part of a series of stories on missing Native American women.
Fort Worth police did not respond to emails seeking updates in the case. Police in Gallup said the investigation was turned over to the Navajo Nation Police Department. Navajo police did not respond to an email inquiring about the case.
Thornburg’s capital murder trial was initially set to start Oct. 29, then pushed back to the afternoon of Oct. 31, before it was finally rescheduled to Thursday, court records show.
