Transcription
Speak in the back there. A window, right? Two windows. Yeah. I'll this open. Uh oh. Oh God, dogs are dead. Two dead dogs. I need more units here. Hold this. Layway Communications, how can I help you? Yes, please. Um, calling for my daughter, Sida Bolome. She lives at 512 Concord Avenue, Romeo Ville, Illinois. And we haven't heard from her, or her husband, or her children during the whole day. No answering the phone. If somebody can go by the house and check them, 'cause the husband, they called from his work that he didn't show up to work and he never, you know, he's always at work. Okay, give me one second. Seconds. Thank you.
On September 17th, 2023, officers responded to a routine welfare check in Romeo Ville, Illinois, that would quickly unravel into a grim discovery. Upon arrival, the house appeared eerily still. All lights were off, except for one faint glow from a room in the southwest corner. Thanks for coming. Light back, back. Hey, I got a TV knocked over and a coffee table knocked over. 367, can we get another unit to Camden, please? Everything's done. Four. Hey, get on the phone with the 17 and call and figure out more information on this call. No, we're going to go on that side. There's a gate over there. He's going to the car to get the number. All right, you see the TV in the uh, yeah. Hey, hold on. Wait. You look in this window. Nothing. Are you able to see all that [ __ ] here? Wait, keep shining so I can kind of see a little bit better now. Okay, now just uh, oh, wait. Lights are all off. Three car there's uh, all right. Nothing in this room. I'm lights are off. It's 9:00 on a Sunday. And uh, no, there's lights on the back. You can see it through that second. Let's call in the backyard real quick. Back. [Music] Keep an eye in that garage. Yeah. Want to try that door real quick? Run. Let's go. This PE in the back there. A window, right? Two those. Yeah. I'll uh, oh. Oh God, dogs are dead. Two dead dogs. I need more units here. Hold this.
It was here that the first grim discovery was made. Two deceased dogs lying lifeless on opposite ends of the kitchen floor. Their presence raised immediate alarms, prompting officers to determine exigent circumstances and enter the home through the unlocked back door. Hey, open the trunk. Units from 367, I'm waiting for at least one more to make entry. Got do the the back. We'll do back. 50 EV Ram 399 coming up. Hold on. Hold it there. Yep. I'm going to wait for, you know what, I'm wa for two more units 'cause I want two units up front while three make entry in the back. Yeah, walk inside theage. Yeah, I didn't see anything. A peek. Tell you what, Drake, go cover him. Cover the back door. Drake, from that corner. Get back door. You problem? You want us that? Okay. I want you. I want two people in front holding the front keys. Can you have fire stage? 350. Any luck on that Ram? I'm sorry, I didn't check. I'll be there. One. No worries. I'm going to force entry to the back. I got enough units here. We're going to get going. You was me. You guys hold the front. Okay, from position of cover, please. I don't know if anybody's in there or not. You got another door right here. Hey, you know what? Hey, uh, I want one of you guys holding this one. One of you guys holding the front there. No other side doors, right? No, not that I know of. Hey, Ron. Yeah, here's what we're going to do. Okay, I'm going to boot it. We're going to go nice and slow. All right, Drake, you stay behind me. Hey, no, no, you're behind me. Okay, second deg, you stay in the in the stack. You watch our six as we move through the house. Okay, Cory, come up here. Cover this door, this window. Got it. This lights is dead. CHR here. No, I got one. I got one. Check the door here. Cover the window. What do you see? Cory, move up. Move up. How, how that? Do we got one dead dog right here? We got a second dead dog over to the. Watch out. Hey, why don't you check the door handle first here? Stand. Hold on. Hold Ona 10 make an entry. 33 traffic only. All right, go.
For privacy reasons, the footage inside the home has been redacted. Inside, the silence was shattered by the unmistakable signs of violence. Officers moved cautiously through the house, clearing each room. In the living room, where it met the hallway, they discovered the body of an adult male lying face up in a pool of blood, later identified as Alberto Rolan, Zoraida's husband. He had suffered fatal injuries to the head, the result of apparent gunfire. Further into the home, in the Southeast bedroom, officers encountered a chilling scene. The door had been forcibly kicked in, with a large footprint and splintered wood around the lock, confirming it. Behind the door lay the body of an adult female, later identified as Zoraida Barto. Her life violently taken. Nearby, their two young boys, Diego and Adriel Rolan, were also found deceased. Their bodies bearing the unmistakable signs of the same brutality. As the officers exited the house, the weight of the tragedy was clear. The home, once a sanctuary for a family, had become a scene of unimaginable horror.
Based on the evidence on Zoraida and Alberto's phones found at the crime scene, police visit Erlinda Paloma and Nathaniel Huie's residence. At this point, police only know that Zoraida had been having an affair with Nathaniel Huie, Erlinda's boyfriend.
Hello. Hello. Hi, Malinda. My name is Detective Garcia. Hello, from the Rille Police Department. This is Detective Wagner. Hello. I know you know what's going on and why you were here. Okay. Um, I know you were talking on the phone with your husband, right now. Husband, boyfriend's just. Okay. Does he live here with you? How long you guys been together? 2015. Okay. We're investigating a murder. Okay. Murder. So we have in our possession some phones. Okay. And in those phones, we're doing what it's called a phone dump. So what happens is if anybody's talking on a text app that you can download, for example, Text Now, we can retrieve those messages. Okay. We have retrieved those messages. All right. We've read them. They're pretty clear that somebody's pretty upset at at um at the victim. Okay. Is there any way that these text messages are going to come back to you or your name or your phone or anything associated with that? Okay. We'd like to speak with you without him present. You okay with? Sure. Do you want me to walk away? Wherever you're comfortable. Wherever you're comfortable. Right. Well, the dogs are all around. So. Oh, yeah. But we're out front or in the house? In the backyard, right? I'm not saying go. I'm not saying go in the house, but we can talk with you out over here. Okay. With that, we can go over by my car, if you'd like. Okay. Thank you.
Nathaniel attempts to convince Hermalinda to speak with officers on the patio because it's right in front of their Ring camera. Officer want to get her Malinda's side of the story without Nathaniel being there, and she eventually agrees to speak with them privately in their patrol cars. Are you comfortable talking here? I don't know. Why don't we go in the car? We can go in the car. You're an adult. Neighbors be in the the window. You're safe with that. No, you can have a seat in the front passenger. It's on. I want him to come out. Malina, do you mind if we walk if we drive down the street? If he comes out, he's probably going to tell you to go back inside. Are you going to do that or what do you want to do? Well, you guys obviously have me. You can't really say much, right? Well, it's, it's what we, we want to talk to you alone, separate from him. That, that's what we're trying to. Want to make sure that you're safe. Can you go by the park? Sure. Yeah, down that way. Okay. Um, you want to, what I'm going to do is I just got to document mileage and stuff. Okay. We got body C on. Just tell me where we're going. Want to text.
Officers arrive at a nearby park to discuss her involvement with Zoraida and her family. Okay, have left. Yeah. How long have you since probably 2015? Okay. Why are you scared of him? Oh, I'm not scared. Well, okay. Why are you scared right now? Because when I called him because I was scared, I didn't know where he was. He said, someone's following me. Okay. So I called and I called and then I heard him say, why are you following me? Do you want to search the car? And then, and then someone said to him, there are messages from you. And it's because her husband found out you were having an affair. And I didn't know that. You didn't know what? But he was having. I'm in an affair. Okay. When did you find that out? Right now. Just find now. Okay. When's the last time that he had unfair? 'Cause I know this is not the first time. No, it's not. Okay. When's the last time you knew here in a fair? When we first started dating, 2015. 2015 to maybe 17. You know what his son was born and he said, I'm not having any more affairs. I'm not cheating on you. Okay. Stupidly. Okay. Do I know if he stopped? No, I don't know. Okay. So the last time you, well, so then I had a party at my house. Mhm. And I fell asleep and apparently he said someone kissed him and that was the. So I don't know, maybe it was 2019. Okay. And he said, no, oh, she kissed me. That was it. Come on, we're all drunk. You know him better than we do. So anyways.
Hermalinda was putting on a show for the officers. In fact, she was the mastermind behind the whole thing. For years, Nathaniel was cheating on her, and she only grew more jealous after successfully retrieving messages from texting apps off of their iCloud accounts. Investigators found out that Hermalinda was posing as a fake hacker and catfishing Nathaniel into believing that Zoraida was a mole in their cartel. She gathered images from the internet to impersonate others, put a spy location app on his phone, and even used online translators to pose as someone fluent in Bulgarian. Hermalinda, filled with jealousy, manipulated and catfished Nathaniel somehow into killing an entire family.
Investigators pay a visit to Nathaniel at his workplace. They are fully aware that the evidence they needed would be on Nathaniel's phone. If he was innocent, he would have no issues giving up his phone. However, that was not the case. Yeah, one second. Um, so we were talking with the the bosses and they said, well, we, we already went through phones. They already got one half of of the conversation. And you said you talked on your phone, right? Yeah. Okay. Um, so what we'd like, or what we're asking for, is consent to to get the text messages off your phone between you and her, Snapchat, or whatever it is between you, so we have both sides of it. Trying to eliminate you as a suspect. But on the computer, right? H. You can get it out of the computer. No, we have to take the phone. We plug it in, we take it out, and we give your phone back. I don't have anything in there that's. There's better. No, I know. I believe you. But well, yeah, I mean, just let me see it. But I mean, I believe you. It's just the problem is is that that that this is all I have. Right there. Back. Oh, this from this morning. Yeah. Everything else. So you had to grab it from from the computer. Well, I mean, it'll be on there. It'll be on your phone. Can't delete. Still in the in the in the thing in the in the catch. When when you delete stuff, it's never actually. So let's just say you like a 64 gig phone, you use about 58 of it. The rest is the catch. It stays in the catch. And and why I asked is is the bosses called right away. They were like, well, they're like, um, we'd like to see if we can get the the stuff, you know, from your end back that way and see if maybe your, you know, maybe your husband got wind of it and pulled it off or something. So we was going to take a look. I mean, it, it on our on our side of it, we can get a search warrant, you know, to go through the phone and just take a little longer. But on on the fastest way would be consent pulled off and give your phone back. Then it would be to. And again, I explained to you earlier, I'm trying to eliminate you. Yeah, I mean, we have a a deceased girl and her last fling or boyfriend or whatever is you. And and I'm sure that that, you know, if if you're an outsider looking in, who do you, who's your suspect? I mean, and so I'd like to eliminate that. I'd like to say, well, no, we went, we look through his stuff, he didn't have nothing to do with it. We're done with it. I guess you guys just go. I agree with you. But but again, there's, um, it, it takes, it would take us, you know, a couple hours to pull information out the phone that could eliminate you as a suspect. Like right from the start. It's up to you. It feels like you're PR suspecting of me. Well, I mean, I'm not joking with you. We, we anytime somebody dies, you look at the husband, the boyfriend. If it's a girl, if it's a guy, you look at his wife and any kind of lovers he had. And we look. That's what we look at. We start there. And then this person was at work, we eliminate that. This person was, you know, we went through the phone, there's nothing between those two. No threats. No, I mean, you're telling us there's no threats, but but I can't go to, you know, to our bosses. I can't go to St. And say, no, I verified it. There, there's no threats. I have to. I can verify and say, no, I went through this phone, there's no threats. There was, they seemed to be good together. There was no threats. There was no animosity between the two of them. There was no fighting. There was none of that stuff. Eliminated. Just just go comp you. I don't, I don't give up my phone. You know what I'm saying? I understand. I'm just telling you, it's like, I, I, I completely understand what you're saying, and I'm not even trying to give you guys a hard time, but like taking my phone and all, like, and and you already told you can get it. You can get it from. We, we can get her side of it. I can't get your side of as a problem. So I can get her side of it. Um, if you know where she's got in her phone, I can get that side of it. How about this? How about I come see you guys later today after work or something like that? Because I, I got in there that I don't necessarily want you to be like looking at, you know what I'm saying? Understand. Just but but again, we, I, I promise you, I don't care what you look at. No, no, no. It's not like, not like, like free, like that or anything like that. I'm saying we even if, even if we, yeah, I mean, if you, again, I'm asking for consent. The consent means that that that we plug it right in, we dump it because you've told us it's okay. Without that, then we have to get a search warrant. If we get a search warrant, then we have to type that up, and it's going to take longer. I can bring it down to you guys and you can dump it all you want to. Yeah, we'll be there. The address is on the card. Well, let me, let me step out right after. Yeah, that's that's we'll have to do that. Yeah. But I mean, you do understand how that kind of defeats the purpose, though? Like, we're, we're looking for, for, you know, like Snapchat stuff, and then you delete Snapchat stuff, it's going to kind of look like you're guilty, you know what I'm saying? I haven't opened my Snapchat in so long. So you're welcome to, you know what I'm saying? Well, the computer will show. Yeah, I'm not like, not try to PS you. It, it will show what was deleted. So, uh, the computer shows everything. If it, like, just now when you open up the phone to show me that text message, when I plugg in the computer, it's going to say, at this date, at this time, somebody opened up a text message and a text message read, blah, blah, blah. So if you just delete some photographs that you don't like, then you're right, that that that'll show in there, and we don't really care about that. But if it shows you deleted it, [ __ ] a little of text messages and this and this, it's going to show you did that, and it's going to make you look guilty. Again, and again, I'm not, I'm not threatening you, I'm not babing you, I'm trying to be like, manto man, honest with you. I'm trying to eliminate you as a suspect. And and doing suspicious things between here and there could hurt you. No, yeah, I get what you're saying completely. Okay. Yeah, like I said, I, I'll come down there later today. We'll dump it. It back. Okay. All right. You got my card with the with the address on it. Yeah. Promise you. Okay. Right. Than shirt. No, you're.
Nathaniel agrees to do a cheek swab for DNA analysis. Then he pays a visit to the police station and allows them to dump his phone, even though he erased all of the messages first. The officers were able to retrieve them later on. I got to ask, do you have anything to do with this? Okay. You know, I have to ask, and you know that your number is going to be in her phone, and we're going to find your text messages, and we're going to find that stuff. And and I want to get a surprise later on that you guys are fighting or that there was something going on between you two or to three of you. I don't know about you. Like nobody was threatening anybody. We weren't fighting like [ __ ] angel, you know? I'm okay. Said we, we, you know, we're this is so new to us investigation wise. We have tons of videos to go through and license plate readers and like text messages, Snapchat messages, and all that stuff. So we're, so it's so in the beginning of this investigation that we're just kind of reaching out to talk to all her family, friends, and everybody like that. And that's that's why we're here talking to you. And um, I just told, I mean, in your head, if you could think of something like, oh, you guys should know about this, it's the time to tell us now before we find it later on, you know, in the computer, we find it in a phone message or something. Those guys, um, yeah, I mean, obviously we're going to stay in touch with you. Um, I ask, you know, a couple more questions might be a little hard for you, but are you willing to take a polygraph test if ever needed? I guess. And then DNA, you know, swab in your mouth if if needed. I'm asking the stuff now. I mean, we, we again, these one of those things where if, if in the future we needed it, I could go to a judge and say, you know, this is why I believe I need it and get a warrant for it. But I always ask people. I ask people straight up, right? Because, you know, most people in kind of high are like, yeah, it's no. Yeah, I mean, I've never, this, this is just something that I never, never thought of. I doubt you'd be in the middle of that exactly, but you, you can see how, like, you're not the only person we're going to talk to. We're talk to lots of people. We're talk to lots of family members. We're going to talk to neighbors. We talk to a ton of people, but we're starting off of the people closest to her. And we're here. That's why we're here talking to you, you know, her family and you. And and and so I ask these questions because, yeah, later on, if, if, uh, we were able to come up with like a DNA sample of something, I am going to ask everybody who she knows if they were willing to give up a DNA swab so that I can eliminate them right away. If I eliminate you right away, we don't have to keep coming down here bothering you. I don't have to bother you at home. I don't, you know, we're, we're done with you. We don't have to call you anymore, stuff like that. Yeah, like, and I don't even think like her family knew anything about us. Well, I can tell you right now, we're sitting here in this office talking to you, somebody knew. Okay? We wouldn't be here talking to you. I didn't, I didn't think that she was talking like to any family like that. Well, um, I think they're done. Uh, I'll give you my card. Give me my card. Um, if you think of something, give me a call. If, if like when you're back at work, you know, back there, you're working, another employee comes up to you and goes, hey, man, uh, I heard this or I heard that, just give me a call and let me know what you heard because I mean, we're asking for your help. I'm asking, I'm sure you would like to see this get salved just like us, you know what I mean? Yeah, 'cause I, I'm pretty, yeah, this, oh, like I said, nothing against my wife, man, like, just, you know, different, like, different connection with someone. Yeah, you know, I just feel like really strong, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And you're right, you're better off here at work, you know, working and keeping your mind off of and sitting at home and dealing with, you know, just sitting there alone or with her thinking about this. So, yeah. All right, well, thank you. [Applause]
From what police gathered from his phone, Nathaniel and Hermalinda meticulously orchestrated the murder of Zoraida in a chilling display of premeditation and calculation. With Erlinda's fake character, their plan began with extensive research into Zora's home, mapping out its layout and analyzing the neighborhood for security cameras. They discovered that the house behind Zora's was vacant, offering an opportunity to avoid detection. In an effort to stage the murder as a botched burglary, Hermalinda instructed Nathaniel to create damage to the scene, making it appear as though teenagers were responsible. Hermalinda drove the vehicle to the scene as planned, while Nathaniel focused on their horrifying mission. Erlinda's Malibu arrived in the area of Concord Avenue and drove past the house several times. The aftermath of their plan was equally cold and calculated. They intended to take Zoraida's and Alberto's phones to disrupt any evidence trails and burn their clothing afterward in Nathaniel's backyard. However, a storm on the night of the murders likely thwarted their attempt to destroy the evidence.
In the early hours of Wednesday, September 20th, 2023, Hermalinda was reported missing by her family. Once they knew they were under investigation for the murders, Nathaniel confessed to his mother. Hermalinda was entered into the Nationwide Law Enforcement Database as endangered, armed, and dangerous, with a note indicating she was with murder suspect Nathaniel in his GMC vehicle. Catoosa Police Captain Swarer observed the two approaching a black GMC Yukon parked at a Walmart in Catoosa, Oklahoma. Security footage confirmed they appeared calm, walking together willingly with no signs of distress. As Captain Swarer activated her emergency lights to investigate, the SUV fled, striking another vehicle before crashing into a concrete median. The impact trapped the driver's side doors, and as the vehicle caught fire, Captain Swarer heard two gunshots. Car's off fire. Get out of the car. Watch your watch your background. Get out of the vehicle. Get out. You go. Yes, on your right. To your right. Behind you. I got door. Do not see movement. No movement. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out now. Come out now. Maybe I don't see anything. Got your cover. Cover. Cover. Got it. Got it. Nothing. Floorboard. [Music] Floorboard. Get her. Got cover. Got cover. Grab Bel. Grab her belt. Grab her belt. You got that door. Can't see. Can't see. Where's fire? Get a fire extinguisher. At least come up here. We need extinguisher. Behind you. I got driver door. Get a baton. Moving to your left. Qui.
Nathaniel found dead in the driver's seat sustained two gunshot wounds to the head, one non-fatal, the other self-inflicted, as confirmed by autopsy. Hermalinda, with a single gunshot wound to the back of her head from Nathaniel, was transported to St. Francis Hospital, where she later died.