Nationwide — Kiany DeJesus, the daughter of Emilia Ignacio, who was killed in 2014, helped bring her mother’s killer to justice years later by using social media to trace his location after he fled to Mexico and built a new life.
Emilia Ignacio was killed in April 2014 in Greenbelt, Maryland. Prosecutors said her ex-boyfriend, Juan Miguel Roman-Balderas, took her out to dinner at a Red Lobster before stabbing her 27 times. He then left her body inside her car and fled the United States using a one-way ticket he had already purchased before the killing.
After the murder, Roman-Balderas escaped to Mexico, where he stayed hidden for more than 10 years. He started a new family there and avoided law enforcement, while also leaving behind the young son he shared with Ignacio. For years, investigators were unable to locate him.
DeJesus later began searching for answers herself. According to NBC News, she turned to social media, followed possible leads, and eventually connected with the Instagram account Crime Time Tea Time, which helped bring wider attention to the case and revive public interest.
“Without her, we wouldn’t have been able to get the ball rolling at all,” she said. DeJesus said about the account’s creator. “We tried. We pushed a lot, and she was the only person to respond to us, and as soon as we started, you know, connecting with her, everything just one by one by one started falling into order.”
Roman-Balderas later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in February. During sentencing in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, his lawyer asked for a 20-year sentence, saying he had no prior record and had changed. He did not make a statement in court.
The judge instead gave him the maximum sentence allowed under the plea deal, pointing to the brutality of the killing and describing Ignacio as having been tortured. The ruling closed a case that had remained unsolved for more than a decade.
In court, DeJesus also gave a victim impact statement and spoke about the long history of alleged abuse, including claims that Roman-Balderas burned her hand when she was a child and mistreated her family’s dog. She said the years after the killing felt like living with someone who was “like a ghost.”
After the sentencing, DeJesus said she finally felt closure. She also said she is considering a future in law or investigations after playing a role in helping locate her mother’s killer and bring the case to an end.