Former babysitter for Michelle Lodzinski, the boy's mother, said she saw the blanket in Lodzinski's apartment.
NEW BRUNSWICK -- A third person took the witness stand Tuesday morning in the trial of Michelle Lodzinski's for the murder of her 5-year-old son in 1991 and identified a blue blanket found near the boy's remains as one she saw in Lodzinski's apartment.
Dawn Matthews, 43, told the jury she was 15 when she babysat for Timothy Wiltsey when he was two years old. She said the boy and his mother lived around the corner from her family in South Amboy from about 1988 to 1990, when Lodzinski and Timmy moved to another apartment in South Amboy.
Matthews said she last saw Timmy in October 1990 when she picked him up to take him to a birthday party.
She said she first spoke to police after Timothy was reported missing by his mother from a carnival in Sayreville the evening of May 25, 1991.
Wiltsey's remains were found in April 1992 in a swampy area of Raritan Center in Edison, along with other items, including the blanket.
Matthews said she was not shown the blanket until December 2015 and recognized it.
When asked how she recognized it, she said, "I recognized it by the metallic threads running through it."
Then, under cross-examination by Lodzinski's attorney, Gerald Krovatin, Matthews said Timmy, "would cuddle with it at night before he went to bed."
Donna Fontana, forensic anthropologist for the State Office Of Forensic Sciences, testified in late April 1992 she examined the remains that were identified as those of Timothy Wiltsey's and determined they belonged to a child between the ages of 5.5 to 7.5 years of age.
She also determined that the body "decomposed" in the location where the bones were found and said decomposition would have happened very quickly in the heat of summer.
Fontana said animals would have taken the lighter bones of the skeleton once the tissues had decomposed, but the heavier bones usually remained in place and those, including the leg bones, were the ones found.
Investigators have said Lodzinski was the prime suspect in his killing early in the investigation after giving police several different versions of his disappearance, but they believed they didn't have enough information to charge her. But she wasn't charged in her son's death until August 2014.
Sue Epstein may be reached at sepstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @susan_epstein. Find NJ.com on Facebook.