Woman Has Murder Conviction in 1991 Death of 5-Year-Old Son Thrown Out by New Jersey Court

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Tuesday to overturn Michelle Lodzinski's 2016 conviction for the death of her son, citing a lack of evidence that she had intentionally killed him.

Lodzinski's son, 5-year-old Timothy Wiltsey, disappeared in May 1991 after attending a carnival in Sayreville with his mother. Lodzinski was considered a suspect early on because she gave conflicting descriptions of the people who she said she saw kidnap her son.

Authorities found Wiltsey's body almost a year later in a marshy area near an office where Lodzinski had previously worked. The cause of death could not be determined because of the level of decay the body had gone through before it was found.

Lodzinski was charged in 2014 after Wiltsey's former babysitters identified a blue blanket found with Wiltsey's body as belonging to her. At her 2016 trial, Lodzinski was convicted of murder.

However, Lodzinski's defense argued there was no forensic evidence tying her to the blanket and that, because the cause of death could not be determined, there was no evidence showing she had purposely killed her son.

In reviewing the conviction, the state Supreme Court was split 3-3. Appellate Judge Jose Fuentes was brought in to serve as the tiebreaking vote, and he voted in favor of acquitting Lodzinski on Tuesday.

It was a stunning turnaround in one of New Jersey's most infamous cold cases, which had remained unresolved for years even though Lodzinski was considered a prime suspect from the outset after she gave varying accounts of what happened on the day Wiltsey was last seen.

It also means Lodzinski cannot be tried again, which would violate a prohibition on so-called "double jeopardy" or being tried twice for the same matter, her attorney Gerald Krovatin said.

"This is a great day for the rule of law and for the proposition that convictions have to be based on evidence, not on speculation or emotion," he said. "Michelle is enormously grateful to everyone who has stood by her throughout this long ordeal."

The court wrote in its majority decision, "After reviewing the entirety of the evidence and after giving the state the benefit of all its favorable testimony and all the favorable inferences drawn from that testimony, no reasonable jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Lodzinski purposefully or knowingly caused Timothy's death."

The prosecutor's office that tried her declined comment.

Prosecutors, who had portrayed Lodzinski at the 2016 trial as a struggling young mother who felt burdened by the boy, argued on appeal that the totality of the evidence, including her evasive answers during initial questioning, was enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. An appeals court agreed in 2019 when it upheld Lodzinski's conviction.

The plot thickened after a deeply split state Supreme Court ruling in May upheld the appeals court's decision. With Chief Justice Stuart Rabner not participating, the court split 3-3, but it was enough to leave the conviction undisturbed until Fuentes' vote for Lodzinski's acquittal Tuesday.

Writing at that time for the three dissenters, Justice Barry Albin wrote, "In the modern annals of New Jersey legal history, to my knowledge, no murder conviction has ever been upheld on such a dearth of evidence."

In a dissenting opinion as part of Tuesday's ruling, the three justices that voted to convict said, "In our view, the majority does the opposite of what our law requires."

In October, the state Supreme Court took the rare step of agreeing to rehear the case, conceding it had made a procedural mistake by ruling on an appellate court decision that had applied an incorrect legal standard.

"If you can't find a cause of death, I submit you don't have a homicide by definition," Krovatin told the court during arguments in October.

For the rehearing, the court added an appellate judge to serve as a tiebreaking vote.

"Even if the evidence suggested that Timothy did not die by accident, no testimony or evidence was offered to distinguish whether Timothy died by the negligent, reckless, or purposeful or knowing acts of a person, even if that person were Lodzinski," the majority decision read.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.