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A Texas man accused of killing and dismembering three people before setting them on fire in a dumpster told police he did so because he had “a thorough knowledge of the Bible and believed that he was called upon to make sacrifices “, according to an arrest warrant. affidavit obtained by The Daily Beast.
Jason Alan Thornburg, 41, was arrested Monday night by Fort Worth police for capital murder and is being held in the county jail on $ 1 million bail, detention records show. Retail Thomas O’Brien, one of the lead investigators in the case, confirmed Thornburg’s arrest to the Daily Beast. It is not known if Thornburg, an apprentice electrician, still has a lawyer to speak on his behalf.
At around 6:15 a.m. last Wednesday, the Fort Worth Fire Department responded to reports of a garbage fire outside a storage facility. As they worked to extinguish the fire, firefighters discovered three bodies inside the receptacle, in pieces. One appeared to be a teenage girl or a young woman. The second appeared to be a child of unknown age and sex, but was later determined to be an adult female. The third body belonged to an unidentified adult male. All of the victims were severely burned and parts of the body were completely missing.
Police have revealed the identity of one of the three victims found in the dumpster, naming him 42-year-old vagrant David Lueras. He was identified based on several separate cop tattoos matching those seen in his Facebook profiles, as well as a penis implant discovered during the autopsy, according to the warrant. Members of the Lueras family could not be reached.
Investigators did not explain how Lueras and Thornburg knew each other, but said Lueras, who had an extensive criminal record, stayed with Thornburg at a local motel for several days before being killed. Thornburg’s past was relatively clean, with a conviction in 2018 for escaping arrest. He served six months before being released on parole.
“Thornburg believed David should be sacrificed,” the warrant says. “He slit David’s throat, then cut it to pieces in the tub. Thornburg initially hid the remains in his room in trash bags before obtaining Rubbermaid-type tubs to store them.
About two days later, a woman showed up to the Thornburg motel room, according to the warrant.
“Thornburg said he also sacrificed her by slitting her throat and butchering her body and also storing her remains in storage bins,” the document said.
Two more days passed before “another woman came to her motel,” the warrant said. “He knew her as [redacted]. Thornburg initially described trying to stab her, but said he eventually had to strangle her. He cut his body into pieces and also stored his remains in the tubs.
Thornburg said he slit the throats of his victims with a straight-bladed Milwaukee knife, according to the warrant.
At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Sgt. Joe Loughman of the Fort Worth Police Homicide Unit explained how his team found their suspect.
Detectives began by checking surveillance cameras in the area around the dumpster and focused on a suspicious Jeep Grand Cherokee that looked like a 2005-2010 model. Police requested a list of all Grand Cherokees from that period registered in the area, which totaled more than 7,000 vehicles. However, one name stands out from the rest: Jason Thornburg.
Thornburg was familiar to detectives “due to a suspicious death investigation” this spring, Loughman said. The police report in this case, which was obtained by The Daily Beast, describes an alleged arson attack at a residence on May 21. When Fort Worth firefighters arrived at the scene, they found “intense fire and smoke” coming from the house. The fire was intentionally started and started in a room where the remains of the lone victim were found, investigators said. At the time, Thornburg – the victim’s roommate – was on the cops’ radar, but they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him with a crime.
According to Thornburg’s arrest warrant in the dumpster murders, investigators contacted the holder of the lien on Thornburg’s vehicle and obtained GPS location data that placed him at the Mid-City Inn, a motel in Euless, Texas. Detectives checked surveillance footage of the property and discovered footage that allegedly showed Thornburg “coming out of a room carrying plastic trash cans with what we believe to be body parts of our victims,” Loughman said. “This subject made several trips to and from this location to add additional items to the back of his car.”
The timing of those trips coincided with how long it would take to get from Eless to the Fort Worth dumpster where the three bodies were found, Loughman said.
The two female victims found in the dumpster were casual acquaintances of Thornburg at best, according to Loughman.
On Monday, Fort Worth detectives observing Thornburg saw him leaving a house in Arlington. Three of them approached Thornburg and asked to speak to him. In an interview with investigators at the police station, cops said Thornburg confessed in “intimate detail” to not only killing the three people found in the dumpster, but also slaughtering his roommate in May before provoking a gas explosion that burned the lodge.
“Detectives asked if there had been any additional sacrifices and he replied that he had sacrificed his girlfriend’s body in Arizona,” the arrest warrant reads.
Fort Worth Police Department
No motive was released by police, and Loughman said he “couldn’t even really get into the psyche of someone who is capable of it.” However, a cousin of Lueras told local media KDFW that Lueras “was scared” and “he knew someone was after him to get him” but “didn’t want to tell us their names”.
“Whoever did this definitely wanted to make an example of him,” said Aaron Torres, who claimed Lueras had returned to Texas, where he had lived on and off, to “go into hiding.”
Loughman said he had never seen another case like this during his time in the Fort Worth Police Homicide Unit. Detectives will dig through their backlog of cold cases to see if Thornburg could have been linked to any of them, and he’s called on other departments to do the same.
“Hopefully that comes out, nationally and potentially internationally,” said Loughman, who hopes “if there are any investigations going on in other jurisdictions they’ll contact us.”
Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes told Tuesday’s press conference he was proud of his officers for making an arrest in less than a week.
“It would have become a cold affair without their diligent efforts,” he said.
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