Ami Mahler Salinas Davis met Yolanda Marodi for the first time a few years ago while playing in the same Kickball team.
One day in 2022, they began to speak and Yolanda learned that Ami has led motorcycles, then told her that she had to meet his wife, Rebecca Marodi.
Yolanda Marodi, also known as Yolanda Olejniczak, is a suspect in the death of his wife.
(Bureau of the Sheriff of the County of San Diego)
“As soon as we met, we were locked up,” said friend about Rebecca, 49, known as Beck or Becky to his friends. “We are very similar humans. We both like to help people and we all like to roll on our motorcycles. We are spirits.
Friend, 37, and his wife, Aisha, 33, quickly became friends with the Marodis, who had just married. Sometimes when Ami and Rebecca led their motorcycles together, Aisha and Yolanda, 53, remained behind and Garden.
For a while, couples have done everything together. They went to the cinema, camped and even had a group conversation.
“The first year and a half, there was nothing (suspect),” said friend. “It was nice to be with another couple who seemed to be like me and my wife.”
Then something changed in the middle of last year. Yolanda was diagnosed with lupus and couples began to depart. Friend and Aisha thought that Yolanda was too sick to socialize and that Rebecca, who had been captain of the Forestry and California fire protection department, was exhausted by his work.
When Aisha spent time with Just Yolanda, she would complain about Rebecca’s proximity to her mother, who lived with the couple in Ramona. Sometimes when friends asked Rebecca if she wanted to bike together, she said she had to get Yolanda’s permission first, because she often controlled with whom the couple spent time.
“Because … Beck was his mother’s only goalkeeper, Yolanda was trying to isolate Beck and it was difficult to do,” said friend.
Another time, Friend and Rebecca had the idea of managing a small business together. Aisha recalled that the moment when she and Yolanda were alone together in the car, Yolanda had said to her: “There is no way to hell, I let Becky do that.”
“Why not?” Asked Aisha. “It’s a cool thing that they could do together and get out of the house.”
“Becky is too a flirt,” said Yolanda. “I don’t trust him and do that.”
Finally, Ami faced Rebecca about the “control and isolation behavior” of Yolanda, she said. She told her friend that she was not as sparkling or outgoing as it was. After their speech, Rebecca ceased to confide in Yolanda.
Aisha said that when she learned that Rebecca was found stabbed to death on February 17 at the couple’s home, she thought that Yolanda should be responsible. The authorities say that Yolanda fled to Mexico on the night of the murder.
“I thought I could see her doing this by a crime of passion,” said Aisha. “The more I discover I, the less I understand what I thought I knew of her as her friend. I don’t know that person.
Rebecca’s mother Lorena Marodi told the detectives that Rebecca had informed Yolanda a week before her murder that she ended their marriage, according to an arrest warrant. In a home security video that detectives examined, Rebecca was seen with blood on her back, running a woman who is Yolanda.
“Yolanda! Please…! I don’t want to die! Rebecca shouted, according to the mandate. The other woman also had blood on her arms.
“You should have thought about it before,” replied the woman, standing above Rebecca holding a knife, depending on the mandate.
According to detectives, this is the second time that Yolanda Marodi has killed his spouse.
In 2004, she was convicted of having killed her husband at the time, James Joseph Olejniczak, according to the judicial archives. She pleaded guilty of voluntary homicide and was in prison from 2004 to 2013.
Yolanda revealed none of this to friend and Aisha, and had always spent a victim in his stories. She had mentioned the previous friends and her children, but never the details of her ex-husband or because he had died.
“We have had a lot of conversations on trauma, but it has always been designed as if she was a survivor of terrible relationships or her education,” said friend.
Andrea Winter, 48, who was the close friend of Rebecca for almost a decade, did not know the story of Yolanda either. Rebecca never mentioned her, the winter suspects, because she knew that winter would have confronted her with red flags from Yolanda, especially before the couple married.
“I am a very straight shooter,” said Winter. “I would have called her so quickly for that. I would have asked, “What are you doing?” What do you think? »»
Yolanda’s relationship and Rebecca quickly took place at first, which was not unusual for Rebecca, Winter said. Yolanda seemed silent and reserved at first, but finally started to trust Winter, who ended up signing the couple’s wedding certificate.
“If Yolanda did not love you, you did not go to associate with her or Becky,” said Winter. “She would have cut you quickly in their lives.”
Winter suspects that she was one of the few people Yolanda made it possible to enter their inner circle because Yolanda did not consider her a romantic threat. Winter is heterosexual and married to her husband.
Rebecca had other friends who were homosexual women and whom she had met through her previous relations. After she and Yolanda started going out together, Yolanda only wanted Rebecca to spend time with these friends, Winter said.
“Yolanda was not very little sure,” said Winter. “Becky has this magnetic personality and everyone loved him. I think Yolanda was very jealous of it and that Becky was this brilliant light. »»
Rebecca tended to gravitate in relations to “injured birds,” said Winter, adding that Yolanda’s troubled history probably attracted it even more.
“Part of Becky’s professional life has flowed into his personal life,” said Winter. “At work, she literally saved lives and I think she had a hard time differentiating herself between the two because she gravity towards partners who needed reparation and a lot of help.”
Yolanda’s current fate is unknown.
The former FBI profileur, Greg McCrary, said that people often go to familiar places when they are subject to a lot of stress and that the authorities would focus on what Yolanda knows in Mexico and where she could hide.
McCrary said that officials should also consider that, because it could be Yolanda’s second offense, she could have a higher risk of suicide because she does not want to find herself behind bars for the rest of her life.
“It makes him even more dangerous because she now knows that if she returns and is condemned, it will be a life sentence according to her previous conviction,” he said. “She has a lot to lose. This increases the danger.
Yolanda fled to Mexico with the couple’s two dogs, Winter said. Yolanda also had friends and family in southern Mexico. In recent years, Yolanda and Rebecca had made a trip to Tequila, Mexico, with Yolanda’s daughter of her first marriage. They had brought back friends and Aisha a bottle of tequila as a memory.
Winter regrets not to speak when she noticed that Rebecca was starting to change in the past year. Winter said that when she invites the couple, they refuse or cancel at the last minute. And Rebecca, who was driving in winter on the problems in her marriage, has stopped communicating as much. His telephone calls and SMS have decreased and gradually, the depth of their conversations has changed.
Winter thought it was not her place to question Rebecca about her marriage, but in the future said that she would do things differently if she noticed that a friend’s social habits change or their partner was controlling and jealous.
“Becky was a nice person and paid for the absolute price for it by trusting the bad person,” she said.
California Daily Newspapers
