The Family Feud Murder

July 14, 2025

When a devoted mother is found dead in her Illinois home, a quiet community is left searching for answers. As investigators dig deeper, unsettling details begin to surface. In this episode, Payton and Garrett investigate the twists and turns of a case that shocked the nation.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband.

I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

I'm the husband.

What if one day when we're 90 years old and we're still doing the podcast—

And we're still doing the podcast.

And I have to—

You finally die.

And then I have—

I finally die, and then I have to—

That was—

Did—

That was crazy.

No, 'cause you're going to stay alive for so long.

And then I have to—

You didn't save it.

You didn't.

That was crazy.

And then I have to change out your blue chair for your coffin.

Okay, I don't want to think about that at all.

No, for your chamber.

I don't even want to think about that.

For your chamber, 'cause you're going to freeze your body.

That's true. I will come back one day.

So it'll just be—

It'll be like on Batman when that guy's just frozen solid in the ice.

Who's dying first? You or me?

Probably me.

I hope.

Oh, baby.

I hope.

I don't want to be 90 without you.

It's true.

Maybe we'll die at the same time in each other's arms.

Like Notebook.

Okay, deal.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for supporting us.

Thank you for listening every week.

Thank you for downloading.

Thank you for commenting, liking, subscribing, all of that.

We really appreciate you guys.

We love you guys. Honestly, we love doing this.

We love talking to you guys every single week.

And yeah, that's what I got going.

What I got going.

Oh, Garrett and I are both drinking our little lollipops.

Not spon— well, not sponsored this episode.

They've been sponsored before, but we drink them all the time.

Lollipop. Not sponsored.

Just shouting them out because—genuinely good product.

We have a code and I, like, genuinely—

Yeah, this is the root beer one.

I genuinely like—

What did you think I said? Do you have Coke?

Do we have a code?

Oh! I think it's "husband."

We'll put a link down below. I can't remember.

I've been drinking the grape one every day.

Yeah. Not sponsored. This is just 'cause we like it.

For my 10 seconds, I am gonna talk about something that is a little selfish, but I really hope that you guys don't skip and listen, because it's something I've been working on with—

No, this is the hottest tea, you guys.

This is the hottest, hottest tea.

This is the most problematic hostess—hostess?

Hottest hot take Garrett's ever going to drop. So listen right now.

But seriously, Fred and I have been working on this for a while.

I will plug it as fast as possible.

Please go and check it out if you have a second.

I promise you're going to like it.

It's not clothes.

It's not a product.

It is an application—an app.

It's called Cupboard.

Or Cupboard. I call it Cupboard.

I know my business partner doesn't like that, but Cupboard is how it's spelled. Or Cupboard.

So if you don't know how to spell it—cupboard.

It is an app where you can track, see upcoming releases, buy and sell all your favorite cups— So Stanley, Owala, HydroJug, BrüMate, Simply, Simple Modern, so on and so forth.

Please go and check it out.

You can literally, on the app, we've inserted every single cup that's ever been released. You can see all the new releases, and we'll even send you notifications when there's a new release, so you don't miss an opportunity to buy the cup you want from the brand you want.

We're adding more brands. You can collect them.

There's also a marketplace, like I said—you can buy and sell.

It is an amazing app. We've been working on it for a long time. Please go and check it out.

You'd be shocked how much you can sell your cups for, you guys, because I don't know if everyone listening knows this.

You might be like, "What the heck?"

But there is a large portion of people who are very into the type of cup that they carry around. They are collectors.

I think a good example is—it's basically the GOAT or StockX for cups.

Go check it out. If you have any type of Stanley or HydroJug, Owala, BrüMate, so on and so forth, you're going to want to just check it out.

The link will be in the description.

I love you guys and thank you.

And if you want a 10 seconds that’s not about that—I hate traffic.

I absolutely loathe—I hate traffic.

I can't stand it.

And I'm trying to be more patient with it, but it makes me want to completely rage.

There's nothing that makes me want to rage—except traffic.

Got it off my chest.

You feel better?

I love you guys. I feel a lot better now. That's what I got.

This message is just for YouTube.

If you're listening to audio, you won't even hear this.

So, I'm not even sure why I'm addressing it, but this is just for you YouTubers.

We love you guys so much. Thank you for watching. Thank you for commenting.

There was some uproar last week about the AI we used.

Look, everyone's kind of got—I think everyone's going to have a little bit of a different opinion.

We love you guys.

We show ourselves almost every week.

We mix it up 'cause our camera was broken.

We used some AI stuff.

I know some people disagree with that.

I'm not going to get into technicalities and dos and don’ts and yada yada yada, because I think people can probably find reason and argue all day. But I tend to try to see both sides, and I think both sides have points.

We're not trying to upset anybody.

We're just not going to really get deep into it.

So if we don't really talk about it again, that's why. It's also not something we're trying to do every single week. It's not something we're switching to. We love ourselves. We're not trying to replace ourselves with little animated characters.

But overall, we love you guys.

Agree to agree, agree to disagree, disagree to disagree—whatever you want to call it.

We're here. We're going to be here every single week. And I think we're just going to stop there. And that's that.

Miss Payton's got something to say.

Yeah. Unfortunately, we had some camera issues, and we sent it to our editor and said—

Well, first, we weren't even going to upload the episode onto YouTube, because obviously the camera didn’t work. And then we were like, maybe let’s just upload the episode with just our logo, and you can stare at that the whole time.

And our editor said, “Hey, no, we can figure out a little something for them to look at,”

kind of like stimulate it so it's still a video for YouTube.

That way, it's not just the same thing as the podcast.

We heard you loud and clear. Like Garrett said, it's not—

We'll be more mindful of it, and it's not something that we ever planned to do full-time.

Right.

Hopping into today's case—I know Payton's got a good one for me. Well, I don't know, but I say "good one," but that's the wrong way to put it, because they're all good in a true crime way. They're all sad. And here we are.

Let's talk about this case and see what we got.

Our sources for this episode are:

oxygen.com, cbsnews.com, nbcnews.com, legacy.com, khqa.com, Killer Queens podcast,

medium.com, News Channel 20, WGN, caselaw.findlaw.com, and the National Library of Medicine.

Okay, so when you hear the words abusive relationship, there are a lot of things that probably come to mind— horror stories about violent arguments, someone showing up with bruises on their arms or face, late night calls to 911.

But abusive partnerships can come in a lot more forms than that. And it's something that's not always talked about. There’s stalking abuse, financial abuse, and probably one of the most common and not openly talked about forms of abuse: emotional abuse.

Sometimes it starts small—taking cracks at a person’s self-esteem, insults or insinuations that put another person down.

But over time, that can grow. It can be full-on humiliation, gaslighting, name-calling, threats, failure to respect someone’s privacy, before isolating them from everyone they know and love. And the reason why emotional abuse is considered so dangerous is because it's often a precursor to physical abuse.

And when the signs are ignored or downplayed for too long, it can end up in a life taken far too soon.

So, let's head now to the quiet little town of Quincy, Illinois. We are right along the Mississippi River, where Rebecca—aka Becky—Posl is born in November of 1981.

Now, growing up in Quincy, Becky seemed to have a pretty idyllic childhood in the ’80s.

She and her older sister, Sarah, had great memories of playing outside, going fishing, chasing frogs, riding their bikes through the neighborhood to their friends’ houses—

pretty much a suburban white-picket-fence dream.

And Becky also becomes a star student. She graduates from her high school as the valedictorian. She goes on to get a bachelor's degree in biological science at Quincy University, where she graduates cum laude.

After that, she gets a job working as a pharmaceutical sales rep, where she ends up being one of the top performers.

So all of this to say—by the time she's an adult with an adult job, Becky is honestly a real catch. And it certainly doesn't hurt that she's also beautiful. She’s incredibly friendly and outgoing, and she's a completely selfless person— which is probably what drew a former college classmate to her, a guy named Tim Bliefnick.

Now, Becky and Tim met during their time at Quincy University, but it wasn’t until two years after they graduated that they then reconnected and fell for one another.

Tim was actually a star on the college’s football team with these all-American, handsome looks. In fact, he was so good he landed a spot in Quincy University’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.

Did he play in the NFL?

After graduation, he hung up his cleats.

Oh.

And Tim found work as a salesman in the recycling industry.

After proposing to Becky, the couple decided to forego a lavish honeymoon and instead used that money to buy their first home together.

Good idea. Get married, buy a home.

And it was a decision that didn’t come as a shock to those who knew them.

If there was one thing about this couple, it was how practical they both seemed to be—individually and together.

And to them, preparing for their future and their family was extremely important.

To many, their marriage seemed like a dream. They had two little boys pretty quickly after they got married. But the couple still always knew how to find time to enjoy each other. People said Becky and Tim were always the first two out on the dance floor. They were always the life of the party.

But after their second son was born, Becky was looking for what to do next in her life.

And while Becky liked working in the medical field, she’d always dreamed of having a more hands-on approach. She wanted to work with patients more directly—really making a difference in people’s lives.

So that’s when Becky decided: Okay, I’ve had my kids, and now I’m going to go to nursing school.

Becky also figured this was a great way to start making more money for the family, which Tim, her husband, seemed to be on board with.

So Becky juggled being a mom and going back to school full-time for her nursing degree.

This is something that couldn’t have been easy, especially since during her senior year, she actually gave birth to a third son.

And throughout all of that, Becky still used the little free time she had to volunteer and give back to her community in the way she could— whether that was helping out at her kids’ school, the local animal rescue, at the stables, working with therapeutic riding services— Becky was literally a superhuman.

And when she finally graduated, she got the job she always dreamed of having. Becky became a nurse in the surgery unit before being transferred to the ER at Blessing Hospital.

But that’s when things kind of got challenging for Becky. Her intense work schedule made it harder for her to do everything for the kids, and Tim wasn’t as hands-on of a father as she was a mother.

So when Tim wouldn’t step in, Becky was forced to go from full-time to part-time in the career she had just spent years working toward— just to make sure that someone was there for their kids.

And this naturally began to cause some resentment and contention in their marriage.

Becky told her friends it kind of started with little things, like him chastising her for not cleaning the house, despite the fact she was working all night and then caring for the kids all day.

Some of Becky’s friends joked that she was more like a single mom—doing everything for the household while Tim was just out living his own life.

In fact, Tim even went on a game show in 2019 without Becky. She was too busy with work and the kids to attend, so he appeared on Family Feud with his side of the family for three different episodes.

What?

Yes.

I wish I could be on Family Feud.

It was during that game show appearance that Tim showed some early signs of trouble.

And this might just be people reading into it too much, but let me tell you about it.

Okay, so on one of the episodes—

Remember, Becky’s just worked super hard to become a nurse, but now she’s also working night shifts, taking care of the kids. They are having some fighting going on, and Tim is now playing Family Feud.

And Steve Harvey asks the question:

“What do you regret doing on your wedding day?”

Oh, no.

Now keep in mind, you're guessing what you think the majority of people would say.

Oh! Can I guess what I think he’s going to say? I’ve never—I’ve never heard this case.

Yes. So remember, Tim’s saying what he thinks the rest of the people would say,

but it’s obviously coming out of his own mouth and came up with in his brain. So, go ahead. What do you think he said?

Oh, never mind. I thought he was going to say something along the lines of,

“I wish I would’ve shoved cake in my wife’s face,” or something.

You think that’s what the majority of people—

No, no, no. I thought it was a real—sorry, I misunderstood.

This is the game show question and him not just being asked, "What do you regret?"

No.

Yeah. So Steve asks Tim the way Family Feud is played—

Yes, yes, yes. They interview a bunch of people, and he’s supposed to guess the majority answer.

What does he say?

He says that his guess—

That one of the most popular answers to that question—was, quote,

“Saying ‘I do.’”

The biggest mistake you made at your wedding.

"Honey, I love you, but—said 'I do.'"

Okay...

It was a comment that the audience just immediately busted up laughing at,

especially when it appeared as one of the top answers on the board.

Oh, it was?

Yes.

Still, Steve Harvey said something to Tim like,

“Jeez, you’re going to have hell to pay when you get home.”

And while Tim might have just played this whole thing off as a joke, like, “I was just trying to win the game. I just figured that would be one of the answers,” it was a comment that— due to the climate in their current marriage— everyone that knew them in real life was just a little bit like... It just stuck with them a little bit. Everyone was kind of talking about it.

Yep.

Because it was clear there was some truth to it. There was a lot of tension brewing between them at home.

And then 2020 hits, and everyone is forced to stay inside— making things much worse for this couple.

So, with hospitals all over the world being super crowded, duty definitely called for Becky, too. And with nowhere to escape to, Tim and Becky were spending a lot more time together at home, indoors, with their three kids.

And it was around this time—while Becky’s trying to be a nurse but also homeschool her children— it’s around that time that Tim starts talking about getting a divorce. He said they just couldn’t see eye to eye on most things. He felt it was time to move on.

And this was something that Becky adamantly did not want. She thought that they should go to couples counseling first—try and work it out. But it seemed like Tim was once again getting his way.

By 2021, he had moved out of their house and gotten a place a few blocks away so he could still be close to the boys. And while it wasn’t what Becky initially wanted, her friends and family said she actually seemed relieved to be kind of doing her own life without Tim.

Yeah.

And as the divorce proceedings went on, Becky even met someone new.

So they’re separated, they are going through with the divorce, and she meets someone.

It’s another guy who was also in the healthcare industry.

So they continue dating through 2022 and into 2023, even as the divorce continued to stretch on— as Tim and Becky were ironing out finances, custody, everything else.

But then, that February of 2023, everything changed.

That month, 41-year-old Becky had just gotten surgery for something. Sources don’t say what it was for, but I know that by the 22nd of February, she was at home recovering.

It seems during that time, 40-year-old Tim had taken their three boys because Becky was getting surgery. The boys are now 12, 10, and 5 years old, and they are staying with him for a few days at his house.

Now, on the morning of the 23rd, Tim dropped the three kids off at school.

The plan was for Becky to then pick them up after school, for them to finally come back to her place.

Okay.

But that afternoon, at around 3:00 p.m., Becky’s dad gets a text from Tim—his ex-son-in-law, if you will—and it reads:

“Can you please call Becky and ask her to tell me when she’s getting the boys today?

I had them last night because she said she was sick, but she hasn’t responded to any of the messages I sent today, and I don’t know if she’s still sick or if she’s coming to get them or what’s happening. I can keep the children again tonight if needed, but I just need her to let me know what she wants to do.”

Now, it seems like Tim sent this because Becky never showed up to the school to pick the children up, which is why Tim is now reaching out to Becky’s dad.

So Becky’s dad says, “Okay, I’m going to drive over to Becky’s house and check on her,

’cause she said she was sick and then she didn’t show up to get the kids.”

And when he shows up, he finds the front door of Becky’s house is unlocked.

So he calls her name. He gets no answer. He goes to the garage to see if her car is there—and it is.

So this is when he’s like, “Hey, I gotta go inside, ’cause if she’s sick and she’s not answering and the car is here...”

He makes his way upstairs to the bedroom and he peeks inside. He goes into the bathroom of the primary bedroom... and finds his daughter Becky’s lifeless body on the bathroom floor.

That is something I hope no parent ever has to go through, 'cause I just—

Now I'm going to paint a picture of what he found, 'cause it wasn’t like he just saw her on the floor unconscious and realized she was dead. Becky had been shot to death. Not once, not twice, not three times—fourteen times.

Holy crap.

So you have to imagine the amount of blood and just what her body looked like.

Do you know what she was shot with?

Yes. There were 9mm shell casings found.

Because depending on the— I guess unless he had an extended mag—like, I'm wondering if depending on the gun, he would have had to put another mag inside—

He or she—sorry—he or she. Yeah, a reload. Which is just absolutely insane. When you empty a gun on someone and then have to put another clip in there—like, that's definitely premeditated at that point.

That's absolutely insane.

That's insane. This is what he stumbles into—fourteen bullet holes in his daughter. And since her father doesn't have his phone on him, he actually runs to the neighbor's house to call 911.

When police arrive, they quickly find a few important things about the scene of the crime. I mean, this is a murder. Becky has been murdered. First, they notice that the intruder entered the home by prying open the upstairs window in one of the kids' bedrooms. So it’s not like this person came in through the front door. They came in through one of the kids’ windows.

They also find that the door to Becky’s room has been kicked open aggressively and was actually broken in some parts. It appears the intruder chased Becky from her bedroom into the bathroom, where they then shot her to death. They also find Becky’s phone behind the bathroom door, and they can tell the time of the murder because at 1:11 in the morning, Becky tried to dial 911 on her cell phone.

Gosh.

So police are thinking—this is so sick. This person breaks in, kicks in Becky’s bedroom door. Becky hears it. She gets up, she’s running to her bathroom while also trying to dial 911. She presses call, but it only lasts 10 seconds before hanging up. And that was probably because the intruder had finally gotten to her and was now attacking her.

I can't. I just can't.

The phone was probably knocked out of her hand and hung up. Police also quickly rule out a burglary because nothing appears to be stolen. The neighbors say they didn’t hear or see anything suspicious, but the intruder did leave some more evidence behind.

There was a partial shoe print near the window that was broken into, which they believe the intruder came in through. There were also eight spent 9mm shell casings, like I said. And they found small pieces of what looked like a plastic bag near Becky’s body, but it wasn’t a full plastic bag.

But maybe one of the most significant clues was the way Becky had died.

Because, as I mentioned, Becky was shot 14 times. There was actually a 15th shot that was fired, but it missed her body. Becky was shot through her hands, her arms, her lungs, her spine—but none of those wounds would have been immediately fatal, which is why the medical examiner actually believes that Becky was shot 14 times, 15 actual shots rang out, and then she was just left there on the floor, bleeding to death.

Yeah.

So, this tells detectives nothing’s missing. This was most likely not a robbery. It was probably a crime of passion. That seems pretty violent.

So the next step for detectives is to go around the neighborhood and see if anyone’s home security systems caught anything on tape—because this is 2023. And they find that Becky’s next-door neighbors, the Hymans, have a security camera on the side of their home that actually points directly at Becky’s driveway, leading along the side of her house.

Now, the camera didn’t catch anything on the night of the murder, but it did pick something up the night before. The night before she’s murdered, the camera shows that around 10:05 a.m., there is a person walking down the driveway toward the back of Becky’s house. Then that same person is seen walking away, back down the driveway in the opposite direction, 48 minutes later.

When the Hymans find out police discovered this footage, they aren’t that surprised. They tell police that a little over a week earlier, on Valentine’s Day, the same thing happened. In the middle of the night, their cameras caught someone walking into Becky’s backyard.

They had actually texted her a week before and said, “Hey, someone’s on our camera in the middle of the night poking around your house.” Becky tells them, “I didn’t see anything. Nothing’s missing.” But she says, “I actually thought I heard voices in my yard, and my motion lights went on in the middle of the night.” Then she was like, “Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

At the time, they all kind of figured it might have just been someone stealing things out of people’s yards. But now, with Becky shot to death, those two moments caught on camera of someone walking around Becky’s home in the middle of the night take on a whole new meaning.

The problem with the footage, though, is that it’s grainy and dark. You can’t make out the person at all. You can’t even tell if it’s male or female. Police suspect it’s a man wearing a hoodie. But they don’t stop the search there. They keep gathering footage from the area and find something else of note.

A surveillance video taken from a bus depot near Becky’s home shows someone on a bike riding in the direction of her house around the time of the murder—and then riding back in the opposite direction shortly after she placed that attempted 911 call.

This strikes police as odd for a few reasons. The first is: it’s February, and it is freezing in Illinois. People don’t usually ride their bikes around at 1:00 a.m. in the middle of winter. And that’s when detectives start to think—okay, this is probably the same person we saw on those other nights.

Um, but they just didn’t go in front of that camera the night of the murder. Again, the footage is so grainy you can’t really tell who’s riding the bike, but it does have one distinguishing feature.

Um, my cameras are high quality. I’m going to know exactly who you are if you come anywhere within probably 100 feet of my house. Fifty feet. A thousand feet. Don’t come near my house.

I mean, I will say our cameras have night vision.

Oh, we got—nah, don’t even try it.

We actually solved a neighborhood mystery with our cameras once.

Story for another day.

Okay. So police notice—okay, well, one thing we can tell about this bicycle that’s riding on the night of the murder, just so happens to be pulling in and then leaving right after the 911 call...

Brian Kohberger...

Um, they notice that the bicycle doesn’t have any reflectors on the wheels. This is a detail that police feel confident will come in handy when searching for this bike.

So, in the meantime, police are beginning to look at those closest to Becky. And when they download the contents of her cell phone, they find that the last person she spoke to over text was her new boyfriend—the one she had been seeing for a while. But they find that most of their exchanges are pretty routine. They talk about their days, how Becky’s feeling—it’s nothing out of the ordinary. So they quickly rule him out as a person of interest.

But they are finding some suspicious text messages on her phone regarding her soon-to-be ex-husband, Tim. And they notice a text that was sent to her sister Sarah a little more than a year before her death. It reads, quote:

“If something ever happens to me, please make sure the number one person of interest is Tim, as that is who would do something to me. I’m putting this in writing that I am fearful he will somehow harm me, come after me, or will try to do something to me that takes me away from the kids or the kids away from me.”

Oh, that is heartbreaking.

So police discover this text, and even though it was a year earlier, they quickly make Tim a person of interest in this case—because, I mean, if someone says, “Hey, this person’s out to get me,” and then they turn up dead...

And it turns out that the divorce between Tim and Becky was actually a lot uglier than anyone ever even thought.

Which is ironic, considering you were saying how he’s the one who wanted to get divorced and she didn’t.

Yeah. Yeah, but I’m going to guess what happened—before, I mean, I guess you’re going to tell us—but is that she didn’t want to, then she ended up relieved. Then she ended up the one who was seeming like she was thriving. And it probably pissed him off because, you know, little fragile ego there.

Yeah. She’s like, “No, don’t leave.” And then he leaves and she’s like, “Whoa, this is amazing.”

So, friends of Becky’s say one of the biggest reasons Tim wanted the divorce in the first place was because he felt he could no longer control Becky.

Oh hey.

And this had to do with the fact that she had decided to chase this new career, making her own money, this new demanding job she was giving a lot of hours to as a nurse. And he used the divorce as a way to try and take back some of that control.

So when she was like, "No, no, let's not get divorced," that actually fueled him for sure—because he was like, "Well, now I'm back in control. I'm the deciding factor."

In fact, a lot of people said Tim emotionally abused Becky, at least toward the end of their marriage, in a way that stripped her of a lot of her peace and happiness.

One time, Tim got so angry at Becky for, quote, "not doing things he had been asking for ten years," that he went out and cut down her favorite tree in their yard—just to make her mad.

Which, just so you know, if you ever touch my trees—that is one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard.

So mean. So manipulative.

And then she's going to seem crazy because she's sad over a tree, you know what I mean?

And it’s just like—that is so manipulative.

It's crazy to me that there are people out there who think and act like that.

He's going to be like, “Oh, it was dead.”

You know what I mean?

Like, I just already know there was going to be gaslighting happening.

And then she is going to feel insane.

Crazy.

What the—

Okay, that’s so mean.

There was another time that he threatened to get rid of a family pet that she loved when she didn’t do what he wanted.

So he was basically like, “You’re not doing this? Then we just need to get rid of this pet.”

Just very manipulative.

Okay...

He would show up at her work, videotaping her, trying to provoke her into an argument.

He lashed out at her once for not adhering to a strict workout regimen—just because he told her that he didn’t love how her body was looking and he wanted her to look a certain way.

So he set up this workout routine for her, and when she wasn’t sticking to it, he got really angry.

This was actually a fight that ended with him almost hitting Becky—and one of her sons who was there for the fight—with a garden hose.

And then, when he finally did file for divorce, he fought for full custody of their kids.

Just another way—almost like he didn’t even want the divorce. He just wanted a tactic to have control and manipulate and hurt.

So exactly what I said. Everything’s over. She moves on, finds a new boyfriend, and he has zero control—and is pissed off.

And so they separate, right? They separate.

That’s so crazy.

They’re getting divorced, and then he starts just showing back up at the house—walking in and taking things out of the house, including a 9mm pistol Becky had once bought him.

Then slowly but surely, things between them get more and more aggressive.

There was one scenario where Tim actually threw a tray of food across the room in front of their kids. He also punched a hole in the wall of Becky’s house.

And that eventually evolved into another situation where Tim put his hands on Becky and shoved her during an argument in front of the kids.

And I do just want to remind everyone that officially, physical violence to items in a home, in front of other people who live in that home, is defined as domestic abuse.

Because it’s a threat.

It’s like—“Look what I can do to this wall.”

That’s how much anger and force I could do to your face next.

That’s what it’s saying to the people who live with you.

Uh-huh.

Around this time, Becky hears about one of her former colleagues who was killed by her spouse. And when she heard this—someone in her life killed by their husband—that scared her enough to send that text to her sister.

That’s what made her send the text, because apparently she was like, “This kind of seems like my life. I feel like this could happen to me, too.”

And that’s when Becky’s sister Sarah recommended, “Hey, you need to go get help from a domestic abuse organization. There are things they can do to protect you.”

Now, whether or not she took that advice is unclear, but Becky did file for an order of protection against Tim after that.

And there are two ways an abuser is going to respond to that.

Number one: they break it.

Or number two: they turn around and file a restraining order against you.

And that’s exactly what Tim did. He reverse Uno’d her to make her life hard.

But here’s the problem. Because a lot of the abuse Becky listed on that request was emotional and psychological—and she and Tim were in the middle of a heated divorce—the judge wasn’t really taking the request very seriously. She was like, “This is probably just a tactic we see a lot of times in divorces, where they’re just trying to hurt each other.” She didn’t think that Tim was an actual threat to Becky.

Okay, but what if the judge was like, “Hey, he cut my tree down—right?—because I didn’t follow a workout routine”?

This is what I’m saying. Tim probably rephrased that to make her seem insane.

Yeah. No, that’s wild.

That’s emotional and psychological abuse at its finest.

They end up denying her request—and Tim’s. So, no restraining orders.

Now, according to one of the prosecutors on this case, protection orders like this are, quote, “virtually impossible to obtain from a judge during a heated divorce,” because like I said, a lot of times people use it as a tactic just to try to get custody of kids. So it’s a lot harder to get one.

I understand. I understand. But obviously, in Becky’s case, this is an extremely serious matter—one that probably should have been taken into consideration.

The judge did, however, order that Tim and Becky stay away from each other’s homes, except for when handing over the kids. And they ordered Tim to give back the pistol that he stole from Becky’s house.

This is something he never ended up doing, because she was like, “Hey, he’s just coming over to the house and taking things—including a gun.”

Yeah.

And they were like, “You’ve got to give that back.”

He never did.

So, hearing now that Becky was denied a restraining order in the months before her death, the police are like, “Dude, Tim’s our guy.”

The problem is connecting him to the crime—something that gets a little easier when, a few days into the investigation, they find a bike on the side of the road. And it’s just like the one they saw in the surveillance video. It’s missing its reflectors from the wheels.

What’s more interesting is where they find it—because this bike is abandoned only half a mile away from Tim’s house.

He said, “I’m not walking a full mile. I’m just going to go dump it.”

Now, I will say, Becky and Tim lived only a few blocks from each other. So that also means the suspect could have ditched it leaving the scene of the crime, and it still could have ended up near Tim’s home. However, police don’t think it’s a coincidence.

They get a search warrant for Tim’s house on March 1st, and they go through his computer. They find that he had recently bought a bike on Facebook Marketplace under a fake name—and it’s the exact same blue bike without reflectors on the wheels.

They find a few other interesting things on his computer, too. Searches for phrases like:

"How to pry open a door with a crowbar."

"How to wash gunpowder off my hands."

"Quincy Police Department response time."

I don’t really have much to say about that. I’m just glad, because he’s going to get caught.

I don’t know—maybe it’s kind of a newer thing, but it makes sense to me. Because even when people know they shouldn’t be doing stuff, they still do it when they’re this egotistical.

Yeah, like when you just are like, “I don’t care.” People still are just going to do bad things.

But he’s obviously trying to get away with it. “How to wash gunpowder off my hands”?

Yeah. I just think you don’t think it through. Like, literally googling how to get away with murder—and the Google of how to get away with murder is going to be the thing that puts him away.

So ironic. That happens all the time.

This is what I’m saying. You know how it was like, “Oh, they can now test DNA and fingerprints, so let’s wear gloves”?

Okay, not—criminals aren’t saying “let’s stop wearing gloves.” They still don’t wear gloves.

Yeah. But it’s like the same thing with the computer, where it’s like—how many suspicious computer searches are going to be brought up case after case before people stop googling stuff on their computer when they’re murdering someone?

Not that I want them to stop. But it’s just one of those things.

So, there were also searches for how to make homemade gun silencers.

Also—this is really creepy—remember how someone had been casing Becky’s house on Valentine’s Day, a few weeks before she died? Well, that night her new boyfriend was parked in her driveway. And later that evening, Tim googled VIN numbers and license plates for her boyfriend’s vehicle.

Not just once. But 200 times.

Two hundred times he googled this. Which means—it had to be him in the surveillance video on Valentine’s Day, googling his ex-wife’s boyfriend’s car, walking around the house.

And when it comes to evidence, it’s not just Tim’s computer that’s telling the story. Police also find a crowbar and an empty gun safe in Tim’s bedroom, where they discover a bunch of spent shell casings—ones that will later come up as a match for the gun that was used to kill.

This is open and shut.

So, 12 days later, on March 13th, police finally get a warrant to arrest Tim and charge him with his ex-wife’s murder.

Now, a lot of people said Tim was clearly declining—mentally and physically—after the divorce. His appearance was looking more haggard and less put together. He was becoming more hateful and vindictive.

Yeah. Because when an abuser starts losing power—

Power.

Yep.

That’s what happens.

They are mentally going to decline.

It was obvious, even to those who didn’t know him that well, that something was going on with Tim after—or during—the divorce. But there might have been a reason why he snapped when he did.

Turns out, the couple’s final divorce hearing was scheduled for a week after Becky was murdered. That wasn’t the issue, though. It was that Becky was planning to bring up a supposed family secret at that hearing—that her father-in-law, Tim’s dad, named Rey, should not be around their kids anymore because he had a supposed history of, quote, “perversion” and abusing minor children.

So at this hearing, Becky was going to say, “I don’t want the kids around Grandpa.”

100% valid. That shouldn’t happen.

Becky wasn’t claiming that Rey had abused their own children, but he had been accused of it in the past—many years earlier—with someone else’s children. And so she wanted him to stay away. In fact, a few of those accusers were going to be witnesses called to the stand during those divorce proceedings.

And even more shocking—when Becky expressed her concerns about the issue to Tim in the past, he told her he wasn’t worried because their kids were boys, and his father’s supposed choice of victim was female.

That’s—

So she said, “Hey, I’m not really comfortable with our kids being around your dad because he’s a pedophile.”

And he said, “Oh, don’t worry, honey. He likes girls, not boys.”

There’s just no way.

I—what—I just can’t.

Sometimes when we do these cases, I just sit here and think, There’s no way there are humans that think, act, and do some of these things.

Like, you’re telling me—he’s delusional.

These are real people. Like, these are real people, not made-up stories. And it’s absolutely mind-blowing.

Also—poor Becky. Because the story and the examples that we gather from these sources are so limited. We get not even a fourth of what Becky and Tim’s life was like. And so if we’re getting these examples, she was so psychologically abused.

Because even him turning that around about his dad—that is so confusing for the brain.

Now, Rey has denied the accusations wholeheartedly and mentioned that he has never been charged with any criminal offense. But many think that because this information was going to be exposed—and Tim knew it—he didn’t want Becky to divorce him, and he didn’t want her to drag his dad’s name through the mud.

So he tried to cover it up. Especially because, in the hours before Becky was killed—earlier that same day—Tim had brought a basketball hoop over to his father’s house with the intention of having his children over there more in the future.

So he’s about to go to a hearing where his ex-wife is going to ask for the kids not to be around his father… and before he goes and kills his ex-wife, he brings over a basketball hoop so the kids can play at Grandpa’s house.

Cool.

Of course, none of this helps Tim’s case for murder. Although he does try to pull the alibi card. He says he was home with his three kids at the time of the murder—there was no way he would have left them alone to go kill their mother.

But it seems… that’s exactly what happened.

Tim saw an opportunity in the middle of the night. He had gone over there multiple times before. He knew that Becky was home alone and recovering from surgery. And he preyed on her vulnerability.

Now, thinking it might work to his advantage, Tim invoked his right to a speedy trial and was in court three months to the date after the murder, which we don’t see very often. So he goes to trial in May of 2023.

The defense tries to say there’s not really any concrete evidence tying Tim to the scene of the crime. They say it doesn’t make sense that he would scale the home to the second-story bedroom and break in through one of the kids’ rooms. That his DNA was never found at the scene. That the shoe print found in the home didn’t match a single pair of shoes found at Tim’s house.

But the prosecution feels differently.

Earlier, I mentioned how there were little pieces of plastic bags found near Becky’s body. Turns out the assailant actually shot through a plastic bag—either as a way to catch gunpowder, the shell casings, or to muffle the sound.

Oh, and remember what Tim was found Googling? How to make a homemade silencer?

Yeah.

By the way, those bags at the scene came from an Aldi supermarket, and they found tons of those back at Tim’s house.

There was also DNA found under Becky’s fingernails—DNA that experts said they couldn’t conclusively rule out as Tim’s.

But perhaps the literal smoking gun was the shell casings found at Tim’s home. I mean, they were an identical match to the ones that had killed Becky. And while the gun itself was nowhere to be found, they felt confident that it came from the same gun Tim had taken from Becky’s home.

So, the trial only lasted six days. The jury returned after four hours and had a clear verdict: they found 40-year-old Tim guilty of first-degree murder.

Three months later, on August 11th, Tim returned to court for a sentencing hearing after being told he would be spending the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The judge said to Tim, quote:

"Mr. Blefnik, you researched this murder.

You planned this murder.

You practiced 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.

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."

Tim has since tried to appeal this conviction.

Get some h—never mind, I’m not going to say it. Keep going. Sorry.

In February of this year, he was denied.

Since his conviction, Tim has not had any contact with his sons—that has been reported on.

Good.

Instead, their three boys went to live with Becky’s parents and her sister, Sarah.

Gosh. Poor kids.

You can’t help but wonder, though—what would’ve happened if she had gotten a restraining order? Maybe nothing. Maybe something. Probably nothing.

Becky recognized that the abuse she received from Tim, while mostly emotional and psychological, was still very much abuse—and still very much a sign of a possible murder. Like, it didn’t have to be physical for it to get taken that far.

She tried to seek help for it. And it’s the law’s job to offer protection—to recognize that abuse does come in many forms. And just because it’s psychological doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

But in this case, the law failed. And because of it, Becky’s story has now become a cautionary tale.

If this case impacted you today, you can find the Becky Bliefnick Memorial and Support Fund on GoFundMe.com to make a donation to her family.

And that is the case of Becky Bliefnick.

Horrible. Sad for the family, sad for the kids.

Another case where I don’t think life in prison is good enough. And kind of all I have to say about it.

It’s so hard, because I really do think that emotional abuse is not acknowledged enough—about how it is dangerous, just like physical abuse in some cases.

Like, this man went from only shoving her once to shooting her 14 times.

That’s a pretty fast escalation.

There had to be an amount of disrespect in his mind for her before that.

All right, you guys. That is our case for this week, and we will see you next time with another one.

I love it and I hate it.

Goodbye.

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