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

A Tarrant County jury must now determine whether a Euless man convicted of killing three people, dismembering them and burning their bodies will receive the death penalty. He told police the killings were “sacrifices.”
FORT WORTH, Texas – Closing arguments begin on Wednesday morning in the punishment phase of convicted killer Jason Thornburg.
Thornburg, 44, was found guilty of capital murder in November for the killing of three people in Euless in 2021.
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.
FOX 4 will have a livestream from inside the courtroom on this page.
The trial is expected to resume around 9 a.m. on Wednesday.
Jason Thornburg
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.
The dismembered bodies of two women and a man were found in burning dumpster in Fort Worth.
Thornburg’s attorneys have argued he was insane at the time of the 2021 murders and had a severe mental disease.
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.
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.
Information in this article comes from past FOX 4 coverage.