Cold cases are never easy to solve without compelling new evidence.That is the challenge facing prosecutors in the trial of Michelle Lodzinski, say legal experts, in the high drama case that may hinge on an old blanket and the memories of a former babysitter. Watch video
NEW BRUNSWICK--It was a case that began with every parent's worst nightmare.
A five-year-old boy had allegedly wandered away from his mother after she turned her back for a moment at a traveling carnival in Sayreville. And vanished.
Police soon found that no one could recall seeing the child that evening in May 1991, and their suspicions only grew about what might have really happened, long before his skeletal remains finally turned up in a marshy area 11 months later.
On Wednesday--almost 25 years after Timothy Wiltsey disappeared, and after decades of false leads colored by the often bizarre and at times emotionless behavior of his mother--prosecutors finally began to present their case that Michelle Lodzinski, now 48, was the one who killed him.
But despite the reopening of the dramatic case by investigators still haunted by photographs of a cute little boy with a smile frozen in time, criminal justice experts say so-called "cold case" murder files like this one are not often solved, nor do they result in a conviction.
That is the challenge now facing prosecutors in the high drama case that may hinge on a faded blanket and the facing memories of 25 years ago.
George Thomas, a leading authority on double jeopardy and confessions who teaches criminal law and procedure at Rutgers School of Law in Newark, said it comes down to what kind of forensic evidence a prosecutor can collect that might not have been originally available--such as DNA, fingerprints or new witness statements.
Noting the case against Lodzinski was always circumstantial, he observed: "There's nothing new that wasn't evident 25 years ago."
Cold cases, unsolved for any length of time, are notoriously difficult to bring back to life. Witnesses die and memories decay, he explained.
"To the extent a trial depends on people remembering things, they are harder to prosecute," noted Thomas. While he had no inside knowledge, he said that based on published accounts the case against Lodzinski still sounded "pretty weak."
Richard Hough Sr., a former Florida cop and a sheriff's deputy who now teaches homicide and cold case investigation at the University of West Florida, said despite what many believe, long-dormant cases that do get solved typically are not cracked by DNA or advanced police technologies unavailable at the time the crime was committed. They get solved by traditional police work.
"It's more going back to good solid basics," he said. "It's not the trick play of DNA--it's a fresh pair of eyes and re-interviewing people."
That is apparently what happened in the Lodzinski case, according to court filings. A blue-and-white blanket found by investigators near the recovered remains of Wiltsey had been shown to Lodzinski and her mother at the time. Both said they did not recognize it then. However, when detectives two years ago went to back re-interview Lodzinski's niece who would often babysit Timothy, they said she had a visceral reaction when she saw the blanket, "bursting into tears."
The frayed and faded blue-and-white blanket found by police near Timothy Wiltsey's remains. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)To prosecutors, this was a smoking gun. If the blanket had come from Lodzinski's home, how did it get there? It suggested to them that someone in the house had taken it there when the boy's body was left there. It was enough for the Middlesex County Prosecutor's office to reopen the case, according to court filings.
Hough, author of "American Homicide," said investigators working any cold case must start from the beginning, going through every scrap of paper, re-interviewing every witness, while trying to "add layers" to what they already know.
"The challenge for the prosecutor is then to put in front of a jury enough of the circumstantial evidence that they had at the time, in a way that is compelling to the jury," he remarked.
That appeared to be the tactic in court on Wednesday. Prosecutors, in their opening statements, began by displaying a photo of Timothy and talked about the dumping of his body in an isolated location.
"She dumped his body in a creek like a piece of trash, but she left behind a telling clue, this blanket," declared Deputy First Assistant Prosecutor Christie Bevacqua, putting on blue gloves and holding up the filthy and faded blanket found about 30 feet from Timothy's remains. "No other killer could get this," she said.
But Lodzinski's attorney, Gerald Krovatin, said she did not cause the death of her child.
"The evidence will show that Lodzinski loved Timothy more than life itself," he told the jury.
He said he would also introduce testimony from an Arizona man who claims that a cellmate told him a story about killing a child that could have been Timmy.
THE BOY ON THE MILK CARTON
Long a mystery, the disappearance in 1991 of Timothy captured national headlines. Photos of the missing child adorned thousands of milk cartons and the case was featured on the television show "America's Most Wanted," while volunteers continued to search for some trace of the boy. Prosecutors said hundreds of sightings reported in the United States and Canada and all were checked out. They all proved false
Any lingering hope turned into tragedy when Timothy's remains were discovered 11 months later in a creek at the Raritan Center industrial park.
Lodzinski had been a suspect from the start, said investigators, frustrated by her changing stories about what happened the day he disappeared, and inconsistent answers to their questions. Equally troubling was their feeling that she showed little emotion over the disappearance of Timothy.
The arrest of Michelle Lodzinski
''Everyone is waiting to see a grieving mother on TV break down, crying, hysterical because the public they thrive on that stuff. But I'm not going to do it,'' she told the press before the remains of the boy were ultimately found.
Prosecutors later revealed that Lodzinski's account of her son's disappearance changed several times in the days and months after she first reported him missing. At first she said he wandered away. They said she claimed a woman named "Ellen," a former go-go dancer she knew casually, offered to watch Timmy while she bought a soda at the carnival. Later, she told detectives that Ellen and an unidentified man kidnapped the boy at knifepoint. And a former boyfriend told a police officer about a conversation he had with her, in which she told him she knew who took Timmy and saw him being abducted, but was afraid to call police in case they might injure him.
A five-member nonprofit organization, Friends of Timmy, was organized to find the child, but she reportedly resigned from the group following a disagreement after she announced a fund-raising baseball game featuring Chippendale's dancers in Linden, according to press reports at the time.
"The Friends of Timmy" hold a press conference in November 1991 at St. Mary Elementary School in South Amboy, before the boy's remains were discovered. Michelle Lodzinski, the mother of Timmy Wiltsey, is seated second from left. (Star-Ledger file photo)With little to go by, and no evidence to link her to the boy's disappearance, authorities even searched Lodzinski's financial records in June 1991 to determine whether she might have sold her son, according to FBI records later obtained by her brother and released to the press.
The case seemed to fade from the public eye until January 1994, when Lodzinski's family reported her missing after her car was found outside her brother's Woodbridge apartment with the door open and the engine running. Lodzinski contacted Detroit police the next day and reported she had been abducted by two men claiming to be FBI agents. After she was interviewed by investigators for the Detroit police armed robbery unit and the FBI, authorities expressed skepticism.
''After interviewing the young lady regarding her report, it was determined that the report lacked credibility," said Hank Glaspie, a spokesman for the Michigan FBI. ''It's our opinion that her story, the report, lacked credibility."
Lodzinski later admitted to the hoax, which police believed was cooked up after she learned she was facing a subpoena in a case involving a Union County police officer accused of improperly using a police computer to run license plate numbers of cars she believed were following her.
Four years later, Lodzinski, then pregnant, was back in the news after she was charged with stealing a laptop computer from the office of the heating and air conditioning company where she was working as a receptionist, that she gave to the same Union County officer as a Christmas gift. She was sentenced to three years probation.
By 2001, she was had moved to Minnesota, where she would enter into a brief marriage, according to court records.
"It took a long time for life to get normal," Lodzinski told a reporter who had found where she lived. "Right now my life is as normal as anyone's life, I guess. Except that I have a past."
And in August 2014, her past finally caught up to her. By then, living in Port St. Lucie, Fla., police came knocking on her door with an arrest warrant.
Older and heavier, and again a single mother with two teenage sons, Lodzinski was she was charged with the murder of Timothy. The arrest took place on his birthday.
"It was a long time coming," said retired Sayreville Police Chief Edward Szkodny on the day of her arrest. He had been on duty at the carnival the night Lodzinski reported her son missing there. "Now we'll see that justice is served."
Hough said he understood the deep feeling investigators had about the matter.
"The pressure we often felt in these cases was not from the department or the public or the family of the victim," he remarked. "It is the victim. You feel you are the final voice of that victim."
Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.