Who Was Rebecca Marodi?
To know Rebecca was to love her, those close to her say.
“She was the best,” Patricia Hutchins tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “From the minute I met her, I just knew there was something special about her.”
Hutchins met Rebecca through horse rescuing, and the pair immediately bonded over their love of animals during their decade-long friendship.
“I've never met a kinder, nicer person. And her face—pictures of her—show exactly who she was: happy and ready to have a good time in life,” she says.
The same sentiment was echoed by longtime pal, Fran George, who first connected with Rebecca in the San Diego women’s motorcycle scene in 2006.
“My first impression was that she was a really cool person,” George recalls. “She was fun; we were always clowning around.”
Perhaps Rebecca's lightheartedness balanced the dangerousness of her career as a fire captain with the Riverside County Fire Department.
“You gotta have a strength about you,” George says. “You have to be a certain person to do that job.”
According to authorities, Rebecca dedicated more than 30 years to the fire service, starting out as a volunteer firefighter in 1993. She was promoted to captain in 2022.
One month before she was murdered, Rebecca was on the ground of the deadly Eaton fire that tore through Altadena, Calif., and claimed the lives of 19 people.
“Becky is the one that runs to the danger and helps other people,” George says, “and to know how she came to her end—it just tears me up inside.”
Rebecca Marodi’s Final Moments
Lorena arrived home the night of February 17, 2025, to find her daughter dead from apparent stab wounds, according to court documents.
She called 911, and Rebecca was pronounced dead on the scene.
The grieving mother informed detectives that one week prior, her daughter told Yolanda that she was ending their two-year marriage. Yolanda, who was usually home, was nowhere to be found at the time.
A later review of Ring doorbell footage offered insight into Rebecca’s slaying and showed her fleeing for her life in her final moments, according to investigators.
That evening, the victim appeared to be running across the patio, trying to escape her knife-wielding wife.
“Yolanda! Please... I don’t want to die,” the victim was heard pleading, according to court documents that cite the video.
“You should have thought of that before,” Yolanda responded.
As she bled to death, she begged Yolanda to call 911. Instead, the perpetrator gathered her belongings and fled to Mexico in a silver SUV, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed.
A close friend of Yolanda’s told investigators that she received a text from the then-suspect the day after the murder.
“Becky came home and told me she was leaving me, she met someone else, all the messages were lies,” Yolanda wrote. “We had a big fight and I hurt her...I’m sorry.”
Yolanda Marodi’s Deadly Past
Rebecca wasn’t Yolanda’s first kill.
In October 2000, Yolanda fatally stabbed her then-husband, James Olejniczak Jr.
Olejniczak, 26, was a U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Pendelton in California.
According to the victim’s mother, Olejniczak was stabbed to death by his estranged wife five months after he filed for divorce and started seeing someone else.
Yolanda pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to nine years in prison. She was released on parole from the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, Calif., in November 2013.
It’s unclear if Rebecca knew about her wife’s sinister past.
“That’s been a big question,” admits Hutchins. “Because it just shocks me that if she knew, why would she still marry Yolanda? It just makes no sense.”
She continues, "Even though they say, ‘love is blind,’ I don't think Becky was that blind.”
Yolanda Marodi’s ‘Clear Pattern’ Of Taking People Out
At her arraignment in March 2025, Yolanda pleaded not guilty to murder and remained held without bail.
But one month ahead of her September 2026 trial, she reversed course and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as part of a plea agreement.
Yolanda was sentenced to a minimum of 36 years in prison.
Her prior voluntary manslaughter conviction was taken into consideration, say authorities.
“She has a clear pattern of taking out the people that she's supposed to care for,” Stephan says. "This is a person who, whenever things aren't going their way, they act out in violence.”
While there was no reported history of domestic violence between the couple, friends described Yolanda’s behavior as “controlling” and “isolating.”
“Yolanda and I would hang out, and all she would be doing was complaining about Becky. Then, in our group chats, she would respond for Becky,” their friend, Aisha Mahler Salinas Davis, previously told KGTV.
Stephan points out it’s common for “people that are in power positions” to be “reluctant to seek law enforcement and report that they themselves are victims.”
Rebecca’s death “really brought home the idea that no one is immune to domestic violence," she says. "She was a powerful fire captain, had served all her life, yet this hidden form of violence that happens in people's homes—domestic violence—took her life.”
More than a year after Rebecca’s death, loved ones say there’s not a day that goes by that she is not on their mind.
“It was an incredible honor to be her friend,” Hutchins says with tears. “The fact that she gave me that time in her life is just the best gift. And she will never, ever be forgotten.”
For help with or information about domestic abuse, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at (800) 799-SAFE (7233).
