Olejniczak Marodi served decade for husband’s 2000 stabbing death
Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi, 54, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to second-degree murder in the stabbing death of her wife, Rebecca “Becky” Marodi, 49, at the couple’s home in Ramona, near San Diego, in February 2025. Rebecca Marodi, a Cal Fire captain assigned to the French Valley Cal Fire station in Riverside County, had fought the Eaton blaze that killed 19 people about a month before she died. She was found with multiple stab wounds to her neck, chest and back, and she had said she wanted to end the marriage.
A warrant for Olejniczak Marodi’s arrest was issued days after the killing. Detectives said home security footage showed Rebecca Marodi running from her wife of two years, screaming: “Yolanda! Please! I don’t want to die!” According to investigators, Olejniczak Marodi, who was seen holding a knife and with blood on her arms in the surveillance film, replied: “You should have thought of that before.”
According to a warrant seen by ABC News, Olejniczak Marodi was captured on video loading “pets, random items and some luggage” into an SUV. About 75 minutes after the attack, records from homeland security showed her crossing the nearby border into Mexico. Investigators later found that she had messaged a friend: “Rebecca came home and told me she was leaving me. We had a big fight, and I hurt her. I’m sorry.”
This was not her first conviction in a spouse’s stabbing death. Olejniczak Marodi was in prison from 2004 to 2013 after being convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 2000 stabbing death of her then-husband, Jim Olejniczak. He, too, had recently informed her he was ending the marriage.
After she fled this time, Mexican law enforcement officers arrested Olejniczak Marodi at a hotel in Mexicali in March 2025. She was later handed over to US Marshals in San Diego and booked on suspicion of murder. She initially pleaded not guilty.
Andrea Winter, a friend of Rebecca, told the Los Angeles Times that Olejniczak Marodi was jealous of her wife’s popularity and exhibited “controlling, isolating behavior” prior to the killing. Winter said Rebecca had not disclosed that her wife had been convicted of stabbing her previous husband to death.
“Yolanda was very insecure,” Winter told the outlet. “Becky has this magnetic personality and everybody liked her. I think Yolanda was very jealous of that and that Becky was this bright light.”
“Becky was a kind person and paid the absolute price for that by trusting the wrong person,” Winter added.
Olejniczak Marodi is scheduled to be sentenced on September 2 and faces 36 years to life in state prison.