Wife pleads guilty in stabbing death of fire captain after hiding out in Mexico

Wife pleads guilty in stabbing death of fire captain after hiding out in Mexico Summer Lin Los Angeles Times August 6, 2026 - 9:25 am LOS ANGELES — For the second time, Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi has been found blameworthy of stabbing a spouse — sometimes with a knife. On Tuesday in San Diego County Superior Court, Olejniczak Marodi, 54, confessed to stabbing her wife, 49‑year‑old Cal Fire Capt. Rebecca Marodi, at their Ramona residence on Feb. 17, 2025, according to Tanya Sierra, spokesperson for the San Diego County district attorney’s office. Olejniczak Marodi pleaded guilty to second‑degree murder and said she used a weapon in the killing, Sierra said. She is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 2 and faces up to 36 years to life in prison. Olejniczak Marodi has a prior conviction for a violent crime. In 2004 she was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the fatal stabbing of her then‑husband, James Joseph Olejniczak, according to court records. She served time from 2004 until 2013. Rebecca Marodi was a decorated captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and helped fight the Eaton fire. She was found stabbed to death in her home. She and Olejniczak Marodi had been married for just over two years. On Feb. 17, Rebecca Marodi’s mother, Lorena, called 911, saying her daughter had been stabbed at their home on Rancho Villa Road, according to an arrest warrant obtained by KABC‑TV News. Detectives arrived to find Rebecca Marodi suffering stab wounds to her neck, chest and abdomen; they attempted life‑saving measures but she was pronounced dead at the scene. Lorena, who lived with her daughter, told detectives that Rebecca Marodi had told Olejniczak Marodi a week earlier that she was ending their marriage, the warrant states. In home‑security video that detectives reviewed the following day, Rebecca Marodi is seen moving away from a woman believed to be Olejniczak Marodi, the warrant states. “Yolanda! Please … ! I don’t privation to die!” Rebecca Marodi screamed, before appearing on video with blood on her back, according to the warrant. Olejniczak Marodi is seen with blood on her arms. “You should person thought of that before,” Olejniczak Marodi responded while standing over Rebecca Marodi holding a knife, according to the warrant. Olejniczak Marodi was captured on the security camera gathering pets and luggage and loading them into a Chevrolet Equinox SUV, according to the warrant. She drove away and her vehicle was logged by the Department of Homeland Security entering Mexico early that night. Over a period later, Olejniczak Marodi was arrested at a hotel in the Ferrocarril neighborhood of Mexicali, according to the Baja California Citizen Security Secretariat. Mexican authorities immigration agents transported Olejniczak Marodi to the U.S. border, where she was released to marshals, according to a press release from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office. She was booked into custody in San Diego on suspicion of murder, authorities said. Friends of Rebecca Marodi said that Olejniczak Marodi exhibited “controlling, isolating behavior” prior to the murder. They also said that Rebecca Marodi did not tell them about Olejniczak Marodi’s criminal past or stabbing of her former husband. “Yolanda was precise insecure,” Andrea Winter, who had been Rebecca’s close friend for about a decade, told The Times. “Becky has this magnetic property and everybody liked her. I deliberation Yolanda was precise jealous of that and that Becky was this agleam light.” Winter said that she noticed Rebecca starting to change in the year before the murder. Winter said that when she would invite the couple over, they would decline or cancel at the last minute. And Rebecca, who used to confide in Winter about problems in her marriage, stopped communicating as much. “Becky was a benignant idiosyncratic and paid the implicit terms for that by trusting the incorrect person,” Winter said.