Serialously with Annie Elise
225: Stalked, Harassed, & Shot 14x on the Bathroom Floor! The Twisted Case of Becky Bliefnick
Mon, 23 Dec 2024
In a quiet Quincy, Illinois neighborhood, the brutal murder of Becky Bliefnick, a beloved nurse and mother of three, shocked the community. Found lifeless in her home after a chilling 911 attempt, what started to unfold was a tangled web of contentious relationships, eerie surveillance footage, and cryptic clues pointing toward a sinister plan. As the investigation unfolded, secrets came to light that left everyone questioning—was this a crime of passion, or something far more calculated? Zocdoc Go to https://www.zocdoc.com/annieelise to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today! Liquid I.V. Go to https://www.liquid-iv.com and use code AE for 20% off your first order Shop the Merch: www.annieelise.com Follow the podcast on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@serialouslypodcast Follow the podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serialouslypod/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise All Social Media Links: https://www.flowcode.com/page/annieelise_ SERIALously FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/SERIALouslyAnnieElise/ About Me: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: [email protected] Sources: CBS News NBC News Law and Crime ABC 7 Chicago Muddy River News Court TV
Chapter 1: What happened to Becky Bliefnick?
Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serial Asleep. Hey everybody, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. We are talking all things true crime today. Well, actually, that's a lie. That is a bold-faced lie. We're not talking all things true crime today.
We're talking about one specific thing true crime today because we are doing a mega, mega deep dive. Now, I will say this case is relatively recent. So there are maybe things that will trickle out over the next month or two. I don't imagine that it will, but possible because it is more of a recent case. But it's one that a lot of you guys have been requesting. So I decided we're not going to wait.
We're just going to go ahead. We're going to jump in and cover it. And I think the one thing that's really creepy, especially when it comes to true crime cases, is the way that some of these absolute monsters can honestly just blend right in. They can act totally normal, totally safe, like these harmless people just, you know, going about their lives, and you would never in a
suspect that they are capable of something so intense and so crazy but then it's like something horrendous or barbaric happens and you go back and you ask yourself like how did we miss the signs how did we not see this what else just kind of flew over our head like what are we missing here So I want you to keep that in mind as we get into today's case.
Like, and I hate to throw back to this, but almost like Ted Bundy in a way, right? Nobody really ever suspected that this handsome, charming guy was capable of doing what he did. He also worked at a self-harm prevention hotline, like all of these things. And then when you look back, you're like, oh, okay, the writing was on the wall and certain things with certain behaviors.
But I just want you to keep that in mind as we get into today's case. So let's jump right in.
What's the biggest mistake you made at your wedding? Honey, I love you, but said I do.
You broke into her house and you shot her 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 times. If they haven't already, your boys will realize that their father doesn't love them.
On February 23, 2023, in Quincy, Illinois, William Postle went to visit his 41-year-old daughter, Becky Bleifnick. He had just received a phone call from her husband, well, sort of ex-husband, I should say, named Tim. He had said that Becky had forgotten to pick up their three boys from school.
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Chapter 2: What were the details of Becky's murder?
So then Tim went to go get the kids from school and asked William to check on Becky to make sure that she was okay and that everything was all right. But what William found would stay with him for the rest of his life. His daughter was there dead on the bathroom floor with blood pooled around her and bullet holes just riddling her body.
He called 911 and officers immediately arrived to investigate. They declared her dead on the scene and they also determined pretty quickly that she had been dead for hours. Now, right away, it was clear that somebody had broken into her home. Thankfully, Becky's sons were staying with their dad, so they didn't have to witness anything that happened during that night.
I mean, God forbid if they were in that house, who knows how many victims there would be. So anyway, on the second floor of the house, in one of Becky's son's rooms, there was a window that had clearly been tampered with. There were marks that suggested that somebody had used a tool of some sort, almost like a crowbar, to try and pry it open.
There was also a shoe print that was not too far away from the window. So, I mean, clearly whoever had forced it open had either come in or had gone out that way. Probably in, which we'll get into in a minute. In fact, outside, directly underneath the window, investigators also found a lawn chair that had been dragged over from somewhere else in the yard.
Almost like somebody needed to get a boost, right? So the thought was that somebody climbed on top of that chair to then get into the window. Then they forced it open, went inside, and attacked Becky. She was in the bathroom that connected to her bedroom, and she had been shot, get this, 14 times. I mean, talk about overkill, right?
She was shot nine times in her chest, three times in her right arm, and once in her left hand. And surrounding her body on the floor were eight 9mm shell casings. And the investigators also found some very strange small pieces of white, yellow, and pink plastic on the bedroom floor. Now, as for Becky's cause of death, I mean, yes, she had been shot.
That was clear enough from all of the bullet casings and from the multiple gunshot wounds. But none of these gunshot wounds were immediately fatal. Instead, she got hit once in the lung and then another time in the spinal cord, and that paralyzed her. But it's not what killed her. For several minutes afterward, she suffered and bled before she finally died.
Which I can't even begin to imagine how... how utterly horrific that would be I mean I guess thank goodness in the sense that you're paralyzed and you wouldn't be able to feel it but the fact that you're paralyzed and you can't move and you know that you're literally dying on your bathroom floor and your sons aren't there and you're you're trying to like grapple with it like I
It's a whole different kind of torture, okay? Now, the police couldn't find any fingerprints or foreign DNA, but they did find a little bit under Becky's fingernails. So it seemed like she had scratched her attacker, but all that the investigators could tell at first was that this DNA underneath her fingernail belonged to a male.
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Chapter 3: Who were the key players in Becky's life?
She told him that she was feeling a little bit sore, but that overall, she was doing well. So the next morning, Ted sent her a good morning text. A few hours later, he sent her another one saying, you know, hey, I hope you slept well. And then hours later, after not receiving any reply to his text messages, he texted her with Marco. Kind of like a little playful way of like, hello, you there?
Are you there? Kind of, you know, Marco Polo the game. So he was hoping that she would reply with Polo. But that reply never came. So during that day, Ted drove to a town in Missouri to discuss some issues related to his own divorce. Like Becky, Ted was also going through a divorce, and he and his ex had to work out some custody arrangements.
So he was going there to deal with the situation in person. So he ended up having an alibi for the day before Becky was shot and murdered. That night, a co-worker also came over for about an hour and a half, but they eventually left. Ted went to sleep, and then he went to work around 7 a.m. the next day. When he was done with his shift, he then went to his parents' house to feed some horses.
So this is all part of his timeline, his alibi, his whereabouts. The police questioned him about everything, about his whereabouts, about his relationship, about, you know, all of the details. And when they did, they learned that Becky had been storing a backpack with $13,000 in cash at Ted's house inside his safe.
Ted knew about the backpack, he knew that it had cash in it, but he didn't know the exact amount. He also said that he didn't know exactly why Becky was storing money at his house. But naturally, the police were investigating, and they wanted to know about all the different motives that people might have had to commit a murder. For example, was Ted jealous? Had he and Becky gotten into a fight?
Was he maybe hoping to get his hands on some of that $13,000 in cash? Which, FYI, you know, it's not a small amount of money. But Ted told the officers that he had no idea that Becky was even dead until Becky's sister sent him a Facebook message on the night of February 23rd to tell him.
Which, I can't even imagine hearing news like that over Facebook Messenger, but maybe she didn't have his number. I mean, obviously, I'm sure she didn't have his number, but like, talk about impersonal. Well, even though Ted's story checked out overall, the police still decided that they wanted to test his hands for gunpowder residue. Luckily, it ended up being negative.
They also took his shoes to compare to the print that they had found in Becky's bedroom, but it wasn't a match. And on top of that, there was really no evidence at the crime scene linking Ted to this murder. He also didn't really have a motive. I mean, remember, he didn't even know how much cash Becky had stored in his safe.
So because of that, how could he be tempted when he might have thought it was just a small inconsequential amount? Like, how are you going to plan this whole murder plot over an amount you don't even know that exists, right? So after checking all of it out and making sure that everything he said was true and that all of his alibi and detail checked out, the police ruled Ted out as a suspect.
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Chapter 4: What issues did Becky face in her marriage?
I'm asking you to stop harassing me and stop following me.'" Becky responds, "'I'm not harassing you. I'm asking you. I don't want you to tape me. Don't tape me.'" Tim says, "'Then stop doing this.'" Becky responds, "'Don't tape me. I don't.'" Tim cuts her off and says, "'Then stop doing this.'" She says, "'I didn't ask you to tape me.'"
And at one point, Tim filed for a protection order against Becky because he claimed that she was stalking him and harassing him. Now in the end, the judge ended up not giving Tim the order of protection, but here's where things get really crazy. Becky filed for her own protection order against Tim.
She said that Tim would come into her home without permission whenever she was gone, or whenever he had the kids, he would have them go into her house on his behalf and then steal from her without her knowing. After one of these incidents, Becky even called the police.
Now, the officer said he couldn't do anything, but that she could if she wanted file a restraining order so that she could stop this from happening again. So that's why she filed and asked for one. When she filled out the paperwork to ask for the restraining order, she also said that Tim had threatened it to get rid of the family pet because he wanted to punish Becky.
He knew that she loved animals, and he knew that that would hurt her. And apparently he thought she wasn't working out enough, so this was his idea of a reasonable punishment for that. As though grown adults need to be punished for not working out in the first place, right? Like, make it make sense.
She also said that he almost hit her and one of their children with a garden hose during one of their heated arguments. According to Becky's filing, Tim scared her. And when they had still lived together, she even refused to sleep in the same room as him because she didn't know what he would do to her during the night.
Apparently, one night she straight up told Tim that she was going to sleep in one of the kids' rooms. But then Tim flew into a rage, threw all of her bedding into the basement, and made her sleep down in the basement. Becky claimed that even though Tim hadn't hit her yet, she feared that he would eventually.
I mean, after all, he was already abusive in an emotional and psychological way, even if he wasn't physical yet. He loved to manipulate situations in his favor and control everything, according to her. But unfortunately, the judge did not grant Becky an order of protection against him. So she tried a few months later in December, and that's when Becky filed for another order of protection.
But this time, it wasn't against Tim. It was against Tim's father, Raymond. Becky claimed in this order that she didn't want her children around Raymond anymore because he had a history of abusing children. Now, I want to be clear, he was never convicted of anything, but apparently it was a known thing in Tim's family.
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Chapter 5: What evidence linked Tim to the murder?
People also noticed the stark difference between his appearance in the Family Feud clip and his appearance in his mugshot. Because in the Family Feud clip, his face was shaved, his hair was neat, it was cut short, but now he had like this scraggly facial hair, his hair was long, it was greasy, and he just kind of like looked unkept.
Becky's friends and family said that Tim's physical appearance was a reflection of his mental state, that he was spiraling and just completely let himself go. But Tim said that he was growing out his hair so that he could donate it to cancer patients.
Tim's trial began in May of 2023, and his lawyer, who had also coincidentally been his divorce lawyer, claimed that the evidence did not prove that Tim had murdered Becky.
The state's theory in this matter is that Tim left his 5-year-old, his 10-year-old, and his 12-year-old home alone in the middle of the night. He rode a bike from 16th and Hampshire to 24th and Kentucky Road. He shimmied up the side of his house. It broke in using his crowbar.
He walked in through the window, left a footprint on the floor, kicked down Becky's door and shot her 14 times, and then rode that bike back home. That's essentially what the state is wanting you to believe happened in this matter. But let's talk a little bit more about what the evidence actually is and what it shows and what it will not show. I want to talk about the bike.
bike was found somewhere around 18th street abandoned the state believes that that was the bike that was used in the commission of this crime they believed in it so much that they took the handlebars off of that bike and they sent it to the illinois state crime lab and the reason that they did that was so that they could try to find dna fingerprints something to link that bike to tim
you will hear from the lab experts that did the testing on that bike. And you will not hear any evidence that there's any trace of his DNA or his fingerprints on that bike. You will also hear and you will see a lot of surveillance video. And you will hear about the lengths that Quincy Police Department went to find viable, useful surveillance video
in this matter in hopes that they could find the perpetrator of this crime somewhere between his house and her house. Now, they did find some video of somebody going somewhere, but that's all the video shows. You don't know if this is a man or a woman. You don't know if they're young or they're old. We don't know what race they are. We don't know how tall they are.
We don't know how much they weigh. We don't know what colors they were wearing. We don't know where they were coming from. We don't know where we were going. We don't even know if this is the same person on each of these videos that you are going to see. The person on these videos is not identifiable by any characteristics whatsoever.
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Chapter 6: What were Becky's fears before her death?
If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it's a mother-effing duck, right? And in fact, Becky had actually given that gun to Tim years earlier. During the divorce proceedings, Tim was ordered to give the gun back to Becky too. He said that he didn't want to give it to her in person though, so Tim had asked the police department to do it for him.
The police refused, so Tim never even returned it. In fact, it was still inside his home when the police searched his home after the murder. The trial lasted six days, and it ended on May 31st. The jury deliberated for four hours, and they ended up finding Tim guilty of all of the charges. During his sentencing hearing, Becky's mother read a victim impact statement, and so did her sister.
In the statement, her sister includes a very lengthy discussion of how the murder has impacted and will impact Becky and Tim's sons.
not just the trauma of losing their mother so violently, but also the way that they'll never be able to live as anything other than the sons of a murderer, and how because of that they're going to be judged, they're going to be bullied, solely because of who they are related to. She says that Tim couldn't possibly love his children and then do something like this to them.
which I wholeheartedly agree. I think if you are selfish enough to kill the parent of one of your children, then you don't love your children because you are leaving them not only without one parent, but if you get caught without two. I don't believe that that is selfless and that you love your children. That's my personal belief.
Now, the judge ended up sentencing Tim to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but it did not end there.
Mr. Bliefnik, you researched this murder. You planned this murder. You practiced this murder. You broke into her house and you shot her. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 times. I don't know how long it took you to do that. Some of those shots were fired while she was lying on the ground. And you did all of that
while your children were upstairs at your house lying snug in their beds. The court believes that the appropriate sentence for each of the two counts of first degree murder would be natural life in prison. Court believes that the third count of home invasion Appropriate sentence is life in prison. Those three sentences will merge together into one life sentence.
Just earlier this year, in April of 2024, Tim appealed his conviction. The appeal mostly rests on the fact that a lot of the evidence included in the trial should not have been included, like the crowbar, the Google searches, things like that. The appeal also claims that the judge was biased because of his relationship with the prosecuting attorney.
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