A 54-year-old woman named Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi confessed on Tuesday to lethally stabbing her 49-year-old wife Rebecca “Becky” Marodi, in their Ramona, California home on February 17. Marodi was a lesbian captain for California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). Yolanda Marodi also stabbed her previous husband to death in 2011.
Rebecca Marodi was initially found in her home with severe stab wounds in her neck, chest, and abdomen. Home security footage partially captured the attack, showing Rebecca Marodi pleading for her life, and saying, “I don’t want to die,” with her wife replying, “You should have thought about that before.”
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Rebecca Marodi’s mother, who lived with the couple, contacted 911 after hearing the attack through the house’s live Ring camera feed. Minutes later, the camera captured Yolanda Marodi packing pets, luggage, and belongings into a silver SUV and then driving away, GO Magazine repoted.
The day after the attack, Yolanda Marodi reportedly texted to an acquaintance the next day, “Becky came home and told me she was leaving me, she met someone else, all the messages were lies. We had a big fight and I hurt her… I’m sorry.”
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Legal authorities arrested Yolanda Marodi at a hotel in Mexicali, a few miles from the southern US border, last March. She pled guilty to second-degree murder on Tuesday, will be sentenced on September 2, and faces up to 36 years to life in prison, GO Magazine reported.
Rebecca Marodi’s ex-wife, Lilia Phleger, told CBS News, “Yolanda was very jealous and did not want Becky to maintain friendships with other women.”
In 2004, Yolanda Marodi was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the stabbing death of her former-husband James Joseph Olejniczak. She only served 665 days of her sentence before being released.
Rebecca Marodi served over 30 years with Cal Fire, particularly in the counties of Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego. She received a promotion to the role of fire captain at Cal Fire Riverside’s Temecula station in 2022.
Cal Fire Battalion Chief Paul Selegue said of Rebecca Marodi, “She was never afraid to get involved with a person who needed help and she was always willing to extend herself to assist them.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 44% of lesbian women and 61% of bisexual women have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetime. This is higher than the 35% of straight women who have experienced IPV.
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