48 Hours - The Game Show and the Murder

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

When Becky Bliefnick was murdered, an answer her husband gave on "Family Feud" years earlier raised eyebrows. Erin Moriarty reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. 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? 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 kind of 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. 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.

It got attention to the case, but it had nothing to do with it. 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. He can't see hair. He can't really see anything at all. That's not Tim in that video. You can't tell who it is. Can you absolutely say with certainty that that is Tim Bliefenich?

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. Josh Jones and Laura Keck have prosecuted hundreds of cases. Eleven and ten seconds. But no case has troubled them quite like the murder of Becky Bleifnick.

You put yourself in the mind of Becky Bleifnick 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 23rd, 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 Riley is Becky's older sister and her only sibling. She lives in New York but was away on vacation with her husband, Brett Riley, 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 Bleifnick, 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 ahold of her either, I'm gonna go over to the house. What happened to Becky should have never happened. And it just, 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 reenacting 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 911-26 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 nine 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, okay, what is this? Detectives canvassing the neighborhood looking for surveillance video didn't have to go far. Becky's next-door neighbors, the Hyman's, 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 Hyman's 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 a.m., 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 14th 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 till 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 the Heimants 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. The person seen on the bike was the same person seen in the driveway. Every time you see a person at the Hyman residence, you see a person riding a bike down the road just a few minutes before you see 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 bikes 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 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. It's terrible. The video's terrible. Authorities needed more leads, and they would get one from Becky's sister that would point them in a very specific direction. It was 1989 in Titusville, Florida. Kim Hallig said she and her ex-boyfriend Chip Flynn were

kidnapped and attacked at gunpoint. Kim fled the scene, but Chip didn't make it out alive. Did you kill Chip Flynn? No, ma'am. Crosley Green has lived more than half his life behind bars for a crime he says he didn't commit. I'm Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours, and of all the cases I've covered, this is the one that troubles me most, involving an eyewitness account that doesn't quite make sense. A sister testifying against a brother.

They always say lies, you can't remember lies. A lack of physical evidence. And questions about whether Crosley Green was accused, arrested, and convicted because he's black. Just because a white female says a black man has committed a crime, we take that as gospel. Listen to Murder in the Orange Grove, the troubled case against Crosley Green, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Of course it was 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. 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. You know, 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, you know, 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 I'm I'm not 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 you to stop harassing me and stop following me. I'm not harassing you. I'm asking you to stop harassing me. He offered this video of the incident as proof. I will make a copy for you. I don't want you to take me. Then stop doing this. Don't take me. I don't— Then stop doing this.

I didn't ask you to take 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 Schnock 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 of 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. 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 9mm handgun that Becky had gifted him when they were together. He was into, you know, 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 9mm handgun that was later used to kill her. I have 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 ones 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 on March 13th, 2023, just over two weeks after Becky's death, Tim Bleifnick 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 Schnock, 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. wouldn't. When Tim Blywnik 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. Alright 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 faced, 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 Schnock, 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. 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 text 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 boy's room that's not there that night. But Schnock points to what she says is a lack of physical evidence tying Tim 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. Schnock 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, Schnock says that doesn't mean anything. Because 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. Bleefnik 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. I mean, 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 a look 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. Bleifnick. 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 one 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 Blakeneck's answer on Family Feud?

Take a look at the case evidence at 48hours.com. Did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free, with a 48-hours-plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Hotshot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast

Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. On May 23rd, 2023, exactly three months after Becky Bleifnick was gunned down in her home,

Tim Bleifnick 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'd 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. TIM HARTMANN, That was three times more likely to have come from the defendant or a male relative from the lineage of the defendant.

KACEY SCHNOCK, And this case is driving where the bees will go. JUDY WOODRUFF But defense attorney Casey Schnock 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. 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 Tim forever. When she reached out to people,

that's what they said. In hindsight, of course, like, oh, 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 in custody that was going to come to trial. And prosecutors told the jury there was something even bigger than money in

custody that was going to come into play. Becky didn't want their three children to be around with Tim's father unsupervised. They didn't tell the jury why, but we uncovered these court documents that revealed Becky had gathered witnesses who she said planned to testify about Tim's father, Ray Bleifnick, 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 kid's basketball hoop to his father's house. He's doing that because he knows Becky's 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 Schnock says those allegations were old news. 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 prosecution 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. 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 there. It's just a coincidence that just minutes later, Tim is doing research on the VIN number and the license tag. 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 have 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 Bleifnick that fired the shell casings that were found in Tim Bleifnick'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. We'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. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still a virgin. It just happens to all of us.

I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction.

Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. When the jury began deliberating after a six-day trial, Tim Bleevenick 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... 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 Bleethnick, 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 not lost both parents. It's not a celebration.

When we sat down with Tim Blyfnik, 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... Because if not... Tell me what you're thinking right now. My kids. I just want them to know that I love them, that 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're 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. Bleifnick, you researched this murder, you planned 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. 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 their partner or whoever it is, is capable of violence,

you need to believe them and make an active effort to make sure they're safe.