A medical examiner said Timothy Wiltsey was killed, but the cause of his death is undetermined. Watch video
NEW BRUNSWICK -- Dr. Geetha Natarajan, who was asked to review all of the records and autopsy results in connection with 5-year-old Timothy Wiltsey's death, testified at his mother's murder trial Tuesday afternoon that the boy was killed.
Natarajan, who served as the chief Middlesex County Medical Examiner from 2000 until she retired in 2007, told the jury at the trial of Michelle Lodzinski for the 1991 murder of her son, the cause of the boy's death was "undetermined" but that the manner of his death was a homicide.
"There is no indication or any evidence of injury or natural illness that would have killed him," she testified. "You do not find a child dying of natural causes in a creek in skeletonized form."
Wiltsey's remains -- his skull and several bones -- were found in a creek in a swampy area of Raritan Center in Edison 11 months after Lodzinski reported him missing from a carnival in Sayreville the evening of May 25, 1991.
Nataranja said she ruled out suicide and accident, as well.
"There is nothing pointing towards any kind of accident," she said. "The fact that the body of a fully clothed 5-year-old is found in a creek is an unnatural death."
Nataranja acknowledged under cross-examination by Lodzinski's attorney, Gerald Krovatin, that she cannot establish a time of death or say where or how he died, but she said that is not uncommon when only skeletal remains are found and they have been in the woods or water for a long period of time.
The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office had to call in a consultant because the medical examiner who performed the original autopsy on the child's remains, Dr. Marvin Shuster, died in 1999.
Nataranja said she did not rely solely on Shuster's autopsy report, but reviewed other examinations done on the remains, including one done by Donna Fontana, the forensic anthropologist who was in the N.J. State Medical Examiner's Office at the time, photos of where the remains were found and the report by county Sgt. Scott Crocco, who handled the investigation into the case when it was reopened in 2011.
Fontana testified earlier Tuesday that the bones belonged to a child between the ages of 5.5 and 7.5 years of age. She also said she believed the body decomposed where the bones were found.
Lodzinski was charged with her son's murder in August 2014, but she was the prime suspect very early in the investigation after she gave police several different versions of how her son went missing within weeks of his disappearance, according to testimony at the trial. She has always maintained she had nothing to do with either his disappearance or his death.
After Nataranja finished her testimony, the prosecution rested. The jury will not return until Thursday morning when the defense will begin its case.
Sue Epstein may be reached at sepstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @susan_epstein. Find NJ.com on Facebook.