JUST IN: Arizona Executed Aaron Gunches After 22 Years on Death Row |He Begged to Die 

JUST IN: Arizona Executed Aaron Gunches After 22 Years on Death Row |He Begged to Die 

On March 19th, 2025, at exactly 10:02 in the morning, Aaron Brian Gunches walked into the execution chamber at Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. He climbed onto the gurnie without assistance, laid down, stared straight at the ceiling. Five corrections officers strapped him to the table, ankles, wrists, waist.

 They covered him with a white sheet, tucking it neatly around his chest like a child being put to bed. Four medical staff members in white hazmat suits approached, their faces hidden behind hoodies and masks. They inserted IVs into both of his arms. The room fell silent. A voice came over the intercom, read the death warrant, then asked the question every condemned man hears in his final moments.

Mr. Gunches, do you have any last words? Aaron Gunches squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. No. He had waited over 20 years for this moment. He had begged for it, demanded it, written letter after letter, pleading with the state of Arizona to kill him. And now, finally, they were going to grant his wish.

 But before we witness the end of Aaron Gunches, we need to understand how he got here. We need to go back to a crowded apartment in Mesa, Arizona. To a man named Ted Price who made the fatal mistake of trying to protect two children from the chaos consuming their mother. A decision that would cost him everything. This is true crime matters.

 And this is the story of the man who wrote his own death warrant. Ted Price was born in Utah. A quiet man, kind to his core, the type who never met a stranger and never met a cat he didn’t like. His sister Karen would later remember him as someone who stood up for people who couldn’t stand up for themselves. In his younger years, Ted fell in love with a woman named Catherine Lecher.

They never married, but they built a life together. A decadel long relationship that produced two children, a daughter named Britney and a son named Justin. During those 10 years, Ted served as a stay-at-home father while Catherine worked. He raised those kids, changed their diapers, helped with homework, drove them to school.

 He loved them as his own. But relationships don’t always survive. Ted and Catherine eventually separated. Ted moved back to Utah, leaving behind the children he had helped raise. He enrolled in school to become a radiology technician. A fresh start, a new career, a chance to rebuild. By November 2002, Ted was 40 years old.

 He had secured a spot at a radiology program in Arizona that would allow him to graduate faster than the Utah program. All he needed was for his student grant to come through and for housing to open up. In the meantime, he figured he would stay with Catherine. After all those years together, after raising her children, surely she would let him crash on her couch for a few weeks. He took a bus from Utah to Mesa.

What Ted Price found when he arrived would shock him to his core. Catherine Lecher’s apartment in Mesa was not the home Ted remembered. It had transformed into something else entirely. A flop house, a drug den, a revolving door of addicts and dealers coming and going at all hours. The apartment was overcrowded.

 Catherine lived there with her two teenage children, Brittany, now 16, and Justin, now 14. Also living there was a 17-year-old girl named Jennifer Garcia along with Jennifer’s father and another woman named Michelle Beck. Various men passed through regularly and everyone in that apartment was using drugs. Everyone, including the children.

 Catherine had fallen deep into methamphetamine addiction after her separation from Ted. The mother he once knew had been consumed by something darker. The home where his children once lived had become unrecognizable. Among the men who frequented Catherine’s apartment was a 31-year-old named Aaron Brian Gunches.

 Gunches had grown up in Carlsbad, California. He had a high school diploma and worked as a mechanic and construction worker. But he had another talent, fabricating glass pipes for smoking methamphetamine. By 1999, he had already accumulated three drug charges and a weapons misconduct charge. He served two and a half years in prison and was released in 2001.

Now, he was in Catherine Lecher’s orbit, her drug dealer, her supplier. He sometimes spent the night at her apartment, though he would later insist to attorneys that they were not a couple. Whatever their relationship was, Gunches had established himself as a fixture in Catherine’s chaotic world. When Ted Price arrived at that apartment in November 2002, he walked into a nightmare.

 For about 10 days, Ted stayed on Catherine’s couch. He watched the parade of drug users. He saw the needles, the pipes, the hollow eyes of people chasing their necks high. But what disturbed him most was what he witnessed happening to the children. According to Ted’s sister, Karen, Ted saw Catherine using methamphetamine with her teenage daughter right there in the apartment in front of her young son.

 Ted had spent a decade of his life raising those kids. He had been their father in every way that mattered. And now he was watching them be destroyed by the woman who gave birth to them. Ted confronted Catherine. He told her what she was doing was wrong. He threatened to call the authorities, child protective services, the police.

Someone had to protect those children. And if Catherine wouldn’t do it, Ted would make sure someone else did. It was the right thing to do. It was also the last decision Ted Price would ever make. November 14th, 2002. The argument between Ted and Catherine escalated. 10 days of tension. 10 days of watching the woman he once loved poison her own children.

 10 days of living in that druginfested apartment. It all came to a head. Catherine screamed at Ted, told him to get out. The argument grew more heated, more violent. Then Catherine grabbed a telephone. Not a cell phone, a heavy landline telephone. She swung it at Ted’s face with everything she had. The phone connected. Ted went down.

 He lay on the floor, bleeding, conscious, but dazed, unable to stand on his own two feet. The blow had scrambled his senses, left him disoriented and vulnerable. Catherine looked at the man on her floor. The man who had threatened to expose her, who had threatened to take away her children. She picked up the phone again. This time she made a call.

She called Aaron Gunches. Gunches arrived at the apartment that evening. He walked in and saw Ted Price lying helpless on the floor, blood on his face, unable to get up. According to witnesses, Gunches did not remain calm for long. He approached Ted, grabbed him by the hair, pulled out a handgun, and pressed it against Ted’s head.

 I should just take you out of this world right now. The words hung in the air. Ted, still dazed from the telephone blow, barely understood what was happening. Gunes turned to Catherine’s roommates, Michelle Beck and Jennifer Garcia. Jennifer was just 17 years old. Gunches instructed them to help load Ted and his belongings into Catherine’s car.

 One of the roommates called Greyhound to find out how much a bus ticket back to Utah would cost. They gathered Ted’s possessions, his clothes, his bags. Then Gunches did something that revealed exactly what he intended to do. He picked up Ted’s guitar, handed it to Catherine’s son. “Complents of Ted,” he said.

 “A gift from a man who would never need it again. They half carried Ted to the car and loaded him into the back seat.” “Jennifer Garcia got behind the wheel. Ges climbed in beside her. Ted slumped in the back, barely aware of where he was being taken. Jennifer drove toward the bus station. At the Greyhound station, Gunches made a show of checking his pockets.

 He didn’t have enough money for a bus ticket. He claimed they couldn’t send Ted back to Utah tonight. Keep driving, Gunes told Jennifer. The 17-year-old obeyed. She drove out of Mesa, heading east into the darkness. Gunches directed her onto a dirt path away from the city lights toward the Salt River Puma Maricopa Indian Reservation.

 The Beeline Highway disappeared behind them. They drove deeper into the desert into isolation, into darkness. “Stop here,” Gunches said. Jennifer stopped the car. They were in the middle of nowhere. No houses, no street lights, nothing but empty desert stretching in every direction. Gunes got out of the car.

 He walked around to the trunk and began rummaging through it. Ted Price, still disoriented, also got out of the car. Jennifer Garcia sat behind the wheel, waiting. Then she heard it pop, pop. Three gunshots. She saw Ted fall to the ground. Pop. A fourth shot. She turned and saw Aaron Gunches standing over Ted’s body, a gun at his side.

 Ted Price had been shot four times, three bullets to the chest, one to the back of the head. The medical examiner would later determine that each shot was fired from close range, less than 2 ft. Each wound on its own would have been fatal. Ted Price was 40 years old. He had come to Arizona to build a better life.

 Instead, he died in a dark desert for the crime of trying to protect two children. Gunes climbed back into the car. He looked at Jennifer Garcia. Drive. Jennifer drove back toward Mesa. At some point during the drive, Gunches reached over and tried to stroke her hair. She kept her eyes on the road. They stopped once along the way. Gunches threw Ted’s belongings into a dumpster.

Evidence of a life discarded like trash. When they finally returned to Catherine’s apartment, Gunches went to sleep as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t just executed a man in the desert. Jennifer Garcia couldn’t sleep. She took the car keys from Gunches and drove away into the night. Ted Price’s body lay in the desert, alone under the Arizona stars.

 It would stay there for almost a month. December 10th, 2002. Hikers discovered the body in the desert near the Salt River Reservation. Decomposition had taken its toll. There was no identification on the remains. Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies combed the murder scene. They found shell casings. They documented the location, but without identification, they had no victim and no leads.

Eventually, forensic investigators made a match. Ted Price was identified through the serial number on a hip replacement he had received earlier in life. Now the police had a name. They began interviewing people in Ted’s life. That led them to Catherine Lecher’s apartment. Detectives spoke with Catherine, with Michelle Beck, with Jennifer Garcia.

 Michelle Beck gave them the break they needed. She told police that Aaron Gunches had confessed to her. “He told me he killed Price,” she said. But by then, Aaron Gunches had vanished. January 15th, 2003, 2 months after the murder. Aaron Gunes was driving his red 1990 Nissan eastbound on Interstate 10 about 10 miles east of Courtzite, Arizona, close to the California border, running from everything he had done.

 At approximately 9:00 in the evening, Arizona Department of Public Safety Officer Robert Flannry noticed the Nissan had a burned out tail light. A routine traffic stop, nothing more. Flannry pulled the vehicle over, approached the driver’s side window. What Officer Flannry did not know was that Aaron Gunches had a bench warrant out for his arrest.

 What he did not know was that Gunches had killed a man 2 months earlier and left his body rotting in the desert. What he did not know was that Gunches had no intention of being taken alive. Gunches raised his weapon and fired twice at Officer Flannry. The first bullet struck Flannry’s Kevlar vest. The impact knocked him backward, but the vest held.

 The second bullet, by some miracle, ricocheted off Flannry’s wristwatch. Officer Flannry survived with minor injuries, saved by his bulletproof vest and a wristwatch. Gunches floored the accelerator and fled. A high-speed chase erupted across the Arizona desert. Gunes tore down I 10, then veered onto US Route 60. Another DPS officer spotted him traveling at dangerous speeds.

 Police deployed a spike strip at milepost 73. Gunches hit the spikes, his tires shredded. The Nissan careened off the road and crashed about half a mile away. Gunes abandoned the vehicle and ran into the desert on foot. A massive manhunt mobilized within hours. More than 50 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies descended on the area.

 Leaz County Sheriff’s deputies, Arizona DPS, Maricopa County officers, US Border Patrol, Phoenix Police. They searched through the night through the following morning. 15 hours of combing the desert for a man who had already killed once and was clearly willing to kill again. January 16th, 2003. 1:00 in the afternoon, Border Patrol officers and Le Paz County deputies found Aaron Gunches about 5 miles east of the tiny community of Wendon.

 He was hiding in a hay stack. The man who had executed Ted Price in cold blood who had shot a police officer and fled across the desert was dragged out of a pile of hay like a rat flushed from its nest. And then forensics delivered the final nail in his coffin. The bullet casings found at the scene where officer Flannry was shot matched the casings recovered from the desert where Ted Price died.

 Same gun, same killer. Aaron Gunches was charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping. October 2003, Gunches was formally indicted for Ted Price’s murder. November 2005, he was found competent to stand trial. November 2007, he was found competent to wave his right to an attorney. And then Aaron Gunes made a decision that would baffle everyone involved in his case.

 He chose to represent himself. Because prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, Gunes still had to go through a penalty phase trial. Even after pleading guilty, a jury would decide whether he would live or die. The court appointed Marcy Crater as his advisory counsel. Her job was to assist him, guide him, help him mount some kind of defense.

 But Gunches wanted no defense. Gunes and I would get into fights every day of his trial, Crater later recalled. He did nothing to help himself. Absolutely nothing. Ges presented no witnesses. He blocked all mitigation evidence. He refused to let the jury hear anything that might explain his background, his mental state, anything that might convince them to spare his life.

 When it came time for closing arguments, his last chance to plead for mercy, Aaron Gunes stood before the jury and said six words. “Do what you’re going to do.” The judge stared at him in disbelief. “This seems like you’re committing suicide by jury,” the judge said. Gunches said nothing. The jury sentenced him to death. Aaron Gunches received his first death sentence.

 But the legal system had one more twist. In 2010, the Arizona Supreme Court reviewed the case and found an error in the sentencing proceedings. The prosecution had argued that Ted Price’s murder was especially cruel and heinous. The Supreme Court disagreed. Ted Price, they ruled, had been dazed and disoriented when he was killed.

 He never saw it coming. He died quickly. Under Arizona law, that did not meet the definition of cruel and heinous. The conviction stood, but the death sentence was vacated. The case was sent back for a new penalty phase. Maricopa County tried again, and again, Aaron Gunes represented himself. Again, he offered no defense.

 Again, he blocked all mitigation. Again, he essentially begged the jury to kill him. They obliged. Aaron Gunches received his second death sentence. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed it in September 2016. And then the waiting began. Gunches sat on death row at Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. Year after year, he never filed a single voluntary appeal.

 He had no interest in fighting his sentence. In 2017, he began writing letters to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. His message was simple. Execute me. He wrote again in 2018 and again and again. Four letters over the following years, all with the same request. Kill me. But Arizona was in no position to execute anyone.

 The state was still dealing with the fallout from the catastrophically botched execution of Joseph Wood in 2014. Wood had gasped for air for nearly 2 hours before finally dying. The incident sparked lawsuits, investigations, and a near total halt to executions in the state. Gunches kept waiting, kept writing.

 Then in 2022, Arizona finally resumed executions. Three men were put to death that year. Clarence Dixon, Frank Atwood, and Murray Hooper. Aaron Gunches saw his opportunity. November the 20282, Gunes filed a handwritten motion with the Arizona Supreme Court. Petitioner Aaron Gunches hereby requests the A Supreme Court issue an immediate death warrant for his execution so that justice may be lawfully served and give closure to the victim’s family.

 He was asking for his own death, demanding it. Attorney General Mark Bernovich supported the request and began the process of issuing a death warrant, but Arizona politics intervened. Chris Maize won the election for Attorney General. Katie Hobbes won the governorship. Both were Democrats. Both had expressed reservations about the death penalty.

Gunes learned that Maize intended to pause executions in Arizona. He also read news reports about the 2022 executions, reports describing problems with IV insertion, descriptions of the condemned men struggling as they died. In January 2023, Gunches withdrew his request. Aaron Gunches would not have filed his motion had he known this stunning news, his handwritten withdrawal stated.

 He claimed the recent executions were carried out in a manner that amounts to torture, but the wheels were already in motion. Attorney General Maize tried to withdraw the warrant request that her predecessor, Bernovich, had filed. The Arizona Supreme Court refused. The warrant was issued anyway with an execution date of April 6th, 2023.

Governor Hobbes announced that her administration would not carry out the execution. She ordered a comprehensive review of Arizona’s death penalty protocols and appointed retired federal magistrate judge David Duncan to conduct it. Aaron Gunches remained on death row, still alive, still waiting.

 The battle over Gunes’s execution became a political war. Karen Price, Ted’s sister, filed a petition asking the Arizona Supreme Court to force Governor Hobbes to carry out the execution. She had been waiting over 20 years for justice. Her brother’s killer was begging to die, and the state was refusing to grant his wish. Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell filed briefs supporting Karen’s petition.

 She argued that the court should compel the execution. Governor Hobbes pushed back. Her administration claimed the state was not prepared to conduct executions in a constitutionally sound manner. Meanwhile, Judge Duncan continued his review. What he found was damning. Execution team members had researched drug dosages on Wikipedia the night before putting someone to death.

 Prison officials responsible for botched executions had received secret $20,000 cash payments. The entire system was riddled with incompetence and coverups. Duncan’s preliminary report concluded that Arizona’s lethal injection protocols were fundamentally unreliable, unworkable, and unacceptably prone to errors. In November 2024, before Duncan could complete his review, Governor Hobbes fired him.

 She claimed he had overstepped his mandate. Duncan protested that he was dismissed for requesting tax records related to those secret payments. With Duncan gone, Hobbes declared that an internal review by the prison system was sufficient. Arizona would resume executions. January 2025, Aaron Gunches submitted yet another handwritten request.

 This time, he demanded to skip legal formalities and be executed by midFebruary. His death sentence, he wrote, was long overdue. He criticized the Arizona court system for dragging its feet. The court rejected his request for a Valentine’s Day execution but set a new date, March 19th, 2025. On March 10th, Gunches appeared before the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency.

He had the right to ask for a sentence commutation or a reprieve. He waved that right. My position has not changed, he wrote in his final filing. Aaron Brian Gunches was going to die and he was going to make sure nothing stopped it. March 19th, 2025, Arizona State Prison Complex, Florence. The night before, Gunches had eaten his last meal.

A double western bacon cheeseburger with fries, a spicy gyro, a barbecue gyro, onion rings, and for dessert, baklava. At 10:00 in the morning, the witnesses filed into the viewing room. At least 18 people would watch Aaron Gunes die. Arizona Attorney General Chris Maize, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, prisons Director Ryan Thornell, five media witnesses, legal advisers, and Karen Price, Ted’s sister, the woman who had fought for over two decades to see this moment.

 She carried a photograph of her brother with her. In the photo, Ted was waving goodbye. “It’s ironic that he was waving goodbye because that was the last time I saw him alive.” Karen would later say, “It’s a memory I will carry with me forever.” At 10:02, corrections officers escorted Gunches into the chamber.

 He wore a white jumpsuit. He climbed onto the gurnie without help, lay down, stared at the ceiling. The officer strapped him down, covered him with a white sheet. His arms extended on rests at his sides. The medical team approached. Four figures in white hazmat suits, their identities hidden. They inserted IVs into both arms.

 It took 3 minutes. When they finished, Gunches lay there, eyes fixed on the ceiling. He never once looked into the witness gallery, never acknowledged the sister of the man he had murdered. Minutes passed in silence. Then Gunches spoke. What’s the hold up? A voice came over the intercom, read the death warrant, then asked for his final words.

Aaron Gunches squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. No. The execution will now commence. A gloved hand appeared on the monitor, pushed the first syringe. Pentobital began flowing into Gun’s veins. He winced, blinked, then let out a sound like a snore. His breathing grew deeper, more labored.

 His body convulsed once, twice. Then he went still, his eyes closed, his mouth fell slightly open. The color drained from his skin. At 10:33 a.m., Aaron Brian Gunes was pronounced dead. 22 years and 4 months after he executed Ted Price in the Arizona desert. The official statement from the Arizona Department of Corrections was brief.

 The process went according to plan and without incident, but not everyone agreed. Dale Bich, a death penalty law professor who witnessed the execution, believed Gunes suffered from pulmonary edema, a condition where the lungs fill with fluid, essentially drowning the person from within. Rapid administration of a high dose of pentobarbatital is excruciatingly painful.

 Bage said pulmonary edema develops in seconds as the lungs fill with water and one is not able to breathe. There is a sensation of drowning from within and not being able to do anything about it. It is like being waterboarded to death. The eight deep breaths and chest heaving, the gurgling sounds and Mr. gun trying to catch his breath are all signs of pulmonary edema.

 Even though it may have looked peaceful, it was not. Whether Aaron Gunes suffered in his final moments, only he knows. He took that truth with him. After the execution, Karen Price stood before the press. Today marks the final chapter in a process that has spanned nearly 23 years. she said. Although we’ve taken the final step in the legal process, the pain of losing Ted remains profound and cannot be conveyed in mere words.

She spoke of her brother, the kind man who loved cats and muscle cars, who raised children that were not his own, who stood up for people who couldn’t defend themselves. Ted was killed for doing the right thing. Karen said a senseless crime that robbed the world of a genuinely kind man. Ted Price would have turned 63 years old on the day his killer was executed.

 His daughter Brittany, who was 16 when she lost her father, released a statement. The pain of reliving the circumstances surrounding my father’s death for over two decades had taken a significant toll on my family and me. Today marks the end of that painful chapter and I couldn’t be more grateful.

 In the end, Aaron Gunes got exactly what he wanted. He spent over 20 years on death row, not because the system failed to execute him, but because he was determined to die on his own terms. He refused attorneys, blocked defenses, demanded death. Some called him a volunteer, one of roughly 165 people since 1976 who actively pursued their own executions.

 Studies show that 87% of execution volunteers struggled with mental illness, PTSD, or substance abuse. Others called it what it was, state assisted suicide. A man who decided that death was preferable to life in prison. who manipulated the legal system to achieve his own end, who used the machinery of justice as his personal executioner.

And in doing so, he ensured that for 22 years, Ted Price’s family lived in limbo, waiting for closure that was always just out of reach. Attending hearings, reading court documents, watching political battles play out over whether the man who murdered their loved one would live or die. Aaron Gunches did not deserve that power, but he took it anyway.

 Ted Price was 40 years old when he died. A father, a brother, a man studying to become a radiology technician. He walked into a drug den in Mesa, Arizona, because he trusted the woman he once loved. He saw children in danger and refused to look away. He did the right thing and for that he was driven into the desert and shot four times.

 His body lay undiscovered for nearly a month alone, forgotten, identified only by the serial number on his hip replacement. Today, Ted Price rests in peace. His killer is dead. His family has their closure, imperfect as it may be. But the questions remain. What happened to Katherine Lecher? The woman whose phone call set everything in motion.

 She was never charged. What became of those two children, Brittany and Justin, who witnessed their mother’s descent and lost the only father figure they had ever known? These are the loose ends that true crime cannot always tie. The justice system punishes killers, but it cannot undo the damage they leave behind.

 Aaron Brian Gunes, born June 30th, 1971. executed March 19th, 2025. He spent his final moments staring at a ceiling, refusing to speak, waiting impatiently for death. He never apologized, never showed remorse, never acknowledged the family of the man he murdered. In the end, he got exactly what he asked for. But Ted Price’s family will carry their grief forever.

That is the true crime, and that is why true crime matters. If this case moved you, leave a comment below. Subscribe to the channel. Hit that notification bell so you never miss when we upload. Because every victim deserves to be remembered and every story deserves to be told. Until next time.