Luc Tieman was angry.

In late August, a friend had told his wife, Valerie Tieman, that he was having an affair. The friend, Torie York of Waterville, says Luc Tieman also had been hitting on her while suggesting that he and his wife were thinking of divorcing.

York said Valerie Tieman was skeptical at first, but eventually came to believe her about the affair. Soon afterward, York said, Luc Tieman angrily texted her: “Why did you do this to me? I just calmed her down.”

Some three weeks later, police have accused Luc Tieman of killing his wife, charging him Wednesday with murder a day after finding Valerie Tieman’s body in the woods near the home where the couple lived with his parents at 628 Norridgewock Road in Fairfield.

The incident involving York happened days before Luc Tieman, 32, said his wife vanished from his truck in a store parking lot while he was shopping. York’s statements in an interview Wednesday are among allegations by friends that Luc Tieman was unfaithful to his wife and wooed other women even as he suggested his marriage was ending. One woman said Luc Tieman intensely courted her around the time Valerie Tieman reportedly disappeared.

Detectives arrested Tieman around 10 a.m. Wednesday along Kennedy Memorial Drive in Waterville, near where he stayed in a motel Tuesday night, said Steve McCausland, spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety, in a written statement. Tieman did not resist arrest and was taken to the Kennebec County jail, McCausland said. He was later transferred to the Somerset County Jail in East Madison and booked there.

Valerie Tieman’s body was identified Wednesday and an autopsy was done at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Augusta.

Luc Tieman told police that he last saw his wife on Aug. 30, saying she had stayed in his truck while he shopped at the Skowhegan Wal-Mart but wasn’t there when he returned. He did not report her missing.

Valerie Tieman’s parents reported their daughter missing to the Fairfield Police Department on Sept. 9. Her parents live in South Carolina and couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday or Wednesday. Luc Tieman’s father, Alan Tieman, did not respond to an email requesting comment Wednesday.

DEATH, ARREST SHOCK FRIENDS

Luc Tieman’s Facebook page says he attended Messalonskee High School in Oakland and was in the Army.

A statewide criminal records check shows that Tieman was incarcerated for 48 hours and paid $100 in restitution for criminal mischief in 2014.

In several Facebook messages to a Morning Sentinel reporter from this week, Luc Tieman said that his wife had “run off” before – though he wouldn’t elaborate – and that he was not mad at her and just wanted her back.

Those who knew Valerie Tieman said Wednesday that they were shocked by her death and the news that her husband is charged with killing her.

Emily Rowden Fournier, 28, of Fairfield said she had heard news Tuesday that a body was found and hoped that it was not her friend’s. Fournier said she last saw Valerie Tieman when she came to Fournier’s home and trimmed her hair for her on Aug. 9.

“These are people we had dinner parties with, who came over to our house and hung out with for birthday parties,” Fournier said Wednesday. “On one hand, it’s like confirming a certain part you started to speculate about, and obviously this was one of the speculations, but you always hope it’s not true.”

Fournier, whose family runs the Recycled Shakespeare Co., based in Fairfield, had played a sister to Valerie Tieman’s character in “The Comedy of Errors,” and from then on they called each other “sister.” Valerie was to have played the lead female role in “Titus Andronicus” with the troupe but never picked up her script at Fournier’s home or attended rehearsals as planned, Fournier said.

“It’s so surreal in a terrifying way,” she said. “I wish there was a way to turn back time and prevent it from happening.”

THE COUPLE

Valerie Harmon and Luc Tieman got married two years ago in South Carolina, where her parents, Allen and Sarajean Harmon, live, Fournier said.

Valerie Tieman’s Facebook page shows a photograph of her in a long white gown and him in his Army uniform on their wedding day, gazing into each other’s eyes.

Fournier said Luc Tieman is a disabled Army veteran who suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I knew that they had met when he was still in the military, because they would Skype,” Fournier said Wednesday. “I don’t know how they met, but when he was in the military she would sing to him on Skype or over the phone. She would sing ‘Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again’ from ‘The Phantom of the Opera.’ It was like their song. When we would go out to sing karaoke at Mainely Brews in Waterville on Thursdays, she would sing that and dedicate it to him every time.

“Her voice was a very sweet, pretty voice, like an angel.”

Fournier met the Tiemans when they moved to Waterville in May 2015, and the couple lived in an apartment on Quarry Road, she said. The Tiemans spent part of their time in South Carolina and part in Maine and, according to a woman who lives across the street from the Tieman family in Fairfield, had moved into Luc Tieman’s parents’ house on Norridgewock Road this summer.

Fournier does not believe Valerie Tieman worked outside the home in recent months, but at one time she was a housekeeper for Faith Evangelical Free Church in Waterville, which the Tiemans attended.

Bill Cripe, pastor of the church, declined to comment Wednesday on the Tieman case.

But Tammy Brown, who attends the church, said last week that Valerie and Luc Tieman seemed like a wonderful couple and appeared very happy together.

“We weren’t close, but she was a sweet, sweet girl and gorgeous,” Brown said.

A BAD FEELING

Others say they saw a different side of Luc Tieman.

York, the Waterville woman who said she told Valerie Tieman that her husband was having an affair, said he stalked her for months, trying to get her to go out with him, but she refused.

“He was, like, following me around, calling my kids and sending my kids money,” York, 39, said Wednesday. “He was just weird, and I kept telling my sister-in-law I have a bad feeling about this guy.”

York said she met Luc Tieman last winter through a mutual friend; she also met Valerie Tieman.

“He and she friended me on Facebook,” York said.

For several months he would send messages via Facebook and text York, sometimes all night long, she said, even though she made it clear she would not go out with him because he was married and she knew his wife.

“His messages were, like, nonstop,” York said. “He basically chased anything that would give in to him.”

When York learned later that he was having an affair with a woman she knows, York notified Valerie Tieman on Aug. 25, she said.

“I just told his wife, I’m like, ‘I hate to tell you this.’ I don’t believe in (affairs). I was raised better. Luc came off as such a church-going person. Then he was, like, me and my wife are thinking about getting a divorce.”

York said she was afraid of Luc Tieman, particularly after she learned a body had been found on his parents’ property, and she was concerned he would target her for telling his wife about his affair.

“I’ve been hiding out the last couple of days. I thought he’d come out after me,” she said.

ANOTHER WOMAN

Another woman, Billi-Jo Goodwin, of Norridgewock, also reported being wooed by Luc Tieman.

Goodwin, 38, said Wednesday that she met him in late August, around the time he reported he last saw his wife.

Luc Tieman knew Goodwin’s niece – the Goodwin and Tieman families know one another – and Goodwin and Luc Tieman started chatting on Facebook, Goodwin said. Goodwin said she wrote on Facebook Aug. 26 that she and her niece were at the municipal pool on North Street in Waterville, and Luc Tieman saw her post and showed up at the pool.

He wooed Goodwin and won her over, telling her that his wife had “run off with another guy,” Goodwin said.

“He started coming over all the time. I’ve never had somebody treat me so nice in my life – like, perfect,” she said.

Goodwin, who works two jobs – at a doughnut shop and a funeral home – said she has five children, including two boys, 14 and 15, who live with her, and a daughter, 21, who also lives with her. Her other children are grown.

She said she has been single for four years and dated occasionally, but no one interested her as much as Luc Tieman did. They both had attended Temple Academy in Waterville at different times.

Goodwin said police detectives recently told her that Luc Tieman had a history of domestic violence and she should stay away from him. So although she stayed in touch with him, she asked him to stay away until the investigation of his wife’s disappearance was completed, she said. Tieman had given some knives to her boys, and Goodwin gave them to the detectives, she said.

“He texted me last night on Facebook that he missed my boys and that kids never let go of him and saying he loved me. He never came across as upset or angry,” Goodwin said. “I never saw him in a bad mood.

“I never would have guessed. Even when they found the body, I thought it must have been an accident. Luc told me last night that it was a drug overdose. He said, ‘I don’t want to ruin her reputation.’ ”

Goodwin said that Luc Tieman had a significant dent in his head that church members said was from a mortar attack in Iraq and that he suffered brain damage as a result. After that, he always wore a hat, she said.

“He did two or three tours in Iraq,” she said. “He got injured the last time and that’s how he had money. He got, like, $4,500 a month.”

DEFENDING HIMSELF

Around 7 a.m. Wednesday, before police arrested Luc Tieman in Waterville and charged him with killing his wife, his mother messaged Goodwin to say she was taking him to Togus VA Medical Center in Augusta to see a crisis counselor, Goodwin said.

On his Facebook page, which was taken down Wednesday, Tieman wrote multiple messages last week defending himself, saying he didn’t report her missing because he assumed she had gone to be with another man or her parents, and he didn’t want to “bad mouth” her.

He agreed to meet a Morning Sentinel reporter and photographer for an in-person interview late Monday afternoon, but insisted it be on Norridgewock Road because he did not want people at his parents’ house.

He put off the interview at the last minute, saying his family members discouraged him, but that he would do the interview when he is ready.

“I just want her found,” he wrote.

Forty-eight hours later, he was in jail, charged with his wife’s murder.

 

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