Jan Bellows

Jan Bellows
Character information
Status	Alive (incarcerated)
Aliases	Sexy Bassoonist (by Mabel) Bloodthirsty Bassoonist (by Charles)
Gender	Female
Relatives	Father Mother Half-sister
Occupation	Bassoonist
Appearances
FirstAppearance	How Well Do You Know Your Neighbors?
EpisodeCount	10
Season(s)	1, 2, & 4
Portrayed by	Amy Ryan

Jan Bellows is a main character in season one and a recurring character in seasons two and four of Only Murders in the Building. She was a professional bassoonist living in the Arconia, ultimately revealed to be the murderer of Tim Kono.

She is portrayed by Amy Ryan.

History

Early Life

Jan describes herself as having had "two childhoods" - the first where she was an only child in a happy family, and the second where her parents got divorced, her father barely paid attention to her and she had a new half-sister. Jan used to play the flute, but switched to the bassoon after her half-sister started playing it.

Dating and Murdering Tim

At some point, Jan met Tim and they started dating. Eventually, Tim broke things off, which Jan believed was due to him finding someone else. Unable to cope with being second yet again, Jan invited him over under the guise of him needing to pick up his things and offered him a drink for old time's sake. She had poisoned the drink and after Tim left, she played a recording of herself playing the bassoon and went to his place, where she watched him die from the poison and then used his gun to shoot him to make it look like a suicide.

Meeting Charles

Jan met Charles when she entered an elevator he was on. He deduced based on the case she was carrying that she was a musician and she confirmed that she was the first chair bassoonist for the City Symphony. Charles realized she was the source of the bassoon he could hear from across the courtyard, a sound he liked.

First Date with Charles

They met again on another elevator. Jan noticed that Charles was dressed up and asked if he was going to see a woman. He said that he was, but Oliver clarified that it was a business meeting. Things then turned awkward for the rest of the ride. Later that day, Jan was playing her bassoon when Charles joined her on his accordion. They played a few different songs and then Jan slipped a note under Charles's door asking him to have dinner with her.

At dinner, Jan told Charles she had two childhoods: one in which she was an only child with married parents and another with an absent father and a half-sister who took her father and her flute, leaving her with the bassoon. When Charles failed to reciprocate her storytelling, she called him out on it. He tried to explain, but stumbled over his words and Jan ended up leaving.

Later that night, Charles went to Jan's place and told her that he dated a woman, Emma, who had a daughter named Lucy. Though he and Emma had little in common, he and Lucy got really close. For their anniversary, Charles booked them a cruise. Emma thought it would be romantic, but he'd booked a family fun cruise. On day three, Emma took Lucy off the ship on an island tour and never came back. He spent the next five days on the cruise alone. Emma said a clean break was best, so he never spoke to her again and it had been haunting him ever since. Then he said he was telling her all that because he liked her and wanted to go on a second date with her. Jan agreed to go on that second date with him.

Second Date

Jan came over to Charles's place for their second date. Charles put on an Ella Fitzgerald record and they danced together. Then they played a game of Scrabble, which quickly turned flirtatious until they ended up sleeping together.

Joining the Investigation

Jan answered the door while Charles was out getting bagels to find Mabel and Oliver. When Charles got back, they told him about Theo Dimas kidnapping them and Teddy threatening them to release one final episode declaring Tim's death a suicide. Jan said that she and Charles had spent the morning going through Tim's phone and learned a lot from that. When they laid out everything, Jan said she wasn't sure that Teddy killed Tim, to the annoyance of Mabel and Oliver.

Jan later returned to the apartment with homemade pizza rolls. Oscar came in and told them he'd talked to Tim's jewelry connection and Tim got the ring the day before he died. Mabel wondered where it was, because she had all the jewelry from his place. Oliver said the killer must had taken it and that convinced Mabel that Teddy and Theo were the killers, as no one else would care to take the ring. Jan still didn't believe it and said it was all circumstantial without the ring.

When Oliver recruited some podcast superfans to help them, Jan introduced herself to them. As they started to talk over the events of the night Tim died, Jan asked about the cat and suggested they focus more on Howard. Oliver and Mabel didn't like that, though Charles reminded them they looked into Howard at one point. Oliver then directed the superfans through reenacting the night. When they finished, they wanted to start recording right away because they only had an hour and a half left. Jane said it felt too easy and tried to get them to look at Howard again. Charles told Jan that the three of them had worked on it as a team and wanted to keep it the three of them. Jan got upset that she wasn't one of the team and left.

When Jan got home, she found a note taped to her door saying that someone was watching her. Charles later found her on her floor bleeding from a stab wound.

Charles called for help for Jan and stayed with her. When she was released from the hospital, he brought her back to his place to take care of her. She insisted she was fine and would be able to play in her concert the next night. He was upset that she'd been stabbed and said he wanted to kill whoever had done it. Charles declared that he would be quitting the podcast, as he blamed that for her getting stabbed. Jan was supportive, but reminded him how much the podcast and Oliver and Mabel meant to him. He said they did, but she meant more. As he said that he wanted to take Jan somewhere sunny, Charles got a phone call informing him that he had a visitor. It was Sazz Pataki, his stunt double from Brazzos. Sazz sat with hem and told stories, then left to take a phone call in the other room. Jan said she liked Sazz, which Charles said was always the case. His ex-girlfriend even left him for her. When Oliver and Mabel joined them, Sazz said she had some thoughts after looking at the evidence board. She believed it was a crime of passion. When Jan pointed out that they hadn't listened to her theories, Oliver said that Sazz is a stunt double and knows what she's talking about. When Oliver, Mabel, and Charles had to leave to defend themselves at a meeting because Bunny wanted to evict them, Sazz offered to stay with Jan.

While they were gone, Sazz helped Jan removed her shirt to change her bandages only to have Charles walk in on them and assume Jan was cheating. Jan assured Charles she wasn't cheating and didn't want to look elsewhere for anything because she liked him. But she packed up her things to go home anyway because she wanted to be well-rested for her solo the next day. She told Charles she didn't want him to come and see her not at her best.

The next day, as Jan sat on the stage waiting for the performance to start, she saw Charles in the audience with a nosebleed just as the conductor introduced the first chair bassoonist, a prodigy.

Arrest

After watching Charles leave, Jan waited for intermission and rushed home, telling Charles they wouldn't miss her, which upset her a little. She apologized for lying to him about being first chair. When she saw that he'd had a nosebleed, she got him a handkerchief and a drink for each of them. Jan noticed a bassoon cleaner on the coffee table, which Charles told her was at Tim's place. Jan worried that the killer was targeting bassoonists, but then realized Charles believed she was the murderer. Charles said he didn't, but Mabel and Oliver did. He told her he was falling in love with her and she said she was falling in love with him, too. He said he could probably still love her even if she did kill Tim. Jan noticed that Charles wasn't drinking much and he told her he actually wasn't drinking at all, but taking stage sips because he knew the drink was poisoned as that's what she'd done to Tim. Despite this, Charles quickly started to feel the effects of poison and realized she'd put it in the handkerchief instead. Jan admitted to killing Tim because she thought he was seeing someone else and didn't take being second very well. When Charles collapsed, she put his head on a pillow and said she had to think bigger because so many people knew because of the podcast.

Jan went down to the boiler room, where she intentionally leaked gas into the apartments above. Mabel and Oliver arrived and fixed it, but Jan found them and pointed a gun at them. Oliver pushed the dog stroller they had Charles in at Jan and then Mabel got the gun from her and punched her. Jan was then arrested and taken away in a police car.

Helping Charles

While investigating the murder of Bunny Folger, Charles got stuck and went to the place where Jan was being held to visit her and ask for her help. Jan was happy to see Charles and asked if they were okay, which threw him. He told her what he knew about the case and she said they were looking for an artist and the artist would stick to a project until the end. She asked if anyone new was getting close to him, because that was the killer. Later, on the phone, Charles told Jan that Mabel had been getting close with Alice, an artist. The two of them then reminiscenced about the bagels they had the morning after they slept together. He later visited her in person again and she thanked him for the bagels.

At another visit, Jan expressed that they'd never broken up, which Charles thought was implied when she attempted to kill him and then was arrested for another murder. Unable to break up with her himself, Charles sent Sazz Pataki to do it for him. Jan was surprised, but found Sazz's scripted break-up arousing.

Breaking Out of Prison

Jan became worried when she didn't hear from Sazz for a few days after a call on which Sazz was upset. Wanting to investigate, Jan broke out of prison using a combination of parkour Sazz had taught her and psychosexual manipulation. Then she used the secret passageways in the Arconia to get into Charles' closet. When she got out of the closet and heard that Charles was on hold with 911, she asked him why he called. They agreed that if he told her, she wouldn't kill him and he told her about Sazz being murdered in his apartment. He told her how much Sazz meant to him and Jan in turn said that Sazz was the only reason she wasn't killing Charles. Jan then took one of Charles' shirts to change as hers had a prison guard's brains on it. Jan told Charles that Sazz was worried about him and thought there might be another murderer in their building. She also suggested that he was the true victim of the bullet Sazz took and warned him that once you've tried and failed to kill someone, you become more creative about how you try the next time. When they heard a knock at the door, Jan said it was time to go and she left again through Charles' closet.

Personality

Jan initially appears to be sweet and quirky. However, her later actions reveal that she is capable of immense jealousy, rage and cruelty, and the sweet personality is a front she puts on in order to function in society. She cannot deal with being second to anyone, which drives her to extreme actions. She is very interested in psychology and communication; she even took a class in non-verbal communication. She quotes her therapist as saying "We are all driven to recreate our first wound to change the ending" and is seen to do this by murdering Tim when she believes he doesn't put her first.

Relationships

Tim Kono

Jan first met Tim in the elevator and they began a relationship. However, Jan believed Tim was seeing another woman after finding an engagement ring he bought from Angel Inc. She became consumed by jealousy and plotted to murder him. She invited him to her apartment to collect some of his possessions, then proposed a drink "for old times' sake". She put a lethal dose of secobarbital in his drink, which he drank. He left her apartment and made it up to his apartment before the poison kicked in. Jan pulled the fire alarm to get everyone else out of the building, then went up to his apartment, where she shot Tim.

Charles-Haden Savage

As with Tim, Jan first meets Charles in the elevator, where they have a conversation about her bassoon. Shortly after, Charles hears Jan playing her bassoon through the open window, and joins in on his accordion. They keep playing together, until Jan suddenly disappears. A few seconds later, she slips a note under his door inviting him for dinner.

On their first date, Jan confesses that she hates being second to anybody, and that in her last relationship, the guy never put her first. Charles doesn't share anything about himself, and is upset after the date, believing he has ruined any shot at a relationship with her. However, he then forces himself to go to her apartment and explains the story of his ex, Emma, and her daughter Lucy.

In 2022, after Charles discovers secret inner workings of the Arconia and the murder weapon in his apartment, Charles meets with Jan at the prison and asks her for her help. Jan tells Charles that she has missed him.

Sazz Pataki

She started dating Sazz Pataki some time after her arrest.

Notes and Trivia

• Jan is associated with red and black: traditional "femme fatale" colors. She also wears clothes of a beige/fawn color, most notably when she is stabbed. This is perhaps to make herself seem softer and more vulnerable.
• Amy Ryan does not actually play the bassoon in the episodes, but she studied tapes of bassoonist Jackie Henderson playing the pieces used in the episodes and imitated her breathing pattern and finger movements.
• Amy Ryan played Holly Flax in The Office, who is in a relationship with Michael Scott. Jan's early behavior can be compared to Holly Flax; both are sweet and nerdy. Michael previously dated a woman named Jan Levinson, who exhibited controlling and unhinged tendencies similar to Jan's later behavior.
• There are subtle hints that indicate to Jan being the killer:
  • Tim Kono entered the elevator from the 6th floor, where Jan lived.
  • The suicide notes found in Tim Kono's trash were identical to Jan's hand writing.
  • The box of sex toys in Tim Kono's box contained a bassoon cleaner, the instrument Jan plays.
• She participates in a Hip Hop Dance Club for lifers in prison.

Gallery

Episode Stills

Photography by Craig Blankenhorn

"How Well Do You Know Your Neighbors?" (S01E03)

"The Sting" (S01E04)

"The Boy from 6B" (S01E07).

"Fan Fiction" (S01E08)

"Double Time" (S01E09)

"Open and Shut" (S01E10)

"Here's Looking at You" (S02E04)

Appearances

Season One
#01	"True Crime"	#05	"Twist"	#09	"Double Time"
#02	"Who Is Tim Kono?"	#06	"To Protect and Serve"	#10	"Open and Shut"
#03	"How Well Do You Know Your Neighbors?"	#07	"The Boy from 6B"
#04	"The Sting"	#08	"Fan Fiction"

Season Two
#01	"Persons of Interest"	#05	"The Tell"	#09	"Sparring Partners"
#02	"Framed"	#06	"Performance Review"	#10	"I Know Who Did It"
#03	"The Last Day of Bunny Folger"	#07	"Flipping the Pieces"
#04	"Here's Looking at You"	#08	"Hello, Darkness"

Season Four
#01	"Once Upon a Time in the West"	#05	"Adaptation"	#09	"Escape From Planet Klongo"
#02	"Gates of Heaven"	#06	"Blow-Up"	#10	"4.10"
#03	"Two for the Road"	#07	"Valley of the Dolls"
#04	"The Stunt Man"	#08	"Lifeboat"