**This Woman Survived a 22-Inch Machete: She Used Her Teeth to Call 911**
The wilds of Alaska are a vast and untamed frontier.
I don’t think there’s much that separates life and death in Alaska. Depending on your circumstances, you can find yourself right on the edge. And that edge is razor thin.
Amid the rugged wilderness, people vanish at an eerily high rate.
You have to be in tune with everything around you.
Outside Anchorage, a maniacal killer comes unglued.
“911.”
“With your machete, we die here.”
The evil on his mind soon becomes apparent. He’s hunting humans.
No one was safe. Absolutely no one was safe on the streets that day.
Long considered the bread basket of Alaska, the Matsu Valley lies just outside of Anchorage. Tucked between the mountains lies a rural oasis, the sleepy little suburb of Palmer.
Palmer was a whistle stop. In 1935, they brought immigrants up from Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota. They were given land tracks by lottery, essentially just pulling their name out of a hat. And from there it grew into the town it is today. A pioneers’s paradise where the soil is rich and the sun never stops shining.
In 2007, 28-year-old Aaron Rogers is basking in the glow of a second chance in Palmer. His father, Chris, and his fiance, Lenny, agree to let Aaron live in the house behind theirs after he’s convicted on a drunk driving charge.
He was helping Chris and Lenny around the house. He helped him paint. He helped him do a lot of things around the house. He helped with the yard work. And so I thought he was doing real well.
Chris and Lenny had known each other for years. They drifted apart after childhood only to reconnect as adults at an AA meeting.
“Chris was my heart and my soulmate. He was just the most romantic man I’d ever known. I knew that we were going to be together forever.”
On December 1st, 4 months after taking Aaron in, Chris and Lenny host an impromptu celebration with family and friends to mark their one-year anniversary of dating.
We were celebrating exactly 365 days together. 365 perfect days. We made Aaron’s favorite meal, homemade pizza. He and I went shopping together for all the ingredients and he did all the chopping and preparation.
The evening is filled with happy times and talk of the couple’s future.
“We were going to get married on June 21st on the solstice. We were going to have a Woodstock wedding.”
Caught up in the excitement, Aaron volunteers to take care of the floral arrangements.
I mean, I felt like Cinderella. I felt like a princess in a Disney movie. It was the happiest evening of my life.
After the party, Aaron retires to the living room to watch TV while Chris and Lenny turn in for the night along with Chris’s dog, Bear.
“Bear was a half English mastiff, half wolf, and he came with Chris. They were a package deal. Bear weighed 150 lbs and he was just a big puppy. He loved Chris. He went everywhere with Chris. Chris had let him ride in the truck with him and he’d just sit there, you know, in the passenger seat. But when you looked at the truck from behind, it looked like there was a blonde woman sitting next to Chris, and so that was I always got a chuckle out of that.”
Hours later, as dawn begins to break and the Mat-Su winds howl outside, Lenny is lying in bed, awake.
I heard Aaron going in and out of the house. You know, he’s watching TV in the living room, going out and having a cigarette, coming back in. You know, I looked at the clock and it was 4:20 and I was almost going to get up and say, you know, please go to bed.
But before she has time to utter a word, she is shaken to the core by the unimaginable.
All of a sudden, this person comes in with what I thought was a stick. And he is yelling,
“Look at what you’re making me do.”
He starts hitting Chris on the neck and I jump across the bed, try to grab the stick and bring my hand back and that’s when I lost the tips of my fingers. And I’m looking at my fingers thinking I’m being hit by a machete. At the same time, I’m wondering if Aaron had been hurt because I knew he had been in the living room watching television.
In an instant, Lenny Moran is in the middle of something she cannot even begin to comprehend.
Then I realized it was him, that it’s Aaron. And I’m trying to wake Chris up, who I don’t know if his head is even still on him. Then suddenly I hear this sound come out of him and he picks Aaron up as he rises up and is able to carry him into the kitchen.
I was praying the whole time. I was saying the Lord’s prayer over and over again. Perfectly, hoping that he would snap out of it by hearing my prayers.
Lenny is desperate for cover. She scrambles to protect herself as blood pours from the massive wounds of a 22-inch blade.
At this point, I’d been hit several times. My elbow is gone and my leg is cut very, very badly. I’m not able to stand on my leg. I’m able to hop. I am able to get into the bathroom, but I’m not able to lock the door because, of course, the fingers are cut off.
Seconds later, Aaron barges through the bathroom door and overpowers her. He slashes her repeatedly, bringing the machete down again and again.
I wasn’t really thinking about what he was doing. I was more in the present moment. I had no fear and I had no pain. It was more like I was just waiting to go to the next chapter. I never expected to live.
At one point, I look him in the eye and I say,
“We’re dead. You’ve killed us. You can stop now.”
And he does. And I think, “Well, gee, I should have said that sooner.” But then I realized Bear is pulling him off me.
Bear must have went ballistic. He knew what violence was. He couldn’t tell the difference between play and real. To him, it was all real. I’m certain that when he saw what was happening, he absolutely intervened.
Bear viciously chases Aaron out of the house. He takes cover in his father’s truck and flees the scene.
Back in the bathroom, Lenny is terrified Aaron will return. She uses her teeth to lock the door and her engagement ring to call for help.
“911. We’ve been macheted.”
Rogers and his fiance Lenny Moran have it all, but their fairy tale romance becomes a nightmare when they are attacked with a machete at the hands of Chris’s own son, Aaron.
Lenny takes refuge in the bathroom, but it’s not enough to protect her from Aaron Rogers’ relentless assault. Finally, Chris’s dog, Bear, pulls Aaron off her. Barely alive, she manages to call 911.
“The person with the machete still there?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, hang on. I’m going to get you over to troopers. We’re going to get help on the way. I need you to stay on the line.”
“I’m passing out.”
State police. Within minutes, Alaska state troopers and the local district attorneys arrive at the grisly scene. They find blood everywhere, in splatters, in drips, in pools. The walls are painted red.
It’s hard to find the words to describe it. It’s almost like in a house of horrors or something like that because I mean there was a lot of blood.
“Everybody, give me a towel.”
Troopers kick in the bathroom door and find Lenny clinging to life.
They said,
“Oh my god, is she in one piece? How are we going to get her out of here?”
And then another one said,
“We’re just going to wrap up and roll.”
While EMTs tend to Lenny’s wounds, she tells officers her future son-in-law is responsible for the attack. And that’s not all. If he took off in his father’s truck, he’s now armed with more than a machete. The night before, Chris put his 357 Magnum revolver under the seat.
“We had a party. We didn’t feel secure putting it anywhere in the house, so Chris put it out in the truck.”
Lenny has no idea her fiance is dead.
Alaska state troopers scour the property, but can’t find the assailant or his weapon. There is also no sign of Bear.
We were worried about Bear because he was missing. There were blood stains, dog paw prints leading away, so we knew he was injured.
A handful of neighbors team up with armed troopers to find the injured animal. Fearing Rogers’ next move, police contact neighboring departments and warn them to be on the lookout for a dangerous suspect. Armed with two deadly weapons, a blade nearly 2 ft long and a 357 Magnum revolver.
There was a certain amount of unpredictability to the situation and nobody had an idea where he was at that point. Alaska is a great place to disappear and if you want to escape and you need to hide, there are very few places left in the world where you can do it. And Alaska is one of those places.
The word first came out later on in the morning on Sunday was that this was sort of a domestic crime that took place and now they’re trying to find the assailant and the assailant’s on the run. We had no idea what lie in the future.
Police issue an all points bulletin for the truck Aaron Rogers is driving. Family and friends are on heightened alert.
No one knew where he was and we didn’t know where he would show up, what he was like, what he was going to do. And so everybody armed themselves and we’re ready.
Fortunately, troopers find Bear alive, but badly injured. He’s bleeding profusely from a missing canine tooth and a 6-in gash from the machete.
He just seemed bummed. I think he missed Chris, missed Lenny. I don’t think he really comprehended in the end what had happened.
Meanwhile, a criminal background check on the suspect suggests the machete wielding madman is a habitual offender who knows how to beat the system.
Aaron Rogers Jr. had a tumultuous past. He’d been in trouble with the law on many occasions.
As a teenager, Rogers was twice caught stealing. His family sought help, enrolling Aaron in the Alaska National Guard Youth Corps Challenge, a program designed to help problem kids turn their lives around. But it had little effect.
As much as Chris tried, he just couldn’t reach him. He couldn’t make him understand the road that he was headed down was going to lead to destruction.
At age 19, Rogers put the lives of those living in the heavily populated area of Eagle River at risk by setting two forest fires on the same day. He was sentenced to probation after his family intervened and asked the judge for leniency. A domestic violence conviction followed. Then a drunk driving charge. He got another slap on the wrist. All of these things got him probation. Two years probation here, 5 years probation there, but no real jail time to speak of.
Oh, he was the second chance kid. Aaron was very good at “I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again.” He was very very good at that.
In July 2007, he was arrested a second time for driving while intoxicated. His father again came to his rescue.
We kind of felt that maybe third partying him, having him in our home, seeing what a sober life was like would be helpful for him. And we wanted to extend him that opportunity.
He needed guidance. He needed love. He needed understanding. He needed stability. And that’s what Mr. Rogers and Lenny were trying to do, trying to give him.
5 months later, Chris Rogers lay on an autopsy table. The medical examiner counts 25 machete wounds, including 13 to the head and neck. There isn’t enough blood left in his body to perform a standard toxicology test.
The wounds were wide and deep. You know, the kind of wounds that open up muscle, layers of muscle, and where you can look into the body, those kind of wounds. Definitely has to be one of the most brutal attacks in the history of Alaska.
Lenny is struggling to survive the same kind of gaping wounds.
Both arms, one leg, from my head to my toes. He hit me three times in the head. Right through here and then they quit counting at 50.
Meanwhile, police in Palmer know Aaron Rogers is a step ahead of them, but they have no idea that he’s made his way to Anchorage or that he’s ditched the truck he stole from his father along with the machete and is now on the prowl for a new set of wheels.
He was looking for an opportunity. So he jiggled doors. His idea was if I can get a car, I can get out of town and continue my flight.
But there’s someone standing in his way. 27-year-old Jason Winger, a graduate student at the University of Alaska.
But he wanted to be on his own. And I think he was looking forward very much to being on his own so he wouldn’t have to rely upon his parents as a 20-some year old. And I think that was part of what motivated me, even though he was somewhat apprehensive about going so far away into such a wild place as Alaska.
That morning, Jason is sitting in his car. He’s waiting for it to warm up before heading to church. He went out to start it up because it was frigid and he needed time for the engine to warm up. And he was listening to music, probably oblivious to anything that was going on around him.
Out of nowhere, Aaron Rogers walks up to the driver’s side window and opens fire. Two shots echo through the still morning air. The noise of the gunshots startled Rogers to the point where he thought he was going to wake up the entire neighborhood.
He’s further alarmed when the weight of Jason’s body collapses against the accelerator, revving the engine. Rogers takes off on foot.
A short time later, a neighbor walking his dog finds Jason slumped over the wheel and calls police. When medics arrive, Jason Winger is pronounced dead at the scene.
That evening, we got a knock at our front door and almost immediately Debbie knew what was coming and she started to cry.
I thought, “Oh, no. This can’t be true. This can’t be happening.”
Interviews with family, friends, and neighbors offer no clues as to who may have wanted a man like Jason Winger dead. Winger had dedicated a large part of his time to working with the developmentally disabled.
He had a fondness for the underdog, the person that might have been lacking in some way, not by any fault of their own.
“Just kind of disbelief. Who would want to shoot him? You know why? What possible motive?”
I mean, even if they wanted to steal the truck, he probably would have given him the keys or even driven him where he wanted to go.
That was all very random. And that’s what was scaring a lot of folks, too. It just seemed very random.
Exhausted, Rogers ducks into the wild to rest. When he wakes from a nap, he buys a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of beer at a nearby convenience store. But his plan has changed. He’s no longer hunting for a way out of town.
He was hunting for people. He was going to take as many people out as possible. He wasn’t worried about getting caught.
He was going to take more people out with him.
A dangerous double murderer is on the loose in Anchorage, Alaska. And 33-year-old Elizabeth Ramsey, a law clerk for the Alaska Supreme Court, has no way to know she’s about to meet him face to face.
She’s walking home alone after volunteering at a local theater.
I was supposed to meet a friend for dinner and I had not brought my car with me. This is literally what went through my mind. It might not be safe for me to walk home late at night after I’d had dinner. Why don’t I go get my car now?
Liz is chatting on her cell phone when she’s suddenly surprised by the tall, skinny stranger.
I hadn’t heard him or seen him. He just appeared. So, it really did sort of startle me a little bit. He just said, you know, do you know what time it is? And it just struck me as like, “Wow, that was out of nowhere.”
Liz keeps walking. Minutes later, she steps off the bike path only a block from home.
I didn’t have that creepy feeling you have when you’re being followed. I just got back into my conversation and didn’t even mention the interaction to my friend and just carried on.
He thought that she might have recognized him and that she was going to call the police.
Suddenly, Rogers unloads his weapon, shooting Liz three times.
They all hit me as I was falling. It was all at once.
The phone fell out of my hand and I could see it like 5, six feet away. And I remember yelling to my friend,
“I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot.”
The sound of gunfire draws residents from their homes and they call for help. As darkness falls, medics arrive and police search the scene for clues. All the while, the sadistic gunman watches from the woods.
This is pretty cruel and heartless and callous individual. Somebody who’s demonstrating a devil may care sort of attitude about what he’s doing cuz he’s enjoying watching the police response.
Liz is rushed to the hospital in critical condition. She is unable to describe her attacker to police.
I didn’t make the connection between the person who asked me for the time and who could it have been that had just shot me. The police are saying who did this? Who did this? And I’m like, I have no idea.
While Alaska State Troopers search for the man behind a gruesome machete attack, Anchorage police are now scrambling to find a gun-toting killer of their own. The city of Anchorage is held hostage. Neither department realizes they’re hunting the same suspect.
Everybody was terrified. People were concerned that this guy was going to pop out anywhere and kill them.
The following morning in Anchorage, an architect and married father of two glances at the newspaper on his way out the door. Aaron Rogers’ picture is plastered on the front page. He’s now a wanted man charged with murdering his father with a machete and slashing up his fiance.
The man gets in his car and starts the engine to warm the vehicle for the drive to work. While he’s doing that, Aaron Rogers is watching. And this time he doesn’t make the mistake that he made with Winger.
Rogers waited for him to get out of his car and Rogers ambushed him.
In a flash, the architect is in the middle of his own worst nightmare. Rogers pulls him out of the jeep.
As the man struggles with his attacker, Rogers fires five shots at point blank range.
He was basically on a rampage. That he was going to take this out on anybody who crossed his path.
Aaron Rogers is on a killing spree. The man who hacked his own father to death with a machete is on the run. He’s desperate to find a getaway car and isn’t about to let anybody stand in his way. He disappears into the outback after shooting Liz Ramsey in the back only to surface again in the driveway of an Anchorage man who is getting ready to leave for work.
“Who are you?”
Surprised by Rogers’ brutal attack, the man fears he is inches away from certain death.
Rogers pointed the gun at his head and he turned his head at the very last moment so that he was shot through the neck but not squarely in the face. He was afraid that Rogers might actually run him over, that the assault wasn’t over with.
Instead, Rogers races from the scene. The man somehow manages to crawl to his front door. Suffering from a punctured lung, he can’t yell loudly enough to wake his wife, who has dismissed the sound of gunfire as fireworks.
Having been shot through the arm, having been shot through the torso, having been shot through the neck, he has to try and manipulate a cell phone with bloody hands. He ends up using his teeth to actually get the phone open because his hands are too slippery to get the phone open.
He musters the strength to dial 911.
“911. What’s location of your emergency?”
“I got shot.”
“Tell me your location again.”
“I’m bleeding.”
“Where were you shot?”
“In the stomach, in the leg, in the arm.”
Seconds later, police and paramedics are at his side.
He is able to describe the getaway car and the gunman.
He was amazingly detailed in his account. The man is an architect. The man is a person who is accustomed to being precise and detailed.
Police, I think, at this particular point, have their aha moment and realize that all this has to be connected, that this has got to be their guy from Palmer.
Immediately, Anchorage police join in the hunt to stop Aaron Rogers before harm comes to another innocent person.
It was just complete randomness. And again, whoever was going to cross his path was in trouble that day. And no one was safe. Absolutely no one was safe on the streets that day.
Not even the police.
Officers are deeply disturbed by what they might encounter when they find Rogers and know they must be prepared for anything given the cold, calculated premeditation of the machete attack.
When people sleep, they’re really defenseless. You know, he took advantage of that situation. He had to think about it. He was there the evening before. He went back to his place on the property where he had the machete. There had to be some thought process that went into it that he was going to do this and how he was going to do it. There were arguments between Chris and Aaron like normal father and son would have, but nothing more than I’ve had with my own son. And I’ve never thought he would pick up a machete and kill me.
Those closest to the suspect share all they can with police in hope of giving authorities the upper hand. But even those who know Rogers best are at a loss as to what could have set him off.
I don’t believe he just snapped. There is something missing inside people that do this. A conscience and an inherent evil resides in its place. My heart’s pounding out of my chest just thinking about it.
Minutes after the assault, Anchorage police close in on Rogers. They spot the stolen Jeep and quickly follow in behind it. Rogers tries to outmaneuver police, gunning the vehicle down a narrow road.
It’s very obvious to the police that this fella is not going to give up. And two police officers decide to ram their car into his to disable it. Cops force his vehicle into a ditch. From behind the wheel, Rogers grabs his gun and takes aim at officers. Police prepare for an all-out bloodbath.
He was in that mindset of just he was going to go out in this blaze of glory.
Anchorage police have cornered the man behind a heinous machete attack and string of random shootings and it quickly becomes clear that Aaron Rogers isn’t going to give up easily. He takes aim at officers and attempts to fire, but his 357 Magnum revolver jams. He’s quickly subdued and taken into custody.
After his arrest, police confiscate the gun. Inside, they find five live rounds and plenty more in Rogers’ jacket.
Aaron Rogers is charged with two counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, and injury to an officer who was involved in the wreck that led to his capture. The truck he’d stolen from his father is found at a nearby gas station with the bloody machete still inside.
He bought it at a garage sale and I remember clearly Chris telling him that that was going to be his best friend at a campsite.
Investigators have both murder weapons in hand, but not a single explanation for the deadly machete attack on Rogers’ father and fiance or the shootings of three innocent bystanders.
During questioning, Rogers offers few clues about his actions.
Why’d you attack your father?
Saying he attacked his father and fiance because he was angry over how his family treated him.
I’m not sure anyone really knew what was underneath. I think a lot of it had to do with his mother. He referred to his mother as Scary Sherry. Told me that she’d slap him because he looked like his father.
As a child, Rogers endured his parents’ bitter divorce. He’d only begun to form a more solid bond with his father in his later years.
I think that what he went through as a child made him who he is today. Why was Chris not there to protect his sons? She would not allow it. That was her way of punishing Chris for not loving her, plain and simple.
He tried giving him guidance. He tried to get him out of trouble. And it was a constant struggle for Chris.
Friends and family admit they knew Rogers had been a troubled kid, but they never dreamed he was capable of inflicting such carnage upon the community or killing his own father in such a deliberate and gruesome attack.
It’s inconceivable. Why he did what he did? I don’t know. Only Aaron can answer that.
Perhaps more shocking, Rogers confesses the string of shootings stemmed solely from his desire to kill a few more people.
I think at that point, he just figured that his life was pretty much over. Whatever else he did wouldn’t be of any consequence.
He made a statement. He said,
“You know, people think I’m some kind of monster, but I’m not. I’m really a nice guy. I’m not as bad as people make me out to be.”
That’s what he thinks of himself even after all this. And he’s denying that these acts are of the most horrific kind that any human being can perpetrate against another. And he did it more than once. There’s absolutely no sign of remorse that I could see.
Although Rogers is tried separately for his crimes, prosecutors describe the man behind such vicious attacks the same way: manipulative, merciless, and self-centered. But they contend he’s far from crazy, and has never shown any remorse, not even for the murder of his own father.
He mentioned that it took some force to commit these crimes, and I think he mentioned he had some regret. If anything, he had some regret that he didn’t use a more efficient weapon, that being the gun that he found in the truck.
In a surprise move, prosecutors called to the stand Bear, the 150 lb wolf mastiff who came to Lenny’s rescue.
I’m sure it had an impact. It’s like, wow. I’m sure everybody in the courtroom was amazed at his size. I credit Bear for saving her life.
In the second trial, Rogers’ defense attorney uses a different tactic. He claims his client clearly wasn’t in his right mind during the string of shootings and that he had heard voices in his head that commanded him to kill.
His claims of mental illness were never documented anywhere but during the trial. They were never alleged anywhere but during this trial. He was narcissistic.
That’s not a mental health diagnosis that would lead anybody to believe that he was mentally ill. He was narcissistic. He had a chip on his shoulder. He was a narcissistic loser.
Rogers is found guilty in both trials. Jason Winger’s family still struggles with their loss, but have managed to find comfort in the faith they shared with their only son.
He recognized that he wasn’t any different than Aaron Rogers except by God’s grace. Aaron Rogers is the kind of person that Jason would see as someone who’s kind of the underdog. You know, everyone’s against him kind of thing. And it seems apparent that that’s how Aaron Rogers viewed himself. Everyone was against him. No one took his side. I think Jason would have worked to try to get him to see that his thinking was all wrong.
Meanwhile, Lenny and the other survivors refuse to let Rogers’ demons define them. She has found strength in her own convictions and a way to go on without Chris.
Our relationship started with the Lord’s Prayer 365 days before and it ended with the Lord’s Prayer. I believe that was the last thing he heard.
Lenny has undergone 17 surgeries since the machete attack. She still struggles with post-traumatic stress, but hopes her story will encourage others. She is planning to write a book about the power of a survivor.
This is really strange and people don’t understand when I say it, but the attack was the easiest part of the whole experience and it was spiritual. I mean, I was in the arms of God. I felt a peace about it. When I was in the hospital, I felt cradled. When I was in that room alone, I felt comforted. I felt lifted up. When I went to get the cell phone, there is no way that I could have gotten up from the floor because I couldn’t do it for a year afterwards.
The man attacked in his driveway still resides in Anchorage and continues his work as an architect. Liz Ramsey, the former law clerk, made a full recovery and is now a practicing attorney.
For me, it felt like I’d been struck by lightning. It’s that sort of randomness. I wasn’t really like, why would anyone do this to me? I sort of knew that it wasn’t me. It was just wrong place, wrong time. I didn’t really feel concerned that I was targeted.
Shortly after the attack, Bear was named most courageous dog in Alaska by the Humane Society of the United States.
He was a majestic gentle giant and very regal and fearless, courageous. He deserved that. Absolutely.
Sadly, he succumbed to cancer a year and a half later. Lenny was with him when he died. His head was in my lap. His ear was right next to my heart. And so he could hear my heart beating and he only knew love. He just looked at me and slowly closed his eyes. The hardest thing I ever did was put down that dog because that dog saved my life.
Aaron Rogers was ultimately convicted of the murders of his father and Jason Winger as well as attempted murder and animal cruelty.
Before sentencing, Lenny Moran expressed to the court all that Bear could not.
“Christopher Aaron Rogers Jr. butchered my heart, filing it as surely as he slaughtered his father. Show him the same mercy he showed us.”
Rogers was sentenced to 498 years. He is guaranteed to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
I believe he got justice, but what he deserves, that will never happen. My world is different than other people’s world. My reality is that children kill their parents. That is the way it is.
