High Court Overturns Lodzinski's Murder Conviction In Son's Death

SOUTH AMBOY, NJ — On Tuesday, the New Jersey Supreme Court vacated the murder conviction of Michelle Lodzinski in the death of her five-year-old son, who she is accused of killing in 1991 and then dumping his body in a marshy creek in Raritan Center in Edison.

Lodzinski and her son, Timothy Wiltsey, lived in South Amboy at the time of his disappearance.

In 2016, 25 years after the boy died, a Middlesex County jury found Lodzinski guilty of first-degree murder for her son's death. She was sentenced to 30 years in state prison and — up until Tuesday — was currently serving her sentence at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Hunterdon County.

With the Supreme Court's decision, she will now be released from prison.

For years, Lodzinski had always professed her innocence and continually appealed her guilty verdict, sending it all the way to the state's highest court.

On Tuesday, the highest court in the state issued its ruling overturning her murder conviction. The Middlesex County Prosecutor, who prosecuted the case, declined to comment on the overturning by the Supreme Court.

Essentially, the NJ Supreme Court said the state prosecution did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lodzinski murdered her son. None of her DNA was ever found by her son's body, nor was any forensic evidence ever found linking her to the crime. The strongest piece of evidence the state presented was the boy's blanket, found near his body.

But the judges said that blanket did not prove criminality.

"We may never know the truth about what happened in this case," wrote Justice Barry Albin in his opinion.

"The prosecution offered no direct or inferential evidence that Lodzinski purposely or knowingly caused Timothy’s death," wrote the Supreme Court in their public judgement Tuesday, which you can read here. "Bootstrapped inferences cannot substitute for the proof necessary to satisfy an element of an offense. In summation, the prosecutor did not and could not guide the jury on how to rationally choose between reckless manslaughter or purposeful or knowing murder. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the Court concludes that no rational jury — without engaging in speculation or conjecture — could conclude that Lodzinski purposely or knowingly caused Timothy’s death."

The highest court in the state appears to argue that Lodzinski did "have some involvement in his disappearance, death and burial," leaving it open that she may have indirectly caused her son's death.

But they said the Middlesex County Prosecutor's office did not prove murder, which is intentional.

"Only the purposeful or knowing causing of death constitutes murder," the judges ruled.

The New Jersey Supreme Court is made up of seven judges. The ruling vacating Lodzinski's murder charge was written by Hon. Albin, and sided with by Hons. Jaynee LaVecchia, Fabiana Pierre-Louis and Jose Fuentes.

Judges Anne Patterson, Faustino Fernandez-Vina and Lee Solomon dissented, saying that her murder conviction should have been upheld and she should remain in prison.

The NJ Supreme Court had previously heard the Lodzinski case and was split on whether it should be overturned, 3-3. Judge Fuentes was added to the court and the case was re-heard this December.

Chief Justice Stuart Rabner did not participate, for reasons unknown.

The tragic, unsolved death of a 5-year-old New Jersey boy

With the Supreme Court's ruling Tuesday, the death of Timothy Wiltsey yet again pivots back to being a New Jersey unsolved mystery.

Timothy was last seen at a carnival in Sayreville on May 25, 1991. The boy's skeleton remains were found a year later, in April, 1992, in the creek. Michelle had once worked near that area.

However, no forensic evidence — no DNA, fiber, or trace evidence — was ever found that tied Lodzinski to her son's death.

When the boy first went missing, Michelle took a vacation to the Bahamas. Michelle showed no emotion at her son's funeral, relatives said during her trial.

The following is taken directly from Judge Albin's Dec. 28 decision to vacate Lodzinski's murder conviction:

"On May 25, 1991, Timothy went missing. On that day, Lodzinski claimed that Timothy was abducted from a carnival at Kennedy Park in the town of Sayreville. Over the course of multiple interrogations, she gave shifting accounts about Timothy’s disappearance that cast doubt on her credibility.

"But Lodzinski never made an incriminating admission, not to the police during many long and exhausting interrogations, not to a former boyfriend who surreptitiously recorded her — not to anyone. Eleven months later, Timothy’s incomplete skeletal remains were found in a shallow creek bed, not far from an office where Lodzinski had previously worked.

"No forensic evidence — no DNA, fiber, or trace evidence — tied Lodzinski to the child’s death. Searches of her house, her car and her garbage generated no evidence of guilt. No one ever observed Lodzinski abuse Timothy. No witness could say where, when, or precisely how Timothy died.

"The medical examiner could not determine the cause of death, only that the manner of death was homicide. By most accounts, Lodzinski was caring and devoted to her son, though challenged by the demands of everyday life as a young single mother.

"In 1992, an exhaustive investigation by municipal, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies did not result in the return of any criminal charges against Lodzinski or anyone else. The case remained dormant for almost two decades, and Lodzinski went on with her life. She moved to Florida, where she started a family, raised two children, and was employed as a paralegal.

"Nineteen years later, in 2011, Sergeant Scott Crocco of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office reopened the investigation and enlisted Lodzinski’s estranged niece, who had babysat for Timothy decades earlier, to attempt to elicit a confession from her aunt. After that effort failed, Sergeant Crocco displayed for the niece a large blanket found near Timothy’s remains.

"The niece identified the blanket, recalling its presence in Lodzinski’s apartment two decades earlier when she babysat Timothy. The identification of that blanket, if believed, undermined Lodzinski’s account of Timothy’s disappearance at the carnival.

"In 2014, a Middlesex County grand jury charged Lodzinski with murder. On the eve of trial, in the midst of saturated pretrial publicity in this sensational murder case, two former babysitters also identified the blanket. At trial, however, a number of witnesses intimately familiar with Lodzinski’s residences during the relevant time period could not identify the blanket. No such blanket appeared in any of the photographs of Lodzinski’s apartments.

"The state medical examiner ruled the boy's death was not accidental but the result of a homicide. The medical examiner did not offer an opinion whether Timothy was the victim of a negligent, reckless, or purposeful or knowing homicide.

"We now hold that after reviewing 'the entirety of the evidence and after giving the State the benefit of all its favorable testimony and all the favorable inferences drawn from that testimony,' no reasonable jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Lodzinski purposefully or knowingly caused Timothy’s death.

"Even if the evidence suggested that Timothy did not die by accident, no testimony or evidence was offered to distinguish whether Timothy died by the negligent, reckless, or purposeful or knowing acts of a person, even if that person were Lodzinski," wrote the judges. "No conviction can be founded on speculation or conjecture. We may never know the truth about what happened in this case.

"The only issue is whether the evidence — presented in the light most favorable to the prosecution — supports a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Lodzinski purposely or knowingly caused the death of her son. By that standard the conviction cannot be sustained."

Ongoing Patch reporting on this case: Convicted Child Killer Michelle Lodzinski Sues Middlesex County, Says She Fell While In Handcuffs (2018)

Michelle Lodzinski Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Murder of Son, 5 (2017)

Michelle Lodzinski Said She 'Wasn't Made' to be a Mother, Witness Testifies (2016)

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