The jury will begin deliberating Thursday. Michelle Lodzinski is charged with the 1991 murder of her 5-year-old son. Watch video
NEW BRUNSWICK -- Timothy Wiltsey was a week away from graduating from kindergarten when he went missing on May 25, 1991, Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Christie Bevacqua told a jury in the beginning of her closing remarks Wednesday afternoon.
"In a few short days, there would be no kindergarten, no after care to take care of her son," Bevacqua said. "She was struggling. So she had had enough by May 25, 1991. She had a solution--a life without Timmy. Timmy took his last breath. He was taken out of the world by the very person who brought him into it -- his mother. Then she dumped him in a drainage ditch off Olympic Drive in Edison, an isolated, desolate place."
A place, Bevacqua said, that Lodzinski was very familiar with having worked about a quarter mile away off Raritan Center Parkway a year earlier. Both locations are in Raritan Center.
"Then she did something only a mother would do--she left her child with a blanket, only this blanket did not cover Timmy's remains--it uncovered his murderer," the prosecutor said.
It was the blue blanket, found the day Timmy's skeletal remains were found on April 23, 1992, 11 months after Lodzinski reported him missing at a carnival in Sayreville May 25, 1991, that led to her being charged with her son's murder in August 2014.
The investigation into the boy's killing was reopened in 2011 when the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office received an anonymous tip, according to county Detective Sgt. Scott Crocco. Crocco testified the tip was not usable, but he decided to reopen the case and show the evidence to other witnesses who may not have seen it 20 years earlier--that included the blanket found near the boy's remains.
The blanket was identified by three witnesses, all of whom babysat for Timmy, as belonging to Lodzinski.
"All of the evidence points to the defendant," Bevacqua told the jury in her lengthy summation. "Michelle Lodzinski was the last person to see Timmy alive. The carnival was just the coverup."
She said Lodzinski's behavior after reporting him missing at the carnival--her calm demeanor and lies to police, including providing different versions of his disappearance, were "evidence of her guilt."
She also dismissed the testimony of Damien Dowdle, the convicted bank robber from Arizona who came in and testified that a man he was involved with in Arizona the late 1980's confessed to him in 1991 that he killed a 5-year-old boy possibly in New Jersey.
Dowdle testified he was paroled from prison in March 2015 and went on the Internet to see if there were any cases that fit the circumstances he claimed McShane told him in 1991-- that he killed a child in "Atlanta City" in a park at a big event. He said he found the Timothy Wiltsey case and contacted Lodzinski's attorney, Gerald Krovatin.
The man, Bernard Joseph McShane, testified for the prosecution and denied killing anyone or ever being in New Jersey until he came to testify for the trial.
"This is some creation of Damien Dowdle's," Bevacqua said. "He is on a mission to make Joe McShane's life hell."
The prosecutor said the state doesn't have to prove a motive to prove murder, but said it was clear that in May 1991, Timmy was no longer wanted."
"Verdict in Latin means speak the truth," Bevacqua told the jurors. "The truth is the defendant is guilty of murder."
The defense summations were Wednesday morning.
Superior Court Judge Dennis Nieves will charge the jury, explaining the law governing all of the charges, including murder and the lesser included offenses of aggravated manslaughter and manslaughter, Thursday morning.
Sue Epstein may be reached at sepstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @susan_epstein. Find NJ.com on Facebook.