00:00:00
Coming to Acorn TV. There's a killer on the loose. Brooke Shields stars in the new original murder mystery, Your
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investigation. How are you related to you? What does that mean? He was a big city cop with a small jurisdiction.
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Boomers are so cute when they flirt. Your Killing Me, all new episodes now on Acorn TV.
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Picture this. It's the end of a long week. You're unwinding in the tub listening to your favorite true crime
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you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man with sexier
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legs than Gary Sinise. Here he is, the captain. >> Some say they're magic legs. It's good
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to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend.
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All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime.
00:04:02
>> Today is National Missing Children's Day. President Ronald Reagan declared the commemoration in 1983.
00:04:08
The day was meant to honor the life of 6-year-old Etan Patz, who went missing on May 25th, 1979 in Manhattan. Patz's
00:04:17
case garnered nationwide attention and sparked prevention and education around missing children. We spoke with a
00:04:23
representative from the State Division of Criminal Justice Services about their prevention and education efforts. Um
00:04:29
when children go missing, you know, either uh runaway or or abductions, and the importance to be able to have close
00:04:36
communication with not only the families, but community organizations and law enforcement agencies that are
00:04:41
doing the work. And so, I view this as a spectrum of raising awareness, um doing
00:04:44
preventive efforts, but then also having a strong response um to uh to make sure
00:04:49
that we're reuniting families wherever possible. According to the New York State Division
00:04:53
of Criminal Justice, in 2024, the state had over 12,000 reported missing children's cases. Over 11,000 of them
00:05:01
were runaway cases, and substantial majority of those cases were white and black girls between the ages of 13 and
00:05:07
15. Roughly 7,000 of those children were returned home. Over 4,000 were found. Timothy Wiltsey entered this world on
00:05:30
August 6, 1985 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His father was George Wiltsey, a man who had grown up
00:05:40
in Walker, Iowa. His mother Michelle Lodzinski, originally from Lawrence Harbor, New Jersey. Their
00:05:49
relationship started the year before Timothy's birth when Michelle, only 16 years old at the time, traveled out to
00:05:57
visit her brother. During that visit, she met George. And what began as a teenage relationship moved quickly into
00:06:05
something much more serious. Before long, Michelle was pregnant. Now, not long after Timothy was born,
00:06:14
Michelle made a decisive choice about where she wanted her life to be. Within only a few months of giving birth, she
00:06:22
chose to leave Iowa and return to her home state of New Jersey taking her infant son with her. She said that she
00:06:31
did not like Iowa describing it as dull and isolating. It was an unfamiliar place for her where she
00:06:39
knew few people and she felt cut off from the support that she wanted and needed in her life at that time.
00:06:47
Now, in the aftermath of that move back to New Jersey, Michelle would later say that George at
00:06:53
some point became abusive in that relationship. Whatever the exact nature of their conflict, the result was clear.
00:07:01
George did not remain a presence in Timothy's life. From that point forward, George had essentially no role in
00:07:12
raising his son. He did not pay child support. There were also claims that this distance was at least in part
00:07:20
exactly what Michelle wanted. That she requested that he stay away. George would later say that when he tried to
00:07:29
reach out, she would return the mail that he would send for his son, Timothy. By the time Michelle and Timothy were
00:07:37
settled back in in the state of New Jersey, the father-son connection had pretty much completely been severed.
00:07:45
Michelle and Timothy first lived with her sister and brother-in-law in South Amboy, New Jersey.
00:07:52
They stayed there for about 2 years. And after that, Michelle moved out on her own renting the first of what would
00:08:00
be three apartments, all of them in the same town. She was a single mother with limited formal
00:08:07
education. She had dropped out of high school in her late teens. And so she worked a patchwork of
00:08:14
low-paying jobs to keep their small household afloat. Her work was largely clerical,
00:08:21
office task, secretarial duties, and at one point employment in a legal office. She also
00:08:29
worked in retail and spent some time as a bank teller. Yeah, it seemed like she had a
00:08:36
tough time keeping down a job. Michelle was determined, however, not to go on welfare, and she declined public
00:08:43
assistance even as money stayed tight. Instead, when she needed help, she relied on support from her father,
00:08:51
who was willing to step in at different points in her life. There were stretches
00:08:55
when Michelle did work two jobs at the same time, pushing herself to cover rent, bills, and child care, and such.
00:09:03
To friends, she sometimes described herself as a, quote, weekend mom, a phrase that reflected how much of her
00:09:12
time was consumed by work and how often her weeknights were swallowed by shifts,
00:09:19
commutes to and from, and simply exhaustion. People who encountered her in day-to-day life
00:09:26
saw both effort and strain. Her landlady described her as a hard-working single mother, but
00:09:34
maintaining stability required constant coordination. Right? She's a single mother. So, this
00:09:39
means babysitters, relatives, friends helping out, and those arrangements don't always hold.
00:09:46
Right. So, when child care fell through, Michelle sometimes brought Timothy to work with her because she simply
00:09:55
there simply wasn't another option for her. Now, co-workers and employers remembered patterns that suggested how
00:10:02
overwhelmed she could be at times. Michelle was frequently late arriving to work. On other
00:10:10
occasions, when she knew she would be late getting home, babysitters said that she sometimes failed to call ahead of
00:10:18
time to explain or adjust the plans, creating friction and stress for the people watching her son Timothy. So, her
00:10:26
life really ran on tight margins. Right? One miscall, one canceled babysitter, one late shift could throw
00:10:33
the entire day into chaos. That fragile system became even harder to maintain in January of 1990.
00:10:42
This is when Michelle's sister and brother-in-law, the very people that she leaned on heavily
00:10:49
for help and child care and general support, the two of them moved to Florida. Their departure removed a
00:10:55
critical safety net for Michelle and Timothy. The everyday help they provided had been woven into their routine, and
00:11:03
without them, Michelle had to find new solutions quickly. It might have been one of the reasons why they chose to
00:11:11
leave, too. Around this period, when Timothy was about 4 years old, another temporary arrangement was made.
00:11:18
Michelle's brother, who lived in another state, took Timothy in for about 2 months' time.
00:11:26
So, he lived there with his uncle, with Michelle's brother, for about 2 months. The purpose of this was
00:11:32
was very practical, actually. Michelle wanted a window of time to work additional hours. Probably working
00:11:39
multiple jobs at this time, Captain. She was trying to get ahead financially because what she wanted to do was save
00:11:45
up some money with a very particular goal in mind, school tuition. She wanted Timothy to attend private school.
00:11:54
And so, she needed some time to be able to focus on making that goal possible. Friends and family also remembered her
00:12:02
in a more tender attentive mode with her son. They recalled that she took Timothy to the dentist
00:12:10
regularly and brought him on camping trips and vacations. They described her saving carefully so
00:12:17
that she could enroll him in kindergarten at St. Mary's school. That's that private school. Once he
00:12:24
reached school age. When Timothy was in school, she did help him with his homework and routinely
00:12:30
bought him new clothes. She seemed committed to his care and committed to investing in her son's
00:12:40
future. Now, we talked about some of her complications with her work. And a lot of that seems to have to do
00:12:50
with child care. We're going to see this in Timothy's school life, too, once he gets of school age. Because at the same
00:12:58
time, the record of Timothy's school life reflected that same instability at the home.
00:13:06
Right. He had notable attendance problems. He missed 25 days of school. And on 63 of the days that he did
00:13:15
attend, he arrived late. So, meaning that even on many of the days that he was in school, he started behind.
00:13:22
>> miss so many days or you're late so many times, they won't give you that special
00:13:27
permission to go to that school anymore. >> So, during these years, the time that
00:13:32
she moved back and getting Timothy, her son, to school age, Michelle's personal relationships also added tension to
00:13:41
their small household. Timothy became a point of friction between Michelle and what's reported as two men that she
00:13:48
dated during that five-year stretch. Uh one of these men she was briefly engaged to.
00:13:56
Both men would later say that they liked Michelle and they really liked Timothy,
00:14:00
but they they felt that they were just simply too young to commit to the role of being a stepfather. You
00:14:08
know, being a husband and being a stepfather. Keep in mind, when our case breaks, Michelle's only 23. Now, I don't
00:14:16
know the ages of these men, but I'm assuming they're roughly about the same age as, you know, Michelle. Now, thank
00:14:23
you for listening, but you knew before you stepped into the garage that this would all lead up to something bad
00:14:30
happening. Our good folks listening from the great state of New Jersey, where you
00:14:33
never have to pump your own gasoline, have already likely heard of this case. This is a case that has stretched on for
00:14:41
decades. >> Yeah, but wouldn't it be nice just one episode we explain this person's
00:14:46
background, we and then we go then he went to college and had a successful career and nothing bad
00:14:53
happened. Saved 40 kids from a burning building. >> Yep. End of the episode. Thanks for
00:14:59
listening. In fairness, there are a lot of good people woven into these stories that we've told over the years, but they
00:15:06
usually don't take center stage. And if they do, they're usually the victim. Right. So,
00:15:12
if we didn't have your full attention, we are going to need it starting now as we're going to move into the day in
00:15:18
question and things are going to move rather rapidly and we have a lot of moving parts and pieces here. So, pay
00:15:25
attention. All right, let's let's lead into it. This is Friday, May 24th, 1991. It's the
00:15:32
first day of the Memorial Day weekend that year. Michelle Lodzinski was in the middle of
00:15:39
making small ordinary plans that felt big because summer was so close. The school year was
00:15:46
winding down and she was already thinking ahead to what came next for her young son,
00:15:52
Timothy. And Timothy was nearing the end of kindergarten and Michelle wanted him to
00:15:58
look nice for this milestone. She took him shopping for some new clothes. She wanted things that would go
00:16:06
with the graduation gown. You know, sometimes these kids, fifth grade or kindergarten, they'll do these
00:16:14
moments where they'll host a graduation for the youngsters. So, she wanted to find some clothing that would go along
00:16:22
with that graduation gown that she had already purchased for him. And summer break was waiting right
00:16:27
around the corner. So, probably needed some summer clothes at the same time. Now, the other thing going on in their
00:16:34
lives, Captain, was Michelle was also mapping out something bigger. This was a trip. She
00:16:40
was making plans to visit her sister who lived in Florida. The idea was once that the school year
00:16:47
had ended, she would take Timothy down to Florida to spend some time with her sister and her sister's family and while
00:16:54
they are there, they would go to Disney World. So, this was really something big to
00:17:00
look forward to after the last day of school. That Friday evening, Michelle mentioned to a neighbor
00:17:08
that the next day on Saturday, May 25th, 1991, she intended to take her son Timothy along with a niece to the South
00:17:18
Amboy Elks Club Carnival, which was taking place in nearby Sayreville. The carnival was being held at Kennedy
00:17:26
Park. The neighbor would later recall that Michelle and Timothy both seemed to be
00:17:32
in good spirits. The kind of mood that really matched the vibe of the holiday weekend.
00:17:40
Then Saturday, May 25th, 1991 arrived. Around 11:00 a.m. a neighbor saw Michelle and Timothy
00:17:49
leaving their home. So, mother and son heading out for the day. But, we should note here that this
00:17:57
became the last time Timothy Wiltsey was seen alive by anyone who knew him other
00:18:04
than Michelle. Michelle later described the day as a series of normal family activities. She
00:18:10
said that she and Timothy went to a park in nearby Holmdel. That afternoon, they played kickball,
00:18:17
they walked around the lake, they visited the petting zoo. As the day moved toward the evening, the
00:18:23
plan about the niece and the carnival began to change. So, for reasons that remain unclear,
00:18:30
Michelle did not pick up her niece after all. Over the years, two versions of what
00:18:37
happened have circulated. In one account, Michelle called the night before and told the parents that she would not
00:18:45
be able to pick up the niece and take her to the carnival. In another account, she didn't call at
00:18:51
all. So, decades later, it's difficult to determine which version is accurate, but remains consistent is the outcome.
00:18:59
The niece was not picked up, and according to some reports, the family was not informed beforehand. Well, we
00:19:05
also have evidence that she wasn't the greatest communicator when it came to plans. That's
00:19:12
So, instead Michelle went straight to the carnival. She arrived at Kennedy Park Carnival in
00:19:19
Sayreville shortly before 7:00 p.m. that Saturday. The atmosphere there would have been
00:19:25
what people would expect from a community event. Crowds moving between rides and
00:19:30
games, families keeping track of children among lights, music, and noise and such.
00:19:36
At some point after arriving, Michelle encountered another niece. So, to be clear, this is a different niece.
00:19:44
Her name is Jennifer Blair, who was there with a friend. When Jennifer and her friend saw
00:19:50
Michelle, something about her stood out immediately. She appeared to be urgently
00:19:54
looking around. Michelle told them that something was wrong, that she had lost sight of
00:20:00
Timothy. According to what she said in that moment to her niece Jennifer, she said that she had left Timothy
00:20:09
waiting in a ride line while she went to buy a soda. When she returned, he was gone. So, with that situation suddenly
00:20:16
shifting from an evening outing to a search, the three of them moved quickly to report
00:20:22
the incident. They went to a Sayreville auxiliary police officer at the carnival
00:20:28
and told the officer that Timothy, the little boy 5 years old, was missing. And this is now the Timothy Wiltsey missing
00:20:36
persons investigation. Yeah, but just to be clear, we don't have anybody saying that they
00:20:42
saw them together. Well, that's where this gets all it gets all a bit hazy, right? We get
00:20:49
When we get down into the muck and the mire of this whole situation, it's it's complex. It might not need to be so
00:20:57
complex, but it but it is. Now, so to people that closest to the little boy, he's known as Timmy, the 5-year-old
00:21:05
boy who loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lived with his mother Michelle in South Amboy, New Jersey is missing.
00:21:12
Right? So, the story is that on that Saturday, May 25th, 1991, Timmy Timmy disappeared
00:21:19
during a trip to a carnival in Sayreville, in nearby Sayreville. Let's zoom in a little closer, shall we,
00:21:28
to take a look at Kennedy Park on that Saturday evening. The carnival was crowded with hundreds
00:21:35
of people moving through the park, drawn to rides, the booths, and such. This was on the fairgrounds along
00:21:44
Washington Road in Sayreville. Michelle said that after arriving, remember she said she arrived there around 7:00-ish,
00:21:53
she bought a bunch of ride tickets. Her and Timmy were having a good time. Then the time came for refreshments.
00:22:00
Michelle says she was standing in line to get a soda. Then she gets to the front of the line,
00:22:06
you know, you got to wait for a bit, then she gets to the front of the line, she buys a soda, she says she paid with
00:22:11
a $10 bill. So, she is waiting on her change. She's busy watching the people working the
00:22:18
refreshment stand. She gets her change, turns around toward Timmy, and he's gone.
00:22:26
It's just seconds. It was just seconds, maybe 2 minutes, and Timmy was gone. Michelle starts looking and calling for
00:22:36
him. So, this is all going down described as occurring sometime between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Michelle's niece
00:22:44
arrives with another person. We had mentioned her already, Jennifer and the friend. The friend is someone
00:22:50
else, this other person is someone who already knew both Michelle and Timmy. Right.
00:22:55
They see Michelle, but no Timmy. Michelle said she had not seen Timmy for about 15 minutes by this point. The
00:23:02
three searched together and then alerted a police officer who was working the event. This is when mother Michelle
00:23:09
officially reports Timmy as missing. Right, but are they stating what her demeanor was?
00:23:17
Was she in a panic? Did she seem calm? Well, we get conflicting reports about her
00:23:26
demeanor, her actions that night. And and to to me there are great contrast in those
00:23:35
reports, which makes it difficult for me to figure out which side I believe. I also believe that in this state of
00:23:45
let's say she was panicking. I can't speak for everyone else, but me, I know that sometimes there's
00:23:52
there's highs and lows in those moments, right? And anytime I would imagine if you're looking for a child, there's
00:23:58
probably moments where you think, "Oh, I'm just seconds away from finding him." And you may be behave behaving one way
00:24:05
with optimism, or there's other moments of "Oh my god. Oh my god, where is he?" This report
00:24:13
of the missing little boy sent off an urgent response, obviously. Almost immediately though, the carnival itself
00:24:19
became the center of a widening search operation. Police focused first on the park where the
00:24:26
carnival had been held, moving through the grounds with the assumption that if Timmy had wandered off, someone would
00:24:33
find him rather quickly, right? He'd be at a ride or a booth. But as the initial sweep failed to
00:24:39
locate him, the situation escalated. The carnival was shut down, a decision that reflected both the
00:24:47
seriousness of the missing kid report and the need to freeze the scene before more people came and went.
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00:30:46
to you, Captain. I'm back, he's back. I wish Timmy was back. Mhm. We are back at
00:30:51
the carnival, but now where we left off, the carnival has been shut down. And we have responders moving
00:30:59
in force. Eventually, this is going to grow, Captain, to police officers, firefighters, even volunteers. And at
00:31:08
some point, we get trained dogs who are going to spread out across the grounds and the surrounding area searching with
00:31:15
intensity at a time when time matters most. Dogs are looking for a scent. Searchers checked places that a small
00:31:24
child might hide or even become stuck. They're really looking for any sign that Timmy had been there.
00:31:31
Maybe, you know, anything that he could have dropped. Right. Does the dog pick Do the dogs pick up on
00:31:37
any scent? I think they picked up on a lot of different smells. There's, you know, a lot of smells at this carnival.
00:31:44
This has a lot of smells here. But I I nothing that would lead to the boy, sadly. And really all this effort the
00:31:54
search produced a troubling absence, right? And a troubling absence of no Timmy, but also no evidence that he
00:32:03
had been in the area at all. Yeah, if I'm a police officer on the scene or detective on the scene, my first thing
00:32:09
is do I have anybody that sees them together? Does anybody see Timmy when she buys the tickets for
00:32:18
the rides? Does anybody see Timmy? Does anybody recognize her and Timmy going on any rides? And also,
00:32:27
how many tickets did she purchase? And were any of them gone? So, if we can get a receipt of all Well,
00:32:35
we know she bought 20 tickets and she has 20 tickets left, but she's telling law enforcement that they went on some
00:32:42
rides. Well, how did you get on those rides? Yeah, and I wouldn't expect a receipt to be available. Maybe it would
00:32:49
be, but I I mean, I I love these types of festivals and carnivals. Like I One of the things that I look forward to
00:32:58
the most every summer are these types of events and often times you buy ride tickets and it's cash
00:33:06
only and you you you hand them the cash and they hand you a a stack of tickets. Right. And but but you're onto the right
00:33:14
thing here, my friend, because what verification was done to back up any part or portions of
00:33:23
Michelle's story gets complicated. And the reason why I think it does is they're not in that
00:33:29
mode at that time. It's all hands on deck looking for the boy, not questioning mom. I know we're going
00:33:37
down a different road here than maybe some expected, but if you're trying if one were trying to cause confusion,
00:33:43
there's a lot of confusion going on at this time. So, as that night unfolded in the search
00:33:48
continued, attention naturally turned to the people at the center of this report,
00:33:54
especially Timmy's mother. So, let's get into some You had asked about her demeanor.
00:34:00
We have some stories coming out from that night. One is from a firefighter who says that they drove Michelle back
00:34:07
to her house with the purpose of retrieving something for the dogs to use for Timmy's scent. Yeah, also kind of a
00:34:16
weird thing because if you have a small child and you're going to this carnival, you'd think that should pack a
00:34:24
extra jacket or most of the time when somebody has a a child, they have other items in their car just in case. This
00:34:33
person who was driving her back to her house to retrieve these items said that they needed to make a stop
00:34:41
along the way. This was Michelle wanted to stop at the bar where her boyfriend, her then boyfriend at the
00:34:48
time was working. She wanted to inform him what was going on. This firefighter says that they remembered Michelle as
00:34:57
visibly overwhelmed with the situation, crying, and speaking incoherently. The search goes on and the search is
00:35:06
eventually suspended around 2:00 a.m. A Sayreville police detective was in charge of returning Michelle home for
00:35:15
the night. Yeah, well, this is not good sign. And and and look, to back up what you were saying, like maybe I get it,
00:35:22
maybe whatever extra items she brought with her, the boy had in his possession and then he went missing. But
00:35:29
the she had to be driven home. I think this is an indicator as to her state and to
00:35:35
me this is a bit of evidence backing up these accounts of people saying that look, she was
00:35:42
she was really messed up by this. Because what we do know is her she drove to the carnival. Now,
00:35:50
where where my mind goes to following you, you're good lead there, Captain, is there was nothing in the car that could
00:35:56
provide a scent of the boy? Anyway, we continue on. Well, and and a couple things because in the initial moments, I
00:36:04
don't know if there's any evidence as far as like is she involved? Was Timothy even there?
00:36:11
Whether she stays calm, some people in that moment in that moment of panic they're going to stay calm because
00:36:19
they're like, if I stay calm, I can figure this out. But once they're stopping the search, once they're saying
00:36:26
we're going to take you home." And like you said, she is in a state where they feel like they
00:36:32
have to drive her home. Mhm. To me, that can go two ways. It's either she is distraught and she's beside herself
00:36:40
because she can't find her her child, right? And and it's a appropriate it's a appropriate time
00:36:47
to freak out. But, if this is some kind of weird ruse that she has set up, this is all unfolding so you can see why she
00:36:56
would be overly emotional, also. Or, you know, like it could be an act or it could be
00:37:05
uh real because she is now contemplating whatever actions she did. Negative actions, if that makes any
00:37:14
sense. Yeah, the the police detective who drove her home that night in his report, he wrote that Michelle was
00:37:21
tearful. And in the time period after she was returned home, she did call her sister
00:37:30
to inform her sister about Timmy's disappearance. Her sister later said that Michelle
00:37:36
cried during that phone call. So, kind of taken together here, these accounts form a timeline of the start of
00:37:45
the search itself, but also the personal shock that seemed to be going on with Michelle
00:37:51
and with Timmy's family as the hours passed without any answers or without finding the boy. This case, just by its
00:37:59
nature, involves a lot of people, perhaps a lot of witnesses to both what did happen and maybe what did not
00:38:06
happen. So, to be thorough and to look from all angles, bear with me as we go through a summary from the Central
00:38:15
New Jersey Home News. The headline was, "Police Believe Lost Boy Abducted." This will lead into some of the key
00:38:24
events of the following day as well on that Sunday. Now, by the time the article was published on May 28th, the
00:38:31
search had already been been underway for days. The police were continuing their efforts
00:38:38
looking for the boy. The disappearance and the search traced back to Michelle realizing that he was missing
00:38:46
or as her story goes when she notified the carnival authorities. Mhm. So then at about 8:30
00:38:53
p.m.-ish, the police are called. Security at the carnival that night was said to include about six off-duty
00:39:01
officers, police officers who were working. Some of them were directing traffic and some of them were patrolling
00:39:08
the the grounds of the event on foot. But despite the presence of security and the density of the crowd, no witness
00:39:18
came forward to say that they had seen what happened, right? No Nobody comes forward at least to say that either
00:39:26
eyewitness seeing a little boy wandering off or being snatched up. Right. And this to me, this would be a hunting
00:39:33
ground, right? You have a carnival, there's going to be a lot of kids there. Probably more kids
00:39:40
to parents. So if you're a pedo, uh this would be a place that you could find a victim.
00:39:48
And then the other problem too with is with these little carnivals that some of these individuals are not
00:39:55
local. The ones that are providing a ride or possibly setting up to be a vendor of some kind.
00:40:03
A- And you're to your point, a lot of the visitors themselves might not be local local,
00:40:11
right? I mean, we know that >> from neighboring counties. >> Exactly. We know Michelle and and
00:40:16
Timothy were from a neighboring town. So, as we said, the the search expanded quickly.
00:40:25
And police would later describe the effort as exhaustive. A search that ran for more than 7 hours
00:40:32
the night that he vanished and then carried on early the next day. So, it sounds like I don't know what time these
00:40:40
resources were pulled in, Captain, but it's reported that a police helicopter was used, four-wheel-drive
00:40:47
vehicles, a boat, a search boat at one time. Yet, they get nothing concrete. No trace of
00:40:55
Timothy. We know no clothing was found that evening. No confirmed sighting of him being snatched
00:41:02
or "Hey, I saw a boy by himself outside of the festival grounds." Yeah. It And this might be a weird question,
00:41:11
but when >> Fire. Fire away. when her family members see her at the carnival, is she holding a soda? Mhm.
00:41:22
That's a detail that is not clear to me. Because That's her story, right? She should be holding a soda. Right. If
00:41:29
she's not, then you go is did Well, one, did she chug the soda? You get those fizzy bubbles all up in
00:41:36
your nose. Or again, is this uh is a is this a ruse? Because like you said, she was supposed
00:41:43
to take her niece. So, you go, "Okay, well, she doesn't take her niece." Cuz her niece would be
00:41:50
an eyewitness. That'd be more difficult. So, I think this story is very bizarre because I don't even
00:41:58
know if we can prove if Timothy was at the carnival. Well, and the the flip of that though is
00:42:04
I don't know that we can prove that he wasn't Right. at the carnival. And it goes back to the confusion of the
00:42:11
situation, and it's natural confusion, right? Because in that moment, these details absolutely matter to the story
00:42:18
now and they absolutely matter to the case and the investigation. However, in the moment, living in the moment, what
00:42:26
do we have going on? We have everybody that that's rushed into this idea of looking for this little boy. So, you
00:42:33
could have it could be that everything that Michelle is saying is absolutely the truth, but nothing was checked or
00:42:41
verified to confirm that because everybody was busy looking for the boy. Or, nothing she's saying is the truth
00:42:48
and these details were lost due to the confusion in the haste of looking for the little
00:42:54
boy. In a lot of these cases, it's time or the time period becomes really a big deal because like you were
00:43:01
just saying, oh well, most of these carnivals, you're just paying cash. Well, yeah, in '91, you do.
00:43:10
But, today, most of these places, you pay by card or most of these vendors will at least have that option.
00:43:18
So, if I go to a street festival or these, you know, beer fest or a um what do they call them? Street food fest
00:43:25
or whatever, I can go, well, I went and got this bratwurst at this time. Here's my receipt. And if I didn't get a
00:43:32
receipt, you can go, well, I got a bratwurst at this time. You can then go to that vendor and they can look up the
00:43:38
credit card transaction. So, now we get a better, more precise timeline. But, this is '91,
00:43:45
so I'm guessing everything that she did was in cash. Well, and one thing we don't
00:43:51
have the advantage of in this story that we did in a story that some might consider to be similar
00:44:00
in its nature is, you know, a long time ago, we covered the DeWaan Sims case. Four-year-old boy reported missing from
00:44:09
a Michigan mall in 1994. Yeah. It was the Wonderland Mall in Livonia, I think it was, Michigan.
00:44:20
And in that story, mom says that she lost track of her boy. He was holding his her hand and then let go and then like
00:44:31
30, 45 seconds later, she turns to look down at the boy and he's gone. Yeah. And she says that somewhere
00:44:37
between the corridor that ran from the Target store to the mall, the actual mall,
00:44:45
he he disappears in the crowd. In that story that takes place in 1994, they had security cameras and they reviewed the
00:44:54
surveillance footage and those cameras at no point what the security guards and what the police say is we never see the
00:45:03
little boy with the mother. Right. She does point to a little boy on the screen and says, "Well, that's him."
00:45:10
But the two don't seem to be interacting in the way that they thought a mother and son would or that, you know, as she
00:45:17
described by holding the hand of the child. Here, it's a carnival. I mean, we've all been to carnivals and it's not
00:45:25
Not everybody. It's It's You know, I know you keep going to receipts. I You know,
00:45:31
frankly, some guy asking for receipts at the carnival, we're going to kindly ask you
00:45:36
to leave, sir. Like, it's just not It's really not I won't take a handwritten receipt that kind of structure.
00:45:43
>> possible. But here's the other thing though, too. It's hard for us to visualize
00:45:48
what this carnival looked like. How many rides were there? How many rides did they have? How many
00:45:55
vendors did they have? How large I mean, just the area. You know, we used to go to a church
00:46:02
festival, but everything was contained to the front area of the church. And so Yeah, this was going to be larger than
00:46:11
that for my understanding as it was held at the fairgrounds. Right. So, you're talking about a a
00:46:17
a larger uh facility. And so, if there's more people, it like you said, to your point, you go, "Well, she bought
00:46:25
tickets." Well, if she does she have those tickets? Did Is she Is she holding the tickets? Is she holding her soda?
00:46:32
Can we go back to that ticket lady? And And it might not be possible cuz that ticket lady or the ticket man or whoever
00:46:39
sold her those tickets might have said, "Why, I sold tickets to hundreds of people. I can't remember
00:46:45
this person." So, it be it it becomes very um this this story becomes very difficult
00:46:53
because there's so much evidence. Well, was he there? We don't know, but we have no evidence that he wasn't
00:47:01
there. And every little point in the story, there's there's a argument for and against evidence of whether
00:47:08
it was just a just simply a mother taking her son to this event or was this some kind of
00:47:15
ruse. >> By morning time starting at 6:00 a.m., a larger, more systematic effort took
00:47:20
hold. A line search was conducted across approximately 1 square mile around Kennedy Park. Searchers formed a human
00:47:30
chain and moved through the area in coordinated sweeps east to west and then north to south. So, by this point, they
00:47:37
are scouring locations that bordered the carnival's footprint and then eventually
00:47:43
extending into nearby community spaces. And to me, this is actually scary because sometimes if if there's a
00:47:50
perpetrator in this case, they might have been involved in the searches. At the same time that morning
00:47:57
Michelle brought clothing to the police station. It's my understanding that this
00:48:01
clothing was brought there for the purpose that Timmy would something for him to change
00:48:07
into if he were in fact to be found. A detective who was there at the time would
00:48:16
recall Michelle's demeanor as distraught. So that's another person saying that describing her demeanor one way. I'm I'm
00:48:25
going into this and describing her actions and what would be her perceived emotional state because later there
00:48:37
going to be people that say, "Well, she didn't seem to care at all. She didn't She seemed unaffected by this." Well,
00:48:44
the initial reports are completely different than that. Yeah, and I actually think, like I said, if she's
00:48:51
distraught, well, you can make an argument she's distraught because her son's missing and you could then make an
00:48:56
argument that she's distraught because whatever plan that she had is now unfolding
00:49:03
and she has to deal with that, the reality of whatever her plan was, if she had a plan. Yes, and but also one could
00:49:11
make the argument that police are honing in on the people that say she seemed unaffected and unemotional unemotional
00:49:18
about the situation because she's guilty of something and they're purposely ignoring these statements,
00:49:26
some by their own department members that say the opposite of that. So this news article described
00:49:33
more than 200 rescue workers and volunteers involved over a 2-day period searching for the boy.
00:49:39
Uh as said, we used additional specialized resources all to which no trace of the child was
00:49:48
found. Now, a sergeant with the police department would describe the situation as and the people looking for the boy as
00:50:02
discouraging. The reasoning for this statement is blunt. If Timothy had simply wandered off,
00:50:09
they believe the search should have found him probably quickly. Instead of the absence of evidence combined with
00:50:19
time elapsed, I mean, this is leading to a troubling conclusion, right? They did
00:50:24
not feel that they that he had wandered off, wandered away. They felt he had been
00:50:32
abducted. Yeah, it'd also be difficult too because during the search they probably found other items left by
00:50:39
children or dropped by children that have nothing to do with Timmy. So, but in that moment when you see something
00:50:46
Oh, here's a stuffed animal or here's a shoe or here's whatever. Probably quickly able
00:50:53
to realize that these items didn't have anything to do with Timmy. >> In the paper, they openly spoke and said
00:50:59
investigators could not rule out different motives or possible scenarios. A kidnapping by a stranger, an abduction
00:51:06
by someone seeking to profit, an individual described as lonely, maybe a woman who wants a child, or someone who
00:51:14
is a pedophile. Words straight from the newspaper. Now, that widening focus included in attention on Timothy's
00:51:24
father, George Wiltsey, who lived in Walker, which is in Linn County, Iowa. Police said George had not seen Timothy
00:51:33
in at least 4 years. The account stated that the FBI interviewed the father in Iowa. So, this
00:51:41
would have been the very next day on that Sunday. He goes missing on a Saturday. The FBI interviewed the father
00:51:48
as well as them sending local police from Walker to interview the father and they
00:51:55
confirmed that he was still in the state of Iowa. So many many many miles away at the time
00:52:02
that Timothy disappeared in New Jersey. Additional background came through a telephone
00:52:09
interview with Jerry Wiltsey. This is a man identified as George's brother. So therefore Timothy's uncle.
00:52:19
Jerry stated that his brother George did not have a telephone. That it but in their small town, there's
00:52:26
only like 600 people that live there. So he said that he would see his brother or bump into his brother almost every
00:52:32
day. He did say he told the newspapers, "Look, my brother did not see Timothy, nor did he try to gain custody
00:52:42
of the child once the mother and the child left for for New Jersey." And Jerry said he's quoted as saying
00:52:51
"There is no question of a custody battle." He says, "Look, my brother did not want
00:52:56
Michelle to leave. He wanted her and the boy to stay, but once she left, she made
00:53:01
it clear we don't you know, we don't want nothing to do with you." When pressed as to well, "Why wouldn't
00:53:07
your brother own a phone? It's 1991." He simply says, "Look, the the place he lives next door to our mother and when
00:53:15
he bought the place, it didn't have a phone. He never put one in. He doesn't like to be bothered or disturbed. When
00:53:20
he needs to use a phone, he just walks next door to his mother's house and uses her phone." Yeah, that makes sense. I
00:53:26
think I think the other thing >> I'm jealous of that. I'm jealous of that. Take away my phone.
00:53:31
Yeah, hold on a second. I'm going to get this hammer and smash mine real quick. But also, you'd have to go
00:53:38
is we don't know if Timothy's father would even know what Timothy looked like. Right, that's a
00:53:46
good point. Cuz there's a there's a big difference. He was missing when he was five and if he didn't see
00:53:52
him for four years, so he he saw him as a one-year-old. He seemed to know where to send the mail, though. And I I would
00:53:59
like to, you know, >> interesting. But again, she lived with her brother or her sister, one of the
00:54:05
two. She lived with relatives for two years, so maybe he was sending the mail there, which are people that he would
00:54:10
know. Maybe he never knew the address to look up. Yeah. >> And again, he's not really part of the
00:54:16
equation, so I don't know how far down this avenue we need to to go. Uh he's ruled out rather quickly.
00:54:23
Meanwhile, we have Ron Romano, an FBI special agent based in the area that confirmed the FBI was assisting the
00:54:32
Sayreville police investigation, though he stated to the newspaper that he was not authorized to provide any details.
00:54:41
A physical description of Timothy was included in the reporting emphasizing what the public should be looking for,
00:54:48
stating that the little boy was last seen wearing a red tank top, shorts with writing on them, and Teenage Mutant
00:54:56
Ninja Turtle sneakers. He had brown hair and a crew cut, weighed between 45 and 50 lb and was between 3 ft 2 in and 3 ft
00:55:06
4 in tall. Tips did come in within the first couple days. It's reported that about 30 calls came in to police
00:55:14
headquarters and as we know, unfortunately, none of them led to finding Timmy. So, that's the search.
00:55:24
Let's get into some of the investigation and potential witnesses, right? And this
00:55:29
is Like we said, witnesses to what happened and maybe witnesses to what didn't happen. And this is where it goes back
00:55:37
to the question that you had asked or something you had presented earlier where I said, "Look, there's kind of
00:55:43
conflicting reports here." So, police interviewed carnival workers and people visiting the event trying to
00:55:51
reconstruct where Timmy had been and who might have seen him. They listened for details about
00:55:58
clothing, timing, other people seen in the area, maybe even direction of travel if somebody saw
00:56:04
the boy. Small facts that could really mean something, lead to something meaningful. One carnival worker reported
00:56:11
that shortly after 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, she had seen a boy come up to her stand. The boy, she said, was
00:56:20
wearing a red tank top, red printed shorts, and this all sounds similar to the clothing Michelle said Timmy had been
00:56:29
wearing. Right. According to that worker, the boy was then called away by a woman. Roughly 10 minutes later, this
00:56:37
same worker said that she saw that same woman walking around calling out loudly saying either Timmy or Jimmy. Mhm. And
00:56:47
she said that the woman she saw appeared to look concerned. The worker later identified Timmy in a
00:56:54
group photograph. Well, that's something. It is something. When she later saw Michelle in person,
00:57:03
she said Michelle might have been the woman she had observed, but she couldn't confirm that. Wh- Which is interesting
00:57:09
to me, right? She picks the boy out of a group photograph and then can't confirm
00:57:14
100% that Michelle is the woman that she saw. This to me, I get the vibe that this woman is doing her best to be
00:57:20
truthful. Right? Like some pe- some people are just trying to help the si- situation and they're overly helpful to
00:57:27
the point of where they go beyond being truthful and they're like, "Yeah, that's
00:57:31
the boy I saw and yeah, that's the woman I saw 100%." Right. That's not what's happening here. So, I think this woman's
00:57:36
doing her best to try >> One so it's also possible that she didn't see Timothy's mother.
00:57:43
It might have been a It might have been somebody else that was calling out cuz at some point people
00:57:48
were looking for Timmy, right? So, that becomes interesting. I don't I didn't want to get to this this
00:57:57
early, but maybe I should because it will make more sense here, but there's a different report of this same situation
00:58:04
here. The other report of this was that the officer that one of the officers that spoke with this
00:58:12
carnival worker didn't believe her simply because of her appearance. He said that she appeared to have been
00:58:19
up all night without saying it, I think he was trying to say that he believed she was on
00:58:25
something. Right. Cuz he's like, "She looked disheveled, she looked confused, she looked like she had been up all
00:58:31
night, she had body odor." And he is like, "Based on her appearance, I He's like, I think she might have been trying
00:58:38
to be helpful, but I I had a hard time believing what she was saying." I think what he's saying is that given her the
00:58:46
way he perceived her to be acting and the way she presented herself presented a less than credible person.
00:58:55
>> Right, but she could have been on something and still saw what she saw. >> Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:59:01
Now, another carnival worker gave a separate account that fixed the timeline even a little more tightly.
00:59:09
He said he recalled helping a boy in a tank top. Again, we know that Timmy was reported to have been wearing a tank
00:59:15
top. He reported helping a boy in a tank top, shorts, and sneakers that were decorated with the Teenage Mutant Ninja
00:59:22
Turtles. He said he helped the boy off of a ride at around 7:15 p.m. So, he's working the
00:59:29
ride. And the boy was small, so he had to help him off of the ride. >> Right. He later told police that he was
00:59:36
certain that the child that he remembered was the same boy he saw on missing persons posters after the
00:59:43
disappearance. See, and that makes sense to me because if you're having a bunch of kids get on
00:59:49
rides, let's say 90 some percent of the time you don't have to help anybody. Mhm. So,
00:59:54
the fact that he would have to help this kid off the ride, more likely to remember him. Then came another piece of
01:00:02
recollection from three teenagers who told police that they had interacted briefly with a boy as they were leaving
01:00:10
the carnival. They say that they remembered warning the little boy to watch out for broken glass on a walkway.
01:00:19
In their account, the boy was accompanied by three adults, two men and a woman. Mhm. And the boy was wearing
01:00:26
Ninja Turtle sneakers. Each of these stories came from different people describing different
01:00:32
moments, and investigators treating them as possible fragments of the same larger
01:00:37
picture. A child in recognizable clothing moving through the carnival during the early
01:00:42
evening hours seen by multiple witnesses and then gone. Yeah, but these shoes, they're not one of one. Right. I'm glad
01:00:51
you pointed that out because these Ninja Turtles are making a resurgence. I'm seeing Ninja Turtles Go Ninja, go Ninja,
01:00:59
go go Ninja. But there was a I think there was a big time period or at least I I I just wasn't paying attention that
01:01:05
I didn't see Ninja Turtles everywhere. Mhm. 1991. Doctor, can you help me? What's What's
01:01:12
your symptoms? I'm seeing Ninja Turtles. Everywhere. >> Everywhere. Lock him up.
01:01:17
Um the in 1991, the Ninja Turtles would have been extremely popular. >> Yeah, I had a friend that went to see
01:01:26
him in concert and I was very jealous. Was it with Vanilla Ice? No, it was just Ninja Turtles and
01:01:35
I remember think And And also I think he went to see The Simpsons cuz The Simpsons had a album.
01:01:42
Don't know why that's a thing. Anytime somebody gets popular, we're like, they should make a record. Especially in the
01:01:49
'90s, that was a thing. So, to add a little bit to this story here, 1990, the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
01:02:00
come out. And this is after they're already very popular, right? The cartoon was a big thing. I'm I think arcade game
01:02:08
Arcade game came out at some point and then in 1991, so this would be just a couple months
01:02:14
before it would be 2 months before Timmy goes missing, the second movie comes out,
01:02:21
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, The Secret of the Ooze, which I think might have been even a bigger hit than the
01:02:27
first one. Well, cuz they had the Ooze. They had the Ooze and it had Vanilla Ice. Mhm.
01:02:33
Um >> Ice Ice Baby. I I was in that weird age where I loved the first movie and I had outgrown them by
01:02:43
the time the second movie came out. So, I don't have to go and see them in concert. That's right. I was not lucky
01:02:49
enough to witness the Turtles in concert. And you know that there was a kid like that went to see all their
01:02:55
concerts and followed around the Ninja Turtles just like The Grateful Dead. While
01:03:00
investigators gathered statements from people at the carnival, both working and visitors, they worked to eliminate or
01:03:08
confirm potential avenues in their investigation. On the day following the disappearance,
01:03:14
the Sayreville police searched Michelle's car. This it was still parked at the carnival when they were searching
01:03:21
it. So, she didn't have time to go there, you know, she didn't retrieve the vehicle or drive it home and
01:03:26
manipulate anything in the vehicle. They said they found nothing that helped their investigation. Two days after
01:03:31
that, the county prosecutor's office searched her home. Again, they sound said that they found
01:03:37
nothing that helped the investigation. The FBI also analyzed her garbage. Now, usually when they're searching your
01:03:44
garbage, they don't let you know that this is going on. Right. So, they get per- permission to search the garbage
01:03:50
from the landlord, and they say that effort too produced no useful leads as to what could have happened with
01:03:58
Timothy. Police also arranged to place a register tap on Michelle's home telephone to record
01:04:06
the phone numbers of incoming calls. This is good work, my friends, because in high-profile missing child
01:04:14
cases, tips, threats, and hoaxes can arrive via telephone, and investigators want to
01:04:22
they want to clear record of what comes in on that telephone line, and from where
01:04:27
does it come? And like I said, if there's a perpetrator or unknown stranger to Timothy, this individual
01:04:34
might insert themselves so into the search, or they might just call the mother. Even just And it might not to be to
01:04:43
taunt her, it might just be to offer up some information or show their concern or whatever.
01:04:52
We see that all the time and uh especially in child cases. Yeah. And a hoax, unfortunately, we've reviewed
01:05:00
several missing child cases, especially in the '80s, early '90s, where someone will call in and pretend
01:05:08
to be the missing kid. And then later it's proven that that person is not the kid. It's just Usually it's just some
01:05:14
teenager or sorry some deranged woman. Yeah. >> Through this period uh people who were
01:05:22
regularly in contact with Michelle, they did describe her as deeply affected by Timmy's unexplained absence. She told
01:05:29
her sister during this time that she could not sleep at all or eat. Her boyfriend at the time recalled her
01:05:35
saying that she could not hold any food down. Now, to me this goes to the complete
01:05:41
opposite of that, but I've never been in these shoes. Thank God, and I hope that
01:05:46
I never am. But within 2 weeks of May 25th, the day that her son went missing, Michelle moved out of her house in South
01:05:54
Amboy saying that she was doing so to avoid the media attention. Now, this case is a little foreign to
01:06:02
us, Captain, as we're Ohio boys, but as I said earlier, people that grew up in New Jersey, they know this case well
01:06:10
because it was a bit of a media frenzy. And this case did receive nationwide attention very quickly. So, she
01:06:19
expressed, she being Michelle, expressed frustration with the expectations that she said had been placed upon her by the
01:06:28
public. Mhm. She said, so she's describing a sense that people were waiting for a
01:06:35
particular kind of televised grief. Quote, "Everyone is waiting to see a grieving mother on TV break down crying
01:06:44
hysterically because the public, they thrive on that stuff. But I am not going to do that." End quote. Well, and
01:06:51
everybody reacts differently. And I think when we see these cases, we we start judging. Well, I would handle it this
01:07:00
way or I would handle it this way. I mean, they did so in like the JonBenét Ramsey case, every little detail. But
01:07:07
like remember in the Ramsey case John Ramsey states, I felt if I could keep my wits about me that I'd be more
01:07:16
helpful, that I could solve this. And I feel like that's where I'd go to. So maybe that's where she was going to
01:07:24
and then probably hearing criticism because of that or people turning uh a suspicious eye towards her
01:07:32
because she's not acting in the way that people think that she should. And she's a single parent. So she's the
01:07:39
solo representative of this family at this point. Yeah, and I think it makes sense though. I mean I I I have to keep
01:07:47
my wits about me to try to figure out what happened. As the days became weeks and the weeks stretched into an
01:07:57
unresolved case, the search for Timmy broadened into the kind of public-facing effort
01:08:03
familiar to many missing child investigations. The case was televised twice on America's Most Wanted. Timmy's
01:08:11
photograph was circulated widely on thousands of missing child flyers and even on milk cartons
01:08:17
so that strangers far from Sayreville might recognize the face and connect it to a sighting. And
01:08:25
hanging over all of it was additional painful additional uh a painful detail, excuse me, noted in
01:08:34
a local newspaper. On May 25th, the day Timothy went missing this was the same day as National
01:08:42
Missing Children's Day. The newspaper called that coincidence a bitter irony, a phrase that underscored how on a day
01:08:50
meant to focus public attention on missing children, one more child's name had been added to the list. Timothy
01:08:58
William Wiltsey, or better yet simply Timmy. 5 years old, last reported missing from
01:09:05
a carnival in Sayreville, New Jersey. So much more to get to in this true crime story. Thanks for joining us here
01:09:26
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