Bethany Anne Decker (née: Littlejohn) was a young woman who vanished from Virginia in 2011.
Her boyfriend has been charged with her abduction and murder. He was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison.
Background[]
Bethany was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on May 13, 1989. She studied global and economic change at George Mason University in Fairfax while also working at Carrabba's Italian Grill to support herself. While at university, she met an Army National Guardsman named Emil Decker, whom she married and had a son. Emil was often deployed to Afghanistan for months at a time, so Bethany would let her son stay with his paternal grandparents while his father was away.
While working at the restaurant, Bethany met and began dating Ronald Roldan, a 30-year-old Bolivian immigrant. When she moved into an apartment on Orchard Grass Terrace in Ashburn, Virginia, in late 2010 because of issues within her marriage, he moved in with her. According to her family, Ronald quickly became abusive, controlling and possessive of Bethany. He would demand she send him photographic evidence of who she was with several times a day, and on one occasion, he had threatened to cut her open. This concerned her family so much that they made a plan to help her leave the relationship.
Case[]
Bethany was last seen in Loudoun County, Virginia, on January 29, 2011. The previous day, she had returned from a week-long trip to Hawaii with her husband, Emil, and spent the night with her in-laws. The next morning, Emil saw Bethany before she left for her apartment, and Ronald claims to have seen her at the apartment. She also made a call to her employer to confirm her work schedule, indicating that she was not planning to go missing. Bethany's bank account, email account and cell phone have been inactive since January 29. There have been no records of her ever leaving the United States or of her giving birth.
Bethany had a busy life and was not always good at keeping in touch with her friends and family, so they were not initially alarmed when she didn't contact them. She did not see Emil off at the airport when he departed for Afghanistan on February 7. However, he was not overly concerned, as he was aware that they were experiencing difficulties in their relationship. However, when multiple people came forward to report receiving strange messages from Bethany's Facebook account and believed someone was using it to impersonate her, her family noticed that something was amiss and decided to check on her on February 19. They found her car dusty and parked at an odd angle with a flat tire in front of her apartment. When they found she wasn't inside, they reported her missing to law enforcement.
Investigators spoke to both Emil and Ronald because they thought either of them could have had a motivation to harm her. According to Ronald, he had moved out of the apartment when the lease had expired.
On November 9, 2020, the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office obtained a warrant for Roldan's arrest for Bethany's abduction. A second warrant was served against Ronald for Bethany's presumed murder in December 2020. He is currently being held at the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center.
Characteristics[]
- Shoulder-length brown hair.
- Brown eyes.
- Pierced ears.
- Small tattoo of a Hawaiian rainbow man on or slightly above left ankle.
- Four to five months pregnant.
Gallery[]
Sources[]
- Bethany Decker on Wikipedia
- Bethany Decker at the Charley Project
- Bethany Decker at NamUs
- WTOPnews