Tarrant County jury to decide on death penalty for convicted killer Jason Thornburg

FORT WORTH, Texas - A Tarrant County jury will decided the fate of convicted killer Jason Thornburg.

Thornburg, 44, was found guilty of capital murder in November for the September 2021 killing of David Lueras, 42, Lauren Phillips, 34, and Maricruz Reyes-Mathis, 33. He then dismembered their bodies and stored them under his bed at a Euless motel. Afterwards, he set the bodies on fire inside a Fort Worth dumpster.

Thornburg admitted to investigators he was being called to "commit sacrifices" and even ate a victim's heart and other parts of the bodies, which was detailed during the guilt-innocence phase of the trial.

When Thornburg was arrested for the 2021 motel murders, he reportedly confessed to police he killed his roommate, 61-year-old Mark Jewell, in May 2021 during a suspicious home explosion and his girlfriend Tanya Begay in Arizona back in 2017. Thornburg allegedly told detectives that he sacrificed Begay in Arizona.

The same Tarrant County jury that found Thornburg guilty will decide if he will face the death penalty or spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Punishment Phase

The last witness to testify in the punishment phase took the stand first thing Wednesday morning. After the witness testimony, the prosecution took over for their closing arguments. 

During the prosecution's closing statements, the prosecution addressed the jury for about 12 minutes. 

"He is a psychopath. He is evil. He is the type of evil that we want to believe doesn't exist in our community. We want to believe we are not raising our children in a world where people like Jason Thornburg exist. We want to believe we live in a world where the Bible is not a weapon, where your vulnerabilities don't make you prey to a serial killer. But so long as we live in a world with Jason Thornburg, said evil will exist."

The prosecution said during the trial, the defense said Thornburg's executive functions did not work. The attorney said he has a long history of employment as an electrician and a 4.0 at a community college. 

"You don't almost get away with two murders with a lack of executive functioning."

The prosecution said, "if you need examples of his executive functioning working just fine, we'll listen to his statement again.

Here are the statements the prosecution says Thornburg has made: "I couldn’t use my chainsaw because that would be too loud, and I would get caught. I have to use my knife. I can't carry out the bodies like that. That would be too obvious. I need to get my car back. I need to go buy some bins and load them up in my car. I need to go dump these bodies in a dumpster 30 miles away to distance myself from the crime. I need to light the bodies on fire because I've done it twice before, and I know that works, and I need to destroy the fingerprints."

Thornburg's defense attorneys then each gave a closing argument.

They began by saying Jason Thorburg was "doomed in the womb," saying he had no chance to "be the correct person he should be. He didn't choose to be that way."

The defense asked if Thornburg told the police officers the truth. "Yes, he did. Because he thought he did the right thing by committing a horrible sinful sacrifice. It's the voices he heard which are not justified. They are evil in a way, but he believed it was correct. That is so bizarre. So bizarre. But see, that's what he believed. He believed his sacrifices were correct, and we know, as citizens, it's not correct."

The second defense attorney stated:

"You have to decide as jurors, do we execute someone who is psychotic at the time they did something? You have to ask yourself, do we execute someone who is delusional? Is that what we're about as a civilized society? Do we execute someone whose mother left them in a position where they were susceptible to all of the evils in our society? Do we do that as a civilized society? Or do we take the other option and confine them for the remainder of their natural life?We lock them up and throw away the key and bury them under the courthouse. Which is the more just thing to do? Is it more just when someone responds to medication and stops seeing hallucinations? And the psychosis is severely reduced? Is it just to execute that person or is it just a thing to continue with the regiment that they're on? It has changed their life."

When the prosecution presented a rebuttal, she said: "We don't use words like cannibal, because it's fun. We use words like cannibal because he ate David's heart. We don't use the word sadist because it is a buzz word, we use sadist because (Thornburg) had sex with Lauren's torso. And he cut off David's penis. And he raped Alicia Woods. And we all know what he did to Alicia, is exactly what he did to Maricruz and Lauren. We use the word sadist because he's the kind of person who would have sex with Lauren with the bodies of Maricruz and David underneath that bed. He can be aroused in a moment where there are two bodies under his bed."

She continued, "This is not about death. This is not about theoretical cannibals. This is about a man who took the heart of the man right there and put it in his mouth. That's why we're here. And ladies and gentlemen, remember we sat here and talked about, ‘oh the ritual.’ See, ladies and gentlemen, the reason he did all of this, is the ritual. And the fire, the ‘fire cleanses his soul.’ No. The fire cleanses crime scenes. And now you know that, because you know about Tanya now. You know that in 2017, not because of a ritual, not because God told him to, but because he regularly beat this woman in a domestic violence situation that resulted in him throwing a coffee pot in her eye. And when he's about to get in trouble for that, she goes missing. And we know, now, that he burned her. He used the word cremated. Do you know how long you have to burn someone to cremate? That's what he did. Because fire, once again, cleansed his crime scene."

What did Jason Thornburg do?

In September 2021, Thornburg killed three people; David Lueras, 42, Lauren Phillips, 34, and Maricruz Reyes-Mathis, 33. He then dismembered their bodies and stored them under his bed at a Euless motel. He then set the bodies on fire inside a Fort Worth dumpster.

Thornburg admitted to investigators he was being called to "commit sacrifices" and even ate a victim's heart and other parts of the bodies, which was detailed during the guilt-innocence phase of the trial.

Thornburg's attorneys have argued he was insane at the time of the 2021 murders and had a severe mental disease.

Death Penalty Decision

Attorney Russell Wilson, who is not connected to the case, says the jury will have to decide if Thornburg is a future danger.

"If you were either medicated or kept in an area for a person who suffers from mental problems, then you would argue that person is not a future danger because they would be confined to prison for the rest of their life," he said.

Possible Previous Murders

When Thornburg was arrested for the 2021 motel murders, he reportedly confessed to police he killed both his roommate in May 2021 during a suspicious home explosion and his girlfriend in Arizona back in 2017.

Tanya Begay vanished in March 2017. The missing indigenous woman was last seen with her then-boyfriend Jason Alan Thornburg. Thornburg allegedly told detectives that he sacrificed Begay in Arizona. The FBI considers Tanya's case open, and her body has not been found. 

Thornburg was indicted in the killing of his roommate, 61-year-old Mark Jewell. Jewell's body was found by firefighters after a gas explosion at their Fort Worth home in May 2021.