Whisper
#byefelicia
hopefully posting this will jar someones memory and let cops gather enough evidence to bust the bitch once and for all
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/two_decades_later_cops_still_s.htmlHe was 5, she was 6, and they were best buddies.
They walked to school together. They dug holes in the backyard to the other side of the world together. Little Timmy Wiltsey was the brother she never had.
"When I graduated college, I thought, ‘Timmy didn’t get to graduate kindergarten,’ " said Tara Packard, now 26. "When I graduated high school, when I got my driver’s license — all these times — I’d think he didn’t get to do this because somebody murdered him."
And there’s Charles Clark. This grizzled, retired detective remembers, too, his voice choking with sorrow over the case he never cracked.
"This is one that I never forget," said the former lead investigator for the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office. "You have a lot of people who worked very hard on this case. But it always goes back to the child … a defenseless child."
This week will mark the 20-year anniversary of the disappearance of Timothy Wiltsey, a 5-year-old from South Amboy whose remains were found in a marshy area 11 months after he was reported missing. The case haunted the state and the nation, and it confounded authorities who quickly suspected the boy’s mother — Michelle Lodzinski — had played a role in his death.
Those suspicions have not changed, police say.
NEW LIFE, VIVID MEMORIESLodzinski has a new life in Port St. Lucie, Fla., with two kids who never knew their brother. She has repeatedly said she is innocent, and she has never been charged in his death. And the case still haunts New Jersey.
The gravesite for Timmy at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Keyport shows some neglect today, with weeds sprouting from the foot of the headstone and some old angel statues looking worse for wear.
The day of his disappearance is still vivid for many who knew him, even 20 years later.
It was May 25, 1991, a sweltering Saturday.
"I had just gone to McDonald’s and was showing him the toy I got in my Happy Meal," Packard said, recalling the previous day. "He asked me if I wanted to go to the carnival. I told him I couldn’t go."
Michelle Lodzinski, a single mother, then 23, and her son Timmy had been to Holmdel Park earlier in the day, she told police. They left around 6 p.m. and arrived at a carnival at John F. Kennedy Memorial Park in Sayreville.
After going on a couple of rides, Lodzinski said she became thirsty and wanted a soda. Timmy did not.
She told police she walked a few feet to a concession stand to buy a Coke. When she turned back, the boy was gone.
Before long, the park was closed, the carnival shut down and a search for Timmy began in earnest with hundreds of police, firefighters, volunteers and search dogs combing the area. There was no sign of the boy.
Within days, discrepancies in Lodzinski’s story emerged and suspicion fell upon her.
Police questioned a woman standing next to Lodzinski at the carnival concession stand that Saturday. She reported that Lodzinski didn’t say anything about her missing child and didn’t seem anxious. Police said not one person at the carnival saw a 50-pound boy with a crew cut, red tank top, red shorts and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sneakers.
On June 6, under questioning from Sayreville police, Lodzinski changed her story, according to former Sayreville police Capt. Edward Szkodny, who retired last year. Two men, one with a knife, took Timmy away, she said. The stunned detectives pressed her on her new account. But Lodzinski lowered her head and appeared to go into a trance.
"I had to get down on my hands and knees and look up at her to see if she was all right," Szkodny said. "Finally, she walked out, saying she had enough."
Lodzinski returned later in the day with her sister and a friend and said she made up that newer version. The following day, a Monday, she told a third variation — that a female and two males were involved in Timmy’s abduction.
While changing stories made Lodzinski more of a suspect, police said, there was no evidence for charges, nor any stories of past abuse. Timmy’s father, George Wiltsey, who lived in Iowa, was not a part of the boy’s life.
In October, one of Timmy’s sneakers was discovered in isolated marshlands in the Raritan Center in Edison and brought to Sayreville police headquarters.
Months later, the sneaker discovery caught the attention of Ron Butkiewicz, an FBI agent just assigned to the Wiltsey case. He visited the area where the sneaker was found and then interviewed several of Lodzinski’s friends and relatives. Lodzinski’s mother, Alice, told Butkiewicz that her daughter once worked for a company in the Raritan Center.
The now-retired Butkiewicz said he had her point to it on a map. Her finger covered where Lodzinski worked and where the shoe was found.
[..]
A search by the FBI, State Police and Sayreville police took place on April 23, 1992.
"It wasn’t 30 seconds and we found the second shoe, 20 yards away," Butkiewicz said. "I remember thinking, ‘How does a shoe wind up here?’ There was no reason for a parent to have a child in that area."
Two hours later and about 100 yards away, a skull was found. It was identified as Timmy’s through dental records. But due to decomposition, there were no clues offered of how he had died. Authorities took note of Lodzinski’s calm reaction to the findings. Lodzinski asked how she was supposed to behave.
Either way, a missing person’s case had now become a homicide.
NO COMMENTOn the corner of a Port St. Lucie road sits a sky blue home with a couple of palm trees on the front lawn. It is the smallest home on a block of middle-class houses. The dark, wooden blinds are drawn in the windows, but there are other signs of kids. A basketball hoop in the driveway. A bike sprawled by the front door. A pool in the backyard. The deep, heavy bark of a dog.
A young boy calls for his mother. Looking fit and youthful, with dark, chin-length hair with red highlights, Michelle Lodzinski, now 43, comes to the door. But she does not want to talk to a reporter. She backs her head inside, shuts the wooden door and locks it.
Her father, Edward, lives nearby. Looking somewhat defeated by the topic of the past, he also passes.
"I’m tired," he said before closing the door. "It’s been a long memory, that’s all."
Other relatives also declined interviews.
A BIZARRE TALEIn the years after Timmy’s disappearance, Lodzinski’s behavior became even more erratic.
In January 1994, she claimed she was driven to Detroit by two threatening FBI agents. Authorities didn’t believe it.
She soon admitted she concocted the entire story.
"It was just another bizarre twist to the case," said Alan Rockoff, who was the Middlesex County prosecutor when Timmy went missing. "It confirmed to me what we already knew — she was the suspect."
Lodzinski originally pleaded not guilty to federal charges of faking her kidnapping, but later recanted. She was sentenced to six months of house arrest and ordered to seek counseling and apologize to federal authorities.
In December 1997, Lodzinski pleaded guilty to stealing a laptop computer from a former employer. She spent one day in jail for violating terms of probation from the FBI fiasco and was sentenced to another three years of probation in March 1998.
Eight months pregnant with her second child — who is now 13 — she moved to Florida and lived with her sister. That move was brief, however. She met Harold Ostrander on a trip to Minnesota and their friendship evolved into a romance. She moved to Apple Valley, a rural suburb of Minneapolis, and found work as a project manager for a local company.
The couple married in June 2001, according to Minnesota marriage records. But the marriage didn’t last.
Lodzinski returned to Florida and bought her current home in 2003.
For days last week, Lodzinski considered but then declined to answer written questions from The Star-Ledger, citing the advice of her lawyer. She has two children, 9 and 13. She was working as a paralegal for a local firm, but no longer.
Her current employment is not known.
Last August, she took part in a local mini-triathlon, running the 5K portion of the event while two other teammates took on the swimming and running duties, according to the race organizer. She was photographed by a local newspaper at a formal high tea — a fundraiser — at a women’s club holiday luncheon in December 2009.
STILL A SUSPECT
Sayreville cops periodically review the cold case and keep track of Lodzinski’s whereabouts. She remains a suspect, although police have not approached her in Florida or contacted police there, according to Lt. Timothy Brennan of the Sayreville Police Department.
Jim O’Neill, spokesman for the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, did not respond to multiple requests for the office’s current take on the case. The Star-Ledger first requested comment in March. Ten years ago, former assistant prosecutor Thomas Kapsak said Lodzinski remained the "primary suspect."
For Robert Gluck, the county prosecutor for most of the investigatory period, the emptiness of an unsolved case is only slightly assuaged by the efforts that were put in.
"It is a shame because a lot of resources went into this," said Gluck, who is now a criminal attorney. "We all remained professional, but this was personal for a lot of people."
The authorities had help from the community also.
Theresa Packard, who is Tara Packard’s mother and was Lodzinski’s landlord, acknowledged for the first time last week that her family worked with the FBI by taking Lodzinski’s trash from the curb and dropping it off to agents at a pre-arranged spot in Sayreville.
"(Butkiewicz) said to me ‘I know you’re loyal to Michelle,’ " she recalled. "I told him ‘I’m loyal to Timmy. If she had something to do with this, I want to know.’ I think that surprised him."
Twenty years later, Tara Packard is still trying to keep Timmy’s memory alive. Whether Lodzinski has moved on, putting the death of Timmy behind her, may never be known.
Some say they will never forget and still hope for answers from his mother.
"I can’t believe someone hasn’t gotten her talking yet," said Susie Primmer, Timmy’s aunt from his father’s side in Iowa. "We’d all like to know how this is going to end and she knows something."
Michelle Lodzinski, third from left, is escorted into Timmy's funeral Mass at St. Mary's Church in South Amboy by, from left, mother Alice Lodzinski, father Edward Lodzinski, and an unidentified family member in 1992.
Michelle Lodzinski leaves the funeral home to a waiting limo in 1992
Photo of the monument at the grave of 5-year-old Timothy Wiltsey, who was murdered 10 years ago. The inscription reads as follows: Precious is this child that shall be loved and cherished forever. His grave is located at St.Joseph's Church Cemetery in Keyport.
Copy photo of Timothy Wiltsey on a missing persons flyer at the Sayreville police department.
Michelle Lodzinski, seen in an undated photo. Today she looks fit and youthful with chin-length hair.
Timmy Wiltsey on his first day of school