A Maryland woman’s determination to find answers in her mother’s murder case has helped bring a killer to justice more than a decade after he fled the United States and disappeared into a new life abroad.
Kiany DeJesus, the daughter of murder victim Emilia Ignacio, played a pivotal role in tracking down the man convicted of killing her mother after years of frustration and dead ends. Using social media and online investigative efforts, DeJesus helped revive interest in a case that had remained unresolved since 2014.
Ignacio was killed in April 2014 in Greenbelt, Maryland. Prosecutors said her ex-boyfriend, Juan Miguel Roman-Balderas, took her to dinner at a Red Lobster before stabbing her 27 times.
Authorities said he left her body inside her vehicle and fled the country using a one-way airline ticket that had been purchased before the killing.
For more than 10 years, Roman-Balderas remained beyond the reach of U.S. authorities. According to reports, he settled in Mexico, started a new family and built a new life while evading capture. Meanwhile, he left behind the young son he shared with Ignacio and a family still searching for justice.
As the years passed, DeJesus refused to let the case fade from public memory.
According to NBC News, she began conducting her own search, following online leads and leveraging social media platforms in an effort to locate her mother’s killer. Her efforts eventually connected her with the Instagram account Crime Time Tea Time, whose creator helped amplify the case and draw renewed public attention.
“Without her, we wouldn’t have been able to get the ball rolling at all,” DeJesus said. “We tried. We pushed a lot, and she was the only person to respond to us, and as soon as we started connecting with her, everything just one by one by one started falling into order.”
The renewed attention ultimately helped move the case forward.
Roman-Balderas later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in February. During sentencing proceedings in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, defense attorneys argued for a 20-year prison sentence, citing his lack of prior criminal history and claiming he had changed during the years he spent in Mexico.
The judge was not persuaded.
Instead, the court imposed the maximum sentence permitted under the plea agreement, emphasizing the extreme violence of the crime and describing Ignacio as having been tortured before her death.
The sentencing marked the end of a painful chapter that had haunted Ignacio’s family for more than a decade.
During the hearing, DeJesus delivered a powerful victim impact statement, recounting what she described as years of abuse and intimidation by Roman-Balderas.
She alleged that he had burned her hand when she was a child and mistreated the family’s dog. She told the court that living with the uncertainty surrounding her mother’s death felt as though the man responsible had become “like a ghost” lingering over her family’s life.
Following the sentencing, DeJesus said she finally felt a sense of closure.
Her pursuit of justice has also inspired a new ambition. After helping locate her mother’s killer and seeing the case through to its conclusion, she has expressed interest in pursuing a future career in law or criminal investigations.
The case stands as a striking example of how social media, public awareness campaigns and determined family members can sometimes help breathe new life into long-dormant investigations.
For DeJesus, however, the outcome was about more than solving a case. It was about ensuring that her mother’s life was not forgotten and that the man accused of taking it could no longer hide from justice.
