Where is Timothy Wiltsey's mother Michelle Lodzinski now? Whereabouts explored ahead of NBC Dateline

For decades, Timothy Wiltsey's mother, Michelle Lodzinski, remained a primary suspect in his murder until 2014, when she was arrested and charged with the five-year-old's slaying. The development was made after new evidence connected a blanket discovered near the boy's body to the Lodzinski house, taking into account the mother's suspicious behavior over the years.

In 2016, Michelle was tried and found guilty of the charges in the high-profile homicide. The following January, she was sentenced to 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole. However, her conviction was contested and appealed, and in December 2021, it was overturned. She was thereafter released from prison after serving only five years.

NBC Dateline is scheduled to chronicle Timothy Wiltsey's decades-old case in an episode titled The Blue Blanket Mystery, which will air on the channel at 9 p.m. ET this Friday, September 1, 2023. The official synopsis says:

"A decades-long investigation begins after a New Jersey mother reports that her 5-year-old son has vanished from a carnival. Andrea Canning reports."

Timothy Wiltsey was a five-year-old kindergartener who lived with his single mother in New Jersey and disappeared from a carnival in May 1991. His skeletal remains were located the following April in an Edison marshland. The boy's mother, Michelle Lodzinski, was declared a suspect in the initial stages of the case.

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Michelle Lodzinski was linked to five-year-old Timothy Wiltsey's murder using a blanket found near his body

According to People Magazine, more than 25 years after Timothy Wiltsey, a five-year-old New Jersey kindergartener, went missing and was later found murdered, his mother, Michelle Lodzinski, was found guilty of his slaying, concluding the decades-old mystery.

Timothy went missing from a carnival at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Park in Sayreville on May 25, just before Memorial Day weekend in 1991. The boy was visiting the carnival with a young single mother, Michelle, who initially told police that he disappeared when she turned her back to get a soda and maintained her innocence.

Surprisingly, the concerned mother then offered conflicting stories during official interviews with the police. Michelle once suggested that she leave Timothy in the care of Ellen, one of her former coworkers, who was accompanied by a little girl and two other men. The mother later changed her narrative and alleged that her son was taken by one of those men at knifepoint.

The outlet reported that police, firefighters, and hundreds of volunteers unsuccessfully searched the carnival and neighboring areas looking for Timothy. His skeletal remains were only found in April 1992, eleven months from the time the boy first disappeared in an Edison Marshland, not far from a fulfillment center where Michelle once worked.

Although police suspected the involvement of Michelle Lodzinski in Timothy Wiltsey's slaying over the decades, she was only arrested and charged with murder in 2014 after new evidence about a blanket found near the victim's body surfaced. The blanket, a piece of key evidence at the core of the high-profile case, reportedly came from the Lodzinski household.

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Michelle's conviction was overturned after five years due to insufficient evidence

Michelle Lodzinski stood trial in 2016 when Deputy First Assistant Prosecutor Christie Bevacqua alleged that "she dumped his [Timothy Wiltsey's] body in a creek like a piece of trash, but she left behind a telling clue: this blanket, claiming that "no other killer could get this."

The People reported that the accused and her mother initially told detectives they did not recognize the blanket until a relative who used to babysit Timothy recognized the evidence.

Following an eight-week-long trial, the jury deliberated for four hours before convicting Michelle of murder. She was then sentenced to 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole in January 2017.

In the following years, Michelle Lodzinski appealed the jury's verdict, causing the New Jersey Supreme Court to overturn the conviction on the grounds of insufficient evidence in December 2021. She served five years in prison and was released from the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Hunterdon County.

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NBC Dateline will further delve into Timothy Wiltsey's murder case this Friday at 9 p.m. ET.