Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: He Has A Meat Cleaver

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

A woman's psychotic boyfriend attacks her with a meat cleaver. A man and his father are dumped in an icy Alaskan river. An intruder sexually assaults a woman and cuts her throat after she gets home from shopping.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. I could see my body being mutilated in front of me, and I could see the blood, and I could see the inside of my body. Real people. We were sucked under the ice so quickly that neither one of us had really time to think or say anything. Who faced death.

I could hear the flesh tearing. And I couldn't feel any pain, but the knife was cutting my throat. And live to tell how. I'm sitting there and I'm praying. At this point, I just, I'm praying. I have three kids. I have to live. It's not an option to die.

This is I survived. It's June 2011 in Fairfield, Ohio. Jen has been romantically involved with a fellow college student for more. than five months. Robbie was really caring. He was funny. He was enthusiastic. He was very nice, sometimes overly nice.

There was never any arguments or any kind of jealousy or anything like that. Robbie was great with the kids and he would just end up spending time around me and the kids at our apartment. Jen's three children went to stay at her mother's house so she could study. I knew that I had class work to do for the next day. So I kind of just had played some cards with him to entertain him. And then I said that I needed to finish my homework. And he went back to the bedroom.

And I was in the living room. Jen and Robbie returned home at 8.30 p.m. Jen was still working at 1 a.m. Robbie comes out from the bedroom. And he asked me why I had poisoned him with battery acid. I looked at him and I said, like, what are you talking about? He proceeded to walk towards the kitchen area,

and he picked up the meat cleaver from the butcher block. He stood in front of me and asked me again why I had poisoned him with battery acid. He just looked like the devil. His eyes were dark. They were shallow. They looked like there was nothing behind him. You could tell he was very angry,

and he just didn't even look human at that point. Jen had no idea that Robbie was in fact a dangerous psychopath. He was also high on cocaine. I realize that this is a very serious situation and, you know, I am scared. I'm just trying to reassure him that I don't feel that he has been harmed in any way and that if he does feel that if he's been harmed, that he should call 911 and just put the meat cleaver down so that nobody gets hurt unnecessarily. Robbie picked up a glass of gin from the dining room table.

He placed the meat cleaver against my neck, and he told me that if I didn't drink the gin, that he would chop my neck off. I opened my mouth to try and swallow the gin. I don't drink, so my gag reflex kicked in, and I was automatically spitting it back out. That irritated him, thinking that there was battery acid in it, so he took a swing with the meat cleaver.

He was swinging for my face, and at that point I raised it. At that point, I raised my left hand to protect my face and he chopped through my left hand with the meat cleaver. There's blood squirting everywhere. Obviously it had chopped through veins, so it's squirting across my living room. He placed the meat cleaver back against my neck and held it there. He proceeded to tell me that if I cried or if I screamed or if I yelled that he would then chop off my neck.

He read a standoff for about 45 minutes. After he had sliced through my hand, I continued to try and talk him down. He was irrational and enraged with fury. And the whole time, you know, like he would have the meat cleaver placed against my neck. I said something that must have really angered him. He removed the meat cleaver from my neck, and he swung. And I raised my left arm in defense, and he then chopped through my left elbow. I could see my body being mutilated in front of me,

and I could see the blood, and I could see the inside of my body. I could see bones, I could see tendons, but I couldn't really feel it. I'm sitting there, and I'm praying. I mean, at this point, I just, I'm praying. I have three kids. I have to live. It's not an option to die.

He walked into the kitchen, and he comes back over, with boiling water, and he begins to pour it down my throat. He would tell me, like, this battery acid is going to taste really great, isn't it? And how did you manage to get it into the water coming out, the faucet? Jen was choking on the scalding water. He thought I wasn't drinking it because he thought the tap water was battery acid. So he began to burn me with cigarettes, and he would put cigarettes out on my face.

and on my arms. As the night progressed, he just became more and more agitated. He was like hopping around like he was like a boxer, you know, just kind of just really aggressive. At one point he had thought that maybe I had hid something, I don't know, in my personal area. So he proceeded to pull down my pants and he ripped off my underwear. And it was my time of the month.

And so I had a tampon in. So he pulled my tampon out and shoved that in my mouth. At no point did I feel that I was going to plead with him. I tried logic, but I was not going to degrade myself and plead or beg. I wasn't going to cry. I felt like if me talking to him rationally wasn't going to work, then begging would just give him greater satisfaction.

It was now 4.45 a.m. and Jen had been bleeding heavily for almost four hours. At that point, I said, please, Robbie, you know, I have kids. This has got to stop. That really just pissed him off. And the next thing I knew, the meat cleaver was flying. And he chopped my upper arm in half. That's when I realized I've got to come up with an idea to get out of here or I'm going to die. He had walked into the kitchen and turned his back, and I just got up and ran. I maneuvered towards the front door, and I unlocked the door and went into the apartment hallway. As I knocked on the door across the hall, you know, I just had helped. He's trying to kill me.

He has a meat cleaver. You know, I'm bleeding. Please call the police. I could feel him come behind me with the meat cleaver, and every time I would say something or knock, I could feel a bang in my skull. And at that point, I put my hand kind of, you know, like my right hand, not thinking behind my head, and he then chopped my right hand twice, and so I didn't have any hands at this point.

I just methodically went from door to door, you know, just praying, like, please somebody open the door, please just help me, he's going to kill me, I'm going to die out here. I didn't scream. I never yelled. I just kind of knocked and spoke loudly and clearly. I knew that I had lost so much blood at this point, that it was so important for me to remain calm and to keep my heart rate down.

Every step that I take, he's right behind me, and I could just feel him continually chopping at me. He was chopping my skull and my back, just trying to kill me. He wasn't trying to stop me at that point. He was trying to kill me. I remember sliding on my own blood, falling down to the ground. As he would take the meat cleaver and chop at my skull, my shoulders, I would fall from the impact and I couldn't lift myself back up because I didn't have hands.

So I would kind of have to crawl up the wall with my forearms. I remember looking down and I could see pieces of my hair and pieces of my skull, my skin, blood clots, and I was just looking down, I was like, my God, you know, I'm dying, you know. And I'm kind of knocking with, you know, just my wrist or whatever because my hands at this point are useless to me. I knock, and I keep knocking. I was on my way to the seventh door to knock on it when I heard the fifth door open, and it was like music to my ears. I heard the doorknob jingle and I just turned around and I started

walking towards the door. And the guy never had to say anything. He just opened the door and pulled me in. And I remember he never said anything to Robbie. Robbie just kind of turned around and walked back down the stairs. I was standing in his kitchen and I was so thirsty. He pours me a glass of water and he sits the glass in front of me. I said, I said, I can't use my hands. Can you come pour this water in my mouth for me? As he's pointing in my mouth, I see it come out my ear by my ear. And I said, my face is messed up, isn't it? And he said, yes. He said, it's hanging off.

And I said, what do you mean? And he said, your whole left side's hanging off. And it's not connected to your lips anymore. Robbie took off all his clothes and walked out onto the street. Jen's neighbor called the police. Police find the man who attacked Jen standing naked outside her home and arrest him. Suffering from massive blood loss and multiple lacerations to her body, Jen is airlifted to the hospital. When they lifted me in the helicopter, they told me I was going to die.

They prepared me. I mean, they started telling me, you know, like, are you an organ donor? You know, what religion are you? And I just looked at him and I said, look, I didn't just survive all this for you to tell me I'm going to die. Like, my head kind of hurts, and can I have a pillow? Jen was in surgery for nine hours. Surgeons managed to reattach Jen's severed hands, and they are slowly recovering. I was stabbed 35 times with a meat cleaver.

My left hand was chopped in half. My left elbow was chopped in half. and then my left upper arm was chopped down to the bone. My neck was chopped, my ear was chopped in half. Obviously, my face was chopped twice. I had 21 chops in my skull. I required almost 2,000 stitches in staples. Jen's attacker Robin A. Chester, Jr., pleaded guilty to attempted murder

and was sentenced to 10 years in jail. This psychiatrist that examined him, she found that he was just a sociopath, like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, and that he spent all this time building up my trust so that he could then watch an amusement as he tortured me and then killed me. I survived because I knew that I had to remain calm. I survived because I wasn't ready to die. I survived because I had three kids that need me. I survived because God protected me from this horrible person.

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Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. Seamintmobile.com. It's June 2003, on the Coyacuck River in Alaska. Blake decides to take his father rafting on a remote Alaskan River for his birthday. My father had always wanted to spend some time in northern Alaska, and so I thought it was a perfect opportunity for us to spend some time together and plan the trip. The time of the year that Blake selected was in the monies. of June. We assumed by that time that the snow would be gone, ice melted, et cetera, and we would see other people on the river.

It wasn't the best time of year to be floating the river, because the river was going to be a little bit higher, but my wife was at home pregnant and was due in August, and so I didn't want to push things into July or even early August, for that matter. A Bush pilot flew the two men up the river to start their week-long journey. Blake and Neil were alone in a deserted wilderness, 60 miles from the nearest township. We passed over a bear and a wolf, and he pointed those out to me. And when we got and landed on the bank, he said, you can't believe how many bears are, bear tracks there are

along here. We loaded up the raft and started floating down the river, taking in the beauty and scenery of what northern Alaska had to offer at that time. As we started floating down the river, we realized that there was still quite a bit of ice. However, it was always on one side of the river. Eventually, it got to where there was ice on either side of the river. We came to a bend in the channel. We were pretty quickly in a channel, no more than ten feet wide. Ice was clear across in front of us. There wasn't a way to stop because the river

was channeled very swiftly at that point. There was very little time for us to do or think about anything. The front of the raft hit at an angle, the ice that was covering the river. The river just took us up along the ice bank and flipped us over, and we went under the ice at that point. The two men were being swept under the ice at almost 15 miles per hour. There was a gap between the ice and the water at that point, and we could actually yell at each other, and Blake yelled at me, oh, Dad, I'm sorry, and that's about all the time that there was. I reached up and grabbed, tried to grab the top of the ice, and keep from going under, and was eventually just sucked under. There was no air pocket.

to breathe, and so my father and I were trying to rise to the surface and ended up with several abrasions and scrapes at the top of our head. We had no gap between the water and the ice bank above us, so from then on it was just how long you can hold your breath. We were so close to death at the time, and we both knew it and realized it, and it seems like you relive a lot of your life in a matter of seconds and start thinking about all those things that you love and cherish that you're certainly worried about losing at the time. It certainly got to the point where I felt like I was going to either take in a big breath

of water or just pass out from holding my breath. There was no place for us to get any air and we were being pushed along by the current and then I probably held my breath for a minute but I felt like my lungs were About had it. Yes, I thought this was it. On the point of asphyxiation, Blake and Neil popped out from under the ice. Blake managed to, he was over to my right, and he managed to scramble up on top of some ice,

and get out and get up on the bank. I pulled myself out of the water, and immediately started looking for my father, and eventually saw his head bobbing above the water. Pretty soon I managed to run into a place where I could grab a rock and stop. I swam over to him, and he got a branch, and there was a little bit of a bank there, and he got a branch and stuck it out to me and pulled me up out of the water. As we were holding each other, we were both somewhat emotional.

It was very difficult for me, especially, knowing that I had left behind an infant son, a wife that was pregnant, and really had almost died, had almost drowned. The men had lost all their supplies and were wearing only light clothing. They were 60 miles from the nearest town. We weren't expected really for almost a week. At that time of year, there's really no food in northern Alaska. The berries haven't come out yet. There really, there was no fish.

We're not going to be able to get to our raft. we need to figure out what in the world we were going to do now. I just took an inventory of everything that I had on me after we got out of the river and realized that I had the lighter in my pocket and I started a fire and I started to gather wood for the night. He gathered up branches and put them across kind of an area by the side of the bank of this open area and for a little shelter. We were very concerned about bears.

Blake and Neil spent a cold, sleepless night in the shelter. The next morning, Blake decided to try hiking out to seek help. It was a difficult decision to make, and of course my father really didn't agree with it, but I felt like it was the best thing for us. We were really high in a river valley, which was quite small and steep, and didn't feel like it was going to be easy for anyone to spot us where we were. He took the lighter with him, and then left about 10.30 that Saturday morning, and left even though I didn't want him to go. Shortly after I started the hike, probably within an hour or so, I ran into a black bear. He was a couple hundred yards away from me.

Easily the biggest black bear I'd ever seen. It crouched down and made my way over to a tree and got behind this tree and actually hid, and luckily I was. was downwind of the bear. I continued to travel on, and I'd come up out of a little drainage area, and I came across a grizzly bear. Luckily, it was far enough away that he didn't see me, but it was probably only 50 yards or so away. And I was able to get back down to that drainage area and make my way around him.

There were several small creeks, which at that time of year had become more small rivers because of the melt. And they were pretty full, and so I had to swim through several of those. And eventually, after one of those, it was getting dark enough and cool enough that I decided to stop and built the fire and laid down to sleep for the night. I started to think about my dad and what might be going on with him. Blake had taken their only lighter, so it was vital for Neil to keep the fire burning. There were times when I would wake up and say, oh, my God.

You know, I got, it was just barely going. I had to think about my wife and what she was doing and go try to keep the fire going again. I was very worried about Blake, no telling where he was, what river he'd fallen into, what bear he'd run into, you know, there was no way of knowing. My plan if a grizzly came through my little campsite was to lay down on the ground and double up. That's it. There's no other way to protect myself. I had made it about 15 miles downstream. They had two very large rivers, very fast-flying rivers, very cold rivers,

that I had no thoughts of trying to jump in and swim across them at the time. the time. So I realized that I was stuck there, but I also realized that I was at the point where two rivers, which a lot of bush pilots use for navigation. My plan was to stay put and hope that someone would fly over, low enough, so that he would actually spot me. Blake had taken their only lighter, so Neil had to keep his fire constantly burning. I had spent that Saturday night after he left in this little shelter. And then on the next day, Sunday, I looked around and a spark had jumped out of the fire.

The top of the shelter was some dead pine branches. And they caught those on fire, and it burned it up and in the process. So then I had to make a second shelter, which I did over the side of the bank. That shelter caught fire on the Monday. So I had a third place that I had to sleep Monday night and it was lousy and slept there Monday night and wasn't looking forward to Tuesday night. Neither Neil nor Blake had any food to

eat. Blake had now camped for three nights downstream, hoping for rescue. Tuesday night and I I believe it was around 6.30 p.m. I heard the roar of a bushplane engine. He was only a hundred feet or so off the river. He banked hard towards me and circled me for a while. It was obvious that he had seen me. The pilot dropped Blake a radio. Blake used it to direct the pilot to the place where he'd left his father. Tuesday evening I had just tried to start making my bed place a little better and I heard a plane flying over and it was fairly close took him about six passes before he located me so I knew then that Blake had gotten through and so that was an emotional moment the pilot who spotted Blake calls in a helicopter to rescue him and his father

When I got in the helicopter, I looked at Blake, and he had a beard and dirt all over his face. And I told him he looked like hell. And he said, you don't look so hot yourself. They'd actually asked us at that time if we wanted to go back up and get the raft and recover it and continue the float with one of them. Of course, we both kind of looked at it and like that said, did you really? just ask us that question. I survived because a Bush pilot happened to be taking a couple of guys from Prudeau Bay on a sightseeing tour one afternoon and Saul Blake.

I survived because I had a reason to live. I had a wife, a child, and a one in the way. And I also believe it's just part of the human instinct. instinct to want to survive. It's October 2001 in Tucson, Arizona. Tiffany is a 20-year-old college student. I was studying chemical engineering, and I was a junior. I lived with two female roommates.

They were my two best girlfriends from high school. Tiffany returned home after morning classes. I unlocked my front door and I walked in and I had groceries in my hands so I put them down. I went to close the door and all of a sudden somebody came up from behind me. He grabbed me with one arm across my shoulders and had a knife to my throat. The other hand covered my eyes. I'd been thinking about my brother because I was supposed to have studied with him that day. So I was thinking, oh, this must just be a joke.

He must just be messing with me. But then the person spoke. They had a knife to my throat, and they said, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just here for the money. There was a mirror, a decorative mirror in front of me. And for just one second, I did see that there was somebody behind me that he was about a little bit taller than I am.

Tiffany was unable to get a good look at her attacker. He just said that I'd come home too early and that he really just didn't think that anybody would be in the house. I just wanted to give him the money and I just really believe that he would leave if I did. He took my wallet and then he put it down. He asked me which room was mine and I told him which one.

He wanted to walk me back there so I directed him. When we got into the room, He bound my hands. He put a sock in my mouth. And while he was doing that, he told me that he was... Just wanted to leave me tied up for my roommates to find. And that he would just take the money and leave. I believed him.

And then he starts to take my clothes off. He tells me that he's going to leave me naked for my roommates to find. and I'm thinking, I'm embarrassed. But at this point, I'm still thinking that everything's going to be okay. I laid myself down on the bed and was going along with what he had requested of me. And as I was laying there, I was thinking that I had done what he had said and that he would leave, but then all of a sudden he was on top of me. and he was raping me

while he was raping me he asked me if I had a boyfriend I couldn't respond to his questions I was gagged I nodded my head yes he asked me if he was better than my boyfriend if he was bigger he asked me if I was enjoying it.

I sort of disassociated from my body. I kind of felt apart from it as though I were almost watching it happen rather than experiencing it. I really just checked out. I thought about who would hear me if I would scream and I knew my neighbor worked from home. And so I thought, if I screamed, maybe he would hear me.

Even though I was gagged, I screamed as loud as I could through the gag. And he said to me, if you scream again, I'll kill you. The rape just seemed to last for so long. It just seemed like it wasn't going to end. And then he had me lay down on my stomach, and he sort of straddled me, and I felt the knife to my throat again. He asked me, are you going to tell anyone? Are you going to tell anybody?

And I, of course, said no. Then I felt the knife start to saw into my neck. I could hear the flesh tearing. And I couldn't feel any pain, but the knife was cutting my throat. He cut basically from ear to ear. He went across my neck twice. with the knife.

I felt it and I heard it, but in my mind, I couldn't feel it, and in my mind I just couldn't believe it that that was really actually happening. I felt him get up, and then I heard him walk out of the room, and I heard the door close,

and I was relieved that he was gone. Then I felt a warmth on my chest, I felt the liquid flowing down my chest and there was blood. And I realized that I could die. I was thinking that if he had gotten my carotid artery that I would have four minutes before I had brain damage and that I needed to get out of that house. Every cell in my body, every fiber of my being,

fiber of my being was just focused on survival in that moment. I was afraid that he might still be in my home, but I knew I needed to get out if I wanted to survive. I was scared that he hadn't actually left, but I just knew I needed to get up and get out of there, even if he was still in the house. And so even though my hands were still bound, I got up and managed to get myself out of the room,

and I was just terrified that I would walk out of the room and he'd still be there, and that I would just continue to be tortured until I died. I walked out of the house, and it was daylight. Tiffany never had a clear view of her attacker. As I went to my neighbor's house for help, I still questioned whether or not. it could be my neighbor that had attacked me.

And so I kind of was thinking, am I just walking into a lion's den? There I am. Mostly naked and bound and running to my neighbor's house. And just thinking that I wasn't ever going to see my family again, that I was going to die. When I walked up to my neighbor's door, it was cracked open. And so I walked up to my neighbor's door, And so I walked into the house,

and there was this nine-year-old boy, my neighbor's son. And I just felt horrible because here I am, mostly naked, and just covered in blood, and completely terrified. I yelled out my neighbor's name, Robert, and he came in, and he shoot his son out of the room. He led me into his bedroom. had me sit down, wrapped blankets around me, and he was a friend. And so it was so reassuring to just hear that I was going to be okay, that I wasn't going to die,

and that he was going to help me. Tiffany was rushed to the hospital where doctors were able to sew up her throat. The police began hunting for her attacker. For a year after the assault, I was terrified. He had left me for dead, and I wasn't dead, and I was so scared that he was going to come and find me and finish the job. A year after the attack, the police finally arrested former soldier James Allen Selby. A DNA match implicated him in multiple sexual attacks across several states. Relief just doesn't even describe how I was feeling when I found out that he was actually caught.

After more than a year of constantly watching my back, constantly scanning faces, looking for thinking that somebody was going to come after me, not being able to sleep at night, checking every door in my house, they'd caught him. Selby was convicted on 27 counts, including, attempted murder and rape. He hung himself in jail before being sentenced. I survived because God said not yet. That wasn't the end of my story. And I continue to survive because of the relentless love of friends and family and because there's so much to live

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