The Murder of Lauren Whitener Part 2: Room 113

Part 2 of 2. Two years after the murder of 32-year-old Lauren Whitener, a potential suspect emerged when the dismembered bodies of three people were found burning in a Fort Worth dumpster. The person who murdered them, Jason Alan Thornburg, was apprehended relatively quickly and readily confessed to two other murders as well. A few years before Thornburg’s conviction for the three murders, the prime suspect in Lauren’s murder, Rodney Aric Maxwell, was released on bond after sitting in a Wise County jail for almost 6 months. Not long after that, the charges against him were dismissed. Although Sheriff Lane Akin insists Maxwell is their guy, none of the evidence they originally used against him linked him to Lauren’s murder at all.

If you have any information about the murder of Lauren Anee Whitener, please contact the Wise County Sheriff’s Office at 940-627-5971 or Texas Crime Stoppers at 940-627-8477

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Sources: The Wise County Messenger, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Dallas Morning News, NBCdfw.com, Fox4news.com, CBSnews.com, WFAA.com, and Court Documents 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Call podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. As Rodney Eric Maxwell sat in
the Wise County jail charged with the murder of thirty
two year old Lauren Ann Whitner, his attorney, Barry Green,
was working hard to get him out and to clear

(00:21):
his name. Green had a lot to work with. The
warrant to arrest Maxwell was based on half truths and
some downright misleading information in the affidavit. Items collected at
Maxwell's house that were said to test positive for possible
blood were in areas that, in the normal course of
a household's day, could have been contaminated with any number

(00:45):
of substances that often show false positives for blood when
sprayed with luminol and luminol based chemicals like blue star,
the substance used in both his and Lauren's homes, items
like bleach and other cleaning agents, not to mention saliva, urine,
and any number of metal compounds that might transfer by touch.

(01:09):
The case against thirty nine year old Maxwell hinged on
a single blade of grass, a piece of evidence that
contained Lauren's blood and DNA. It was taken from an
area that had been trampled through by firefighters and deputies
who had come out to the backyard after being inside
at the crime scene, which was bloody, but it was

(01:30):
hardly the only piece of evidence authorities had. There was
another suspect. The Wise County Sheriff's office and Texas Ranger
James Holland were investigating as well, a fact that seemed
to imply uncertainty in their choice to arrest and to
charge Maxwell in the first place. And there may have

(01:50):
been another, a man who at the time wasn't yet
known to area law enforcement in the capacity he is now.
The year before Lauren's murder, in twenty eighteen, a man
named Jason Allen Thornburg was arrested in Wise County and
charged with evading arrest. His court date came a few

(02:13):
months later, and Thornburg was sentenced to two years in prison.
When it was all said and done, he served about
a year and was released in May of twenty nineteen.
Although he was released on Pearl sixty miles to the
southeast to Terrant County, won previous crime and crimes he
would go on to commit begs questions that have yet

(02:35):
to be answered. It's unclear why Thornburg was in Wise
County in the first place, or where he was staying.
A much more important question, however, is whether he came
back to Wise County after his May twenty nineteen release
and committed a crime that is similar to his others.

(03:06):
More than two years after the murder of Lauren Whitner.
At six seventeen am on Wednesday, September twenty second, twenty
twenty one, the Fort Worth Fire Department was dispatched to
thirty one twenty Bonnie Drive in the city's far west.
A dumpster there, the caller said, was on fire. The

(03:26):
area is zoned for both business and residential, and among
the several warehouses surrounding the address is a small row
of houses. Firefighters arrived and quickly extinguished the blaze. When
they looked inside the dumpster, they were horrified to find
human remains that had been dismembered, and it was clear

(03:47):
there was more than one body. They called in the police.
After assessing the scene, Patrol officers notified Detective Matthew Barron,
the on call homicide detective, on due Several other detectives
swarmed the scene shortly thereafter, and a digital forensics unit
was called for assistance in locating surveillance footage. Medical investigators

(04:13):
Steve White and Amy Renfro processed the scene, with Renfro
climbing in the steel container and lifting out body parts
for nearly three hours. She stood in water that came
to her mid calf, handing them off to White, who
stood outside the dumpster. They determined there were three bodies.

(04:34):
The only way to tell for sure at that point
was by counting the heads. Little else was found inside.
The bodies were sent to the Arrant County Medical Examiner's office. There,
it was discovered that the remains belonged to an adult male,
an adult or teenaged female, and what they thought was
a child whose sex they could not determine. Three complete

(04:58):
bodies could not be accounted for. The best clue they
had as to the identities of the victims or the
letters U E r as tattooed on the adult male's back,
Detectives took to Facebook, where they used the partial name
to locate a man named David Luerz, whose account had

(05:19):
a photo of a tattoo of his last name across
his back, one that matched their victims tattoo exactly. Police
were having trouble identifying the other victims. Digital Forensics meanwhile
obtained surveillance footage taken across the street from the dumpster.
On the video, a dark colored SUV can be seen

(05:42):
pulling up and parking next to the dumpster at about
ten fifty the night before. The driver, the vehicle's only occupant,
is then seen exiting the vehicle from the trunk. The man,
dressed in a Hasmat type bodysuit, took out several large
containers and dumped the contents of each one in the dumpster.

(06:05):
He placed the containers back in the suv and can
be seen pulling away. A couple hours later, at twelve
fifty am, the man returned and again dumped out the
contents of several containers. Then he started the fire before
fleeing the scene. After determining the SUV was a black

(06:26):
two thousand and five to twenty ten Jeep Grand Cherokee,
by examining the several surveillance videos they were able to
track down in the area, detectives compiled a list of
all such vehicles registered in Tarrant County. When they came
across a two thousand and eight model with similar chrome rims,
the vehicle was registered to forty one year old Jason

(06:48):
allen Thornberg, a man the fort Worth Police had previously
investigated when his roommate died in a suspicious house fire
caused by a gas explosion four months earlier. At around
ten am on Monday May twenty first, twenty twenty one,
firefighters arrived at the scene of an intense blaze at

(07:10):
a residence on the forty five hundred block of Valentine Street.
After extinguishing the fire, responders were horrified to find a
body within the home, identified a short time later as
one of the two men who lived there, sixty one
year old Mark Jewel. Because of the explosion and fire,

(07:30):
it was impossible for the medical examiner to determine exactly
how Mark died. Sometime before his death, Mark met Jason
allen Thornberg through a mutual friend and through faith, a
bond was created. The two became fast friends. They went
to church together and studied the Bible outside of services.

(07:53):
Mark Jewell, in fact, is said to have known the
Good Book like the back of his hand. He had
developed to a deep understanding of Christianity while serving time
for a heinous crime. He wasn't proud of one he
was looking to put behind him and even make up
for if possible. At some point, Mark and Thornburg decided

(08:15):
they could be mutually beneficial to one another. Though Mark
had a girlfriend, she was a long distance one, so
it made sense for him and Thornburg, a bachelor, to
move in together. Things seemed to have gone well before
the explosion and fire. At Mark's funeral, a small crowd
listened intently as Thornberg described him as a good friend,

(08:39):
one with whom he studied the Bible often. Fast forward
back to September twenty twenty one, and detectives tracked down
Thornberg's jeep. They viewed it in person and determined it
was the suv scene in the surveillance videos dumping the
bodies in the dumpster. Now it was timed to find

(09:00):
out where he lived. Detectives quickly discovered that Jason Allen
Thornberg lived at the Mid City Inn in Uless, a
pay by the Weak motel, about twenty five miles northeast

(09:22):
of where the dumpster fire occurred. Surveillance footage from there
showed the man making several trips to his vehicle carrying
large containers while dressed in a hazmat suit. The times
coincided with the man seen dumping the containers in a
West fort Worth dumpster before setting it on fire. It

(09:43):
was obvious to detectives that they had their guy, but
there was more work to be done before making an arrest.
After interviewing several folks who lived or worked at the
Mid City n a picture of Thornburg began forming. It
was isn't necessarily what detectives expected. Thornburg often preached the

(10:05):
Word of God to residence and handed out church flyers.
His knowledge of scripture was vast, and sometimes he'd even
stand on street corners with a microphone and deliver sermons
to passers by. But when they really got to know Thornburg,
who the man really was, the truth of what he'd
done in Room one thirteen at the Mid City End

(10:27):
was appalling. At about six pm on Monday, September twenty seventh,
twenty twenty one, detectives visited their suspect in Arlington, where
he was doing electrical work. Thornburg agreed to accompany them
to the Police Homicide Division. Once he was there, everything

(10:47):
poured out of Thornburg, who spoke like he'd done nothing wrong.
He was being called by God to make sacrifices. He
told detectives Thomas O'Brien and Matthew barn he had a
sense of purpose, a sense of destiny that must be achieved.
He didn't provide detectives with detailed accounts of his crimes

(11:11):
at this time. Most of the following details emerged later
in court. Five days before he discarded the dismembered bodies
in the West fort Worth dumpster, forty two year old
David Luerz, who stayed with Thornburg in Room one thirteen
of the Mid City Inn, came home David. Thornberg says

(11:32):
he believed needed to be sacrificed. He slit David's throat
using a Milwaukee brand straight blade knife. Thoughts bombarded the
killer's brain after his depraved act. I can't use my
chainsaw because it would be too loud, he thought to himself.
He finally decided on using a knife to dismember David's

(11:55):
body in the bathtub. As he cut off his limbs,
Thornburg off David's penis and took a bite of his heart.
Loud music could be heard coming from the room as
he did Church Hymn's one witness suggested. When he was finished,
Thornberg placed David's remains in a black trash bag and

(12:17):
stuffed them under the bed. He kneaded his jeep out
of the shop. He reasoned with himself large rubber maid
type storage containers would be the best way to store
and dispose of the body. Two days later, Thornburg, armed
with his weapon of choice, Bible scripture, lord a thirty
three year old woman named Mary Cruz Mathis into his room.

(12:41):
She was small, certainly no match for Thornberg's strength and psychopathy.
Once again, using his straight blade, he sliced Mary Cruz's
throat and then dismembered her before placing her remains in
a black trash bag. Thornberg placed the trash bag under
the bed alongside David's body. After two more days had passed,

(13:06):
Thornberg talked to thirty four year old Laura and Phillips
into entering Room one thirteen. He tried stabbing her, but
ultimately strangled her to death. Like the others, Thornburg dismembered
Laura in the bathtub. According to news reports, Thornburg sexually
abused Laura's torso before putting her body parts in a

(13:29):
trash bag and storing them under the bed. I need
to go buy some bins and load them up in
my car, the killer thought to himself, almost as if
the thought was as mundane as making a list of
household chores. I need to dump these bodies in a
dumpster thirty miles away to distance myself from the crime.

(13:49):
I need to light the bodies on fire, and that's
exactly what he did. He later cleaned out the plastic
containers he used to carry the body parts and return
turned them to the store where he bought them. Finally,
detectives Baron and O'Brien asked Thornburg about his previous roommate,

(14:09):
Mark Jewel. He had sacrificed Mark, Thornburgh said, by slashing
his throat. Then he uncapped the gas line and lit
a candle before leaving. An explosion occurred within moments, followed
by a fire. The detectives wondered if there were any others,

(14:30):
and Thornburg told them there was. In Tahachi, New Mexico,
on March third, twenty seventeen, thirty six year old Tanya
Baget left her aunt's house after stopping on her way
to her parents' house in Gallop. Tanya was coming from
her home in Loop, Arizona. The trip took place over

(14:52):
mostly Navajo land, and there's no reason it should have
taken more than a couple hours, but Tanya Begay made it.
Tanya wasn't alone when she left her aunt's place. She
was with her boyfriend, Jason Allen Thornburg, whose domestic violence
toward Tanya was well known to her family, domestic violence

(15:15):
that had then recently escalated and landed Thornburg in trouble
with the law. While speaking with detectives, Thornburg admitted to
killing Tanya and burning her remains or cremating her, as
he put it. Though the Dodge Neon she was driving
was later found abandoned near White Cone, Arizona, Tanya's remains

(15:37):
have never been recovered. After his confession, Thornburg was arrested
and charged with the murders of David Luerz, Mary Cruz Mathis,
and Laura Phillips. Later, at trial, his attorneys attempted an
insanity defense, citing the voices in his head telling him
to commit the sacrifices in the name of God, but

(16:02):
by his own admissions Thornburg had methodically and coherently attempted
to clean up after his crimes. A jury of Thornberg's peers, anyway,
didn't buy the insanitied defense. In December of twenty twenty four,
he was found guilty of the charges and sentenced to death.

(16:24):
Jason Allen Thornburg confessed to five murders, freely and seemingly
without hesitation, four of which are known to have been
committed using a knife at all, five of which he
used fire to cleanse the crime scene of evidence. Lauren
Whitener's July twenty nineteen murder shares these similarities again. The

(16:47):
year before Lauren's murder, in twenty eighteen, Thornburg was arrested
in Wise County and charged with evading arrest. His court
date came a few months later, and Thornburg was sentenced
to two years in prison. When it was all said
and done, he served about a year and was released
in May of twenty nineteen, just two months before Lauren

(17:10):
was slain in her home. It's unclear why Thornburg was
in Wise County in the first place, and it's unclear
where he was staying. Although he was released on parole,
to Terrant County. He could have easily come back to
Wise County after his release. If Thornburg is responsible for

(17:31):
other murders, it's unclear why he chose not to confess.
What is clear is that the charges against the Wise
County Sheriff's Office prime suspect in the murder of Lauren
Whitener didn't stick, and for a good reason. On Thursday

(17:59):
February twenty seventh, twenty twenty, District Judge Brock Smith reduced
Rodney Eric Maxwell's bond from eight hundred and fifty five
thousand dollars to two hundred thousand dollars. The following day,
the man suspected of the murder of Lauren Whitner posted
bond and was released from the Wise County jail. He'd

(18:21):
been there for almost six months, not able to make
the original bail. The money to get him out was
almost all, if not all, of his father's life savings.
Maxwell's defense attorney Barry Green said Green had already questioned
the single blade of grass with blood found around the

(18:42):
halfway point between Maxwell and Lauren's homes. Though the grass
contained Lauren's DNA, it also contained the DNA profile of
someone else, but the DNA sample of the second contributor
was insufficient to create a profile. A couple weeks after
his release, on Wednesday, March eleventh, Green filed a motion

(19:05):
to have the DNA collected in Lauren's case reanalyzed. After
a successful motion for discovery, Green had found an email
dated December nineteenth, twenty nineteen, to Lieutenant Heinrich Downs of
the Wise County Sheriff's Office from Pure Gold Labs in California.
After the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science in Dallas sent

(19:29):
a microscope smear created by swabs taken from the Lauren
Weiitner case, pure Gold determined it to be positive for sperm.
The findings indicated these possibilities. One that the victim had
anal intercourse within a twenty four to thirty six hour
time period before the evidence was tested at the Southwestern

(19:51):
Institute of Forensic Science. Two more recent sexual intercourse with
partial internal partial external EDGEIA vaculation leading to a lower
than normal number of sperm cells. Or three more recent
anal intercourse with a male who does not produce the
typical number of sperm cells slash ejaculate. Because the first

(20:16):
possibilities time constraints closely coincided with Lauren's murder, it can
be easily presumed it is the correct possibility Lauren either
had sex with someone just before she was killed, was raped,
or her body sexually abused after Ultimately, a judge ordered

(20:37):
that this swab be sent from the Southwestern Institute of
Forensic Science to Pure Gold for further testing, meaning to
attempt to obtain a full DNA profile. Since they only
had a partial, a partial that did not match Rodney
Eric Maxwell, but instead belonged to an unknown male, Green

(20:59):
was pushing to have a full profile entered into COTIS.
The defense attorney also pointed out that the bottle of
lighter fluid described as testing positive for the presumption of
blood in the arrest warrant Affidaephitt actually tested negative, a
false pretense for Maxwell's arrest. Months later, on Thursday, September tenth,

(21:22):
twenty twenty, after some evidence was retested, capital murder and
other charges against Maxwell were dropped. The news came more
than a year after his arrest. The charges were based
on guesswork, speculation, and flat out fantasy. Barry Green wrote
in a statement regarding the charges against his client being dismissed.

(21:46):
The Wise County Sheriff's office had known about the unknown
male DNA since September nineteenth, twenty nineteen, just a couple
weeks after Maxwell's arrest, yet they continued to hold him
even though the report apparently listed Maxwell as excluded from
being a DNA contributor, it also excluded the publicly unknown

(22:09):
person of interest. It should be noted detectives either could
not interpret the results of the tests, even emphatically stated results,
or they chose not to read it. District Attorney Greg Lowry,
who backed the case against Maxwell, of course, told the
Wise County Messenger it was necessary to find out who

(22:32):
the unknown mail is and see if they could eliminate
him as a suspect, but he was sure to point
out the new realizations do not clear Maxwell. The unknown
male DNA profile was uploaded into codis but matched no
one in the system. Without acknowledging they'd made a mistake

(22:54):
and prematurely arrested and charged Maxwell with Lauren's murder. The
Wise County Sheriff's office insisted he was still a suspect.
Sheriff and former Texas ranger Lane Aiken said, we at
this moment do not believe there was anyone else involved
in the murder of Lauren Whitener. We agreed to dismiss

(23:15):
and take the case back to the grand jury in
the not too distant future. We had five possible suspects
and we narrowed that down to one, and we are
competent in that. To say we are ignoring potential suspects
is wrong because that is not the way we do
our business. The evidence still indicates that Maxwell is the suspect.

(23:40):
Though we reached out to folks we thought might know,
we were unable to determine whether Jason Allen Thornberg's DNA
has been entered into state and national DNA databases. His
capital murder conviction requires this to be done, but in
many cases it takes months and sometimes years after a conviction.

(24:04):
If you have any information about the murder of Lauren
Ann Whitner, please contact the Wise County Sheriff's Office at
nine four zero six two seven five nine seven one,
or Crime Stoppers at nine four zero six two seven
eight four seven seven. If you'd like to join gon

(24:26):
Cold's mission to shine a light on unsolved homicides and
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(24:50):
to support Gone Cold, we appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all,