The tongue is a powerful thing. A man who once joked that he regretted marrying his wife was found guilty of murdering her years later.
Tim Bliefnick, a former 2020 Family Feud contestant, was sentenced to three life sentences in prison in an Illinois courtroom on Friday. He was found guilty in June for the murder of Rebecca Bliefnick, who was found dead on Feb. 23, 2023.
“You researched this murder,” Judge Robert Adrian said during the sentencing hearing. “You planned this murder. You practiced this murder. You broke into her house and you shot her … 14 times. … 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.”
Authorities say Bliefnick shot his estranged wife 14 times in the second-floor bathroom of the home where she lived with the couple’s three young boys, ages 12, 10, and 6, after he filed for divorce in 2021.
Bliefnick had told police his estranged wife was the victim of a violent home invasion, PEOPLE reported.
But prosecutors didn’t believe his story, and during his four-day trial in May, disclosed the evidence against him, which included internet searches on “how to break into a window with a crowbar” and how to create a homemade gun silencer.
They also say he killed her out of jealousy over her new boyfriend.
Bliefnick and some of his family members appeared on the popular game show Family Feud in 2020.
“What’s your biggest mistake you made at your wedding?” host Steve Harvey asked Bliefnick during the taping.
“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?”
