The conviction of a New Jersey mother accused of murdering her five-year-old son has been overturned. The case against Michelle Lodzinski, convicted in 2016 of the 1991 murder of her son Timothy Wiltsey, was one of New Jersey’s most well-known criminal cases. In a 4-3 decision on Tuesday, the state Supreme Court stated that no reasonable jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Lodzinski purposefully or knowingly caused her son’s death.
In 1991, Lodzinski, who was living in South Amboy, claimed that her son disappeared from Sayreville’s Kennedy Park on Memorial Day weekend. She changed her story several times but she was not charged. Her son’s body was discovered about a year later. The murder was considered a cold case until 2014 when investigators took another look at evidence they believed tied Lodzinski to the case. That year, she was arrested in Florida and two years later, she was tried, convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. An appeals court upheld the conviction in 2019, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in 2020.
