The Murder of Becky Bliefnick

Becky Bliefnick was born in Quincy, IL in November of 1981.  Becky had an older sister, Sarah.  They were 16 months apart, but Sarah says that they grew up very close.  Their childhood was a lot of playing outside, catching frogs in buckets, going fishing, and riding their bikes up and down gravel roads.  Sarah said that Becky was one of those people who could walk into a room and talk with anyone, and by the end of the night, they would be best friends. Becky was known by everyone who met her as someone full of compassion, generosity, and faith.  And she had a fierce love for and devotion to her family.  

Becky attended Quincy Notre Dame High School, where she graduated valedictorian.  From there, she attended Quincy University where she played on the tennis team and studied Biology.  She graduated with a bachelors in Biology and went into the pharmaceutical industry after graduation.  While at Quincy University, Becky met Tim Bliefnick, and the two quickly fell in love.  

When he was younger, Tim was a star athlete in school.  Whether it was on the basketball court or the football field, he was usually one of the best players out there.  He was well known within the community, and played football at Quincy University as a student athlete. He was named an All-American, an honor given to outstanding U.S. athletes in a specific sport in a given year competing at the collegiate and secondary school levels.  In 2019, Tim was enshrined in the Quincy University Sport Hall of Fame for his time there playing football. 

As their lives became more intertwined, people said that you would be hard pressed to find a couple that had more going for them than Tim and Becky.  Tim worked as a salesman in the recycling industry.  Tim and Becky decided to get married, and instead of getting a flashy ring or going on a lavish honeymoon, they saved that money and put a down payment on a house instead.  They were both very practical when it came to decisions like that, and it just made sense to establish their lives together and give them a head start on their goals.  

Sarah says that while Becky had very specific career goals, being a mother was her number 1 thing.  Family was always first.  She says that originally, Becky wanted to be a doctor, but she didn’t want to delay becoming a mother for the 7 to 12 years it would take, so she put those plans on hold.  Tim was active in the crossfit community in their town, and they would do that together, whether it was just working out or going to competitions.  

After their first two sons were born, Becky decided it was time for a career change.  At the time, she was still in the pharmaceutical industry, but decided she wanted to go back to school and become a nurse.  She wanted to help people more one on one or face to face, and as a nurse, she would be able to bring in more money to the household as well.  For Becky, it was pedal to the metal all the time when it came to studying, working, and being there for her family. 

Becky graduated summa cum laude from Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing and Health Sciences, as well as receiving the Faculty Outstanding Senior Award while she was there.  She gave birth to their third child during spring break of her senior year, and only missed 1 day of classes.  She worked as a nurse in surgery before transferring to the ER of Blessing Hospital.  During the COVID pandemic, Becky worked as a travel nurse at both Northeast Regional Medical Center in Kirksville, MO, and Hannibal Regional Hospital in Hannibal, MO.  Beyond her registered nurse credentials, she was also a certified trauma nurse specialist (TNS) and a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE).  At the time of her death, she worked at Blessing Hospital in vascular access and was working toward her nurse practitioner certification.  

In whatever free time she had, Becky gave back to the community wherever she could.  Whether that be volunteering with the PTO, where she helped with coordinating the Mother/Son event, planning the teacher conference luncheons, or coordinating the school’s room mothers, or volunteering with local animal shelters organizations like Homeward Bound Waggin, she was always willing to step up and pitch in.  She was also scheduled to begin volunteering with QUEST Stables, which focuses on providing therapeutic riding services for patients.  

As dedicated as she was to her professional pursuits, the single most important thing to Becky was always her family. Her boys were her world, her life’s greatest gifts. She was the quintessential “boy mom,” aptly illustrated by their Halloween costumes, when she built Transformers costumes that actually transformed, creating custom “first day of school” posters each year, and jumping all-in with fishing and frog hunting and anything sports. Her Catholic faith was also of great importance, and she worked diligently to instill her love for God in her boys.

In 2019, Tim and his family applied and auditioned to appear on Family Feud, and after everything they were accepted to come on the show.  They appeared for three episodes, and in the end won a little over twenty thousand dollars to be split amongst the five of them.  Becky was unable to appear on the show due to her work and school obligations.  But, while on the show, one of the questions asked was something to the effect of “What do you regret doing on your wedding day?”  Tim gave the answer “Saying I do.”  Of course Steve Harvey and the audience laugh as Steve tells him he’s going to have hell to pay when he gets back home.  But, was his answer far from the truth in his mind? 

Back home, as I mentioned, the five who were on the show split the money, and Tim made it clear to Becky that his share was HIS, not “theirs.”  This was coupled with the fact that they had been going through a rough patch.  Due to the demands of school, work, and family, Becky needed Tim to step up more and help around the house, and just in their daily lives.  They fought more and more, and Becky actually ended up cutting her hours down to part time so she could be home more.  With her Catholic faith, divorce was not an option, but to Tim, it appeared to be the only option.  

In 2021, the fighting had reached a high, and the couple separated.  Tim had filed for divorce, and moved out of their home to another one a few blocks away.  It was still close enough that he could see the boys, and still very close to their school so he could help with drop off and pick up.  Sarah said that it seemed like it was all a relief to Becky.  

Becky was trying to move on, and eventually met someone she started dating while the divorce proceedings went on.  Her new boyfriend was also in healthcare, and they had a lot in common and common ground they could relate to one another on. Their relationship was kept quiet while the divorce was going on because she didn’t want that to affect anything going on during the proceedings. But as the divorce dragged on, it got more and more contentious.  

Tim was very resistant when it came to the co-parenting aspect.  His only goal was for him to get as much time as he could, and leave Becky with as little time as possible.  They were unable to agree on any type of custody agreement, and then each one asked for an order of protection against the other.  Becky’s document said that Tim threw a tray of food across the room in front of one of their sons who was 3 at the time and punched a hole in the wall as well as entering her residence without permission.  Then he went on her property and cut down a tree she loved, a Japanese Maple tree. She sent Sarah and her husband a text saying she was fearful of Tim, saying that if something ever happened to her, to make sure that Tim was the number one person of interest. She continued to say that she was putting it in writing because she was fearful that he would harm her or come after her, or do something that would get the kids taken from her.  Sarah said that this was sparked by one of Becky’s colleagues having been murdered by her spouse, and it scared her and made her think it could happen to her. 

In Tim’s request for an order of protection, he said that Becky was harassing him.  That she made a scene at a parent teacher conference night and became combative with him.  That she chased him to get a document and followed him to his car and pounded on the door as he tried to leave. 

A judge denied both requests due to a lack of evidence and no physical threats.  A lawyer said that when orders of protection were given during divorces, especially bitter divorces like the one that Becky and Tim were going through, it really limits the rights of one of the parents, and judges are very hesitant to give them out in such cases.  But they were ordered to not have any contact other than what was necessary to facilitate the drop off and pick up of the children. He also ordered Tim to return a 9mm handgun that Becky had given to him as a gift.  She wanted it back because it was registered in her name.  Tim never returned it.  He said that he no longer had the gun, and hadn’t seen it in a couple years. 

This brings us to a February day in 2023.  The kids were staying at Tim’s house and he took them to school.  Becky was supposed to pick them up after school, but she never showed up. Instantly, alarm bells started going off for all of Becky’s family and friends.  Her not picking the boys up from school was something that just wouldn’t happen.  Sarah said that she instantly felt like something was wrong.  Tim had been texting Becky throughout the day but never got a reply from her.  When he realized that Becky didn’t pick the boys up, Tim reached out to Becky’s father and asked if he knew where she was or if he could go check in on her.  

Bill went to Becky’s house and went in.  As he walked through the house to the 2nd floor, he found Becky’s body in an upstairs bathroom.  She had been shot 14 times.  A 15th shot was fired, but it didn’t strike her.  Becky had been struck in the hands, arms, and chest.  A bullet passed through one of her lungs, and another through her spine, paralyzing her.  Upon examining her body, the medical examiner said that it is likely that Becky didn’t die immediately, she likely survived for a few minutes, and she was left there on the bathroom floor to die.  

The police went into an all hands on deck situation.  A violent crime like this was not something that happened in Quincy, a place that all the residents would say is one of the safest places in the country.  As they go over the crime scene, they find shell casings from all the shots, and pieces of plastic strewn about the floor where Becky was found.  Outside, they found a chair that looked like it had been moved to allow someone access to the second story, where they used something to pry one of the windows open, where they could see obvious signs of forced entry on the window seal.  That window led to one of the boys’ rooms, where they found a footprint on the carpet.  

Outside of that room, Becky’s bedroom is just a short walk down the hall.  As they inspected it, it became clear that Becky saw the person and ran.  She tried to close the door, but it was kicked in.  They found Becky’s cell phone behind that door, against the wall. From her phone, they could see that she attempted to call 911, but misdialed and a call never went through.  She tried to place that call at 1:10 AM. 

Investigators talked with Becky’s new boyfriend, who was completely cooperative.  They knew that a 9mm gun was used, and he told them he had no access to one, and records indicated that he didn’t have one registered to his name.  They downloaded a copy of the contents of Becky’s phone, and he was one of the last people to talk with Becky, via text.  Their exchange was just the basics of going over their days and chit chatting.  After speaking with him and going through Becky’s phone, they eliminated him as a suspect. At that point, Tim became their focus, not in any small part due to the text messages she had sent her sister and brother in law previously, and it also struck them as odd that something like this had happened just a week before their divorce proceedings were set to go to a trial.  

With no witnesses, the Quincy PD went to neighbors to see if anyone had security cameras and footage.  The town’s bus depot for school buses was nearby, and they went there because they knew that they had security cameras.  They pulled the footage, and in the footage, you can see someone riding a bike past, towards where Becky’s house was.  Now, this footage is grainy and you can not make a clear identification of the person at all.  You can pretty much just see that a person is riding a bike by, and the bike doesn’t have reflectors on the wheels.  

Next, they talked with one of Becky’s neighbors.  They had previously had one of their cars broken into, and put up a camera outside to watch the driveway. It’s a camera that doesn’t record all the time, just when it senses movement.  The night of Becky’s murder, the camera didn’t capture anything in the driveway.  But, the night before, it did capture a man walking up the driveway in a hoodie, towards the back of Becky’s house. Then, about 48 minutes later, that person is seen again walking back towards the road. 

About a week before this, the camera had captured something similar on Valentines day.  The neighbor saw the notification from the camera when that incident occurred, and she texted Becky to tell her that they just saw someone on the camera in the driveway.  Becky didn’t respond until the next day, when she told her neighbor that she didn’t see anything, but she thought she had heard a voice or voices in the backyard and her motion light had turned on.  

They went over the footage of the man on the bike and the footage from the driveway.  They made a correlation to the times.  Every time they would see someone in the driveway footage, they could go to the corresponding date’s footage from the bus depot, and see the person riding the bike a few minutes before.  The night Becky was murdered, there was no footage of anyone in the driveway, there was footage of the bike rider riding towards Becky’s house before the time of the murder, then in the opposite direction after.  Also, this wasn’t a part of town where people just rode bikes in, especially in February when it was freezing outside. 

A few days into the investigation, a bike was found about half a block from Tim’s house.  It had no reflectors on the wheels.  A search warrant was obtained for Tim’s house and car, and he watched as they looked through everything.  On March 13th, 2 weeks after Becky was murdered, Tim was arrested and charged with her murder.  

Tim’s attorney throughout the divorce would also serve as his defense attorney.  Tim’s arrest made news throughout the country because of his family’s appearance on Family Feud.  People said that his appearance in his mugshot was disheveled, and Becky’s family said his appearance went hand and hand with the deterioration of his mental state during the divorce.  He had grown his hair very long, and he said he did it for a charity for cancer research.  

Tim’s attorney said that just because they were going through a messy divorce, it doesn’t mean that he killed her.  The things they were arguing about in the divorce proceedings were the same things that people argue about every day in divorces.  She also said that Becky’s friends talking about how Becky feared Tim was a lot of “girl talk.” 

Tim was ordered to be held without bond after his arrest. He invoked his right to a speedy trial, which meant that prosecutors were required to try the case within 90 days of his arrest. The prosecutors felt very strongly that they had the right man, but with no real DNA evidence linking Tim to the crime scene, it was going to be tough.  They said that juries expect to see that non-arguable DNA evidence.  They had to show the jury that they didn’t have that in this case, but they had plenty of other evidence. 

The trial commenced on May 23rd, 2023, three months after Becky’s murder.  The prosecution started to link everything they had to Tim.  The first talked about the pieces of plastic that were found around Becky’s body.  It turns out that those were fragments of an Aldi recyclable grocery bag, which had been used as a makeshift silencer on the gun, as shots were fired through it.  When Tim’s house was searched, there were tons of these bags found.  An expert testified that with a DNA sample found on one of the plastic pieces, it was more likely than not that Tim was a contributor.  Another expert testified that DNA found under Becky’s fingernails was 3 times more likely to come from Tim or a male relative. Tim’s attorney argued that pretty much every house in their small town has a stack of Aldi bags like that, and that the DNA found on the bag and under Becky’s nails was just a likely from one of their sons, especially if you consider the fact that they used the Aldi bags to pack clothes when the boys went back and forth between houses. 

The prosecution showed a crow bar they found in Tim’s basement which they suspect was used to pry the window open to gain entry.  An expert testified that while there were microscopic consistencies between the markings left on the window and the crow bar, she couldn’t definitely say that the crow bar was what left the marks on the window.  

The prosecution went on to say that Tim chose that night to commit the murder based on a few factors.  The boys had stayed with him the night before and were supposed to go back to Becky’s house, but she had asked him to keep them an extra night because she was sick and not feeling well.  They went on to say that he chose that night because he knew she was sick and would be weaker and easier to attack.  And, since he had the boys, he knew which window to go through, since there wouldn’t be a child in that room to make  noise when he broke in.  They pointed out that when making entry, he passed up other windows that would have been closer and probably easier to get into, to go through that window closer to Becky’s bedroom. 

The prosecution then said that Becky was killed before the divorce trial because she was going to ask in the courts that Tim’s father not be allowed to be alone around the children because of a history of abuse against minor children years earlier.  Tim’s father vehemently denies these claims and points out that he had never been charged with any crimes stemming from these allegations. Tim’s attorney said that those allegations were already in court proceedings previously, and were already a matter of public record, so it doesn’t make sense to “silence” Becky over something that’s already available.  

The prosecution showed searches that had been found on Tim’s phone; “how to open my door with a crowbar” “how to make a homemade pistol silencer” “how to clean gunpowder off your hands.”  They also talked about the person that was caught on camera in Becky’s neighbors driveway on Valentines day.  They said that after that man was seen on camera, Tim made over 200 searches online for a specific license plate number and car VIN number around 1:10 AM. That license plate and VIN belonged to the man that Becky was dating, who happened to be staying over at her house that night with his truck parked in her driveway. Tim said he had learned about the relationship earlier and didn’t care.  Tim’s lawyer said that if she was going to be searching for her ex husband’ new girlfriend, she would have waited till late at night when the kids were asleep, and it was just a coincidence that the person was spotted on camera and minutes later Tim was making these searches. 

As they were bringing their case to rest, the prosecution produced some spent 9mm shell casings that were taken as evidence when Tim’s home was searched. As we know, when a gun fires, it leaves a unique “fingerprint” on the shell casings.  They had an expert testify that when they were compared to the shell casings found at the scene to the ones from Tim’s house, 27 of them were fired from the same gun used to kill Becky.  Tim’s lawyer later said, “That’s the expert’s opinion. At the end of the day, it’s subject to human error like anything else.” 

The defense chose not to call any witnesses.  When asked about this after the trial, his lawyer said that they could have called witnesses to refute the claims by the prosecution, but they were strapped on time and funds.  The trial was sent to the jury, and after four hours of deliberations, Tim was found guilty of first degree murder. The prosecution said it wasn’t a celebration, because their sons had now lost both parents. 

Tim was sentenced on August 11th, 2023, he was sentenced to life in prison w/o the possibility of parole.  Tim’s legal team has filed an appeal in a 50 page brief.  The appeal covers three main arguments being made by Bliefnick’s new defense team:

• The first claims that the court included evidence and witnesses that were “irrelevant” to the prosecution’s case. These include testimony from Becky Bliefnick’s friends and family members, along with her divorce attorneys, who testified that Becky was afraid of her estranged husband, with some comments being made by Becky between 2021 and her death in 2023. These comments were admitted under the “forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine” which allows evidence to be admitted if a party has made the declarant unable to testify themselves.
• The other arguments included in the filing are comments made by lead prosecutor Josh Jones during his closing arguments. The filing claims that the comments Jones made about some of the evidence counted as “unsworn testimony” that the defense did not have a chance to respond to.
• Bliefnick’s attorneys also argued that Judge Robert Adrian’s actions of not removing prosecutor Josh Jones from the case also denied Bliefnick a fair trial. At the time, Jones was a witness in Robert Adrian’s case before the judicial inquiry board, which eventually led to Adrian being removed from the bench. Bliefnick’s attorneys say Adrian violated the defense’s suggestion of conflict when allowing Jones to remain as the lead prosecutor for Bliefnick’s trials.

The appeal is currently in process, with the prosecution having responded.  It’s in the hands of a panel of judges to decide if oral arguments should be heard in regards to claims of the appeal.  If the panel decides that they should, it could occur as early as the fall of 2024. 

Sarah gave a witness impact statement at Tim’s sentencing, saying:

“Your children’s future will be forever impacted by your crime. They are already suffering. Maybe you should have childhood PTSD in between your internet searches for homemade silencers and VIN numbers.”

Tim hasn’t had any contact with his sons since his arrest, and they are living with Sarah and Becky’s parents, but they have an entire family looking out for them.  Sarah says that they all work together to make sure that the boys have the life they deserve.