Ep 50 - The Butcher Apostle: Jason Thornburg and the 2021 Ft. Worth Murders - Scream and Sugar: True Crime Coffee Hour

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Scream and Sugar,
your true crime coffee Hour, the podcast where we dive
into the darker side of humanity while enjoying a little
something sweet on the side. I am your host, Sahara,
I'm Candace, and today we're going to be talking about
Jason Thornberg in the twenty twenty one fort Worth murders. Hey, Candace,

(00:52):
Hey girl, he heah, how are you?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I am permanently exhausted, but I'm still how are you?
That's any indicator of how I speak in class? That's
pretty accurate. I'm so eloquent when I write. My professor
even today was like he like quoted something that I
fucking added in the discussion post and said that was

(01:16):
very eloquently put. And I was like, yeah, he's a
hot mess.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
It was just like, fuck, You're like, you should hear
me in person so bad.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
I don't know what I'm saying Half the time.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
I call my PI. I call him a tea dog.
What what's up? Tea dog? He's like tea dog. How funny.
He's kind of British or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
He love it slightly British. He's like he was.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Born in Ireland, grew up in England.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Has a touch of the British.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
It's the wildest Ah, he's Tello funny. He's always likes
my lab mates from India. Yeah, and so he's always like,
do you know that tiki missala is the national food
of Britain?

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Like, oh god, yeah it is, which is so yeah.
They stole all the spices and the national dish, you know,
as they do. But there's a very cool mix of
people in England. Oh show, it was very fun to see, absolutely,
I'd bet.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
I mean, I'd love to see it one day.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
You should go to there. What is it like?

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Inside jokes? I'd love to be part of one some day.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Same.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
So you guys, today's our fiftieth episode.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Oh happy fifty.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Happy fiftieth y'all. It's crazy to think about, but loving it, dude.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
There's fifty two weeks in a year, so that means
we only missed two weeks this year. Wow, aren't you
proud of us?

Speaker 1 (02:40):
I shook it?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Actually, I know we were so bad. I was gone
for three months. How did we manage I don't know,
to almost do an entire year's worth of episodes?

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Waitn't our one year in October. Okay, yep, cool, love it.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, but we didn't start releasing episodes until that's true December,
so suck at y'all. So take that and rewind it.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Backs got to beat like your buddy go.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Uh. Yeah. So Saharah brought me these lovely Christmas Lash
fiftieth Anniversary fiftieth fiftieth University Diversity Episode present, and she
got me this really fucking cool Lord of the Rings.
I'll post up a picture of it, Lord of the
Rings fucking saar On action figure that I'm immediately going
to take out of the box and put on my
little shelf. Oh my god, there's a gol on one.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
I know.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
I have to collect all of these amazing they're really
fucking cool. Yeah, and she got me this really cool
mixology and murder book, So we'll be sharing some of
these with you throughout the year. I'm assuming yes, cold cases,
cults and other disturbing true crime stories and the cocktails
that are inspired by them. So very fucking thoughtful, You thoughtful,

(03:58):
ast bit you.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Canna's got me a super awesome bumper circa that I've
actually received like four compliments on because I'm always just
hanging out with my car.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Do you have it on your car already? Oh yeah,
I have a matching one that is keep ponking and
listening to the BBC's nineteen eighty one dramatized recording of J. R. R.
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and it has Gandalf
smoking pipe but.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
It's so funny, and I've had people just be like wow,
cool bumper and I'm like, yes.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
I like popped up my Instagram. I was like, I
need these immediately, rocky.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah. And today we also stopped buy Old World Coffee
Roasters so delicious.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
I've got an orange blossom latte, very very yummy, highly
suggest Yes, what did you get, Sarah?

Speaker 1 (04:47):
So I got one of their seasonal ones called the Pinet.
We are super good, not super sweet. In neither of these.
I felt like We're particularly over the top suite, which
I love and just oat milk, creamy, tasty, delightful.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I think this one was brown sugar and I'm not
sure brown sugar and something, but it's fantastic. Obviously, Candices
was orange blossom.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah honey, Oh yeah, I think there was honey in it.
When I looked at the thing, it was like some
sort of delightful mixture of sweet and citrusy, very good.
I love it it fox with it heavy.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
So yeah, shout out Old World Coffee. I took some pictures.
We want to post them.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Very cute.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
They have like their own they clearly like make their
own coffee roast coffe there it is roasted.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Roast their own beans. Yeah, and you can.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
See it like in the back and it looks so faancy.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Which is so cool. So I if I remember correctly,
they were on Vastar Street right up from my old
apartment when they first opened up, and they weren't like
necessarily they had like certain hours where you could go
in and buy the beans, but they didn't have like
a storefront where you actually bought a coffee aat. So
I'm pretty stoked on this.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, loving it totally.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
I've heard great things. I don't mind my and I
also have a banana for your scale, so I'll post
a pictures.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Okay, last a regular banana cana walked.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
In with like the fucking Hulk banana.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
The biggest banana I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
I was telling Sahara Alex and I went to Carson City. All.
I also have another place I want to shout out
to uh. We went to Carson City did some thrifting,
and on our way back we did instacart because it
was late and we both had to get up early
Monday morning, so Alex did the Instacart order and it
just came with this, the most massive banana I think

(06:48):
I've ever received in my life. It's got some girth
on it. Girl, it's so banana for scale, but it's
like hulk banana for scale. I'll post that picture, dude,
because it's fun. It's hilarious and carrying around with me
all day. I haven't eaten it yet.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
I'm just like it's it's like clearly been through some
shit too, Like it's not that old, but it's got
lots of little baby bruises.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
So it's been in my cards.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
I'm sure it's hers as you're walking around, because that
thing is gigantic.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
I could probably bludgeon somebody with this, I believe it
if I needed to. It's a self defense. But I
walk walk off, walk walk off.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Or I will bludgeon you.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, I could use it anyway.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Sidebar, slidebar, All right, y'all. Well, I'm gonna go ahead
and hop on in. We don't have a ton of
time today, but I wanted to talk a little bit
about a relatively new case. These murders occurred in twenty
twenty one, but he was found guilty and convicted of
these murders and sentenced to death in Texas on December

(07:48):
fourth of this year. So fourth, twenty twenty four.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
So that's very recent.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Very recent, all right, So we'll hop on in. I'll
give you some top lines here, Candy, all right. At
six fifteen am on Wednesday, Tember twenty second, twenty twenty one,
the West fort Worth Fire Department responded to a report
of a dumpster fire outside of a business in the
Bonnie Drive block of Fort Worth, Texas. After they put
out the flames, they noticed what appeared to be burned

(08:12):
human body parts in the dumpster and quickly called the police.
Homicide detectives promptly began piecing together what had happened, and
though the bodies were so heavily dismembered that they were
almost impossible to identify, and even some pieces were missing,
they were able to determine that the bodies in the
dumpster were from at least three different victims. At first,
they thought that at least one of the bodies was

(08:33):
a child due to how severely mutilated and small it was.
But now know that the bodies belonged to three adult
murder victims. So who could have done this and why?
I wonder who it could be? Could it be Jason Thornwork.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Could it be him because there's already been sentenced to death.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, it was him.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
That's crazy. Spoiler three people.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, just like on fire in a dumpster. So luckily,
the UH officers noticed that there was a surveillance camera
in the area that was able to pick up a
Jeep and Cherokee that showed a man wearing a coverall
painting suit, like a painting suit, like a you know,
like those suits that you wear when you go painting,
where you just like cover your whole body in this suit,

(09:12):
protect your clothes and stuff. Sorry, he's just saying suit over.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
The suit, the suit, the suit, the suit. I would
just like, I think coveralls. Yeah, like the jumpsuits. Yeah yeah, yeah,
I think they're fucking cool. Wait too, they look warm. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
I'm here for the warm baby, here for the comfy, cozy,
easy breezy, the breezy, the beautiful coveralls covers.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yes, oh no.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
So they caught this dude coming to and from the
dumpster multiple times. He appeared to be dumping containers full
of something into the dumpster and then putting the containers
back into his jeep, and then leaving and then coming
back later repeating the process. They couldn't quite see good
enough detail on the camera to make an identification, so
they started looking at a list of jeep Grand Cherokee

(10:01):
owners in the area, and one man ended up standing
out from the list to them. Detectives recognized his name
in association with a suspicious case.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
A suspicious so he was already a person of interest
in another case.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
The previous may yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Ooh.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
This man was forty one year old religious Zelot Jason
Thornberg from Terrant County, So born in nineteen eighty on
August twenty seventh. Let me tell you a story. My
birthday is August twenty eighth. This little sucker is a bergie.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Ooh, it's always you. I know.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
I saw a list the other day to I was
like she had so. According to the defense, Thornberg's mother
was a pretty horrific alcoholic even while she was pregnant.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Oh no, does he have feed alcohol syndrome.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
He has a what they consider to be a mild
case of fetal alcohol syndrome. So he had brain scans
done during the trial, and that led to the defense
showing that his brain was in the lower second percentile,
so like under fifty percent of the average population. His
brain was very small, okay, which was likely exacerbated by

(11:10):
an assault in two thousand and two that left him
with traumatic brain injuries.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Okay, so when he's twenty or nineteen, No, you're.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Right, twenty two, twenty two. So when he was twenty two, yeah,
he got assaulted.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Your brain still developing at this point, right or no,
like it should have been already.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Fully, I think it continues until you're twenty four, but
he would have been at the very tail end if
it was going to complete. He grew up primarily in
northern Arizona on the Navajo Reservation, in an octagon shaped
traditional shack of dirt and concrete with a dirt and
concrete floor. There was no electricity or running water in his.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
House where he Okay, so impoverished.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yes, definitely, Yeah, pretty improperished. So interestingly, as he started,
as he grew up, he became an electrician electricians apprentice,
and he had a long history of employment as an
electricians apprentice. He also attended a community college and had
a four point oh GPA, which I think is important
because it shows.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
That he had a high IQ and wasn't necessarily because
his brain's on the smaller side, doesn't mean that he's
an intelligent right, And.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
I think it also to me at least told me like,
he doesn't really have executive dysfunction.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Right, right, He can make decisions exactly, yeah, the formed decisions.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, and he can like plan right because the defense
tries to say, ah, actually one of their main things
if you listen to the defense and the prosecution at
the end when they do their closing arguments, which I'll
post that up for everybody to listen to if you'd like,
he's basically like he was doomed in the womb. His
mom doomed in the womb. That's yeah, he's like his

(12:52):
mom doomed him.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
This isn't on.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Him, it's on his mother and the FBI for batching both.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
I'm sorry if you don't. I had a song called
Doomed in the Womb. I don't know what it'll do.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
I don't know either, but I feel like, can'tus We
got to get the band back together. Just Doomed in the.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Doomed in the Womb is going to be our first
album for whatever the fuck are.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Bands call hell Yah, I heard Quentin's down.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Oh Heelliah, I'd be nice.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Fuck don't play with me, play with my emotions. So yes,
he lived in Arizona and Montana prior to living in
Fort Worth and was actually only in fort Worth for
a couple of years okay around this time because of
something very interesting we'll get into later. So he was
living in a Uliss motel at the time he was discovered.

(13:41):
It was called mid City Inn, and he started living
there on July twenty eighth, and so this whole fire
thing happened on September twenty second, so it was very
very quick after moving into.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
About a month this minute, yeah, into the sin.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
At one point he shared space actually with one of
his victims, David Luarris forty two, who came and stayed
with him before being brutally murdered by Jason Thornburg. Prior
to this whole situation, Thornberg actually had a short record
with just a couple misdemeanors in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Texas.

(14:17):
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Thornburg had
once completed a two year sentence in twenty eighteen for
evading arrest with a vehicle in Whitse County. Had something
to do with the DUI. I believe he was released
to mandatory supervision in May of twenty nineteen, and then
he was discharged completely in June of twenty twenty. So
June of twenty twenty, he's out. Shit starts popping stock

(14:37):
really quick.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
In September of twenty twenty one, a witness at the
motel did see David living with Thornberg and likely also
saw another woman who was staying there with reddish blonde hair.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Okay, so they're all sharing like a cedymotel type place weekly,
are we thinking kind of? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
So what the prosecution believes, and it was partially justified
through Jason's testimony, was that Jason would kind of lure
in these people who were maybe underprivileged atticts things like
that with the Bible, offered them a place to stay.
We've heard of this time and time and time again.

(15:21):
During the prosecution's closing arguments. They talk about the fact
that David and Lauren and Marricruz his other victim, will
get into they were, you know, just people trying to
make it through life, and he preyed on them because
they were vulnerable and because Jason believed that they were

(15:42):
less likely to be investigated. Interestingly, I heard somewhere that
one of the ways they were able to identify these victims,
because you know, they had been severely mutilated and burned,
was there was a partial tattoo on David's back and
it was actually his last name. Oh, so it was
part of his last name tattoo. They started looking around.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
And they found that it was in fact missing.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Wow, isn't that wild? And I think that Jason Thornberg
had assumed that if he burned the bodies, you wouldn't
be able to detect that, but that's actually not the case.
So if you get burned up, because tattoo ink goes
down so many layers, they can most likely be able
to find tattoo ink.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
If they're still tissue left. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
It's kind of fascinating. So around ten thirty pm on
September twenty first, Thornberg started putting lots of containers from
his motel room into his jeep, allegedly leaving the motel
wearing again that coverall suit. At the time, it was
hard to say, like that was unusual, just because he
was an electricians apprentice.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Okay, so they were like, were they like toats?

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Okay, so like storageats, storage tots? Interesting.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
He drives off with that, comes back around twelve thirty am,
adds another load of containers to the jeep, leaves again,
comes back at one third, takes the containers from the
back of the jeep they appear to be empty, puts
them back into the motel room. They see him coming
back to the dumpster after this to light something inside
on fire at around six ten am.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
So he loved that shit for how long? I'm sorry?
What time did he dump them? And what? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Oh my god. So he comes back around one thirty
am and doesn't go back and light it on fire.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Until six ten, five hours on those pass.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Isn't that crazy. Later that morning, they see Thornberg drive
to a home depot in return the four empty twenty
gallon totes for a cash refund, where a store employee
put them back on the shelf for sale, No, ma'am.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Oh, who ever forgot those totes?

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Hopefully nobody bought them? I mean pretty horrible. Yeah, that's
pretty awful. Well, I'd just see that they would go
chrack them down. How would you know what the tots were?
How would you know which ones have Cereal numbers on them? Right?
I don't know. But because it's a police investigation, I
imagine they have to take all of them off the shelf.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, fair, look for trace evidence.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
Right, So they think, hey, like this is maybe our dude.
So they pull him in Monday, September twenty seventh and
talked to him for the first time. Then Tuesday the
twenty eighth, they share that he's their prime suspect in
a news conference. So they were pretty fucking sure that
it was him really quickly. So allegedly he knew the

(18:19):
women casually is what he called it. But when they
started talking to him, they started to notice some really
intense religious zelotism that came from him. I don't know
if that's a word, but it is now because he
started to tell them that he felt like they needed
to be sacrificed.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Bro.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yes, what he told them he felt called to commit sacrifices,
specifically human sacrifices to God like in the Old Testament,
and then he proceeded to tell investigators that he also
ate parts of their body. He ate David Luceras's heart, Yes,
he pulled it out and ate his heart.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
What he also case my brother in Christ.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
It's wild. He did a lot of other things. I'm
gonna you know, I'm gonna go ahead and put a
little trigger warning. Okay, we're going to be talking about
what happened to these bodies because Jason Thornberg is.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Trash.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, so he goes into what kind of happened to
these victims. He would bring each victim back to the
hotel room separately so they did not all come together
while sleeping. He slit the throats of two of his victims,
David and Lauren, and dismembered their bodies in the bathtub
using a Milwaukee straight blade knife before storing them under

(19:47):
his bed in the plastic storage bins and trash bags.
He then scrubbed down his tiled motel room with ammonia
and lavender solution. In fact, in his testimony, he told
the court, or at least the police officers, I'm not
sure if this one was in court. But he tells
the detectives that he could not use his chainsaw because

(20:08):
it would have been too loud, right, so he just
used a straight blaid knife to dismember the bodies.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Fuck, dude, that's gnarly, that's executive function, baby. Yeah, yes, yeah,
he chose to use the knife instead of a chainsaw. Yep. Absolutely.
He also cut off and he knew that it was
going to be too loud, so he was clearly thinking, and.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
He scraped down his motel. Yeah, he cut off David's
genitals and he had sex with Lauren's torso. His third victim,
Mary Cruz, came by the house two days after he
killed Lauren. He tried to slit her throat as well,
but ended up stabbing and strangling her instead. He admitted
to sexually assaulting her corpse before dismembering her body, similarly

(20:51):
to what he did to Lauren, which sounds a lot
like escalation to me personally. I think he was getting
worse all during this time. The manager at mid City
in his name was Kanti Gandhi, said that he was
playing such loud music in his room that people upstairs
and next door were like getting pissed and complaining. Yeah,
Kanti thought it was church music that he was playing
during this time.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Oh holyo.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, fucking nightmare scenario. So obviously this was pretty horrible.
They learned about all this stuff that has happened to
these three people, but then they start learning even more.
In May of twenty twenty one, so less than a
year after he gets out for that two year stint,
he is living on a street called Valentine Street with

(21:35):
a roommate named Mark Jewel. We find out that he
has also killed his roommate, Mark Jewel, and even before that,
he killed his girlfriend Tanya Baget in Arizona in twenty seventeen. Allegedly,
he slit Mark's throat before uncapping a gas line and
lighting a candle to make it seem like an accident.
This essentially caused a large gas explosion at their Fort

(21:57):
Worth home.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
This is the guy that they.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
He was. He was considered like a was considered suspicious,
like the death was considered suspicious, but the medical examiner
was unable to.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Say anything like really prove one way or.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Another, just super quick. According to some sources, Jason actually
spoke at Mark's funeral and cried alongside his family. Mark's
brothers said to him, Oh, man, there must have been
a reason why you weren't home that day, Like I
guess God, God was just looking out for you. And
he was like, yeah, I guess, and like I was
crying with him.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Along with it.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
After he had killed him.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
He's of actual human trash.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
His girlfriend, Tanya vanished in March of twenty seventeen, so
everybody was like, what happened to Tanya while she was
dating him? Tanya was like Thornberg indigenous, so the prosecution
even brings up like he was looking for people he
could get away with killing, and we all know like
missing indigenous women is a big issue, especially in our country.

(22:58):
She was last seen with Jason, who told detectives that
he had sacrificed her in Arizona and then cremated.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Her body, and they never found any of her remains.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Nope. Since this case was across state lines, the FBI
is actually the one in charge. A federal grand jury
charged him in April of twenty twenty two, I think,
indicting him for her murder, so they were actively looking
to locate her remains. So her case, just like Marx
is still pending technically. Yeah, according to the prosecutor's remarks

(23:32):
at the end of the trial, she actually talks about
how he was incredibly abusive towards Tanya, and she mentions
that at one point he threw a glass coffee pot
at her and like it broke on her eye, which
is horrible. Her sister was actually allowed to give testimony
at the trial, even though Tanya wasn't technically a part

(23:53):
of it, and she talks about how her sister just
wasn't herself when she started dating him, and she was
afraid for her, and both the prosecution and the defense
agreed that the FBI and the investigators on that case
did not do enough to figure out what happened to her.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah, absolutely not. So I just said that she ran
away or something stupid, like they do.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Always, and they're like, yep, sounds good bye.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah, she's in Mexico or Canada.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
And he like immediately left after that too, He's like, bye.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
That's not suspicious at all. There was even question for
her murder or her disappearance.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
I think he was questioned, but they didn't have anything
to hold him because there was no body.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
There's no evidence.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
So, according to court records, Jason was incredibly knowledgeable of
the Bible and believed that God was calling him to
make these human sacrifices. He was actually known for passing
out flyers for a local church in fort Worth and
had Bible verses in his biography section on Facebook. Scott Shaw,
who rented the flat above Thornberg at mid City End,

(25:10):
said that he would see Jason reading the Bible, and
he was also like a big fan of the Bible,
so they would talk about what part each other was on.
So he told investigators he said, JT, what are you reading?
And he'd say, oh, I'm in the Book of Isaiah,
and I'd say, oh, I'm in the Book of Peter,
and so they would kind of like go back and
forth all the time. Can you imagine that guy finding
this out? He said he was blown away when Jason

(25:32):
was arrested, So I guess this guy. Shaw had once
asked him about the smell coming from his room about
a week prior to his arrest. He said, JT, do
you smell that it's down here by your room? And
JT said yeah, I think somebody peered underneath the stairs.

(25:54):
And he said that he had told him now it
doesn't smell like you're into me.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
M m.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
But that was like the end of it.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
I guess, well, I mean, yeah, what do you What
else can you say? Room fucking smell reeks of fucking
death and the case.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
I feel like I've done so many cases lately where
people are being shoved under beds. I think I can
name my five religious cases.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Religion. There's the theme going here, all right.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Well, one time, I guess Jason attended a leadership conference
which was taught by one of his victims. I only
found one source on this, so I'm not sure which
victim it was, but on a worksheet at the conference,
he wrote that he wanted to be a missionary and
that his greatest strength was a sense of purpose and
destiny that must be achieved.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Mm hmm. Suspicion. It's like those feelings of grandeur too,
that a lot of these cases kind of speak on
as well, like they feel like they have like this
higher purpose. Yeah, well, he felt like he was being
directed by God. I guess we've talked to directly, So.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Clearly the guy was delusional. But is he considered insane?
I don't know. I don't think so, I don't think
so either, And the jury obviously agrees with us because
he was convicted and sentenced to death. But I feared
I'll talk to you just a little bit about his arrest.
So October rolls around and Terran County judge ruled that
there was reason to believe that Thornberg had a mental

(27:24):
illness or intellectual disability, so he did say, like, maybe
there's a chance. So the defense produced an expert witness
who claimed that Thornberg had schizophrenia and should not be
found guilty. But the brutality of the case and the
clear planning of hiding the remains and the confessions he
very much influenced the jury. So graphic photos and chilling

(27:46):
video in the trial helped secure the guilty verdict for
capital murder on November seventh, twenty twenty four, for David Laris,
Lauren Phillips, and Mary Cruse Mathis. For the punishment phase,
they talked about seeking the death penalty or life without
the possibility of role, but he was sentenced to death
on December fourth, twenty twenty four by unanimous decision and
serving out his sentence at the Polanski Unit in West Livington, Texas.

(28:11):
Likely he will wait to die for decades, right, which
is fucking crazy.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
But I didn't I get it.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
For each family, I'm sure they won't like the closure.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
And yeah, knowing that he's high accountable for what he did,
because that's true, truly awful and disturbing.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Horrible, And the jury was like upset and like sobbed
during his sentencing because I feel like there's probably a
lot of pressure.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
That's very that's a very traumatic trial to be on
the jury for. I mean, you're having to look at
the remains of these people that have been brutally murdered,
absolutely dismembered, and then their corpses have been defiled and burnt.
I don't know. That's just awful and just to throw

(28:55):
them in the trash like that too, Like it's truly horrified.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
Oh absolutely. And what's kind of interesting, and it's something
I could not find anywhere was apparently there was a
live victim of this man who came to trial to
testify against him.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
They have escaped.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Her name was Alicia Woods. She was a local sex
worker who was raped by Jason Thornberg, and she provided
details to the courtroom that they believe he had he
had the intention of killing her. Yeah, he had started
to clean up the room and put down like stuff

(29:34):
on the ground and stuff.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
And she bolted smart.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
I know, oh my god, thank God for that, right,
But Alicia Woods, I couldn't find anything else about her,
but I just wanted to bring her up because I
still consider her a.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Victim, oh absolutely, especially after watching him on her.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Obviously, Tanya's sister is still looking for her remains, So
if anybody has any information, they're asked to contact Detective
m barn at eight one seven three nine two four
three three nine or Detective Ta O'Brien at eight one seven,
three nine two four three three eight. You can also
contact Homicide Unit directly at eight one seven three nine
two four three three zero. Anyone can remain anonymous by

(30:10):
contacting Crime Stoppers at eight one seven, four six nine
eight four seven seven. Just to kind of close everything
out here, I just wanted to mention that, you know,
his victims were obviously people with people who loved them
and cared very much about them. A lot of victim
impact statements were given at the end of his trial,

(30:32):
and they were really very powerful, even though he didn't
show any emotion when he was sentenced many of them
compared him to Satan, calling him evil.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
And a coward.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Tanya's family talked about what a strong and beautiful Navaja
woman she was, and they plead, they pled pleaded, pleaded, pleaded,
they pleaded for him to tell them where Tania's body was.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
Fucking do it, Just fucking tell him where her remains
are so they can put her to rest. Right, It's
such an important thing in the Indigenous people culture. Like,
I mean, and anyone's culture really, but Indigenous people especially,
it's like you want their remains back so you can
give them a proper burial.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
Absolutely. They told him that he gave the Navaho nation
a bad name. Yeah, And I'm sure they were like,
we don't, we don't claim you anymore. What's interesting about
all this because you know, he said he cremated her body.
I feel like he learned early on that like fire
could disrupt a crime scene so badly that people would
be unable to I'm.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
The same with the gasleek and yeah, setting and lighting
a candle, you know when the room fills up with gas.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, she goes boom. He clearly burned up Tany's body
got away with it, right, set Mark Jewele's house on fire,
got away with it.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
I think it's just sloppy as hell, putting the bodies
and a dumpster and setting it on fire, because what
the fuck?

Speaker 1 (31:58):
Well, And to me, I'm like, I feel very confident
that if a proper investigation had been done on the
other two cases, we probably wouldn't be sitting here today
having this conversation about now the other three victims, four victims.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Who knows how many other potentially who.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Knows, because I know Alicia Woods didn't even go to
the police, to the police because she's like, nobody would
believe me, which God damn it. Marracuse mathis a sister.
Normah Harris described her as a beautiful, strong and outgoing woman.
She was also really small, which is why the police
had eventually identified her as a child. I do have

(32:36):
a couple of quotes here because I think they're kind
of impactful. So the prosecution had said, we don't use
words like cannibal because it's fun. We use words like
cannibal because he ate David's heart. We don't use words
like satis because it's a buzzword. We use sadus because
Thornberg had sex with Lawrence Torso and cut off David's penis.

(32:57):
He raped Alicia Woods and we all know what he
did to Alicia is exactly what he did to Americas
and Lauren.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
So the prosecution statement I almost feel like they didn't
even have to work that hard because people were like,
what the fuck. But they also mentioned that while he
was in his jail cell, he kept trying to make
weapons to kill guards when they came in his prison cell.
What So the defense kept saying like, this is just
him not on medication. But if you put him on medication,

(33:25):
he's like a really good, normal.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Dude, outstanding citizen. He loves God, loves God.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
And I'm like, I kept thinking, if that was the case,
why would he be making weapons.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Right, trying to kill more people?

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeah, because they're like, oh, he The only thing that
the prosecution was able to prove is that he has psychosis, right,
And I'm like, oh, okay, if that's the case, then
why is he making weapons in his cell trying to
kill people?

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Is he on medication? He's on medication.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, so I believe he's on force medication in prison.
The final three killings were carried out in five days within.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Him within five days from each other. Wow, it's not wild.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
And his defense kept trying to say, well, it was
fueled by methamphetamine use, like he was just on he
was on meth and it was he entered into psychosis
and that's what happened. And you can't put somebody down
for And I'm like.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Wait, he also killed two other people.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
No, And I don't know. He seems like he planned
it out pretty good to me.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
He already had the totes, he already had a spot
where he was gonna do them off. Yeah. He brought
the fucking coats back to home depot and returned them.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah. Wild.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
So he paid cash.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
He did pay cash, and he got a cash event.
And he actually drove thirty miles away from his the
mid city end to the dumpster. Wow, because he was like,
I needed to get them as far away from me
as I could. The prosecution said that actually this was
because of sexual sadism and a desire to have intercourse
with sex workers for free. That's works. Yeah, I'm like,

(34:59):
what the fuck, dude. The aunt of Lauren Phillips, Deborah Curry,
actually said, you have committed the ultimate blasphemy against God.
You said you do the work with God, but it's
Satan you work for. You have destroyed all of the
virtues that God gave to you, and you willfully filled
your soul with the work of Satan by slaughtering are
beloved for the pleasure in some gruesome manner, in a
cowardly way from behind while they lay asleep at night.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Fucking horrible. So that is the case of Jason Thornberg.
Happy to keep you updated as new affirmation comes out,
but absolutely fucking crazy. That was rough, so a heavy one.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, he ate.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yes, he cut off like genitals and stuff. I'm like,
what the fuck with a knife and.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Just the torso so he had already taken off her limbs. Yeah,
and her head really decapitated to you.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah, they were severely mutilated, like even like the limbs
and stuff were cut into little pieces, which is fucked up.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah, the amount of time time, I'm sure that took
doing all that by hand. Yeah, it's fucked up. Thank
you for sharing that case.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Saharah, Rest in peace to all the victims. Yes, absolutely,
and good on Emil Lusha Wooz for coming forward because
absolutely I can't even imagine.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
I hope you're living your best life now. Yeah, gotch
sur badya?

Speaker 1 (36:23):
All right, guys, Well, if you have any case corrections
or any cases you want us cover or recipes, hit
us up on Instagram.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
At Scream dot and Dot Sugar, Dot podcast on Facebook,
Scream and Sugar, True Crime Coffee Hour on TikTok, Scream
Dot and Dot.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Sugar, or shoot us an email on Gmail Scream.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
And Sugar Email at gmail dot com. Hope you guys
have a great and safe New Year, and thanks for
sticking in with us for this whole sprawl of twenty
twenty four.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, it's been a blast.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Really, we love you.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
Spooky's glad so much.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Until next time, Stay Spooky y'all. Bye bye. I just

(37:44):
playing with my banana. I'm sorry it's such a girthy bitch.

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Ep 50 - The Butcher Apostle: Jason Thornburg and the 2021 Ft. Worth Murders

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 50 - The Butcher Apostle: Jason Thornburg and the 2021 Ft. Worth Murders