Daughter confronts mother's killer at sentencing after decade-long manhunt

Kiany DeJesus was 11 when her mother was killed, and she was in court in Upper Marlboro on Tuesday to watch the man accused of doing it receive a decades-long prison term. After more than a decade of searching, social media helped bring Juan Miguel Roman-Balderas back into the reach of Maryland justice, turning a family’s private grief into a case that crossed borders and platforms.

Prosecutors said Roman-Balderas, Emilia Ignacio’s ex-boyfriend, took the 28-year-old to Red Lobster for dinner before stabbing her 27 times in Greenbelt in April 2014. He fled to Mexico on a one-way ticket he had bought before the killing, and investigators believed he had been hiding there for more than a decade, where he later started a new family. Ignacio and Roman-Balderas shared a 1-year-old son.

DeJesus said she used social media to track him down, crediting the Instagram account Crime Time Tea Time with helping bring attention to the case. The search reflected a new reality in violent-crime cases: when investigative momentum fades or distance shields a suspect, victims’ relatives increasingly use digital networks to keep names, photos and old warrants alive long after the first headlines disappear. In this case, that pressure helped lead to Roman-Balderas’s arrest in Mexico and his return to face the killing in court.

Roman-Balderas pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in February 2026. On June 10, 2026, DeJesus watched him be sentenced to decades in prison and delivered a tearful victim impact statement describing what she lost. She said she wanted him to hear her words and later said that getting the statement out made her feel as if she could finally close the case.

DeJesus also told the judge that Roman-Balderas had been abusive to both her and her mother, saying he burned her hand on the stove when she took a few quarters as a child and abused her dog. She had not seen him since she was a child and described him as feeling like a ghost.

His attorney argued that he was a changed man, had taken responsibility and had no other record, and asked for a 20-year sentence. Instead, the judge imposed the maximum allowed under the plea agreement, saying Roman-Balderas had tortured Ignacio. For DeJesus, the sentencing marked both an ending and a new beginning, and she said she is now considering becoming a lawyer or detective.