Friends of slain Cal Fire captain give glimpse into ‘controlling’ marriage to fugitive wife
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Ami Mahler Salinas Davis first met Yolanda Marodi a few years ago while playing on the same kickball team.
One day in 2022, they got to talking and Yolanda learned that Ami rode motorcycles, then told her that she had to meet her wife, Rebecca Marodi.
“As soon as we met, we were locked in,” Ami said about Rebecca, 49, known as Beck or Becky to her friends. “We’re very similar humans. We both like to help people and we both like riding our motorcycles. We’re kindred spirits.”
Ami, 37, and her wife, Aisha, 33, quickly befriended the Marodis, who had just gotten married. Sometimes when Ami and Rebecca would ride their motorcycles together, Aisha and 53-year-old Yolanda would stay behind and garden.
For a time, the couples did everything together. They went to the movies, camped and even had a group chat.
“The first year and a half, there was nothing [suspicious],” Ami said. “It was nice to be with another couple that seemed to be like me and my wife.”
Then, something changed around the middle of last year. Yolanda was diagnosed with lupus and the couples began to drift apart. Ami and Aisha figured that Yolanda was too sick to socialize and that Rebecca, who had been a captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, was exhausted from her job.
When Aisha would spend time with just Yolanda, she would complain about how close Rebecca was with her mother, who lived with the couple in Ramona. Sometimes, when Ami asked Rebecca if she wanted to ride bikes together, she said she’d need to get permission from Yolanda first, because she often controlled with whom the couple spent time.
“Because ... Beck was her mom’s sole caretaker, Yolanda was trying to isolate Beck and that was hard to do,” Ami said.
Another time, Ami and Rebecca came up with the idea to run a small business together. Aisha recalled that the moment she and Yolanda were alone together in the car, Yolanda told her: “There’s no way in hell I’m letting Becky do that.”
“Why not?” Aisha asked. “It’s a cool thing they could do together and get out of the house.”
“Becky is too much of a flirt,” Yolanda said. “I don’t trust her out and about doing that.”
Yolanda Marodi, 53, is at large and authorities are asking for the public’s help in locating her. She is wanted in the murder of her wife, Rebecca Marodi.
Eventually, Ami confronted Rebecca about Yolanda’s “controlling, isolating behavior,” she said. She told her friend that she wasn’t as bubbly or outgoing as she used to be. After their talk, Rebecca stopped confiding about Yolanda.
Aisha said that when she learned that Rebecca was found stabbed to death on Feb. 17 at the couple’s home, she thought that Yolanda had to be responsible. Authorities say Yolanda fled to Mexico the night of the killing.
“I thought I could see her doing that out of a crime of passion,” Aisha said. “The more I find out, the less I understand what I thought I knew about her as her friend. I don’t know that person.”
Rebecca’s mother, Lorena Marodi, told detectives Rebecca had informed Yolanda a week before her killing that she was ending their marriage, according to an arrest warrant. In home security video that detectives reviewed, Rebecca was seen with blood on her back running from a woman believed to be Yolanda.
“Yolanda! Please...! I don’t want to die!” Rebecca screamed, according to the warrant. The other woman also had blood on her arms.
“You should have thought of that before,” the woman responded while standing over Rebecca holding a knife, according to the warrant.
According to detectives, this is the second time that Yolanda Marodi has killed her spouse.
In 2004, she was convicted of killing her then-husband, James Joseph Olejniczak, according to court records. She pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was in prison from 2004 to 2013.
Yolanda didn’t reveal any of this to Ami and Aisha, and had always portrayed herself as a victim in her stories. She had mentioned previous girlfriends and her children, but never details about her ex-husband or the fact that he was deceased.
“We had a lot of conversations about trauma but it was always framed as if she was a survivor of terrible relationships or her upbringing,” Ami said.
Yolanda Marodi, who is suspected in the slaying of her wife, a Cal Fire captain, pleaded guilty in 2004 to voluntary manslaughter in the fatal stabbing of her then-husband.
Andrea Winter, 48, who had been Rebecca’s close friend for nearly a decade, also didn’t know about Yolanda’s history. Rebecca never mentioned it to her, Winter suspects, because she knew that Winter would have confronted her about Yolanda’s red flags, especially before the couple got married.
“I’m a very straight shooter,” Winter said. “I would’ve called her out so fast for that. I would’ve asked, ‘What are you doing? What are you thinking?’”
Yolanda and Rebecca’s relationship moved quickly at the beginning, which wasn’t unusual for Rebecca, Winter said. Yolanda seemed quiet and reserved at first but eventually started to trust Winter, who ended up signing the couple’s marriage certificate.
“If Yolanda didn’t like you, you were not going to associate with her or Becky,” Winter said. “She would’ve cut you out of their life swiftly.”
Winter suspects that she was one of the few people who Yolanda allowed into their inner circle because Yolanda didn’t view her as a romantic threat. Winter is heterosexual and married to her husband.
Rebecca had other friends who were gay women and whom she had met through her previous relationships. After she and Yolanda started dating, Yolanda didn’t want Rebecca spending time with those friends anymore, Winter said.
“Yolanda was very insecure,” Winter said. “Becky has this magnetic personality and everybody liked her. I think Yolanda was very jealous of that and that Becky was this bright light.”
Rebecca tended to gravitate in relationships toward “wounded birds,” Winter said, adding that Yolanda’s troubled history probably drew her in even more.
“Some of Becky’s professional life trickled into her personal life,” Winter said. “At work, she literally saved lives and I think she had a hard time differentiating between the two because she gravitated toward partners who needed repair and a lot of help.”
Yolanda’s current whereabouts are unknown.
In home security video that detectives reviewed while investigating the killing, Rebecca Marodi is seen running from a woman believed to be her wife, a warrant states.
Former FBI profiler Greg McCrary said that people often go to familiar places when they are under a lot of stress and that authorities would focus on who Yolanda knows in Mexico and where she might be hiding out.
McCrary said that officials should also consider that because this could be Yolanda’s second offense, she might have a higher risk for suicide because she doesn’t want to end up behind bars for the rest of her life.
“That makes it all the more potentially dangerous because she knows now if she comes back and is convicted, that’ll be a lifelong prison sentence based on her previous conviction,” he said. “She has a lot to lose. That ups the danger.”
Yolanda fled to Mexico with the couple’s two dogs, Winter said. Yolanda also had some friends and family in southern Mexico. In recent years, Yolanda and Rebecca had taken a trip to Tequila, Mexico, with Yolanda’s daughter from her first marriage. They had brought back Ami and Aisha a bottle of tequila as a souvenir.
Winter regrets not speaking up when she noticed Rebecca starting to change over the last year. 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. Her phone calls and text messages lessened and gradually, the depth of their conversations shifted.
Winter thought it wasn’t her place to question Rebecca about her marriage, but going forward, said she would do things differently if she noticed a friend’s social habits change or if their partner was being controlling and jealous.
“Becky was a kind person and paid the absolute price for that by trusting the wrong person,” she said.
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