Timothy Wiltsey

Timothy Wiltsey

Timothy Wiltsey, from 1991 missing-child flyer
Born (1985-08-06)August 6, 1985
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Died May 25, 1991(1991-05-25) (aged 5)
Residence South Amboy, New Jersey
Nationality American
Known for Victim of homicide
Parent(s) Michelle Lodzinski, George Wiltsey

Timothy William "Timmy" Wiltsey (August 6, 1985 – May 25, 1991) was a 5-year-old boy from South Amboy, New Jersey, whose 23-year-old single mother, Michelle Lodzinski, reported him missing from a local carnival on May 25, 1991.[1] The case was televised twice on America's Most Wanted, and Timmy's photograph was circulated on thousands of missing-child flyers and milk cartons. On April 23, 1992, his partial remains were discovered across the Raritan River in the marshlands of Edison, New Jersey, near one of Lodzinski's recent employment locations. She was considered the primary suspect in the crime, but despite two failed polygraph tests and a hoax kidnapping and other inconsistencies in her story,[2] she was not charged with Timmy's death until August 6, 2014. Her criminal trial began on March 16, 2016.

Disappearance

The evening of Saturday, May 25, 1991, Michelle Lodzinski said she and her son visited the South Amboy Elks Club carnival in Sayreville's Kennedy Park. Lodzinski reported that her son went missing when she left him waiting in a carnival ride line as she went to buy a soda. Police officers, firefighters, volunteers, and trained dogs immediately launched an exhaustive search of the carnival grounds and the surrounding area, to no avail. Timmy's father, George Wiltsey, was at home in Iowa, uninvolved in the boy's life, and eliminated as a suspect.[2]

Inconsistencies

Lodzinski reported to authorities that she and her son had spent time at Holmdel Park during the afternoon before driving to the evening carnival. According to park police, the Holmdel lot where she claimed to have parked was closed that day. Despite claiming to have spent approximately 90 minutes at the Elks carnival, with Timmy dressed in bright red, the authorities could find no one who had seen her son with her that night.[2] As one witness testified: "I spoke with her and she did not have a child with her. I was very upset. There was a child missing and there was no child."[3]

Ten days later at a police interview in Sayreville, Lodzinski claimed two men with a knife had taken her son. Later that day she returned to the police station and recanted the story, as the police began to consider her a leading suspect. The following day she returned and gave a third story that her son had been taken by two men and a woman. She claimed to have known the woman as Ellen, a local go-go dancer and bank customer. This woman was never found, despite an exhaustive FBI search.[2][4][5]

Initial evidence

On October 26, 1991, schoolteacher and birdwatcher Dan O'Malley was exploring marshlands in the Raritan Center industrial park in Edison, New Jersey. He discovered a child's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sneaker, which had been highly publicized in missing-child flyers as the kind Timmy was wearing when he disappeared. O'Malley brought it to the Sayreville Police Department that same day. The sneaker was shown to Lodzinski, who stated it was not her son’s. It was then stored in an evidence area and apparently forgotten. After three weeks with no word from the police, O'Malley reported the sneaker to a local newspaper, The Home News of New Brunswick, resulting in a front-page story and FBI forensic testing.[2][6][7]

Months later, after the forensic testing had been inconclusive, FBI agent Ron Butkiewicz read the newspaper story, contacted O'Malley, and they toured the location together on April 6, 1992.[7] Upon re-interviewing Lodzinski's friends and family, Butkiewitz learned that she had once worked and taken frequent long walks at the Raritan Center complex, within a few blocks of the sneaker's discovery, although Lodzinski herself omitted this location when investigators had asked for her complete employment history.[8] On April 23–24, 1992, law-enforcement teams conducted a full search of the area. They quickly located a matching second sneaker in Timmy's size, and then found the boy's partial skeletal remains, in and around a truck tire in Red Root Creek. His identity was confirmed through dental records, and his death was ruled a homicide, although the time, location, and medical cause of death could not be determined due to advanced decomposition.[2][7]

Later developments

On January 21, 1994, Michelle Lodzinski's car was found idling at her New Jersey home. The next day, she turned up in Detroit, Michigan, claiming abduction by FBI agents "to teach her a lesson for talking about Timmy." Two weeks after she returned home, her brother found an FBI business card on the door with the message "It's not over." Agent Butkiewicz resumed his investigation and found a local print shop that had recently printed FBI business cards for Lodzinski. She admitted faking the kidnapping but refused to discuss her son’s disappearance, and was sentenced to house arrest and probation.[2][9]

In 1997, pregnant with her second child, Lodzinski pleaded guilty to stealing a computer from a former employer, and was again sentenced to house arrest and probation. In 1998 she moved to Florida, then in 1999 to Minnesota, where she was married in 2001 and started a new family.[2] The marriage did not last long and pregnant with her third child she returned to Florida in 2003, where she bought a small home in Port St. Lucie.[10]

As part of a "cold case" review that NJ prosecutors began in 2011, three of Timmy's former babysitters were each able to identify a distinctive blanket that had been discovered near his remains.[11] Investigators realized that the boy would not have been carrying a 10-foot (3 m) blanket through a carnival on the humid 90 °F (32 °C) day when he disappeared, and concluded that the blanket was taken from Lodzinski's South Amboy home, for wrapping the boy after his death.[12]

Arrest and trial

On August 6, 2014, which would have been Timmy's 29th birthday, following a sealed indictment by a grand jury, Lodzinski was arrested in Florida and charged with her son's murder.[13] Her criminal trial in New Jersey began on March 16, 2016, and was expected to conclude by July.[14]

References

  1. ↑ "In Memory of Timothy Wiltsey". Children Who Never Made It Home. Archived from the original on October 28, 2004.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Fisher, Robin Gaby (May 20, 2001). "Timothy Wiltsey: Ten years after the 5-year-old South Amboy boy disappeared". The Star-Ledger. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  3. ↑ Epstein, Sue (March 23, 2016). "A mother on trial: Lodzinski was at the carnival, but no one saw Timothy". The Star-Ledger. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  4. ↑ Epstein, Sue (September 24, 2015). "4 conflicting Lodzinski statements from 1991 played in court". The Star-Ledger. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
  5. ↑ Livio, Susan K.; Stirling, Stephen (September 18, 2015). "Striking new details revealed in FBI documents on Timothy Wiltsey investigation". The Star-Ledger. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
  6. ↑ Hutchinson, Jennifer (November 19, 1991). "Missing boy's sneaker may have been located". The Home News (New Brunswick, NJ).
  7. 1 2 3 Federal Bureau of Investigation (2000), Timothy William Wiltsey (7-NK-69423), retrieved March 4, 2016
  8. ↑ Mueller, Mark (September 23, 2015). "Did she kill Timmy Wiltsey? Evidence includes blanket, pillowcase". The Star-Ledger. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
  9. ↑ Staff (September 24, 1994). "Woman Admits to a Judge She Faked Her Abduction". The New York Times. Retrieved January 8, 2016.
  10. ↑ Bichao, Sergio; Russell, Suzanne (March 24, 2016). "Follow the Lodzinski murder case – all you need to know". Home News Tribune. Retrieved March 26, 2016.
  11. ↑ Russell, Suzanne (April 7, 2016). "Testimony: Could Timothy Wiltsey have been strangled?". Home News Tribune. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  12. ↑ Mueller, Mark; Livio, Susan K. (September 23, 2015). "Murder trial against Michelle Lodzinski will proceed, judge says". The Star-Ledger. Retrieved January 8, 2016.
  13. ↑ Wallace, Sarah; Sedensky, Matt (August 8, 2014). "Mom Arrested for New Jersey Son's Death in 1991". Associated Press. Retrieved January 8, 2016.
  14. ↑ Epstein, Sue (March 17, 2016). "Tears, drama as murder trial begins for mom whose child disappeared in 1991". The Star-Ledger. Retrieved March 17, 2016.

Further reading

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