Deadly Deception: The Cartel, the Affair, and the Romeoville Family Murders

[00:00:00] The case featured in this episode has been researched using police records, court documents, witness statements, and the news. Listener discretion is advised. All parties mentioned are innocent until proven guilty, and all opinions are my own.

[00:00:33] Hey everyone, my name is Nikki Young, and this is Serial Napper, the true crime podcast for naps. I'm back with another true crime story to lull you to sleep, or perhaps to give you nightmares. Tonight, we're talking about a crime that rocked the small village of Romeoville, Illinois. It was a quiet Sunday evening in September of 2023, when police pulled up to a quaint blue home on Concord Avenue.

[00:01:00] The neighborhood was calm and peaceful, but what they found inside was anything but. As officers moved through the dark, quiet house, their flashlights revealed overturned furniture, deceased pets, and something way worse. An entire family had been brutally murdered.

[00:01:20] Zoraida Bartolome, her husband, Alberto Rallone, and their two young sons, Adriel and Diego, they were all found dead in their own home, executed in cold blood. At first, the police thought that it was a targeted home invasion. It certainly appeared so at first glance. Their belongings looked like they had been rummaged through, and there was spray paint on the walls.

[00:01:42] But as they dug deeper, they uncovered a twisted story that no one saw coming, one filled with manipulation, cartel ties, jealousy, and one of the most bizarre catfishing schemes you could imagine. It's a case that shocked not just the tight-knit community, but the entire country. We're talking infidelity, paranoia, and way more death than any small town should ever see.

[00:02:10] So, dim the lights, put your phone down, and listen as I dive into the disturbing and downright confusing story of the Bartolome-Rollone family murders, also known as the Romeoville family massacre. So let's jump right in. To truly grasp how a seemingly stable family ended up the victims of such brutal violence, we have to rewind the clock.

[00:02:36] This is a story rooted in manipulation, long-brewing resentment, and decisions that would ultimately lead to tragedy. But before that, it was just a story of two families leading completely independent lives. No one had any idea how they would come crashing together in the deadliest way. The Bartolome-Rollone family seemed to have it all.

[00:03:00] After purchasing their home at 512 Concord Avenue in Romeoville about five months earlier that year in 2023, Zoraida Bartolome and Alberto Rollone, they were building a life that many would admire. Alberto was thriving in his warehouse job where he had worked the last six years, and Zoraida had landed a solid gig working at Avanti Engineering. Their finances were stable. They had saved up enough for this home, and they had more to spare.

[00:03:28] And their two boys, Adriel and Diego, they were happy and healthy. From the outside, they were the picture of suburban success. But like so many seemingly perfect families, cracks started to show behind closed doors. Those closest to the couple knew that Alberto and Zoraida's marriage, it wasn't as solid as it appeared. According to Alberto's brother, the relationship had been strained for years, primarily held together by a shared commitment to their children.

[00:03:58] Zoraida had been unfaithful. And though Alberto knew about her affairs, he stayed with her for the sake of the boys. We hear about this happening in other cases that I've covered, and it never works out. I understand not wanting to raise your children in a broken home, but it's better than raising them in a dysfunctional one. While Zoraida had cheated several times before, one affair, however, would stand out. The one that would unravel everything.

[00:04:27] Zoraida began a relationship with a co-worker from Avanti Engineering, a man named Nathaniel Huey Jr. She called him her soulmate and compared their relationship to Romeo and Juliet when confiding to her sister. Text messages later recovered by police revealed just how deeply she had fallen for Nathaniel. At his workstation, they even found a post-it note that read, You mean so much to me.

[00:04:56] Like, I don't think you understand how much I actually love you. The handwriting matched Zoraida's. Pretty damn brazen. Especially considering that it was a well-known fact she was married, and Nathaniel was in a long-term relationship with another woman engaged to be married. On the surface, this might look like just another messy affair. But this relationship would become far more dangerous than anyone could have anticipated.

[00:05:22] While the Bartolome-Rollone family was settling into their new life in Romeoville, another couple's story was slowly and tragically becoming intertwined with theirs. Nathaniel Huey Jr. and Irma Linda Paloma had been together since around 2015, and by 2023, they were engaged to be married. Their relationship didn't really make sense to most people who knew them. Irma Linda was described as a strong, independent woman,

[00:05:51] a mom of five and even a grandmother. After her own marriage fell apart, she focused on raising her kids alone and keeping them on the right track. Then there was Nathaniel, a guy 20 years younger than her, with a past that was more than a little sketchy. His criminal record went way back, and by 2016, his bad choices were catching up with him. He did some jail time for assault,

[00:06:18] and then he got picked up again the following year for a DUI. But his real passion, if you can call it that, was guns. Nathaniel was completely obsessed with weapons. Despite a court order banning him from owning firearms, he found a way around it. He started buying guns on the black market and showing them off on social media. His pages were basically filled with photos of him parading these things around.

[00:06:48] Handguns, rifles, tactical gear. Like, he wanted to make sure everyone knew that he was dangerous. So, how did Irma Linda fit into this picture? Honestly, it was hard for anyone to understand. She had worked so hard to create a stable life, but here she was living with a guy who couldn't seem to stay out of trouble. To make things even messier, Irma Linda's kids and her grandkids, they were living under the same roof.

[00:07:16] And it wasn't unusual to see Nathaniel sitting at the kitchen table cleaning one of his illegal guns, which would make them extremely uncomfortable. At the time all of this unfolded, they'd been together for years. But stability? It wasn't exactly a word that you would use to describe their relationship. Nathaniel was a serial cheater. He'd meet women online, exchange messages, and then wipe away any trace of it.

[00:07:43] He'd head out late at night with vague excuses about business meetings. Then he would come back at dawn like it was no big deal. Nathaniel just figured that Irma Linda wouldn't question him, like he had her wrapped around his finger. But what he didn't realize was that she was way more aware of what was going on than he gave her credit for. And underestimating her, that would turn out to be his biggest mistake. At first, Irma Linda tried to brush off Nathaniel's suspicious behavior.

[00:08:13] She wanted to believe that his late-night disappearing acts and sudden obsession with his looks, they were just phases. But after a while, it became way too obvious that something wasn't right. The final straw came when she saw a message pop up in his phone. No guessing needed. It was straight-up proof that he was cheating. Instead of blowing up right then and there, Irma Linda decided to take a different approach. If Nathaniel thought that he could keep playing her for a fool,

[00:08:43] he was about to get a wake-up call. Instead of confronting him, she got kind of strategic. She started tracking his movements, memorizing his schedule, and sneaking peeks at his phone when he carelessly left it lying around. It didn't take long before she knew his routine better than he did. Every excuse, every lie, she could see them coming from a mile away. And the more she learned, the angrier she got.

[00:09:12] Nathaniel acted like she didn't have a clue, like she'd just accept being lied to. But Irma Linda wasn't about to just take it. If she was going to make him pay, it wasn't going to be in some messy blowout fight. She wanted him to feel trapped and paranoid, just like he had made her feel. So instead of confronting him head-on, she came up with a plan that would completely mess with his head. Step 1. Fake online profiles.

[00:09:40] Irma Linda spent hours creating them, picking just the right photos, coming up with believable backstories, and studying how to pull off convincing scams. Then she got to work. The first fake profile showed up in Nathaniel's online world, like a random woman who seemed interested in him. Of course, Nathaniel couldn't resist. He started chatting with her. But things took a weird turn when she began hinting that she knew things about him she shouldn't have.

[00:10:09] Nathaniel started getting a little uneasy. How did the stranger know so much? Then it got even weirder. More people started contacting him. Some threatening him, some claiming to be allies, and others warning him to stay away from certain places. The messages were all over the place. Different apps, different numbers, and nothing made any sense. Some wanted money, while others acted like Nathaniel had stumbled into something

[00:10:38] way bigger than he realized. Nathaniel started to lose it. He became paranoid, constantly checking his phone, jumping at shadows, and acting like someone was out to get him. He even asked Ermelinda to drive him around because he thought he was being followed. He began deleting messages, changing his passwords, basically trying anything to make the weirdness stop. But no matter what he did, the fear wouldn't go away. He felt like he was being hunted.

[00:11:08] And that was exactly what Ermelinda wanted. The best part? Nathaniel had no clue that the person behind it all right there beside him the whole time, watching him fall apart. About a year after Ermelinda started messing with Nathaniel using those fake profiles, things took a new turn. It was 2022, and by then, Ermelinda had gotten pretty good at manipulating him online. She'd convinced Nathaniel that he was being watched,

[00:11:37] and even made him believe that he was somehow connected to the Mexican cartel. She'd use fake social media accounts and phone numbers to deliver messages that made it seem like some dangerous people were keeping tabs on him. And as weird as it sounds, she even used this whole fake cartel situation to her advantage, pushing Nathaniel to treat her better by making him think that these supposed cartel bosses, they didn't approve of how he was acting,

[00:12:07] how he was treating his fiancé. The whole thing was pretty twisted, but Ermelinda was fully committed to making Nathaniel squirm. But then, something happened that made Ermelinda snap. She found out that Nathaniel was cheating again, and this time, it wasn't just some random fling. This affair was with Zoraida Bartolome, the married woman and mother that he worked with. Things between them seemed to be much deeper

[00:12:35] than the other trysts Nathaniel had had in the past. As far as Ermelinda was concerned, this wasn't just another one of Nathaniel's mistakes. This was the final straw. She decided this would be the last affair Nathaniel ever had. Ermelinda doubled down on her online schemes, using the fake cartel accounts to tighten her grip on him. She started sending messages that made it sound like the cartel was pulling the strings,

[00:13:03] telling him where to be, how to act, and warning him that people were watching his every move. Nathaniel bought into it completely. He genuinely thought that he had been recruited to work for the cartel. To keep up the illusion, Ermelinda would drop hints about his routine, little details that made him think those cartel bosses, they had eyes on him everywhere. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was constantly being watched, and it was driving him crazy.

[00:13:33] The fear wasn't just about getting caught cheating anymore. Nathaniel was convinced that one wrong move, it could cost him his life. Ermelinda had successfully manipulated him into thinking that he was a part of something way bigger than himself, and that meant he couldn't just walk away or make his own choices. And it wasn't just Nathaniel Huey Jr. who started getting these weird messages. Before long, Zoraida Bartolome, the woman he was having an affair with, and her husband,

[00:14:03] Alberto Rolon, they started getting them too. At first, it seemed kind of random and strange, like just weird anonymous texts. But by June 2023, things started to get way more personal and way more threatening. Zoraida began receiving messages that flat out warned her to stay away from Nathaniel. One even said that Nathaniel was about to get caught up in a murder investigation. Another accused her of putting her kids at risk

[00:14:33] just by being involved with him. It wasn't just vague stuff anymore. It was direct, and it was intense. Zoraida wasn't about to just take it. She fired back saying, you don't know anything about me as a mother or person. But that did not stop the messages. They kept coming, more aggressive, and more accusatory. And then it wasn't just Zoraida. Her husband, Alberto, he started getting similar messages. They were trying to get him

[00:15:02] to confront Zoraida about the affair, saying that she was reckless and that Nathaniel's violent past, it could put their kids in danger. Alberto wasn't looking to get into it. He just wanted a simple life. He responded to one of the messages saying, all I want to do is work and go home and be with my kids. I'm not a complicated person and don't need or deserve all of this drama. But whoever was behind these texts, aka Irma Linda,

[00:15:32] wasn't letting up. The whole time, Irma Linda was in the background pulling the strings. She was using the same fake accounts and phone numbers that she had used to mess with Nathaniel. At this point, it wasn't just about controlling her fiancé anymore. It was about blowing up his new relationship too. She'd already managed to make Nathaniel paranoid and stressed. And now, she was spreading that same fear and chaos to Zoraida and Alberto. What started as Irma Linda

[00:16:01] trying to get back at Nathaniel for cheating, it had turned into a full-blown twisted game. And it was about to spiral completely out of control. It's almost impossible to believe how far this whole thing went. But the worst, it was still yet to come. It's time for a quick break and a word from tonight's sponsors. Hang on, I'll be back before you know it. Life can be a lot sometimes.

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[00:17:58] only using code Goalie50. Try them risk-free with Goalie's money-back guarantee, because wellness should be simple, effective, and delicious. Don't wait. Visit Goalie.com and use code Goalie50 today. Now back to our story. The messages Nathaniel Huey Jr. had been getting just kept getting weirder and way more intense. Suddenly, they started hinting

[00:18:28] that someone close to him was actually a mole, someone feeding information about him to the cartel. And then, just like that, the messages stopped for a while. For days, there was nothing. Radio silence. Nathaniel was losing it, pacing around, barely sleeping, completely paranoid. He knew the cartel didn't mess around, and if he'd accidentally shared info with the wrong person, he was convinced that his life was on the line. By the time the accounts

[00:18:58] came back online, Nathaniel was a total wreck. He was desperate to know who had betrayed him. And finally, the accounts gave him the answer. It was Zoraida, the woman he was having an affair with. According to the messages, Zoraida had only gotten involved with him to get the cartel's secrets out of him. The whole relationship was supposedly a setup from the start. Nathaniel was floored. He didn't know what to believe, but the accounts

[00:19:26] were pretty convincing, and the paranoia, it had completely taken over. Then, they dropped the next bombshell. Zoraida wasn't just a mole, she was now a threat. Nathaniel's bosses needed him to take care of her before she could expose them. To help, they introduced him to a so-called cartel hitman who went by the name Turtle. Turtle was supposedly there to help Nathaniel figure out how to get rid of Zoraida

[00:19:56] before she could make the first move. Nathaniel was freaking out. On one hand, he couldn't believe that Zoraida would betray him like that. But on the other hand, the fear of crossing the cartel, it was way too strong to ignore. He felt trapped, convinced that he had to follow through, or he would face some very serious consequences. The wild part? Nathaniel had no clue that the whole turtle thing, it was just another one of Irma Linda's tricks.

[00:20:26] She was still running the show, using fake accounts to push Nathaniel right to the edge. But he was way too paranoid to even question it at this point. Once Nathaniel was convinced that Zoraida was a mole, he didn't waste any time. He and Turtle, who remember, was actually just Irma Linda using a fake account, they got right to planning how to kill her. They did their homework, looking up Zoraida's neighborhood online, figuring out where the security cameras

[00:20:55] were, planning how to sneak in and out without leaving any DNA behind. Nathaniel thought that he was being smart, but the whole time, he was just following Irma Linda's twisted script. At one point, Nathaniel even mentioned to Turtle that his wife would be the one driving him to the house. He still didn't realize that he was actually messaging Irma Linda. She kept up the act, telling him to make the whole thing look like a robbery gone wrong, something that would look like a bunch of

[00:21:25] kids just messing around. To calm his nerves, she even dropped a creepy reassurance, saying, many murders go unsolved. Just three days after Nathaniel was convinced that Zoraida was the mole, he and Irma Linda, they put their plan into action. They drove up to Zoraida's house in the middle of the night. Irma Linda stayed in the car with a walkie-talkie so that they could keep in touch while Nathaniel went inside. Nathaniel used a knife to cut through two

[00:21:55] window screens, then he slipped inside through the kitchen. His plan was to make it look like a break-in, like someone had just popped in to rob the place. But things did not go as planned. As Nathaniel moved further into the house, Alberto Rolon, Zoraida's husband, he had already heard the noises. He was awake, he was up, and he was ready to investigate who was in his house. Nathaniel had thought that he could just sneak in and get it done without anyone noticing.

[00:22:24] But now, face-to-face with Alberto, he knew things were about to get messy. Now, this next part is just horrific, so heads up. As Alberto tried running towards the master bedroom where his wife and his two little children were sleeping, Nathaniel shot him several times in the back, killing him. You see, the two little ones, they had been having a lot of difficulty sleeping at night, so they had actually been sleeping with their parents in their room.

[00:22:54] Alberto was trying to run to get them to protect them, but unfortunately, he was gunned down in the hallway. Next, Nathaniel moved his way upstairs towards the master bedroom, where Zoraida and the children were sitting up in bed, having been awakened by all of the noises downstairs. The door was closed, and Nathaniel didn't even bother to open it to see who was inside the room. He simply shot through the door, killing Zoraida almost instantly.

[00:23:23] Once he made his way into the room, he then shot both of the children, Adriel and Diego. One of the children was wearing a sleep mask, and my only hope is that he didn't know what was happening before he died. Nathaniel didn't even stop for a moment to think about how these innocent babies had nothing to do with any of this nonsense. Nathaniel would continue on throughout the house. He even went on to kill the three family dogs who were scratching at the door trying to

[00:23:53] get out away to safety. Then he tossed the furniture around the rooms and spray-painted the walls in an attempt to make it look like some kind of violent break-in. Next, he got out of there, confident that the mole had been taken care of. The following day, when Zoraida was not responding to her mother's phone calls and Alberto failed to show up for work, a wellness check was called in. When officers showed up at the house on Concord Avenue, it was dark,

[00:24:22] almost all of the lights were off. Through the front window, they could see that the TV and coffee table were knocked over. Right away, they knew that something appeared to be wrong. They moved around to the back of the house, and that's when they saw it, the family's dogs lying there, dead. It was just the start of what would turn out to be a truly horrifying scene. As crime scene investigators started arriving, officers talked to neighbors and family members, trying to get a sense of what had

[00:24:52] happened. They really didn't get much to go on. Most of the neighbors didn't see or hear anything unusual, except for one who mentioned that they may have heard something that sounded like thunder around 3.30 a.m. But when the police checked out doorbell camera footage from nearby houses, they found something that definitely stood out. A dark sedan circling the block several times in the early morning hours, almost like it was stalking the house. It gave off some serious

[00:25:21] predator vibes. Zoraida Bartolomei's brother, he said that he couldn't think of anyone who would want to hurt his sister or her no one. But the way everything looked, it didn't feel random. It seemed like someone had targeted them. Now in today's world, cell phones are like gold mines when it comes to solving homicide cases. Luckily for investigators on this case, the killer did not take Alberto's or Zoraida's phones from the scene, and that mistake

[00:25:50] ended up being a huge break for the case. Once forensic analysis started digging through the data on the phones, they uncovered thousands of messages, texts, social media chats, emails, you name it. All of it painted a picture of infidelity, jealousy, threats, and a deception so twisted it was almost hard to believe. Now one name kept popping up of course, Nathaniel Huey Jr. They learned that he worked with Zoraida

[00:26:20] at Avanti Engineering and as it turned out, they had been having an affair and that made him a pretty obvious person of interest. Investigators also discovered some of those threatening messages that had been sent to both Alberto and Zoraida, threatening them to cut things off with Nathaniel. The day after the murders, word started spreading at work and officers showed up to talk to Zoraida's co-workers. That's when they found out that on September 14th, the day before the murders, Nathaniel had

[00:26:49] left work early and he didn't come back until the next morning after the shootings had already happened. People also mentioned that there had been some tension between him and Zoraida before he left and he looked pretty upset. A few days later, detectives managed to speak with Nathaniel. Now, he admitted to the affair but he swore he had never been to Zoraida's house and that he had nothing to do with the murders. Obviously, the police weren't necessarily buying it so they kept an eye

[00:27:19] on him. They asked Nathaniel for permission to search his vehicle but he said no and they didn't have enough for a warrant at the time so they decided to watch him closer instead. At one point, officers spotting him moving guns into another guy's car. They followed him after work and they caught up with him in a Walmart parking lot. When they asked him about the threatening messages sent to Zoraida and Alberto, he acted clueless. He said he didn't know anything about them

[00:27:49] but he did mention that he had been getting some weird messages himself. Stuff about people coming after him and even saying he'd be dead within a year. After that, the police went to Nathaniel's house and Irma Linda was the one who answered the door. When they told her that they were there investigating a murder, she played completely dumb. She acted like she had no idea what was going on, that she had only just learned about her husband's affair. Both Nathaniel and Irma

[00:28:18] Linda, they were asked to come down to the station for further questioning the following day, but neither of them would show up because that night, she and Nathaniel, they took off. Their first stop was a target, where Nathaniel met up with his mother and he dropped a bombshell on her. He straight up confessed to killing Zoraida and her family, saying that he did it because people were after him. His mom asked him why he killed the kids too, and his response was pretty chilling. He said

[00:28:48] that they were, quote, better off dead than living without their parents. Shortly after that, Irma Linda's family reported her as missing, telling the police that they thought Nathaniel had taken her against her will. The police used surveillance footage to track them down to a Walmart in Oklahoma. Local police tried to confront them in the parking lot, but Nathaniel and Irma Linda, they managed to take off in their car, leading the police on a wild chase. But it didn't take

[00:29:18] long for the chase to end. Their car ended up crashing into the center divider on the highway. It was a huge mess of twisted metal and fire, the vehicle literally went up in flames. But that's when things got even darker. Even though they had both survived the crash, Nathaniel, he shot Irma Linda in the head, killing her instantly. Then he tried to shoot himself under the chin. That shot didn't work, so he fired again, this time

[00:29:47] killing himself. The chase was over, and with that, so was the opportunity to gain more insight into how all of this awful tragedy happened. When the dust finally settled and investigators started digging into the phones involved, they figured out the truth about Nathaniel's paranoia. It wasn't some cartel conspiracy. It was all orchestrated by Irma Linda, his fiancée. She'd been creating fake phone numbers and online personas since December of

[00:30:17] 2021, trying to convince Nathaniel that he was tangled up with a Mexican crime organization. Every threat, every fake warning, it all led back to her. It was a twisted plan that spun completely out of control, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. The Romeoville Family Massacre is one of those cases that leaves you questioning just how far someone can be pushed by lies and manipulation. What started as a tangled

[00:30:46] web of secrets and betrayal spiraled into a horrific tragedy, one fueled by paranoia, jealousy, and a twisted obsession with control. Nathaniel Huey Jr. and Irma Linda Paloma's relationship, it was toxic from the start, but when she decided to manipulate Nathaniel with fake cartel threats and invented enemies, it set off a chain reaction that no one could have predicted. But perhaps they should have.

[00:31:15] The senseless murders of Zoraida Bartolome, Alberto Rolone, and their two young sons were the horrifying outcome of a plan so delusional, it almost sounds like fiction. What's truly chilling is just how easily paranoia can take hold when someone that you trust becomes your puppet master. In this case, a toxic relationship, an affair, and a web of deceit led to an unimaginable violence. It's a dark reminder that evil doesn't

[00:31:45] always come in the form of a stranger. It can grow from within a relationship fueled by fears and lies. That's it for me tonight. If you want to reach out, you can find me on Facebook at Serial Napper. You can find my audio on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. I post all of my episodes in video format over on YouTube, so go check it out. And if you're watching on YouTube, I would love if you can give me a thumbs up and subscribe because every little bit helps. I'm also on Patreon.

[00:32:15] If you'd like to get your Serial Napper episodes early and ad-free for just $2 a month, hop on over and check out all the details at patreon.com slash Serial Napper. Until next time, sweet dreams, stay kind, especially in the comments. Bye.