Missing girlfriend of accused Fort Worth serial killer identified by family as N.M. woman
A man accused of sacrificing and burning three people in North Texas earlier this month also confessed to killing his 36-year-old girlfriend who was last seen in New Mexico in 2017, according to a warrant and relatives of the woman on Wednesday.
Jason Thornburg told Fort Worth detectives he had sacrificed the body of his girlfriend in Arizona and identified her, according to the warrant released by Fort Worth police on Tuesday. Her name was redacted in the warrant, but relatives identified her to the Star-Telegram as Tanya Begay of Gallup, New Mexico.
Thornburg was arrested late Monday at a Euless motel where detectives say the 41-year-old serial slaying suspect killed a man and two women and dismembered them. He later placed the body parts in plastic tubs, drove to west Fort Worth, put the victims’ remains in a dumpster and set it on fire, police said.
Thornburg told detectives he believed he was biblically called to commit sacrifices, according to the warrant.
Just a few months ago, Thornburg was a person of interest in the death of his roommate, 61-year-old Mark Jewell, in Fort Worth. Investigators said they didn’t have probable cause to arrest Thornburg because the explosion obscured Jewell’s manner of death. In an interview Monday, Thornburg admitted to slicing Jewell’s throat and then uncapping a natural gas line and lighting a candle, which ignited a fire at their home on Valentine Street in May, police said in the warrant released Tuesday.
Relatives of Begay said Wednesday that they knew something bad had happened to the mother of two children.
“We thought maybe he had sold her for prostitution,” said Sheryl Tsosie of Gallup, New Mexico, in a Wednesday telephone interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She called Begay her “sister,” even though she was her cousin’s sister. “We didn’t want to believe he had killed her.”
Begay and her two children moved back to Gallup in 2016 after leaving Phoenix, staying with a relative who lived across the street from where Thornburg was staying, her family said.
Within days, the two began dating.
“He swept her off her feet,” Tsosie said. “I met him a couple of times, and he seemed nice. He’s a tall and skinny guy.”
But Tsosie said Thornburg began abusing Begay shortly after they started dating, hitting her and one time throwing a glass container at Begay and injuring her eye.
“We told her to get away from him,” Tsosie said. “But she kept going back to him.”
In March 2017, Begay and Thornburg drove to her father’s home in Tohatchi, New Mexico, to ask for some money. They had hitched a ride to Tohatchi.
The two drove away in a red 2004 Dodge Neon owned by her aunt.
Just a few days later, Begay called her mother to say they were in Dilkon, Arizona, and they were headed back to Gallup.
She never returned to Gallup, and her body was never found, her family said.
Thornburg was questioned by authorities, but he was later released and then vanished, according to fliers which were passed out after Begay went missing.
In the Fort Worth cases, authorities identified one victim as David Lueras, 42.
Thornburg told police that Lueras showed up about five days before the bodies were found and stayed with him at his Euless motel, the Mid City Inn, the warrant says. Thornburg believed Lueras needed to be sacrificed and killed him by slitting his throat, he told police. Initially, he hid the remains in his room in trash bags before he bought plastic tubs to store the body parts, according to the warrant.
About two days later, an acquaintance who Thornburg described as a very small Hispanic woman showed up at his motel room. He sacrificed her by cutting her throat, cut her in pieces and stored her body parts in the storage tubs, he told police. Investigators said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon that while police initially thought the victim was a child, they later determined she was an adult woman.
A couple of days later, another woman who Thornburg knew arrived at his Euless motel room. He tried to stab her, but he ultimately strangled her to death, he told police. He cut her body in pieces and stored her remains in the plastic tubs, he said.
Fort Worth police have tentatively identified the two women who Thornburg confessed to killing in his Euless motel room, but said officials with the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office would make the positive identifications.
Detectives tracked Thornburg down through surveillance video near the dumpster in Fort Worth and at the Euless motel.
Fort Worth detectives are reviewing cold cases in the city that might be linked to Thornburg, and other law enforcement agencies have contacted Fort Worth police about the 41-year-old murder suspect.
Thornburg was in the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth on Wednesday with bond set at $1 million.
This story was originally published September 29, 2021 at 9:14 AM.
