Michelle Lodzinski in 1991
Michelle Lodzinski?s screams rose above the din of clanging rides and carnival games. It was a spring evening in 1991, and she told anyone who was listening that she had brought her 5-year-old son to the carnival in Sayreville, N.J. Now, he was missing.
Ms. Lodzinski told the police she had looked away for a moment to order a soda, when someone snatched her child.
The carnival was shut down. Helicopters circled overhead late into the night, and hundreds of police and volunteers searched the park for any sign of the child.
Almost immediately, the northern New Jersey case attracted national attention, with little Timothy Wiltsey?s picture ? vibrant and smiling ? appearing on the side of thousands of milk cartons and on the Jumbotron at Yankee Stadium. Don Mattingly posed holding his photo.
Twice, the case was featured on the television show ?America?s Most Wanted.? From the outset, however, something seemed off about the 23-year-old mother?s story. No credible witnesses could recall seeing the boy at the carnival. Ms. Lodzinski?s version of events about what had happened that night changed over time. She did not act the way people might expect of a grieving mother, with neighbors in South Amboy describing her alternately as cold and calculating or too perky. When Timothy?s skeletal remains were found 11 months after he disappeared, the authorities made a point of noting that his mother had not been eliminated as a suspect.
Still, for more than two decades, they were unable to build a case against her. On Wednesday, though, on what would have been Timothy?s 29th birthday, Ms. Lodzinski was arrested in Florida after being charged with his murder. A resident of Port St. Lucie, she has been living in the state since 2003, working as a paralegal and raising two other sons, 12 and 16. In a one-page indictment unsealed on Thursday, a grand jury in Middlesex County, N.J., found that Ms. Lodzinski, 47, ?did purposely or knowingly kill? Timothy. The indictment does not detail either the cause of death or the evidence the grand jury considered in reaching its conclusion. The Middlesex County prosecutor, who brought the charges, is working to have her extradited to New Jersey.
Ms. Lodzinski?s relatives did not respond to phone messages on Friday, and she declined to apply to be represented by a public defender during a brief court appearance on Thursday. She has always maintained her innocence. While many questions about the case remain unanswered, Ms. Lodzinski?s arrest stirred vivid memories for Ronald Butkiewicz, a retired agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who helped lead the search after Timothy vanished. ?This case was the biggest unfinished piece in my career,? Mr. Butkiewicz, 69, said on Friday, noting that when he joined the effort to find the boy, he had already been missing for several months. A few years earlier, Mr. Butkiewicz had traveled to Seattle to assist in the case of the so-called Green River killer, who murdered dozens of women and dumped their bodies in remote areas near the river. (Gary L. Ridgway was ultimately convicted in that case after confessing in 2003 to killing 48 women over a 16-year period.)
Mr. Butkiewicz said he learned two key things while working on the Green River case: Killers often dump bodies in desolate areas with which they are familiar, and the skull is usually the first thing to be discovered during a search because it looks like nothing else found in the woods. When Mr. Butkiewicz joined the hunt for Timothy, he learned that a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shoe, just like those that the boy was last seen wearing, had been recovered near the Raritan Center, a three-square-mile industrial park in Edison whose commercial buildings were surrounded in those days by wide expanses of woods and marshes.
Mr. Butkiewicz said that while investigating Ms. Lodzinski?s background, he interviewed a woman about the various jobs the mother had held. She mentioned the Raritan Center and that Ms. Lodzinski had worked there as a secretary. Mr. Butkiewicz said he immediately pulled out a map and asked the woman to point to the office?s location. Her finger fell almost on the exact spot where the shoe had been found, he said. Soon after Mr. Butkiewicz ordered a search of the area, Timothy?s skull was recovered. The boy?s remains were so badly decomposed that the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death.
Alan A. Rockoff, who was the Middlesex County prosecutor when the boy disappeared, said on Friday that all of the evidence against Ms. Lodzinski at the time was circumstantial. DNA testing, still in its infancy, was no help. He said he was happy that after years of hard work, a jury would now get the chance to hear the case against her. ?It has bothered me for the last 23 years,? Mr. Rockoff said. ?This is one of those gnawing cold-cases that we never put in the freezer.? The arrest did not come as a surprise in the South Amboy neighborhood where Timothy grew up, though residents there said nothing seemed unusual about the single mother raising her son before he disappeared. Still, the question lingered: Why would she do it?
Stephen Illes was among the hundreds of people who lost sleep searching for the missing child. ?I always hoped the little boy would be found, I thought maybe a family member came and got little Timmy at the carnival,? Mr. Illes said, standing in the yard of the two-story wooden home where he has lived since 1963. ?I still can?t believe she?s guilty,? Mr. Illes, 81, added. ?How someone can do that to a child, I can?t even get it in my mind.? But for most people in the town, sympathy for Ms. Lodzinski hardened long ago into skepticism. In 1994, in an odd twist,
she was arrested and eventually confessed to lying about being kidnapped by federal agents and taken from her home in Colonia, N.J., to Detroit. Her lawyer at the time said she was not even clear in her own mind why she made up the story.
She was arrested again in 1997, accused of stealing a computer from work. Since then, she had seemingly lived a quiet life. In 2001, on the 10th anniversary of Timothy?s disappearance, a reporter from The Star-Ledger of Newark tracked Ms. Lodzinski down in Minnesota, where she was living. She said she was trying to get on with her life, to move past what had been a very dark period, though she added that it would always be with her. ?I don?t forget the past. Never,? she said. ?I think about it all the time. I think about him all the time.?