A former Family Feud contestant who’s accused of k#lling his estranged wife joked on the show that his biggest mistake was marrying her.
Timothy W. Bliefnick, 39, and some of his family members were contestants on the game show Family Feud in an episode that aired in 2020.
“What’s your biggest mistake you made at your wedding?” host Steve Harvey asked Bliefnick during the show, FOX News first reported.
“Honey, I love you, but, ‘Said I do,'” Bliefnick replied. “Not my mistake, not my mistake — I love my wife. I’m gonna get in trouble for that, aren’t I?” The episode was originally taped in the fall of 2019, according to FOX News.
Bliefnick was charged recently with two counts of first-degree murder and home invasion in the death of his 41-year-old estranged wife Rebecca Bliefnick, who was found dead in her Quincy, Ill., home on Feb. 23 after she didn’t pick up her kids from school, WGEM reported.
The couple was going through a divorce at the time of the slaying. “They’ve been separated for two years,” Bliefnick’s attorney Casey Schnack revealed.
Schnack said her client, a sales executive who starred in football at Quincy University in Illinois, maintains his innocence.
“He’s never been arrested for battery, domestic battery, anything violent, anything ever,” she said. “He was fully employed…There was tremendous pressure from the community for an arrest to be made. And naturally the estranged spouse is going to be the number one suspect regardless of the other circumstances.”
“He was active in the community,” she said. “He was a youth football coach. He was actively involved in his church here. A lot of people knew him. It’s very surprising that this is where the family is at right now. He’s your standard, all-American, Midwestern dad.”
Meanwhile, family and friends are mourning the loss of the beloved nurse. According to an online obituary, Rebecca Bliefnick was nominated for the international Daisy Award that honors exceptional care in 2020. She was also a certified trauma nurse, sexual assault nurse examiner and during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked as a traveling nurse.
She also volunteered for an animal rescue group and dedicated her life to her three boys.
“Her boys were her world, her life’s greatest gifts,” the obituary said. “She was the quintessential ‘boy mom,’ aptly illustrated by building, for Halloween, Transformers costumes that actually transformed, creating custom ‘first day of school‘ posters each year, and jumping all-in with fishing and frog hunting and anything sports.”