[MUSIC PLAYING]
This was different than any homicide we've ever really had.
This was a homicide that occurred in someone's bathroom.
From the first moment when we walked in and saw Becky's body,
it was different.
She was shot 14 times, and there was one miss.
So there were 15 rounds fired.
My mom called my phone.
She was understandably hysterical,
and she just kept saying Becky's dead.
You never expect to get a phone call saying your sister's dead.
It doesn't seem possible.
She was an incredible nurse, but she was made to be a mom.
I can't imagine someone looking at someone
so beautiful and kind and still thinking that you
should take her life from her.
She must have been so scared.
This brutal crime has had the Quincy community
on edge and our residents living in fear.
How big a story was this initially?
Huge.
It was huge.
Were people scared that there was a killer loose?
Definitely.
How is this happening in our small town?
Make sure you lock your doors.
Turn on exterior lights.
There were prowlers in the area right next door within a week
of her being murdered.
They're breaking into cars.
They're trying to break into houses.
It wasn't a random prowler.
It was an execution.
You don't kick down a door, chase them into a bathroom,
shoot them once, and then shoot them that many more
times in a random act.
This was somebody who was there with a purpose.
Did you think you'd probably be a suspect?
I mean, you're the estranged husband
in the middle of a very contentious divorce.
I had to make an assumption that, yeah, I probably
was going to be a suspect.
We learned that he was on Family Feud.
It's time to play Family Feud.
He gave a silly answer to a silly question.
The question was, what is the number
one regret that people have from their wedding day?
What's the biggest mistake you made at your wedding?
Honey, I love you, but said I do.
Not my mistake.
I love my wife.
It wasn't said with any malice or bad intentions.
It was supposed to be funny.
It was the second most popular answer on the board.
I do.
[DING]
It got attention to the case, but it
had nothing to do with it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
What's the first thing that you did looking for evidence?
We had the detectives go around to all the neighbors
to see if they had any video.
That's her house over there.
Yep, that's Becky's house.
And this is the neighbor's driveway.
This is the neighbor's driveway.
You'll see this person walk across,
looks like they have gloves on.
Can't see a face at all.
Can't see a face.
You can't see hair.
You can't really see anything else.
That's not Tim in that video.
You can't tell who it is.
Can you absolutely say with certainty
that is Tim Bliefnick?
Based on the video evidence alone, absolutely not.
That's one piece of the puzzle.
He had everything to lose if that's him and nothing to gain.
I wholeheartedly do not believe he had anything
to do with the death of Becky.
Did you kill your wife Becky?
No, I did not murder Becky.
The idea of murdering someone, let alone the mother
of my kids, is not any part of who I am.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Josh Jones and Laura Keck have prosecuted hundreds of cases.
11 and 10 seconds.
But no case has troubled them quite like the murder of Becky
Bliefnick.
You put yourself in the mind of Becky Bliefnick
in the last moments of her life, the fear
that she had to be feeling.
You can't walk out of that house and not be affected by it.
Becky was just 41 years old when on the afternoon of February
23, 2023 her own father discovered
her lifeless on the bathroom floor of her Quincy, Illinois
home.
She'd been dead for hours, shot a total of 14 times.
None of the wounds were immediately fatal.
It took her minutes to die.
It was an emotional response for both of us
to realize not just that she had been executed
but that her last minutes were lying on a floor
alone in the dark in extreme pain waiting to die.
Quincy is a quiet town along the Mississippi River
where violent crimes are rare and unsettling.
She was a nurse who had three children.
I think people were just horrified
that a mother of three young boys
could be shot and killed in her own home.
Sarah Reilly is Becky's older sister and her only sibling.
She lives in New York but was away on vacation
with her husband Brett Reilly when they
got that life-changing call.
You just want to wake up and have it not be real.
It's a living nightmare.
How fast can we get to the airport, fly back to New York,
unpack our swimsuits, and pack funeral clothes
and get out to Quincy, Illinois?
And just holding each other up in screaming grief.
How would you both describe her?
Selfless.
That really captures it.
She thought of everybody that was in her life as somebody
important and somebody special.
The kids were her world.
Becky's three sons, ages 12, 10, and 5,
were not at home at the time of the murder.
They were staying with their father Tim
Bliefnick about a mile away.
The couple was in the process of getting divorced.
Tim says that when he couldn't reach Becky on the 23rd,
he contacted her father.
He said, hey, I haven't been able to get hold of her either.
I'm going to go over to the house.
What happened to Becky should have never happened.
It still doesn't-- at times, it still just doesn't feel real.
Police quickly determined that the killer
had broken into Becky's home by prying open an upstairs
window in one of the children's bedrooms.
This video shows a police officer later re-enacting
how investigators believe the assailant scaled the house.
The person had climbed up on there.
There was a patio chair that was pulled over.
They walked past Becky's windows in her bedroom,
and then they went to a room of one of the boys.
And they pried open, broke the window open, went in.
You could almost trace their path to Becky's room.
They had kicked in or broken in the door violently.
Becky then ran into the bathroom,
turned around, and got shot.
What time do you believe the intruder entered the house?
So it would have been around 1:11 in the morning
because we know that at 1:11 and 10 seconds,
Becky tried to call 911 on her cell phone.
She dialed 91126.
And the phone was knocked out of her hand,
and it was found behind the door.
Nothing appeared to be stolen.
And neighbors didn't see or hear anything.
But there was evidence left behind,
a partial shoe print near the point of entry, eight spent
9 millimeter shell casings, and small pieces
of plastic on the floor around Becky's body.
We thought it was unusual when we saw that it was like, OK,
what is this?
Detectives canvassing the neighborhood
looking for surveillance video didn't have to go far.
Becky's next door neighbors, the Heimanns,
had installed a camera on the side of their house
after a car break in more than a year earlier.
It pointed at their driveway, which
ran alongside Becky's house.
What does it record?
It records movement.
So anytime it senses movement, it
will notify us on our phones.
The Heimann camera didn't capture anything
on the night of the murder, but it did capture something
unusual about 24 hours earlier.
We've slowed down some of the videos
so you can see them better.
At 1:05 AM, a person was seen walking down
the driveway towards the back of Becky's House.
And what appeared to be that same person was seen again
48 minutes later, this time walking
in the opposite direction.
The camera had also captured a similar incident
about a week earlier on February 14, Valentine's Day.
I saw that one in the middle of the night
and texted Becky immediately.
I told her we just saw somebody in the driveway.
And she responded not until the next morning.
And what did she say when she responded?
That's when she told me that she hadn't seen anything,
but she thought she had been hearing voices in her backyard.
And her motion light go on.
And she was very paranoid.
At the time, the Heimanns thought
it was a neighborhood prowler looking for something to steal.
But now with Becky dead, they began to wonder
and investigators did too.
Officers went around the entire neighborhood trying
to find more video, and we were able to find
a video from a house.
And we were able to find video from the Quincy bus barn.
And those videos showed a person riding a bike
in the direction of Becky's house.
After analyzing the recorded times of the videos,
authorities began to suspect that the person seen
on the bike was the same person seen in the driveway.
Every time you see a person at the Heimann residence,
you see a person riding a bike down the road
just a few minutes before you see
a person on that Heimann video.
And even though there was no video
from the Heimann residence on the morning Becky was killed,
there was video of a person on a bike riding
in the direction of Becky's House right before the murder
and in the opposite direction right after.
And this is not a part of town that people ride bike
in the middle of the night in winter.
And so when you have this surveillance video
and it exactly matches the timeline, that's suspicious.
But there was one big problem.
You can tell absolutely nothing from the videos,
only that the bike did not appear to have reflectors
on the wheels.
I mean, you can't see whether it's male/female.
No.
It's terrible
It's terrible.
The video is terrible.
Authorities needed more leads, and they would get one
from Becky's sister that would point them
in a very specific direction.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
When Becky's sister Sarah and brother-in-law
Brett learned of her murder, they say one person
came to mind as the prime suspect, Becky's estranged
husband Tim Bliefnick.
I told Brett it was Tim.
Of course, it's Tim.
I said--
Right away?
Right away.
Tim and Becky met when they were students at Quincy University.
But it wasn't until two years after graduating
that they began dating.
And how would you describe Becky back then?
Happy, fun.
She was beautiful.
The two eventually moved in together, married,
and started a family.
Becky quit her job in pharmaceutical sales
to become a stay-at-home mom, while Tim
continued his successful career in the recycling industry.
I thought this was it.
I'm going to be 85 and sitting on a porch in a rocking chair
with her talking about how good life was.
But things didn't turn out that way.
She was very happy with their marriage for probably
the first five years.
And then things started to change.
He got progressively more manipulative and controlling.
And he didn't do any of the work ever at the house.
Shannon Zanger is Becky's close friend.
When she'd come over and we'd talk husbands as wives do,
she felt like she was shouldering most of the load.
I thought, man, I really have a partner here.
And she doesn't seem to have that partnership.
Shannon and Sarah say the relationship only
became more strained when Becky decided to go back
to school to become a nurse.
He not only did not support her, he did not increase his time
with the boys.
While Tim acknowledges that he wasn't in favor of Becky
taking on a career in nursing, he says it was out of concern
for her well-being.
Because of the stress piece of it.
Were you worried you'd have to pick up
more of the work with the kids?
Not at all.
I've always been involved with the kids every day.
In January 2021 after 11 years of marriage,
Tim filed for divorce.
Although he wouldn't discuss the specifics of why he filed,
he hinted that it had to do with what
he saw as a change in Becky's personality
after she became a nurse.
She struggled with patience and stress a lot,
especially when it came to the kids.
And it created some conflict.
But Sarah says Tim is just making excuses.
And she believes the reason Tim filed for divorce is because he
couldn't control Becky.
She says Becky was a loving mother
and tried in vain to salvage the marriage.
She wanted to go to marriage counseling with him.
And he refused.
Whatever the reason for the divorce might have been,
one thing is certain, things between the two
soon turned contentious.
According to divorce documents, they fought over just
about everything, money, the marital home,
and custody of the kids.
I don't understand why it got so contentious if you were
the one who wanted to get out.
Yeah, I was the one that wanted to get out.
And I tried on several occasions,
but there are details that are hard to talk about that
happened in the divorce.
In the months after Tim filed for divorce,
Becky began voicing concerns about Tim's behavior.
She sent this text to a friend, "He has screamed in my face.
He shoved me in front of the kids
and has thrown things across the room."
And she texted another friend, "I truly
believe Tim has serious mental health problems,
and he is becoming more vengeful and unpredictable."
But Tim says it was Becky who was vengeful.
She told people I had an affair, which is untrue.
She tried to tell people that I was
an alcoholic, which is untrue.
She was telling people these things because she
was angry about the divorce.
At one point, Tim sought an order of protection
against Becky.
He alleged Becky stalked and harassed him.
He also referenced an incident where
he said Becky had become combative during a disagreement
at a parent-teacher night.
I'm asking for the letter.
Stop.
I'm asking you to stop harassing me and stop following me.
I'm not harassing you.
I'm asking you--
He offered this video of the incident as
I will make a copy for you.
I don't want you to tape me.
Don't tape me.
Then stop doing this.
Don't tape me.
I don't--
Then stop going this.
I didn't ask you to tape me.
Do you really think she was trying
to hurt him in that video?
I don't think anybody was trying to hurt anybody.
I think you have two parents that were having a disagreement
and didn't know how to deal with it.
Casey Schnack was one of Tim's divorce attorneys.
The judge didn't grant that order of protection.
Did not grant it.
No.
Days after Tim filed for that order of protection
and more than a year before her death,
Becky sent her sister Sarah this text.
If something ever happens to me, please make sure the number one
person of interest is Tim.
She would later make similar statements to friends.
I said what did he do?
And that text was prompted by the murder
of one of her colleagues.
One of the nurses that she knew was murdered by her partner.
That scared her.
She felt like this could happen.
This is real.
I never understood where that came from.
We would get into arguments.
And sometimes we would get loud.
But that's all it amounted to.
Sarah says she recommended Becky seek help from a domestic abuse
organization.
And, eventually, Becky filed for an order of protection
against Tim.
In her petition, she alleged that Tim entered her residence
without permission.
She also said that he repeatedly falsified
interactions between the two.
That order of protection was not granted.
But a judge did ultimately order Tim and Becky stay away
from each other's residences except when
exchanging their kids.
And the judge also ordered Tim to return a 9 millimeter
handgun that Becky had gifted him when they were together.
He was into recreational shooting.
She wanted that particular gun back
because the gun was in her name.
But Becky never got it back.
And it was a 9 millimeter handgun that
was later used to kill her.
So I had not seen that gun in three years.
I didn't have it.
Becky was killed one week before the divorce
case was set to go to trial.
When Sarah informed law enforcement of their history,
Tim became a person of interest.
Authorities kept digging.
And days later, they found a bike
with no reflectors on the wheels just
like the one seen on those surveillance videos.
How close was that bike that you found to Tim's house?
Less than half a block.
They then executed a search warrant on Tim's house and car
as Tim looked on.
And on March 13, 2023, just over two weeks after Becky's death,
Tim Bliefnick was arrested and charged with her murder.
I can't even fathom the idea of considering murdering somebody.
Like I can't.
Tim's divorce attorney Casey Schnack
would become his defense attorney.
And she says she's convinced police got it wrong.
He knew how much those kids meant to her
and how much she meant to them.
He wouldn't do this to them.
He wouldn't
[MUSIC PLAYING]
When Tim Bliefnick was arrested, it made national news.
He competed on Family Feud as his whole town cheered him on,
but his local hero status is over.
In large part because of that appearance
he made alongside his parents and brothers
on the game show Family Feud.
All right, Tim, we talked to a hundred married people.
What's the biggest mistake you made at your wedding?
Honey, I love you, but said I do.
The episode was filmed in 2019, nearly two years
before Tim filed for divorce.
But because of the charges he now face,
it had people talking.
And there was also chatter about Tim's appearance
in his mugshot, although it was no surprise to Becky's family.
We had seen through social media the deterioration
of his appearance.
And that went hand in hand with the deterioration
of his mental state over the course of the divorce.
But Tim says that's not the case and that he
had been growing out his hair for a fundraiser for cancer
research.
I'm not a violent person.
I'm not an angry person.
I've never been that way.
Tim's attorney Casey Schnack was determined
to prove his innocence.
She says, just because Tim and Becky
were going through a messy divorce,
it doesn't mean he killed her.
It wasn't pretty, but the things that they were fighting over
were not monumental things.
You know, there were a number of friends, Becky's friends,
who said that she expressed great fear of Tim.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
That's a lot of girl talk.
I've never seen any pictures of her
with bruises, of marks, any allegations
of him beating on her, nothing.
But Adams County prosecutors Josh Jones and Laura Keck
say even though there may not have been physical abuse,
there was emotional abuse evident in Tim's texts
to Becky.
What do his text messages reveal?
So I would say what they reveal is somebody
who wants power and control.
He wants to control the relationship.
He wants to control how people perceive him.
Tim denies that.
She wasn't the one that was emotionally abused.
I tried to create space.
I tried to stay out of her life.
And Tim says he has an alibi for the time of the murder.
He says he was home with their three kids.
They were sleeping over that night
because Becky had asked him to keep them an extra night.
She told him that she wasn't feeling well,
and he said that's fine.
That's how you want to see two people in a divorcing situation
act with kids.
But Jones and Keck believe Tim saw an opportunity.
She showed weakness to a predator.
And that's what predators do.
When they see a weakness, they attack.
And they also say that explains the intruder's point
of entry, an upstairs window in one of the kids' bedrooms.
If you're a random intruder, why do you
go to the second floor window?
You go past not just one window but three windows that
are possible entrance points.
And you just happen to get lucky that it's a little boys room
that's not there that night.
But Schnack points to what she says
is a lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime.
No murder weapon or bloody clothing was found.
And while police did seize pairs of Tim's shoes,
they weren't able to match them to that partial shoe
print found at the scene.
They took every single pair of athletic shoes
that they thought would be a match.
They didn't find any that were a suitable match.
Schnack also points out that Tim's DNA
wasn't found on that patio chair that investigators
believe was used by the killer to climb onto Becky's roof.
Nothing on that was connected to Tim.
They took every pair of gloves from Tim's car, house
that they could find.
And none of those gloves had anything
that linked him to this crime.
But if Tim didn't kill Becky, who did?
If I knew that answer, I would have given that name or whoever
it was a long time ago.
Tim's attorney says that she believes investigators should
have given more weight to the idea
that it could have been a random prowler who killed
Becky in a break-in gone wrong.
Remember, police found those videos of a person
on a bike and a person walking down
Becky's neighbor's driveway.
Tim insists it's not him in those videos.
You cannot say with any degree of certainty who that person is
on any of those videos.
All you see is a bike without reflectors.
And even though a bike with no reflectors on the wheels
was found less than half a block from Tim's house,
Schnack says that doesn't mean anything.
His DNA was not found on that bike.
And we don't even know that the bike that was found
is the same bike that was in the video.
But prosecutors Jones and Keck say
they did find evidence tying Tim to that bike.
We were able to download information off his phone.
And we found that Mr. Bliefnick had
a what I'll call burner or fake Facebook account with the name
John Smith.
And they say that John Smith Facebook
account appeared to have been looking at this bike for sale.
It's a blue Schwinn with no reflectors on the wheels,
just like that bike that was found.
You know, I have a fake Facebook account.
I'm not proud of it, but people do it.
Isn't it a bit of a problem, though, that on his phone
he gets an alert for that blue bike?
Sure.
Are there similarities?
Sure, but that's not the only abandoned bike
that's been found around town.
Jones and Keck say they're confident they
got the right guy.
The detectives followed the evidence
exactly where it took them.
And there was one inescapable conclusion
that it was Mr. Bliefnick.
But despite their confidence, they soon
faced quite a challenge.
When Tim was arrested, he was ordered held without bond.
He had a right to a speedy trial, which he took,
meaning prosecutors would be required
to try the case within 90 days of Tim's arrest.
We were going to be ready come hell or high water.
But did they have enough to prove their case
beyond a reasonable doubt?
Juries expect a confession.
They expect that DNA evidence that says 1 in 500 million.
We're going to have to show them that that's not
what we have here.
What do you make of Tim Bliefnick's answer
on Family Feud?
Take a look at the case evidence at 48hours.com.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
On May 23, 2023, exactly three months after Becky Bliefnick
was gunned down in her home, Tim Bliefnick
went on trial for her murder.
The defendant looked down at Becky,
and he pointed a gun at her.
And he pulled the trigger.
Prosecutors Josh Jones and Laura Keck
began by methodically laying out the evidence they say points
directly to Tim, starting with those odd pieces of plastic
that were found around Becky's body.
They say investigators determined
that they were shreds from an ALDI grocery store bag.
And then in the defendant's house,
we found stacks of ALDI bags.
He had fired through an ALDI bag either in an attempt
to muffle the sound or to catch his shell casings.
And prosecutors say that in the process,
DNA was left behind on a piece of that plastic.
An expert testified that it was more likely than not
that Tim was a contributor.
And Tim also couldn't be excluded
from DNA that was found under Becky's fingernails.
That was three times more likely to have
come from the defendant or a male relative
from the lineage of the defendant.
And this case is dripping with reasonable doubt.
But defense attorney Casey Schnack
says that evidence is far from definitive.
Everybody in town has ALDI bags that they're hoarding.
They could have came from Becky's house.
With DNA from him?
Well, because they transferred stuff back and forth
for the boys in ALDI bags.
There was DNA found under Becky's fingernails.
Yeah.
And it was just as likely to be Tim's as any one of the boys.
Prosecutors also told the jury that police found this crowbar
in Tim's basement, and they called an expert to the stand
who testified that she compared it to tool marks left
on the window that was pried open at Becky's.
While there were microscopic consistencies,
she couldn't say with scientific certainty
that that crowbar made those marks.
The expert said that that was inconclusive.
Inconclusive leaves a jury guessing and speculating,
which they are not allowed to do.
The jury heard about the couple's acrimonious divorce
and from Becky's sister and several friends who
testified about those fears Becky had raised about Tim.
Several of them acknowledged that they regretfully
didn't take steps to help her.
How could Tim do that?
I've known him forever.
When she reached out to people, that's what they said.
In hindsight, of course, like we should have done more.
There's only one person that believed it was true,
and that was Becky herself.
And the prosecution argued that the timing of the murder
is significant.
Remember, Becky was killed one week
before the couple's divorce case was set to go to trial.
And prosecutors told the jury there was something even bigger
than money and custody that was going to come into play.
Becky didn't want their three children
to be around the defendant's father unsupervised.
They didn't tell the jury why, but we uncovered these court
documents that reveal Becky had gathered witnesses who she said
planned to testify about Tim's father Ray Bliefnick
and would allege that he had a history of perversion
and abusing minor children many years earlier.
The alleged victims were not Becky and Tim's children.
Becky sought an order of protection against Ray,
but a judge denied her request.
In a letter, Ray's lawyer wrote that Ray vehemently
denies the claims and that he has never
been charged with any criminal offense stemming
from the allegations.
Information was going to come out
that he didn't want to come out, and he
started to feel like he was losing control.
The prosecution pointed out that on the day of Becky's murder,
hours before anyone except her killer knew that she was dead,
Tim brought a kids basketball hoop to his father's house.
He's doing that because he knows Becky is not
going to be a problem anymore.
Becky didn't want those boys around Ray.
And in Tim's mind, that problem was
solved because Becky was dead.
I really don't buy that.
Why not?
Because the boys weren't restricted
from seeing Ray to begin with.
They just couldn't see him without supervision.
And Schnack says those allegations were old news.
So all of those allegations were in pleadings
that her attorneys had filed and at that point were already
a matter of public record.
It doesn't make sense that he would throw his life away
over a divorce and keeping information out
of the public eye that quite frankly was already out.
But the prosecutors wasn't done.
The jury was also shown numerous damaging searches
found on Tim's phone like how to open
my door with a crowbar, how to make a homemade pistol
silencer, and how to clean gunpowder off your hands.
It was mind boggling.
Yeah.
And remember that person caught on camera in Becky's neighbor's
driveway on Valentine's Day about a week before the murder?
Well, prosecutors say that right after that sighting,
Tim made more than 200 searches online for a specific license
plate and a car VIN number.
It turns out that that license plate and VIN number belonged
to a man whom Becky was dating.
And his truck was parked in Becky's driveway at the time.
And for somebody with power and control issues,
you realize that your prior significant other
is now in a relationship with somebody,
that they're spending the night on Valentine's Day.
And then the minute you get back to your home
at 1:10 in the morning, you're searching their license plate
number and their VIN number.
That's somebody who's lost control.
Tim insists he had learned about Becky's new relationship months
earlier.
I actually didn't care.
It sounds like you were kind of obsessed because--
No.
He declined to go into more detail about specific trial
evidence citing legal proceedings.
But his lawyer spoke for him.
I mean, if I'm going to be checking out my husband's
new girlfriend, I'm going to be doing it late at night
after my kids are asleep.
So it's just a coincidence that the night you
see that prowler at the next door neighbor's driveway
and his truck is there-- it's just
a coincidence that just minutes later, Tim
is doing research on the VIN number and the license tags.
That's not Tim in that video.
What about the searches that were found on Tim's phone?
There's no date or time as to when those searches were done.
So we don't know if they were done before the murder,
and we don't know if they were done after the murder.
Before they rested the case, prosecutors
dropped one more piece of evidence.
These spent shell casings that were found in Tim's home.
An expert testified that she compared them
to the shell casings found at the crime scene
and determined that 27 of them had
been fired from the exact same gun used in the murder.
Each firearm leaves its own fingerprint
on every shell casing that it fires.
It was the same gun that killed Becky Bliefnick that
fired the shell casings that were found in Tim Bliefnick's
residence.
That's the expert's opinion.
At the end of the day, it's subject to human error
like anything else.
But when it was the defense's turn to call witnesses,
it chose to call none.
You could have brought in your own expert
to say those did not match.
I guess we could have, but we were
strapped on time and funds.
You've got a man's life on the line.
And he didn't want us to do that.
It was a risky move, but one that
may have paid off for the defense
because when the jury began deliberating, they took a vote.
And there was a holdout.
Sometimes you just need one.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
When the jury began deliberating after a six-day trial,
Tim Bliefnick was on edge.
It was miserable because I was essentially waiting for them
to decide my fate.
Inside that jury room, one juror was undecided.
Our stomachs were in knots.
We were beyond stressed.
But four hours later, a verdict.
When they passed the paper from the jury box--
Give it to the clerk.
--to the clerk, that was very difficult to know
that there's a possibility that he could get away with it.
Would the clerk read the verdicts please?
We the jury find the defendant Timothy Bliefnick
guilty of first degree murder.
Guilty.
It was a sense of relief that they had found him guilty.
But it was also a sense of these three little boys
have now lost both parents.
It's not a celebration.
When we sat down with Tim Bliefnick,
it was just over a month after his conviction.
He was still awaiting sentencing.
Did you ever imagine you would be here?
No, no, never.
At times, it's felt like I'm watching somebody else's
life from the outside.
Like it can't be me.
But the only thing I can do right now
is what we are doing, filing an appeal.
I have to believe in that process because if not--
Tell me what you're thinking right now.
My kids.
I just want them to know that I love them, and I miss them.
I'm innocent.
I didn't kill Becky.
But Becky's sister says Tim is right where he belongs.
He called my dad to set him up to find her.
That alone shows how cruel he really is.
As agonizing as our pain is, I want
him to understand his worst crime was against his children.
And that's the message Sarah delivered directly to Tim
during her victim impact statement right
before he was sentenced on August 11, 2023.
Your children's future will be forever impacted by your crime.
They are already suffering.
Maybe you should have googled childhood PTSD
in between your internet searches for homemade silencers
and VIN numbers.
Judge Robert Adrian had the option of sentencing Tim
to anywhere between 45 years to life.
Mr. Bliefnick, you researched this murder.
You planned this murder.
You broke into her house.
And you shot her 1, 2, 3 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,
14 times.
The court believes that the appropriate sentence would
be natural life in prison.
Life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors Jones and Keck say the punishment fits the crime,
but even they don't consider it justice.
If I had a magic wand, I would bring Becky back to life.
Tim can spend the rest of his life out of prison.
That would be justice, but I can't.
What we can do is we can hold her killer accountable,
and that's all we can do.
Now Becky's family is left to focus
on all they have left of her, memories
and the loves of her life, her three boys, who are now
living with her parents.
We will all work together to make sure those boys have
the life they deserved.
And we started a GoFundMe to support the boys.
And Becky's family and friends hope
that Becky's mission in life will now become her legacy.
Becky would have wanted positive change to happen.
She would want somebody else's life to be saved.
If we can learn anything, if somebody reaches out to you
and says that they're scared, they
believe that they're partner or whoever
it is is capable of violence, need
to believe them and make an active effort
to make sure they're safe.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
An attempted murder caught on video and a crime scene
investigator is the victim.
It's a miracle she's alive.
My life changed forever.
But the number one suspect has a bulletproof alibi.
Someone wanted me dead.
Next Saturday on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
[MUSIC PLAYING]