“I found my daughter dead in the house. I tried to wake her and she was stiff. Her hands were stiff, and her knees were stiff. ”
That was the 911 call Becky Bliefnick’s father made in February 2023, in Quincy, Illinois.
He had gone to her house at the request of her estranged husband, Tim, who claimed he was worried because Becky hadn’t picked up their three boys from school. Instead, her father found her on the bathroom floor. Becky was 40 years old, a mother of three, a nurse. She had a laugh her friends still describe as unforgettable—you could hear her before you saw her.
She had been married to Tim Bliefnick since 2009. They met at Quincy University, both athletes, both outgoing, and for a while, they seemed like the perfect couple. But behind closed doors, things had soured badly. When Becky went back to work as a nurse against Tim’s wishes, the marriage began to fracture.
Friends described Becky as a “single married mother”—Tim was rarely home, and when he was, he was critical. He criticized her parenting, her housekeeping, and especially her body, calling her fat and worthless. He made her feel small, and he controlled the money. In early 2021, they separated.
Tim moved out, but the divorce was brutal. He filed continuance after continuance, bleeding Becky of money. She went deep into debt—nearly $40,000—just trying to end the marriage. He fought against paying child support or alimony, and he fought for full custody.
Becky’s lawyer remembered her saying, “If anything ever happens to me, the first person of interest should be Tim. ”
Becky told friends she feared Tim was stalking her. Her cats died under suspicious circumstances—one seizing suddenly after coming inside, the other vanishing. She filed for a restraining order.
Tim filed a countersuit against her. In the court’s eyes, it looked like two angry exes fighting, nothing more. Then, on the night of February 22, 2023, Becky was home alone. Her boys were with Tim.
At 1:11 a. m. , she tried to dial 911. Her phone shows she attempted to call, but the call never connected.
Her fingers slid across the screen as if she was struggling. The killer broke in through a back window on the second floor, climbing onto the roof to get there. Becky had locked her bedroom door, but the attacker forced it open. She was shot fourteen times.
More than one of the wounds was to her hands, suggesting she tried to defend herself. Many of the shots came after she was already on the ground. Nothing was taken from the house. This was no botched burglary.
It was targeted, personal, and brutal. Neighborhood security cameras captured a figure walking through yards in the days before the murder, including on Valentine’s Day. On the night itself, a camera from the school bus storage lot near Tim’s home captured a cyclist leaving Tim’s area around 12:55 a. m.
, and then again heading back just minutes after Becky’s failed 911 call. The bike had no reflectors. Police searched Tim’s home. They found shopping bags that matched shredded fragments of plastic found at the crime scene—plastic investigators believed was used to muffle the sound of gunshots.
They found a box of spent shell casings that matched the casings around Becky’s body. They found a pry tool similar to the tool marks on Becky’s window. When police first stopped Tim, they seized his phone and noticed he was wearing a Whoop fitness tracker. He said it was just an activity tracker.
Investigators later obtained data from the Whoop company. The data showed the tracker disconnected from Tim’s phone at the exact times the cyclist would have been riding from his house to Becky’s and back. Tim’s browser history was damning. He had searched: “Can you match a shotgun shell to the weapon that was used?
” “How can you open a door with a crowbar? ” “How to make a homemade pistol silencer? ”
Tim insisted he was innocent. He refused any deal.
He wanted his day in court. At trial, prosecutors pointed out that Becky was killed just one week before the final divorce hearing, where she was likely to win custody, child support, and alimony—a massive loss for Tim. They also pointed to a chilling detail: ten hours after Becky’s murder, Tim picked up the boys from school an hour early. He needed someone to find the body.
And he made sure that someone was Becky’s father. Tim orchestrated her father finding her, knowing it would devastate the family. After nine days of testimony, the jury returned a verdict: guilty. The judge imposed the maximum sentence—life in prison without parole.
Becky’s friends and family still struggle with the loss. They talk about her laughter, her kindness, her fierce intelligence. They speak about the danger of emotional abuse—how it can be just as deadly as physical violence. Becky knew she was in danger.
She told people. She filed for protection. And still, no one could stop him.
The camera doesn’t lie.
