Woman dismembered, burned in Fort Worth dumpster by accused serial killer identified
The second of three people found dismembered and burned in a Fort Worth dumpster on Sept. 22 was identified in court documents.
According to a charging document, Lauren Phillips was strangled to death by accused serial killer Jason Thornburg. She has not been publicly identified by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office, which is conducting the autopsies, and her age and hometown have not been released.
Thornburg, 41, is charged with capital murder of multiple persons in the deaths of Phillips and the two other victims.
According to Fort Worth police, over the course of several days in September, Thornburg killed Phillips, 42-year-old David Lueras, and an unidentified woman at a motel where he had been living in Euless. He dismembered the bodies and stored them in plastic containers, police wrote in an arrest warrant affidavit.
On the morning of Sept. 22, Thornburg, wearing a full hazmat body suit, loaded up the plastic containers in his Jeep Grand Cherokee, drove to Fort Worth, put the dismembered parts in a dumpster in the 3100 block of Bonnie Drive and set it on fire, Fort Worth police said.
He was arrested on Sept. 27 and charged in the triple homicide after police connected him to the crimes through surveillance video filmed near the dumpster and the motel. According to police, Thornburg said he “sacrificed” Lueras, Phillips and the other woman when they came to his Euless motel room on separate occasions, the arrest warrant states.
Thornburg told police that after he killed Lueras and the unidentified woman by cutting their throats, Phillips arrived at his motel room. He tried to stab her, but he ultimately strangled her, he told police, according to the warrant. He said he cut her body in pieces and stored her remains in the plastic tubs.
Police have said they believe they know who the unidentified third victim is but that she will be formally identified by the medical examiner’s office.
Fort Worth homicide Sgt. Joe Loughman said at a news conference last week that Thornburg had just casually known the women and he knew Lueras because he had been living with him in the motel for a short time.
Thornburg also confessed to killing his roommate, Mark Jewell, 61, and setting their west Fort Worth home on fire in May, police wrote in the warrant. He also told police he killed his girlfriend, Tanya Begay, in Arizona. Begay, 36, was last seen in New Mexico in 2017, and her body has not been found.
Thornburg told police he felt biblically called to sacrifice the victims, the warrant states.
He is scheduled to appear in Tarrant County Criminal District Court No. 3 on Friday.
This story was originally published October 4, 2021 at 12:36 PM.
