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- A North Carolina man has been charged in connection to the disappearance of his girlfriend, who vanished without a trace nearly 10 years ago. Ronald D. Roldan, 40, was charged with abduction and extradited from North Carolina to Virginia this week, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office announced in a press release Tuesday.
www.oxygen.com/crime-news/bethany-decker-disappearance-boyfriend-ronald-roldan-charged-with-abductionBethany Decker Disappearance: Boyfriend Ronald Roldan Charged ...
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Oct 19, 2023 · Who is Ronald Roldan? Born in the early 1980s, Ronald Roldan is a Bolivian national who moved to the States when he was 11 years old. He met Bethany Decker when he moved in near her apartment, and by that time, he was a father to at least four children from three different women.
- Overview
- Panic after a physical fight
- Who sent the Facebook messages?
- A chance to get to the truth
In November 2020, Ronald Roldan had almost finished a prison sentence for a nearly fatal assault on a girlfriend when a warrant for his arrest was issued in the death of Bethany Decker.
Although authorities in Virginia had long suspected Roldan in the death of Decker, 21 — who was pregnant with her second child when she vanished on Jan. 29, 2011 — her body hadn’t been found, and Roldan was never charged. Then, this year, he confessed to the killing.
The admission, which came in a roughly four-hour interview in January with a prosecutor and the lead detective, was a key part of a plea agreement Roldan had made with authorities two months before: In exchange for his account of Decker’s death, he was allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder and be sentenced to 12½ years.
Decker’s mother supported the deal, believing the interview would reveal the truth about what happened to her daughter.
But in recent interviews, authorities told NBC’s “Dateline” that they believe Roldan lied when he confessed that Decker’s death was accidental. Video of Roldan’s interview, first reported by “Dateline,” shows the lead detective challenging Roldan, telling him that his account didn’t add up and that it appeared he tried to cover up the killing by posing as Decker on Facebook and elsewhere and sending messages after she vanished.
“It’s disappointing to not get the truth,” Loudoun County Sheriff’s Detective Mark Bush told “Dateline.” “What I got from him was I got an admission that he did it.”
In the video, Roldan said he and Decker — a waitress enrolled at George Mason University whom her mother recalled as an inquisitive, adventurous and natural parent — got into an argument about whether she’d work that January day at Carrabba’s, the restaurant where they met and both worked.
At the time, Roldan said, he and Decker were in the living room of the apartment they shared in Ashburn, Virginia, roughly 30 miles northwest of Washington.
Roldan said he lightly shoved Decker. She tripped over her feet, he said, hitting her head on a windowsill as she tumbled to the ground. She wasn’t bleeding, Roldan said, but he felt no breath when he placed two fingers beneath her nose.
Roldan told officials he couldn’t recall how long he spent trying to figure out whether Decker was dead. He said he provided no lifesaving measures and didn’t call authorities, who he feared “would not believe what I had to say.”
In a state of panic, Roldan said, he grabbed a Christmas tree removal bag from the kitchen and shoved Decker’s body into it. That afternoon, he dumped the bag in the apartment building’s trash compactor, he told officials in the interview.
In the video, Bush, the detective, said investigators found no marks or scrapings on the windowsill to corroborate Decker’s account.
Bush also pointed to messages that he said Roldan sent to Decker’s family and friends as evidence that the killing was more sinister than Roldan portrayed.
The messages, many of which were sent on Facebook in the weeks after Decker’s disappearance, all had what Bush described as the "same tone” — “Bethany screwed up, Bethany lied and that Ronald was the best thing that ever happened to Bethany,” Bush told “Dateline.” “Bethany was going to take some time alone and be away and that she couldn’t tell anybody where she was.”
Briefly, Decker’s family found the messages somewhat comforting, her mother said, noting that she thought they’d been her daughter’s way of reaching out. But that comfort turned to anxiety because the messages didn’t sound like they were from Decker, she said.
Another point of concern was Decker’s car: It was parked crookedly in her building’s lot, with a flat tire and covered in dust, Nelson said. When the family realized that no one had actually seen Decker since late January, they reported her missing. That was three days after the messages began — on Feb. 16, 2011.
Authorities had long been suspicious of the messages, Bush said, but investigators had never been able to prove Roldan sent them. In earlier interviews with authorities, he denied having had anything to do with Decker’s disappearance, and there wasn’t enough evidence to link him to what authorities had come to believe was a homicide, Bush said.
Law enforcement had also interviewed Decker’s husband and considered him a person of interest, Bush said. Although his name appeared in media reports, he had a solid alibi, and the case languished, even after Roldan pleaded guilty in 2016 to felony assault in the shooting of another woman, Vickey Willoughby.
Just before Roldan’s sentence for assaulting Willoughby was up, authorities in Loudoun County issued an arrest warrant accusing him of abduction in Decker’s killing. He was transferred to the county jail and indicted later on a second-degree murder charge.
As authorities prepared for trial, they talked with Decker’s family about the possibility of taking a different path — of skipping what Kim Nelson described as the “big burden” of a lengthy, uncertain court case and getting something that Decker’s family had longed for since she vanished: the truth.
The family agreed, and authorities eventually reached a deal with Roldan’s lawyers, Clark Nelson said. Roldan would serve 12 ½ years in prison and submit to a “debrief” — a post-conviction interview in which he would lay out what happened and Decker’s family could provide her with questions for him.
Many of the questions revolved around whether Decker suffered and what happened to her body, the prosecutor said.
But there was a catch. Authorities would have to accept the account Roldan put forward, Bush said. They’d be allowed to challenge it, he said, but they wouldn’t be allowed to verify it as a condition of the agreement.
Lawyers for Roldan didn’t respond to requests for comment.
- Breaking News Reporter
- 1 min
Feb 21, 2023 · Bethany Decker was five months pregnant when her boyfriend, Ronald Roldan killed her. Now he's going on the record with his version of the murder.
- Drew Wilder
On January 29, 2011, Bethany Anne Decker (née Littlejohn; [1] born May 13, 1989) left her grandparents' home and returned to her apartment in Ashburn, Virginia. Her then-boyfriend, Ronald Roldan, claimed he saw her there later that day. She has not been seen since.
Feb 22, 2023 · Ronald Roldan, the Loudoun County man who pleaded guilty to murdering his pregnant girlfriend over a decade ago, was sentenced Tuesday in a Leesburg courtroom.
Feb 21, 2023 · For years, friends and family of Bethany Anne Decker suspected Ronald Dennis Roldan killed her in 2011, but because her body was never found, their agony was compounded by uncertainty.
Feb 21, 2023 · NEW: Ron Roldan will have to serve 12.5 years in prison for the murder of Bethany Decker. Today we learned Roldan disposed of her body using a Christmas tree trash bag.
