SHAWNEE TOWNSHIP — Almost 29 years ago, Peter J. Becci Jr. was executed inside his Indianbrook home as his wife and two children were away eating dinner.
Not only was it an unusual crime for the affluent subdivision west of Lima, it was alarming for any neighborhood even in high-crime areas of the city. On Feb. 6, 1987, in the early evening hours, someone from inside the home at 750 Kiowa Trail shot Becci four times at close range with a large-caliber handgun, including once in the head and once in the back.
His wife, Joyce, and the children would find his body at the top of the steps leading from the lower level of the tri-level home. Burglary and robbery were quickly ruled out as motives because Becci’s Rolex watch and billfold were found on the kitchen table. There were no signs of a struggle or break-in, and none of the neighbors heard gunshots.
The 35-year-old Becci was a biochemist from New Jersey who moved to Lima two years earlier from Apalachin, New York, to be president of Springborn Institute for Bioresearch in Spencerville.
Shawnee Township Police are taking another close look at the murder. Chief Mike Keith, who ran the Lima Police Department Detectives Bureau for years overseeing homicides and other felony crimes, wants justice for the Becci family.
The case is a priority and Keith has his two detectives, Jack Miller and Don Marik working it. Marik is the most experienced detective in Allen County and worked under Keith at the Lima Police Department for years.
Police and Becci’s family have put up two billboards in Lima to remind people of Becci’s murder. They also want anyone with information on the crime, as well as those initially interviewed, to come forward to be interviewed, even if they were interviewed before.
Marik and Miller have made trips out of state since they reopened the case in 2012. They even tried to talk to Joyce Becci, who is now Joyce Flax and living in Lake Worth, Florida, near West Palm Beach. Joyce and Peter Becci were high school sweethearts who were married for 13 years at the time of his death.
“She refused to give a statement and was very stubborn. She came up with a lot of excuses why she didn’t want to tell us anything about this,” Marik said.
Becci’s wife, who Marik called “a person of interest,” refuses to talk to police. She had little to say right after the murder and refused to talk to investigators in the years that followed, Marik said.
Both Marik and Keith want to learn more from Flax, including information about the state of her marriage with Becci. Marik said Flax was living apart from Becci and had never moved into the house. She was living at Kent State University among college students in a boarding house and talked to her husband by phone.
“She was a 30-year-old woman living on campus,” Marik said. “She left the kids here.”
Attempts to reach Flax were unsuccessful.
Peter Becci’s brother, Mike Becci, said his brother’s murder not only affected his two sisters and one other brother but was something his parents dealt with until their deaths.
“It kind of takes a piece of you. You learn how to live with it but you never learn to get over it,” he said.
The killing also changed the life his brother’s children had with their grandparents. The Becci grandparents only saw their grandchildren once or twice after Peter Becci was killed, Mike Becci said.
Mike Becci said if he could somehow get a message to his brother’s killer he would like to tell that person to take responsibility for his or her actions.
“I would tell them to own up to what they have done in life. Part of being a good person is to own up to what you have done in life,” Mike Becci said.
While the case is old with one of the original detectives dead and many officers from that time retired, Marik said it can be solved. He believes someone has information that could give investigators the lead they have been looking for to finally solve the murder. He wants people to remember the victim, a father of two now-adult children, and the relatives who never forgot.
Peter Becci deserves justice and did not deserve to be murdered in cold blood in his own house, Marik said, but to get justice people need to come forward. Investigators can be contacted at 419-227-1115. Any person who provides information that leads to an arrest would be eligible for a reward up to a several thousand dollars, Marik said.
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