Herbert Swilley is seen at left during his Nov. 3, 2023, arrest. Deputies say he murdered his husband, Timothy Floyd Smith. (Image: Marion County Sheriff’s Office)
Months after publicly calling him out as a suspect, deputies arrested a Florida man as his husband’s alleged killer. Herbert Swilley, 55, is in the Marion County Jail without bond as of Sunday, records show.
In various public statements, deputies said that they had looked for the victim, Timothy Floyd Smith, 59, to do a wellbeing check on March 25, the day after he did not show up to work. They found him brutally murdered at an apartment that he and Swilley had maintained.
Publicly, the case was a mystery, going unsolved for months, but deputies in August called out Swilley in August, calling him a suspect and claiming he offered through an attorney that he would cooperate only if given immunity from prosecution in his husband’s death.
Authorities arrested Swilley on Friday for a count each of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence.
Investigators claim that Smith, who suffered domestic abuse at Swilley’s hands, was close to getting a new job in another county and moving there without his husband.
Also, the defendant stood to profit from Smith’s death as the beneficiary of a total of $333,000 in life insurance policies.
The victim never had the chance to leave.
“Timothy had a dark ligature mark on his neck and blunt-force trauma to his face and genitalia,” deputies wrote regarding his remains.
Investigators determined that sometime the night of March 23 or early morning March 24, Smith was dosed with a massive amount of the antihistamine diphenhydramine — 30 times more than the normal therapeutic dose. Diphenhydramine is found in allergy medicine and can make people drowsy.
Deputies claim Swilley choked Smith to death with an unknown ligature and fractured his cervical spine — his neck.
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Swilley then drove the body from their shared home to a nearby apartment they had maintained, they wrote.
He allegedly put the remains inside, staged a fake crime scene, and used household cleaning agents in an attempt to destroy evidence.
“Swilley returned to their residence and then drove Timothy’s vehicle to the apartment where he left it,” deputies wrote. “Swilley then walked back to their residence where he accessed their Ring camera application; investigators later learned that surveillance videos from that night were not present. Then, a few hours later, Swilley drove to the landfill where he dropped off what appeared to be two carpets from their residence before going about his day.”
Authorities described Swilley as initially acting cooperative, but his many details in his preliminary statement were “false, self-serving, or contradicted by other evidence.”
Smith’s sister, Sandy Reils, had a similar account about her brother-in-law, Swilley. She told WESH he did not contact her after the murder. Instead, she learned about it from social media.
“Just from the first initial conversation I had with him, he changed his story in that conversation three times,” she said.
Reils welcomed news of the arrest.
“I just started crying and thanking Jesus because there have been so many prayers going up that we get justice for Tim,” she said. “This is a step in the right direction.”
Court is scheduled for Dec. 5. Available records do not name Swilley’s attorney.
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