Texas Cannibal Serial Killer Sentenced To Death After Dismembering 3 People

A Texas jury sentenced a man on Wednesday to death after being convicted for killing and dismembering three people in 2021.

Jason Thornburg was sentenced to die after prosecutors in Tarrant County sought the death penalty for the murder of two women and one man in what Thornburg called "human sacrifices".

According to the CBS News, the bodies of David Lueras, Lauren Phillips, and Maricruz Mathis were found burning in a dumpster in Fort Worth in September of 2021. Thornburg was indicted for the murders in December of 2021. CBS also reported that Thornburg confessed to two other murders, Tanya Begay in Arizona in 2017 and Mark Jewell in May of 2021.

CBS News also reported that body parts were missing from the bodies pulled from the dumpster. During the trial, Thornburg said that he ate part of Lueras' heart before storing his remains.

Thornburg claimed to have in-depth knowledge of the Bible and believed the was called to commit human scarifies.

According to an affidavit, Thornburg said he has an in-depth knowledge of the Bible and believes he was called to commit human sacrifices. He even attended a leadership conference taught by one of his alleged victims. On a worksheet, he wrote that he wanted to be a missionary and said his greatest strength was "a sense of purpose, a sense of destiny that must be achieved."

Thornburg's attorney's argued he should have been found not guilty by reason of insanity and that his executive functions didn't work. The prosecution argued Thornburg has a long history of employment and a 4.0 at a community college. According to FOX 4, the prosecutors said, "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."

A jury came back and agreed with the death penalty.