The prosector and defense attorney gave jurors two different views of Michelle Lodzinski, a mother accused of killing her son
NEW BRUNSWICK -- No one has found any evidence over the past quarter century that links a former South Amboy woman to the murder of her 5-year-old son, Gerald Krovatin told the jury in his opening remarks Wednesday morning.
"There is probably nothing more horrible to contemplate than the death of a child, any child, especially your child," Krovatin told them.
But then, he said, there may be something more horrible.
"Maybe the only thing worse is the day when they turn around and someone falsely accuses you of killing your own child."
Timmy Wiltsey, 5, seen in a picture taken at his school. He disappeared in 1991. His mother, Michelle Lodzinski, was charged with his murder in 2014. Lodzinski, he said, was a loving mother. She kept a photo of her son Timothy, which he showed to the jury, by her bed until the day she was arrested in July 2014 for her son's murder.
She also kept his purple graduation gown that he was to wear for his kindergarten graduation, which was supposed to happen a week after his May 25, 1991 disappearance.
"The evidence will show that Michelle Lodzinski loved that little boy more than life itself," Krovatin said.
Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Christie Bevacqua, who presented his opening statements first, countered that Lodzinski was a young, struggling mother who resolved her problems by murdering her son.
"Why would a mother kill her child?" Bevacqua asked. "It's a foreign concept, hard to grasp. The solution to Michelle Lodzinski's problems were to murder her first born, her biggest burden."
She told the jurors, "a mother's instinct is to protect her child."
"A killer's instinct is to lie," Bevacqua said. "That is Michelle Lodzinski. Timothy Wiltsey was dead at five years of age. His body dumped in a creek, an isolated creek as though he was an unwanted pierce of trash. Who would do this to Timmy?"
"The evidence will show it was his mother, Michelle Lodzinski, the very person who brought him into the world, took him out of it."
Lodzinski said Timmy disappeared when she went to buy soda, that he was taken by two men, that he was snatched by two men and a woman, and that a woman in a red car abducted him at knifepoint.
In the months and years following Timmy's death, Lodzinski's behavior was puzzling and bizarre, authorities said. In addition to changing her story about her son's disappearance, she was later arrested twice - once for faking her kidnapping and again for stealing from an employer.
Krovatin will also introduce testimony from an Arizona man who will testify that a cellmate told him a story about killing a child that could have been Timothy Wiltsey.
The trial is expected to take about four months.
Sue Epstein may be reached at sepstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @susan_epstein. Find NJ.com on Facebook.