The former Family Feud contestant who shared a shocking answer about his wife while appearing on the game show will spend the rest of his life behind bars for her murder.
In May, Timothy Bliefnick, 40, was found guilty of breaking into the home of his estranged wife, Rebecca Postle Bliefnick, and shooting her 14 times. Bliefnick has now been sentenced.
Bliefnick appeared on the long-running game show in 2019 in an episode aired in January 2020.
Host Steve Harvey asks the question: "What's the biggest mistake you made at your wedding?"
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After Bliefnick's fellow contestants give their answers, Harvey turns to Bliefnick, who says: "Honey, I love you, but 'said I do.'"
People in the audience groaned at the answer, leading Bliefnick to explain, "Not my mistake, not my mistake – I love my wife."
Only three years later, Bliefnick’s wife and mother of his three children would be killed during a home invasion by her estranged husband.
After being arrested on charges of home invasion and first-degree murder in March and following a trial, Bliefnick has been found guilty and will spend the rest of his life incarcerated.
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Prosecutors said Bliefnick used Google to research how to murder his estranged wife, including how to force open a window with a crowbar and the response time of the police.
“Mr. Bliefnick, you researched this murder. You planned this murder,” said Judge Robert Adrian as he sentenced the convicted killer Friday, per Fox News.
“You practiced 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.
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“I don’t know how long it took you to do that, but 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.”
The victim was found dead by her father, William Postle, on the bathroom floor in her home in Quincy, Illinois, a small city close to the Missouri state line. She had been shot 14 times.
Mr Postle became alarmed when his daughter didn’t pick up her three children from school that day.
The former couple - who wed in 2009 - were in the process of getting a divorce, court records show. Rebecca Bliefnick, who worked as a nurse, filed for an order of protection from her husband in 2021, according to additional papers filed in Adams County.
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Postle Bliefnick told her sister in chilling text messages that she feared her ex.
“I am putting this in writing that I’m fearful he will somehow harm me, come after me, or will try to [do] something to me that takes me away from the kids or the kids away from me,” she told her sister, Sarah Reilly, in a text.
“He already has lied multiple times to paint himself as a victim and me as the perpetrator when it is absolutely the other way around.”
Topics: News, US News, Crime, Gun Crime, Film and TV