Michelle Lodzinski Denied Appeal Request In Son's Murder

SOUTH AMBOY, NJ — Michelle Lodzinski, you're still guilty for killing your 5-year-old son, and you will not be getting a new trial.

That's what a New Jersey appeals court ruled on Wednesday of this week, when it affirmed the conviction of a former South Amboy single mom for killing her five-year-old son, Timothy Wiltsey, 28 years ago in 1991.

Lodzinski, currently serving 30 years in prison for her son's murder, had requested a re-trial. Her lawyer argued the jury was "tainted" by outside information. He also argued that her right to due process was violated when prosecutors waited 23 years to bring her to trial, and that sufficient evidence was never shown clearly proving Lodzinski killed her own son.

"Michelle is disappointed with the court’s decision and is committed to taking her appeal to the Supreme Court," her lawyer, Gerald Krovatin said in an email provided to MyCentralJersey.com.

Her 30-year sentence has no parole eligibility, meaning she must serve the entire term. Lodzinski will be approximately 80 years old when she is released from prison.

Lodzinksi, 51, is originally from South Amboy. That's where she and her son were living when she first reported him missing from a carnival in Sayreville over Memorial Day weekend in 1991. Police and fellow residents helped Lodzinski look for her son for months after he disappeared, doing regular searches of the woods near Sayreville and posting little Timmy's photos on flyers all over the area.

All the while, Lodzinski professed her innocence and regularly posed for newspaper, TV and news outlet interviews.

A year later, in 1992, the 5-year-old boy's partial remains were found by a bird watcher in a marshy area off Olympic Drive in Raritan Center. By that time, Lodzinski had moved to Florida, remarried and had additional children.

She was not brought to trial until 2016. The trial in New Brunswick lasted four months and a jury found her guilty in May of 2018.

“We are very pleased with the affirmance, which comes one day after Timmy’s birthday. Prosecuting this case was the right thing to do,” said Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey on Wednesday of this week.

The Michelle Lodzinski case has been called one of the most notorious crimes in the history of Middlesex County.

"She killed her son, dumped his remains in a ravine close to her former place of employment, falsely claimed he was abducted by strangers, and spearheaded a desperate search for a child she knew was already dead," said a statement released by the county prosecutor's office.

Hon. Dennis V. Nieves sentenced Lodzinski to 30 years in state prison in January 2017.

During the trial, Deputy First Assistant Prosecutor Christie Bevacqua and Assistant Prosecutor Scott LaMountain argued Lodzinski killed the child sometime before she reported him missing from the carnival in Sayreville on May 21, 1991.

The child’s partial remains were recovered on April 23, 1992 from a remote section of Raritan Center, an industrial park in Edison.

Prosecutor Carey commended the unceasingly vigilant efforts of numerous dedicated police officers who worked on the case over the years which included members of the Sayreville Police Department, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, the New Jersey State Police and the FBI.

Earlier this year, as Patch reported, Middlesex County paid Lodzinski a one-time settlement of $25,000, putting an end to a lawsuit Lodzinski filed against the county after she tripped and fell while being led into court in handcuffs for the 2017 murder trial of her son.

Lodzinski sued the Middlesex County Sheriff's office after she fell; she claimed that deputy sheriffs moved her too quickly was they walked her into the courtroom. At the time she fell, both her wrists and ankles were restrained.

Middlesex County said the decision to settle avoided a lengthy legal battle and resulted in an overall cost savings to taxpayers.

Timmy suffered from health problems, including issues with his teeth and stomach, and Michelle seemed to be fed up with it, NJ.com quoted witnesses testifying in court during her trial.

"The older he got, the more medical problems he was having. It was harder for her. You could tell," testified a former girlfriend of Michelle's brother, Eddie Lodzinski, Danielle Marquis, according to NJ.com, which covered the trial.

In exasperation, Michelle, 23 and a single mother at the time, had once told her she was a "weekend mother" and "not made for this (expletive)."

Ongoing Patch reporting on Michelle Lodzinski:

Middlesex County Pays Michelle Lodzinski $25K To Settle Lawsuit

Michelle Lodzinski Said She 'Wasn't Made' to be a Mother, Witness Testifies

The following is from the Middlesex County prosecutor's office:

On May 25, 1991, defendant Michelle Lodzinski reported that her son, five-year-old Timothy (Timmy) Wiltsey, went missing while both were attending a Memorial Day carnival in Sayreville. Search efforts began immediately, they became widespread, and descriptions of Timmy, the clothing and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) sneakers he was wearing, and his continued disappearance received national media attention.

In October 1991, a schoolteacher walking in the area of Olympic Drive, near the Raritan Center industrial complex in Edison, found a child's TMNT sneaker; believing it might be related to the case, he provided it to law enforcement authorities. Defendant had worked for a company in Raritan Center for approximately six months in the late 1980s.

Police were able to match the model number of the sneaker to a shoebox defendant provided shortly after Timmy's disappearance. When first shown the sneaker, defendant said it was not her son's, describing features that distinguished it from the sneakers Timmy was wearing. In November 1991, defendant returned to view the sneaker a second time and told authorities it could be her son's. She did not disclose, however, that she had worked in Raritan Center. Also in November 1991, police and an FBI agent assigned to the case searched the area on foot near where the sneaker was found, but they discovered nothing of significance.

FBI agent Ron Butkiewicz and police officers returned to the same general area on April 23, 1992, and the following day, April 24, and found a matching sneaker and a pillowcase. Approximately 150 yards away, and across Olympic Drive, they found Timmy's skeletal remains in the stagnant water of Red Root Creek, a tributary of the Raritan River. They also discovered remnants of his clothing, a shovel and a TMNT balloon, like Timmy sometimes kept in his bedroom at home.

Approximately twenty-five feet above the remains, embedded in the soil in the bank of the creek, Butkiewicz found a blue blanket with multi-colored, metallic fibers. Although FBI testing on the blanket revealed nothing of evidential value, years later a New Jersey State Police forensic scientist identified metallic fibers found on the pillowcase as being similar to those in the blanket, although he never performed a full trace analysis. In 1992, defendant and her parents could not identify the blanket, but, twenty-years later, detectives showed the blanket to three women who babysat Timmy in the late 1980s and early 1990s; they identified it as coming from defendant's home. Police also showed the blanket to several other witnesses when the investigation was reopened, but none of them could identify it.

The medical examiner who examined the remains at the scene, but died before trial, could not reach a conclusion about the cause of Timmy's death.

However, another medical examiner, Dr. Geetha Natajarian, who reviewed the autopsy reports, photographs, and investigative and other forensic reports, testified. She, too, could not determine a cause of death, but through a process of elimination, opined that the manner of Timmy's death was a homicide. A forensic anthropologist, Donna Fontana, opined that Timmy's body had decomposed where it was found, at a "surface burial" site.

Although defendant was immediately a suspect in the investigation of Timmy's disappearance, and remained so after the authorities found his remains, she never admitted having a role in either his disappearance or his death. Within the first two months after her son's disappearance, however, defendant provided numerous statements that conflicted with the account she first provided on the night of the carnival, i.e., that she went to purchase a soda and Timmy simply disappeared. On June 6, 1991, defendant told authorities that two men abducted Timmy. The next day, she claimed that a woman she knew only as "Ellen" was at the carnival and offered to watch Timmy as defendant purchased her soda. Two men accompanied Ellen. Defendant described them, but did not know who they were.

Initially, defendant claimed the trio just disappeared with Timmy. In a later version, she said one of the men threatened her with a knife and told her not to say anything or they would harm Timmy.

Twenty-three years after Timmy's disappearance, a Middlesex County grand jury indicted defendant in a single count charging her with the first-degree murder of her son. Trial proceeded between March and May 2016. At the close of the State's case, defendant moved for a judgment of acquittal pursuant to Rule 3:18-1, which the judge denied. The jury found defendant guilty. After denying her motions for a judgment of acquittal notwithstanding the verdict or a new trial, the judge sentenced defendant to a thirty-year term of imprisonment with a thirty-year period of parole ineligibility.