Michelle Lodzinski's attorney told a jury she was a "loving, devoted mother" and asked the jury to find her not guilty.
NEW BRUNSWICK -- Timothy Wiltsey was a good kid because he had a good mother, Michelle Lodzinski, Lodzinski's attorney told the jury in his closing remarks at her murder trial Wednesday morning.
"She was a loving, devoted mother," Gerald Krovatin said. "Loving, devoted mothers don't wake up one day and kill their children."
After a more than three-hour summation, Krovatin concluded by asking the jurors to find Lodzinski not guilty of murder and the lesser included offenses of aggravated manslaughter and manslaughter.
The prosecution will make their closing remarks at 2 p.m.
Krovatin told the jurors that Superior Court Judge Dennis Nieves will be charging them on aggravated manslaughter and manslaughter but he pleaded with them not to use the charges as a possible compromise verdict.
"All three require you to find that Michelle Lodzinski caused Timmy Wiltsey's death," Krovatin said. "This is not the time to compromise. There is no evidence that Miss Lodzinski caused the death of her child. She did not kill her child."
The attorney said "there is enough reasonable doubt in this case to drive a truck through it."
He told the jurors the reason Michelle gave police so many different versions of her son's disappearance was because first she was afraid she would look like a bad mother for letting a person she didn't know well take care of him, and then "she was in denial."
Lodzinski originally told police her son disappeared when she went to a concession stand to buy a soda at a carnival in Sayreville on the evening of May 25, 1991.
Within a few weeks, she had given them several different versions, including one in which a woman named Ellen, which she knew from working at a bank, and two men abducted him.
The boy's skeletal remains were found in a swampy areas of Raritan Center in Edison 11 months after he disappeared, along with a blanket, sneakers and other items that authorities believed could be linked to Timmy.
Krovatin dismissed the three witnesses who identified the blanket as coming from Lodzinski's apartment, noting they were 14-years-old and their memories couldn't be very good.
It was the identification of the blanket the led to the charges against Lodzinski in August 2014 after the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office reopened the case in 2011.
Sue Epstein may be reached at sepstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @susan_epstein. Find NJ.com on Facebook.