Michelle Lodzinski.Photo: Patti Sapone/NJ Advance Media/AP
A New Jersey woman found guilty ofkilling her 5-year-old sonhas had her conviction overturned.
Lodzinski, 54, had appealed the jury’s verdict soon after it was rendered, and her attorneys have long argued the state failed to present enough evidence to connect her to her son’s death.
“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 court wrote in its decision.
This means Lodzinski can never again be tried for her son’s murder.
Lodzinski’s son,Timmy Wiltsey, went missing on May 25, 1991, when the pair were attending a carnival in Sayreville, N.J. Lodzinski first told authorities he disappeared when she went to get a soda, and long denied she was involved in his death.
In subsequent interviews with law enforcement officials, Lodzinski, then a 23-year-old single mom, gave police several conflicting stories about his disappearance.
Patti Sapone/NJ Advance Media/AP
Hundreds of volunteers combed the area for signs of Timmy, and his “smiling face” was one of the first to appear on milk cartons used to raise awareness of missing children, reports NJ.com.
Eleven months after he disappeared, Timmy’s skeletal remains were found in a swampy creek in Edison, N.J.
While some law enforcement officials and community members long suspected Lodzinski was involved with Timmy’s disappearance, it took them more than 20 years to charge her with his murder.
During this time, Lodzinski moved to Minnesota and then Florida, settling in Port St. Lucie in 2003 and working as a paralegal for a law firm while living in virtual anonymity.
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The case was reopened in 2014 with the discovery of new evidence: a child’s blanket, found near Timmy’s remains, which had come from the Lodzinski home.
After eight weeks of testimony, jurors only took four hours to convict her.
PEOPLE was unable to reach Lodzinski for comment Wednesday.
source: people.com
