A fire captain told her wife she was leaving. The Ring camera recorded what happened next.
Ramona, California, February 17, 2025. Lorena Marodi came home from an evening with friends, noticed her daughter-in-law's car was gone, and found a trail of blood leading into the house. Just before 9 p.m. she called 911. Deputies found her daughter, Rebecca "Becky" Marodi, face down in a hallway. A firefighter arriving to take over life-saving measures recognized her: Rebecca, 49, was a Cal Fire captain with more than thirty years in the state firefighting agency, and weeks earlier she had been working the fires that burned through Los Angeles.
Within three days the San Diego County Sheriff's Department named a suspect: Rebecca's wife of a little more than two years, Yolanda Marodi, 53. Friends later told NBC 7 that the couple's circle had narrowed over the previous year. What those friends did not know was Yolanda's past. Under her former name, Yolanda Olejniczak, she had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the 2000 stabbing death of her then-husband in San Bernardino County, served prison time from 2004 until 2013, and came off parole in 2015.
According to the arrest-warrant declaration, Rebecca had told her mother the week before that she was ending the marriage. The house had a Ring camera on the patio, and the account belonged to Lorena, who handed it to detectives that night. A little after 8 p.m. it had recorded Rebecca running across the patio, calling for her mother, while a woman in a yellow shirt chased her. Rebecca reappeared with blood on her back and said, "Yolanda! Please. I don't want to die." The reply was recorded too: "You should have thought about that before." At 9:20 p.m. the front-door camera recorded Yolanda loading pets and luggage into a silver Chevrolet Equinox and driving away. Homeland Security records showed the same vehicle crossing into Mexico about an hour after the attack.
Three days after the killing, a witness handed investigators a text Yolanda had sent the day after Rebecca died: "Becky came home and told me she was leaving me… We had a big fight and I hurt her. I'm sorry." The U.S. Marshals' fugitive task force joined the search. Around March 21, 2025, Mexican authorities found Yolanda outside a hotel in Mexicali. She was handed over at the border, booked on suspicion of murder, and pleaded not guilty at her March 26 arraignment. At a preliminary hearing, testimony indicated Rebecca had suffered 23 stab wounds.
Trial was set for September 2026. Instead, on August 4, 2026, Yolanda Marodi pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and admitted the 2000 manslaughter as a prior serious felony, waiving her right to appeal the sentence. On September 2, 2026, in the East County courthouse in El Cajon, she was sentenced to 36 years to life in state prison. Second-degree murder carries 15 years to life in California; the prior strike doubled the base term and added years on top of it. She will be in her nineties before she is first eligible for parole.
Lorena Marodi told the court it had been the privilege of a lifetime to be Rebecca's mother. Yolanda did not speak, but submitted a letter apologizing to Lorena and saying the fault was hers alone. District Attorney Summer Stephan called it the vicious murder of a respected fire captain, and said the case showed no one is immune to domestic violence. If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.
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Sources and credits
FACTUAL SOURCES - San Diego County District Attorney, DA NewsCenter, "Ramona Wife Who Killed Fire Captain and Fled to Mexico Sentenced to Prison," Sept. 2, 2026 (36-years-to-life sentence; Aug. 4 plea one month before trial; DA Summer Stephan statement; DDAs Maura Duffey and Jared Coleman; "nearly two dozen" stab wounds; arrest in Mexico and extradition; National Domestic Violence Hotline). - NBC 7 San Diego / City News Service, "Woman who killed her wife, a Cal Fire captain, in Ramona sentenced to 36 years-to-life," Sept. 2, 2026 (plea details; prior voluntary manslaughter conviction; warrant text message; 23 stab wounds; Lorena Marodi, Deputy Angela Peratis and Det. Jessica Ricca preliminary-hearing testimony; Ring footage description; Equinox; border crossing; Mexicali arrest in the Ferrocarril neighborhood). - ABC7 Los Angeles / City News Service, "Woman who killed her fire captain wife is sentenced to 36 years to life," Sept. 3, 2026 (sentenced Wednesday; appeal waiver; victim impact statements from Lorena Marodi, Wendy Williams and Katie Stewart; Yolanda Marodi's letter to the court and its quoted passages). - ABC7 / City News Service, "Wife of slain Cal Fire captain admits to stabbing spouse, pleads guilty to second-degree murder," Aug. 6, 2026. - NBC 7 San Diego, Eric S. Page, "'Don't want to die' — Ring camera recorded killing of Cal Fire captain in Ramona," Feb. 25, 2025 (the arrest-warrant declaration by DA investigator Cecilia Markland: 911 call just before 9 p.m.; Ring footage timeline and quotes; 9:20 p.m. packing; DHS record of the vehicle entering Mexico; the next-day text; Crime Stoppers reward; fundraisers in Ramona and Temecula; prior conviction and Feb. 2004–Nov. 2013 prison term). - NBC 7 San Diego, "Cal Fire captain's wife, now at-large suspect in her death, previously killed husband," Feb. 20, 2025 (Sheriff's Department identification of the suspect; 2013 Chevrolet Equinox, plate 8BQJ420; U.S. Marshals fugitive task force; Baja California Secretary of Citizen Security statement; Jim Olejniczak, October 2000; parole discharge 2015; Battalion Chief Paul Selegue). - NBC 7 San Diego, Allison Ash, "Friends of slain Cal Fire captain relieved after wife's arrest in Mexico," Mar. 24, 2025 (arrest outside a Mexicali hotel; Ami and Aisha Mahler; U.S. Marshals processing; arraignment). - Where sources differ on where Rebecca was pronounced dead (at the scene per the DA and Sheriff; at Sharp Hospital per the warrant as reported), the narration says only that she did not survive. Where the plea year for the 2000 case is reported as 2003 or 2004, the narration uses the Feb. 2004 prison-entry date from corrections records. VISUALS - Rebecca and Yolanda Marodi together: the identification photo widely published across coverage of this case (hosted by NBC 7 San Diego) — opening slide, Facebook teaser card. - Capt. Rebecca Marodi in front of a Riverside County engine: Cal Fire / Riverside County Fire Department photo widely published for identification (via NBC 7) — used for the thumbnail and closing slide. - Yolanda Marodi: San Diego County Sheriff's Office photo released with the Feb. 20, 2025 be-on-the-lookout (via NBC 7). - 2013 Chevrolet Equinox: photo released by the San Diego County Sheriff's Department during the search (via NBC 7). - Yolanda Marodi after arrest, in front of a Baja California Secretaría de Seguridad Ciudadana backdrop: agency-released arrest photo (via NBC 7). - "Fire Captain Rebecca Marodi, June 14, 1975 – February 17, 2025" memorial image: released by Cal Fire and by the San Diego County DA's Office with its Sept. 2, 2026 release. - Hills near Ramona: Matt Howard / Unsplash, CC0, Wikimedia Commons. - Cal Fire engine: CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons (not her unit). - Ring video doorbell: Ring, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. - San Diego County Sheriff's vehicles: CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. - Traffic at the San Ysidro border crossing: CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons (not the night in question). - Street in Mexicali: CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons (not the hotel). - Prison corridor (CC BY 2.0), legal gavel (CC BY 2.0), Lady Justice (Bhullargraphic, CC BY-SA 4.0): Wikimedia Commons, illustrative. - Suburban street, phone, evidence recovery team (IAEA Imagebank, CC BY 2.0), handcuffs/arrest (U.S. Army, public domain), San Diego County Courthouse (CC BY 2.0): licensed/public-domain stock reused from earlier videos in this series — all illustrative, none depicting this case. No news-broadcast footage was used. NBC 7's own photograph of the scene was not used. The Ring footage itself has never been publicly released and does not appear. AMAZON AFFILIATE NOTE Tag: truecrimecases-20 (from .env), applied 2026-09-04. This is a RUNG-3 tagged SEARCH URL, not a product link: a WebSearch on 2026-09-04 for a book about this case returned no Amazon listing (the case was sentenced two days before this video), and no verified high-rated book about the specific thing that broke the case applies. No ASIN is used, so nothing to run through scripts/verify_book.py. Full-length amazon.com URL, no amzn.to short link. No placeholders anywhere in this file.