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Man Found Guilty of Killing Wife Who Threatened to Reveal Family Secret in Divorce Court
The marriage of so-called “perfect couple” Tim and Becky Bliefnick ended in a violent murder at their formerly shared Quincy, Illinois home.
Becky Bliefnick’s father walked into one of the most traumatic scenes imaginable: his daughter shot and killed on her bathroom floor.
“Whoever killed Becky stood over her and emptied the clip. Fired until there were no more bullets available. It was a really, really, horrible crime,” said Joshua Jones, assistant state’s attorney for Adams County Illinois, on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins, airing Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.
The 41-year-old had recently had surgery and was healing, so her three boys were with her estranged husband, Tim Bliefnick, when she was killed on Feb. 23, 2023 in her home in Quincy, Illinois. Police believed the killer climbed onto the roof and broke in through one of the boy’s bedroom windows. An autopsy report showed Becky was shot 14 times.
“That was significant. Because why would you shoot someone 14 times when you could have shot them twice and killed them?” Adam Yates, Quincy police chief, said on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “It seemed like someone was coming for Becky.”
One suspect stood out to police: Tim Bliefnick.
Tim and Becky Bliefnick's marriage falls apart
Tim and Becky Bliefnick met when they both attended the same college.
“Becky’s wedding was beautiful. She was so happy,” said Sarah Reilly, Becky’s sister, on Killer Realtionship with Faith Jenkins. “Tim was a responsible guy. He had a great job. They had a house. She was over the moon.”
The young couple quickly had two sons.
“They were so cute. They were the first ones on the dance floor. They were the life of the party,” said Christie Krause, Becky’s friend and colleague, on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “Not many couples say ‘I’m ready to have a baby’ right away, you know, and they were that couple…they were just so excited to be parents.”
But it was after the birth of their second son that things started to change in their marriage.
“Life with kids is challenging, and there was a distinct shift in their relationship in the years after their second child was born,” Reilly said. “She wanted to have her own career again and that became a point of contention.”
Becky Bliefnick went back to nursing school, and after getting her degree, gave birth to her third son. She then became an emergency room nurse. But friends and family said Tim didn’t adjust to her demanding career.
“He was not contributing. He was not supportive. He chastised her about the house not being clean. He never said, ‘Can I help you clean the house?’ It was always her job,” Reilly said. “We called her the single married mother because she was not getting much, if any, help from Tim. And that was the point where she truly believed the marriage was in danger of falling apart.”
It was when the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020 that Becky began telling her friends of her marriage problems.
“She told me that Tim just didn’t want to be married anymore,” Krause said. “I thought, ‘Wow,’ you know, they were like the perfect couple.”
In January 2021, Tim Bliefnick petitioned for divorce from Becky. By spring of 2022, Becky was moving on and dating, but then, in February 2023, she was discovered murdered in her home.
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What happened to Becky Bliefnick?
Becky Bliefnick’s phone showed she attempted to call 911 at 1:10 a.m. the night she was killed, giving police a time frame for her murder. Police checked out surveillance video from a neighboring home, which showed an unknown person walking between the houses multiple times in the middle of the night in the days and weeks leading up to Becky’s slaying. But the footage was too grainy to make out the identity of the person.
“It seemed like someone was casing Becky’s house,” Jones said.
Police also looked into surveillance video from a nearby school bus parking lot. On the night of Becky’s murder, it showed someone on a bike around the time she was killed. Police located that bike abandoned a half mile from Tim Bliefnick’s home.
On March 1, 2023, officers got a search warrant for Tim’s house. On his computer, they realized he bought the abandoned bike on Facebook marketplace under a fake name. That wasn’t the only suspicious evidence Tim’s computer showed.
“We learned that he had searched several phrases and terms that just shocked us,” Jones said. “He was searching ‘how to pry open a door with a crowbar.’ ‘How to wash gunpowder off my hands.’ He was searching ‘Quincy police department response time.’ It just did not seem like the actions of an innocent person.”
Police also found an empty gun safe in Tim’s room, as well as dozens of shell casings. Ballistic reports showed the shell casings matched those of shell casings found by Becky’s dead body.
Court documents also showed that Tim and Becky Bliefnick had a very difficult and disputed divorce.
“Tim’s appearance was disintegrating over the course of the divorce…he didn’t even look like the same person that she married. He became even more vindictive. He became a very hateful person,” Reilly said. “She was convinced that he was willing to do just about anything to prevent her from ‘winning’ the divorce.”
Tim Bliefnick had asked the court for sole and/or majority custody of his three children, but Becky had also filed motions.
“We learned that Becky sought an order of protection against her estranged husband’s father,” Jones said. “She did not want [Tim's father] to be around her kids unsupervised. And that was one of the issues in the divorce.”
The couple’s final divorce hearing was scheduled for about a week after Becky was murdered. Documents showed Becky was planning to expose a potential family secret, and have witnesses testify that her father-in-law had a history of “perversion and abusing minor children,” including a minor family member — putting a huge strain on Tim Bliefnick.
“That was the moment we knew we had our guy,” said Nick Eddy, lead investigator for the Quincy police department, on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins.
On March 13, 2023, Tim Bliefnick was charged with his estranged wife Becky’s murder. On May 31, 2023, Tim was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. Their sons now live with Becky’s parents, who are in the process of adopting them.
“Tim orchestrated the worst possible horror for my father,” Reilly said. “It wasn’t enough for him to murder my father’s daughter. He had to have him find her and let that image be the last thing that he had of her.”
Watch all-new episodes of Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins on Saurdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.
