Husband joked on TV that his marriage vows were a mistake – then killed his wife

15 October 2023 , 06:00

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Husband joked on TV that his marriage vows were a mistake – then killed his wife

When popular American game show Family Feud aired on prime-time TV in January 2020, it appeared to be just another regular episode. It had been filmed a few months earlier and viewers watched host Steve Harvey make his way over to Timothy Bliefnick and four members of his family.

Family Feud , which inspired its British TV counterpart, Family Fortunes , pits families against each other to find answers to survey results. At one point, Bliefnick was asked, “What was the biggest mistake you made at your wedding?” Turning to the camera and giving the impression he was speaking to his wife at home, he said, “Honey, I love you.” Then he turned away and answered, “Said I do?”

Timothy Bliefnick told TV host Steve Harvey he 'regrets' marriage on air

“Not my mistake… I love my wife,” Bliefnick added, as the audience laughed and gasped and Steve gave him an exaggerated deadpan look. “I’m going to get into trouble for that, aren’t I?” Steve agreed, “It’s going to be a lot of hell to pay at your house.”

Bliefnick’s televised response would come back to haunt him little more than a year later.

He had been married to 41-year-old Rebecca – known as Becky – since 2009. They had three sons, aged 12, 10, and six, and lived in Quincy, Illinois, where she worked as a nurse. Despite being apparently happy together, early in 2021, a year after his game show gaffe, Bliefnick filed for divorce. He moved into rented property and proceedings began over the custody of their sons. Becky’s friends and family supported what they thought was an amicable separation but in the following months were shocked by her confessions that she was becoming worried by Bliefnick’s behaviour.

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Becky and Tim Bliefnick and their three sons

In a message to her sister, Sarah Reilly, she said that if anything happened to her, “The No1 person of interest is Tim.” She said she was putting the warning in writing because she feared he would harm her. Becky also told friends that Bliefnick had been acting erratically and she was worried about what he might do if he lost custody of their children. She filed for several orders of protection, while Bliefnick, in turn, applied for a restraining order against her.

Becky, meanwhile, started dating someone else, but the approaching custody battle and concerns about her ex weighed heavily on her. Then, on 24 February this year, she was expected to pick up her sons from school, but instead they were collected by her estranged husband.

Bliefnick rang Becky’s father, William Postle, to say he’d been unable to contact her, and that the school had asked him to pick up the boys as they hadn’t been collected. William went to the house only to find the body of his daughter slumped in the doorway of the upstairs bathroom. She’d been shot 14 times at close range. Someone had used a crowbar to break in through an upstairs window before gunning her down.

Her family instantly recalled the warning messages she’d sent them – if anything happened, her estranged husband would probably be responsible for it. Had the man who a couple of years earlier had made such a publicly flippant joke about their marriage now taken
his wife’s life?

When police turned their attention to Bliefnick, they learnt he’d taken Becky’s handgun and not returned it. Now it was missing. When his rented home was searched, shell casings matching bullets from the crime scene were found. The gun was never located. Bliefnick had a burner phone that he had used to discover answers to questions such as “how to force open a door with a crowbar”, “average Quincy, Illinois, response time”, “can you wash off gunpowder?” and “how can I check if a gun is registered to me?” Also, referring to the fitness tracker he used, “Does my WHOOP record the exact times I wear it?”

Tim Bliefnick was sentenced to life in prison without parole (Adams County, Illl., Administration via AP)

It seemed he’d used the phone to buy a second-hand bike through Facebook, under the name of John Smith. Police officers believed that on 23 February Bliefnick had cycled to Becky’s house, leaving his sons in their beds at his home. He’d climbed up to the second floor, opened a window with the aid of a crowbar and shot Becky, probably using a silencer he’d made following internet instructions. He continued firing as his wife lay dying on the floor. Bliefnick later rang the school asking them not to allow his sons to walk home – where they would have found their mother’s body.

Police also thought Bliefnick had seen Becky’s boyfriend’s car parked outside her house and had tried to discover his identity through the car registration number. Whether his motivation arose from jealousy or from fear of losing his sons, officers believed Bliefnick had at this point decided to kill his wife. On 13 March he was arrested and charged. Two months later he was tried at Adams County Court in Illinois.

Prosecuting lawyers told the court that Becky had spent her final days fearing for her life. They claimed Bliefnick had been captured on grainy video footage from street cameras as he carried out practice runs on his bike on the day of the killing. They argued it was no coincidence his fitness band recorded no activity whenever the bike was logged on camera – including during the murder period – as he’d turned it off to conceal his actions.

But the defence insisted the evidence was circumstantial and that no one could be sure it was Bliefnick in the videos. And while it was true somebody had been seen in Becky’s neighbourhood in the week before the murder, there was nothing to suggest who it was.

More than 200 pieces of evidence were presented by the prosecution team, and they called 46 witnesses to testify. The defence had no evidence or witnesses, and Bliefnick himself didn’t testify. Bliefnick, 40, was found guilty of first-degree murder, home invasion and use of a firearm and was sentenced two months later.

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Becky’s family gave impact statements in court. Her mother, Bernadette Postle, told Bliefnick, “You took from your boys the person who loved them the most on this earth. You replaced their mother’s love with emotional scars and trauma.” Her sister, Sarah, looked at Bliefnick as she addressed him, saying, “She was my only sister, my best friend. I loved her and continue to still love her with every ounce of my being. She is irreplaceable. I am left here living with and locking away my own suffering so I can move forward with my life for the sake of my family, for the sake of the boys, because Becky would not want our pain to give you any further satisfaction.”

Sentencing Bliefnick to life in prison without the chance of parole, Judge Robert K Adrian told him he had carried out a premeditated killing. “You researched this murder, you planned this murder, you practised this murder, you broke into her house, and you shot her,” he said before counting loudly from one to 14, to remind the court of how many bullets had been fired into Becky.

“I don’t know how long it took you to do that,” the judge added. “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.”

Gail Shortland