Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings

The Disappearance of Bethany Decker

Bethany Decker (born Bethany Anne Littlejohn; born May 13, 1989 – disappeared January 29, 2011) is an American missing person. On January 29, 2011, Decker left her grandparents' home and returned to her apartment in Ashburn, Virginia. Her boyfriend, Ronald Roldan, says he saw her there later that day. She has not been seen since.

While Decker did not show up at her job or classes she took at nearby George Mason University, her absence was not noted for another three weeks, since messages to her friends purportedly from her continued to be posted on her Facebook account. After her family noted her absence otherwise, they found her car parked near her apartment. Apart from the Facebook posts, there had been no other evidence she had done anything since the day she was last seen. They reported her missing to Loudoun County police. Decker was five months pregnant at the time of her disappearance. Extensive searches have found no trace of her or the child she might have given birth to.

Roldan, who had a criminal record prior to the disappearance, is considered a person of interest in the case. In 2015, he was arrested in North Carolina and charged with the attempted murder of another girlfriend after he shot her during an incident in 2014; he has not said anything about the Decker case. After she recovered, the victim claimed on the Dr. Phil show that he had made statements to her that might implicate him in Decker's disappearance. Roldan pled guilty to two lesser charges in 2016; after he serves his sentence, he will be deported to his native Bolivia. The incident has been the subject of a segment of the Investigation Discovery channel series Disappeared.

Background

A native of Fredericksburg, Virginia, Bethany Decker attended George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax after graduating high school. She majored in global and economic change while working full-time. During her time at GMU, she became pregnant by Emile Decker, an Army National Guardsman. The two married in 2009; their son was born six months later. Emile was often deployed to Afghanistan with his unit for months at a time. During those times, Decker often left the boy with her in-laws in Columbia, Maryland, while she worked and attended classes.

While working at a Centreville Italian restaurant, Decker met Ronald Roldan, a Bolivian immigrant then around 30, and began an extramarital affair with him. By late 2010, there were strains in the Deckers' marriage; Bethany moved to a separate apartment in Ashburn, Virginia. The relationship with Roldan soon followed, and he moved in with her. According to her family, Decker quickly found that Roldan was abusive, possessive, and controlling. Several times a day, he demanded that she send him a picture of herself from her cellphone to show who she was with. Her parents began developing a plan to get her out of the relationship. By the end of the year, she was pregnant.

Disappearance

In January 2011, Emile came back from his deployment for a month-long leave. Near the end of that period, he and Bethany went on a vacation to Hawaii for a week. They returned on January 28 and spent the night at his parents' home in Maryland. Emile's parents were unaware of the couple's marital difficulties.

The next morning, Emile saw Decker before she went back to the Ashburn apartment. Roldan said he saw her there later that afternoon. Since then, no one else is known to have seen her. During that day, Decker called her employer to confirm her work schedule for the coming week, the last known contact she has had with anyone other than Emile or Roldan.

On February 2, Emile's leave ended and he returned to Afghanistan. Friends who came to see him off at the airport noted that unlike previous such occasions, Decker was not there. They attributed her absence to the couple's marital problems.

Investigation

Friends and family say Decker did her best to keep in contact with them. But due to her busy life, balancing her classes in what was to be her final semester at GMU with a full-time job, they had gotten used to not hearing from her for several days at a time, so they were not worried as February 2011 began without any news from her. However, later in the month, several of Decker's friends called her mother, Kim Nelson, saying that they had received messages from her via her Facebook account that did not seem to them to have come from Decker.