Yolanda Marodi, a 54-year-old California woman, has admitted to killing her wife, Rebecca Marodi, in a case that has stunned many people and reopened questions about her past.
Yolanda pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a San Diego courtroom after admitting she used a knife to kill Rebecca, a respected fire captain, inside their home on February 17, 2025. According to prosecutors, the confession came more than a year after the shocking death of her wife, who was 49 years old.
The case became even more disturbing when authorities revealed that Yolanda had previously been convicted of killing her husband decades earlier. The two incidents reportedly involved similar methods, making the situation even more unbelievable. It is the kind of detail that makes people wonder how such a dark pattern could repeat itself.
Rebecca, a captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, was found with stab wounds to her neck, chest and abdomen when police were called to the couple’s $950,000 Ramona four-bedroom, three-bathroom home.
Surveillance footage seemingly captured the moments leading up to Rebecca’s death, as she pleaded with her wife and told her she did not want to die.
Yolanda now faces 36-years-to-life in prison for Rebecca’s murder. She is scheduled to be sentenced on September 2.
The details of Rebecca’s grisly murder echoed eerily similar to the way Yolanda stabbed her first partner, then-husband James J Olejniczak Jr, to death in October 2000.
She was sentenced in that case to 11 years in state prison but was only in custody from February 2004 through November 2013.
Yolanda, who identifies as bisexual, now faces the consequences of her actions as she awaits sentencing.
Rebecca had told Yolanda that she was leaving her and ending their marriage about one week prior to the fatal stabbing, per a February 2025 arrest warrant.
Surveillance video captured Yolanda chasing after her wife on the patio around 8.10pm that day.
According to the warrant, a seemingly bloodied Rebecca was heard pleading, ‘Yolanda! Please… I don’t want to die.’
‘You should have thought about that before,’ Yolanda replied, according to the warrant.
The Ring camera footage captured Yolanda standing in front of Rebecca, seemingly with a knife in her right hand and with apparent blood spattered over her arms.
About ten minutes after the couple was last seen entering the home, Yolanda gathered her items, pets and luggage into a silver Chevrolet Equinox SUV and fled, per the warrant.
Yolanda also texted a ‘known associate’ of hers after killing Rebecca, the document continued.
‘Becky came home and told me she was leaving me, she met someone else, all the messages were lies,’ Yolanda wrote.
She added: ‘We had a big fight and I hurt her… I’m sorry.’
The details surrounding Rebecca’s murder appeared similar to how Yolanda killed Olejniczak Jr, her first husband, in 2000.
For Yolanda Marodi, the next chapter will likely be spent in prison. For Rebecca Marodi’s family and friends, the focus remains on remembering the woman she was rather than the tragedy that took her away.
