Michelle Lodzinski

Timothy William "Timmy" Wiltsey (August 6, 1985 – remains recovered April 23, 1992) was a 5-year-old boy from South Amboy, New Jersey, United States, whose mother, Michelle Lodzinski, told police that he went missing from a carnival in nearby Sayreville on May 25, 1991.

Police searches of the park where the carnival had been held failed to locate Wiltsey.

Almost 11 months later, his remains were discovered across the Raritan River in the marshlands of nearby Edison, near an office park where Lodzinski had once worked.

Due to changes in her account of how her son disappeared within a month of his disappearance, and her unemotional demeanor on the few occasions she spoke publicly about the case, she began to be seen as a suspect.

That perception intensified later in the decade when she was convicted of first staging her own kidnapping, and then again several years later of stealing a laptop from a former employer.

Wiltsey was born August 6, 1985, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to George Wiltsey of nearby Walker, and Michelle Lodzinski of Laurence Harbor, New Jersey.

The two had met the year before when the 16-year-old Lodzsinki had come to visit her brother.

They began dating, and Michelle became pregnant.

Six months after giving birth, Lodzinski returned to her home with her infant son as his father had become abusive; she also disliked the isolation of Iowa.

George had nothing to do with his son (at Lodzinski's request, he later testified; she returned any mail he sent his son ) after Timothy went back to New Jersey with his mother, and did not pay any child support.

Lodzinski and her son lived with her sister and her husband in South Amboy for two years before she moved out to the first of three apartments in the same town she and Wiltsey lived in.

She worked at a variety of low-paying jobs available to a single mother who had dropped out of high school in her late teens with minimal education and skills, primarily clerical and office work, plus retailing and as a bank teller.

She declined to seek public assistance, instead accepting money from her father and at some points she was working two jobs; she sometimes described herself to friends as a "weekend mom".

Her landlady described her as "a hardworking single mother"

Lodzinski often relied on friends, family or paid sitters to watch Wiltsey while she was at work, but sometimes those arrangements fell through, and she took him to work with her.

Employers and coworkers recalled that she frequently came in late.

On other occasions, when she had to come home late, she forgot to call her sitters.

In January 1990, Lodzinski's sister and brother-in-law, on whom she had relied extensively for child care, moved to Florida, greatly complicating her arrangements.

At one point, when Wiltsey was four, a brother in Minnesota took him in for two months so she could save money for his school tuition.

Her friends and family recall that she was devoted to Wiltsey, taking him to the dentist regularly, taking him on camping trips and other vacations, and saving up enough money to send him to kindergarten at private St. Mary's School when he reached school age.

Once he was in school she helped him with his homework and regularly bought him new clothes.

Wiltsey had attendance problems: he was absent 25 days that year and came in late on another 63.

Wiltsey was an issue between Lodzinski and two men she became romantically involved with during this period, one of whom she became briefly engaged to.

While both of them said later that they liked both her and her son, they felt they were both too young themselves to commit to being his stepfather.

The former fiancé did not believe Lodzinski was a properly attentive mother to Wiltsey; she impressed him as relating to him more like an older sister and was not surprised when the boy required 72 stitches to his face after being bitten by a dog next door as he had warned her about letting Wiltsey play outside in the back yard alone while the dog was loose.

He became engaged to another woman a month before Wiltsey's disappearance.

Lodzinski's brother's girlfriend was also critical of some aspects of her parenting.

On one occasion while Lodzinski was out late and she was sitting Wiltsey, Lodzinski called and asked her to let the boy leave with a man the girlfriend did not know.

After she refused, Lodzinski returned home and forced Wiltsey into a car driven by Lodzinski's boyfriend at the time, Fred Bruno.

She believed Wiltsey was "terrified" of Bruno and told police she suspected him after Wiltsey's body was found (on the witness stand he denied any involvement in Wiltsey's death).

On May 24, 1991, the Friday before that year's Memorial Day weekend, Lodzinski was planning for the end of the school year and the summer ahead.

Prosecutors did not bring charges against her until the 2010s, by which time she had remarried, had two more children, and moved to Florida, where she was arrested in 2014.

Wiltsey's remains were so decomposed when discovered that the cause of death could not be determined, and it was unclear when anyone besides Lodzinski had last seen him, making it difficult to connect her to any foul play or establish when and how it had taken place.

Middlesex County prosecutors believed that a blanket found near the body was one that babysitters had seen in her house while the boy was alive.

In 2016, after a trial that saw the jury foreman dismissed for doing independent research, she was convicted and sentenced to 30 years without parole.

The conviction was sustained on appeal.

In 2021, the New Jersey Supreme Court heard Lodzinski's case.

Chief Justice Stuart Rabner recused himself, and the remaining judges deadlocked, leaving her most recent appeal, which had upheld her conviction, standing.

The Court was persuaded to invoke a rarely-used rule allowing a rehearing with another judge temporarily designated a justice to hear the case so that a result is reached.

At the end of the year, a narrow majority vacated her conviction because the evidence was insufficient for a reasonable jury to convict her.