NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Sept. 16 (UPI) -- A woman who told New Jersey police in 1991 her son had been kidnapped from a carnival pleaded not guilty Tuesday to killing the 5-year-old boy.
Michelle Lodzinski, who waived extradition after her arrest in Florida earlier this month, let her lawyer speak for her during a hearing in Middlesex County. She appeared in court in handcuffs and a jail jumpsuit.
Lodzinski was a young single mother when her son Timothy Wiltsey vanished in 1991. She told police he disappeared from a Sayreville carnival when she turned away from him briefly to purchase a soda.
The boy's bones were found almost a year later in a marshy area in Edison, N.J., near a company where his mother had worked.
Lodzinski quickly became a suspect because she changed parts of her story and because no one else could remember seeing the boy at the carnival. But police did not have enough evidence to charge her.
At Tuesday's hearing, Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor Scott LaMountain said that in 2011 investigators decided to show a blanket and another item found with Timothy's remains to relatives. The relatives said they belonged to the boy.
Gerald Krovatin, Lodzinski's lawyer, said he does not believe prosecutors have any real evidence against her.
"Criminal cases don't get better with age," Krovatin said. "She denies the charge and will hold the state to its proof."
Lodzinski has two sons born after Timothy's death.
