When a Bond County woman first befriended Timothy Hayden in 2018, she knew nothing about his habitually violent past.
But by the time she was granted a restraining order against him less than a year later, she had firsthand experience with everything that once prompted a psychologist to refer to Hayden as a “time bomb” in testimony during a murder trial against him.
Hayden had been arrested 35 times onmore than 50 different offenses more than 30 years earlier, with four related to domestic abuse of his wife, the former Tracy Fogarty, who was granted an order of protection against her husband on the same day she filed for divorce. She testified during the court hearing that she and her children escaped to a women’s shelter after her husband had threatened her with a knife.
Seven weeks after she left him, on July 27 in a crowded restaurant and pub in west Belleville, the son of a once-prominent Belleville building contractor killed his estranged wife, stabbing her at least six times.
Had Hayden been convicted of that murder today instead of in 1991, he would have aged into his mid 80s before being released from prison. As it is, he served just half of his 55-year sentence.
On Friday morning, he was released from the Lawrence Correctional Center in Eastern Illinois. His parole supervision is over.
Now 60, Hayden has told police officers they would have to kill him before he would go back to jail, according to records released by the Illinois Prisoner Review Board under a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Belleville News-Democrat.
But between his release from his original sentence in January 2018 and his January 2019 arrest on parole violations, staterecords show, Hayden continued a pattern of behavior starkly similar to those he exhibited over the years leading up to the murder of his wife.
Members of Tracy Hayden’s family declined to comment about Timothy Hayden. The BND attempted to reach Timothy Hayden but a letter sent to his state prison address was returned with no response.
The prospect of his release chills the Bond County woman who considered Hayden a friend until she filed for her own restraining order against him, just as Tracy Hayden and a second Bond County woman had done before.
“It’s scary,” she said. “There is no way I would get back around him at all. … I just hope he doesn’t come after me.”
Timothy Hayden was sentenced for the murder of Tracy Hayden and was released from state prison on Friday, Jan. 17. Tracy Hayden was 29 and the mother of two small children on July 27, 1990, when she was stabbed to death by her estranged husband in a crowded west Belleville tavern. provided provided
Patterns of behavior
Before his arrest in Tracy Hayden’s death and while he was out on parole,Hayden had multiple run-ins with the police and he was accused of violating an order of protection. He made physical threats and damaged property:
Police reports: Hayden had at least six encounters with police officers and parole agents between January 2018 and January 2019 regarding complaints filed against him in Bond County during his 347 days of freedom from state prison.
Before he was arrested in 1990 in the stabbing death of his wife, he had been arrested 35 times, including four arrests after incidents involving Tracy Hayden before she was murdered.
Order of protection violations: Two Bond County women successfully filed for orders of protection in an effort to keep Hayden away from them in 2018. Hayden was arrested on a parole violation on Jan. 9, 2019, for violating one of the orders of protection, according to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board order that revoked Hayden’s parole on March 13, 2019.
On June 7, 1990, Tracy Hayden was granted an order of protection against her husband. Timothy Hayden was arrested twice later that month on charges he violated it.
Tracy Hayden was 29 and the mother of two small children on July 27, 1990, when she was murdered by her estranged husband in a crowded west Belleville tavern. Provided/BND
Broken glass: On Jan. 6, 2019, Greenville Police Department officers responded to Hayden’s home at 5:13 a.m. regarding “domestic trouble” between Hayden and a Bond County woman, according to an Illinois Department of Corrections parole violation report.
Officers found that the glass door that leads from the kitchen to the back door of the house was shattered. The woman, whose name was redacted from the report released to the News-Democrat, told officers that her right hand was cut when Hayden, who stands 6-foot-3 and weighs 205 pounds, had slammed the glass door after the two had returned from a Litchfield bar. The woman told police that Hayden would not give her phone back. She told the News-Democrat in an interview that she did not need to go to the hospital for the cut. “I just wrapped it up,” she said.
After an arrest in January 1985, Hayden was accused of breaking out a rear door window of a St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department squad car.
Threats: On Dec. 29, 2018, Hayden told Greenville Police Department officers that if the woman who filed the order of protection accused him of domestic battery, he would shoot her, according to the Department of Corrections report. As he said this, he made his hands into the shape of a gun and put his hands to his head.
Hayden called police to say that he and the woman had been in a verbal argument and that she had left his home at 4 a.m.
“Parolee was advised if anything happens to the victim he was suspect #1,” according to the Department of Corrections report. This date would have been Tracy Hayden’s 58th birthday.
On July 5, 1990, about three weeks before she was killed, Tracy Hayden testified during a hearing that Timothy Hayden had threatened her with a knife and she feared for the safety of her two children.
She left him on May 31, 1990, and went to a shelter for women “because he had threatened me if anyone broke up this family, he’d kill them and anyone who had anything to do with it,” according to court records cited by the News-Democrat at the time.
Timothy Hayden gestures as he exits the courtroom in April 1991 after he was found guilty of murdering his wife Tracy Hayden. Tracy Hayden was 29 and the mother of two small children on July 27, 1990, when she was murdered by her estranged husband in a crowded west Belleville tavern. News-Democrat file photo
Hayden in Bond County
The first complaint in Bond County against Hayden occurred in March 2018, barely two months after his release from nearly three decades behind bars.
A store cashier in Greenville told police that Hayden had been giving her $20 tips, gift cards and a $140 watch. He also invited her to a candlelight dinner at his house, according to a Department of Corrections parole violation report.
The woman filed for an order of protection from Hayden on March 19, 2018. In April 2018, Hayden and the woman, whose name was redacted from the Department of Corrections report released to the News-Democrat, told a judge they had reached an agreement that Hayden must stay 500 feet or more away from the woman or her place of employment.
Then, in May 2018, the Greenville Police Department reported that Hayden told people in a gym that he had been jailed because he had run over three black people and killed them. He also said he was jailed a second time because he stabbed someone.
On May 18, 2018, Hayden’s parole agent told him he no longer is allowed to visit that gym.
Back to prison
As 2018 came to an end, Hayden had multiple encounters with Greenville police officers that culminated with his arrest on Jan. 9, 2019.
On Dec. 11, 2018, a second Bond County woman filed for an order of protection against Hayden, who on the day before had filed for an order of protection against her.
When Greenville Police Department officers told Hayden that he could face arrest regarding a complaint about Facebook messages he sent to the woman and her daughter, Hayden “became very upset” and told the officers they would have to kill him before he would go back to jail.
He threw his phone, flexed his muscles and told officers he had worked out for 27 ½ years in prison and is in better shape than anyone who would try to arrest him.
This was followed by the Dec. 29 report that Hayden threatened to shoot the Bond County woman if she sought a domestic charge against him and the Jan. 6 report that he slammed a glass door on her.
On Dec. 31, 2018, a judge reviewed the order of protection requests filed by the Bond County woman as well as by Hayden. “The court … finds that the balance of credibility, competing claims and hardships weighs” in favor of the woman.
Hayden was arrested on Jan. 9 for violating his parole, which the Illinois Prisoner Review Board revoked on March 13.
The board said that Hayden violated two conditions of his parole agreement: He had been in contact with the Bond County woman while she had an order of protection against him and he did not get counseling for substance abuse, anger management, mental health and domestic violence.
The board’s order noted that Hayden was “courteous and polite” during the hearing. While he admitted that he had not started his required mental health counseling, he also stated that he did not think he needed it.
Although he had been represented by several different lawyers in dozens of previous legal matters, he did not have a lawyer for this hearing.
Current Illinois Department of Corrections photo of Timothy Hayden. He was sentenced for the 1990 murder of Tracy Hayden. Tracy Hayden was 29 and the mother of two small children on July 27, 1990, when she was stabbed to death by her estranged husband in a crowded west Belleville tavern. Illinois Department of Corrections
Battle against domestic violence
On a summer night in west Belleville nearly 30 years ago, employees and patrons of Dundee’s restaurant and pub pinned down Timothy Hayden after he fatally stabbed his wife.
In the weeks and years before the stabbing, Tracy Hayden endured assaults and threats. The mother of two had filed for a divorce and gotten an order of protection from her husband about seven weeks before she died on July 27, 1990.
And it was this case of domestic violence that prompted the St. Clair County State’s Attorney’s Office in 2011 to dedicate its domestic violence unit the Tracy Fogarty Center, referencing her maiden name.
One of Tracy’s sister’s, Jane Fogarty Nesbit, spoke during the dedication ceremony.
“This is a very special and very personal event,” she said. “Life was good for them, most of the time. She lived through some very, very violent times and she tried to fix it and unfortunately, she could not fix it. As often happens with domestic violence, it ended in murder. Life goes on, and it did go on and we have Tracy to thank for that.”
The Tracy Fogarty Center also includes the special victims unit of the state’s attorney’s office.
“The overall mission of the center is to ensure offender accountability through communication between various facets of law enforcement, nonprofit organizations and the community,” according to a statement from the state’s attorney’s office.
The center assisted 754 victims in 2018 and 672 in the first half of 2019.
In 2018, St. Clair County prosecutors charged 544 cases of domestic violence.
The system is “designed to streamline offender accountability and compliance monitoring practices to help reduce recidivism.”
In Monroe County, law-enforcement officials are launching a new effort to reduce domestic violence.
State’s Attorney Christopher Hitzemann said Monday the plan is modeled after a program started by the High Point, N.C., Police Department.
“The purpose is to take the onus off the victim and to place the focus on the offender … to increase offender accountability, Hitzemann said.
One part of the program calls for law-enforcement officers to follow-up with offenders in the days following a domestic violence incident to “put them on notice,” Hitzemann said.
This file photo from 2011 shows, from left, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, former St. Clair County State’s Attorney Brendan Kelly and Jane Fogarty Nesbit during the dedication of the Tracy Fogarty Center, which includes the domestic violence unit of the St. Clair County State’s Attorney’s Office. It was named in honor of Tracy Hayden’s maiden name. She was fatally stabbed by her husband, Timothy Hayden, in a Belleville restaurant and pub in 1990. Tracy’s picture is on the podium in front of her sister. News-Democrat file photo
How to get help
Domestic violence victims can call crisis hotlines for assistance:
▪ Call 618-235-0892 for the Violence Prevention Center of Southwestern Illinois hotline. For more information about the center, go to vpcswi.org.
▪ Call 800-799-7233 for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. For more information, go to thehotline.org.
Timothy Hayden was the son of a prominent Belleville building contractor when he was convicted in 1991 of murdering his wife, Tracy Hayden. Despite a habitually violent past and violations of his parole that sent him back to jail less than a year after his initial release, Hayden was turned loose again on Friday, Jan. 17. Through Freedom of Information Act requests to the Illinois Department of Corrections and the Illinois Prisoner Review Board, along with archived articles and law enforcement records, the BND has been able to detail a pattern of threats and violence Hayden displayed both prior to the murder and during the 12 months of his temporary release in 2018. Efforts to contact Hayden at his state prison address were returned without response. Members of Tracy Hayden’s family declined the BND’s requests for comment. Further, to provide context and solutions-based information regarding the issue of domestic violence and the effectiveness of orders of protection, we reached out to organizations that work to help domestic violence victims as well as with law-enforcement authorities. Please see the accompanying article for more information about domestic violence issues.
This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 5:02 AM.
