Timmy Wiltsey was just five years old when his mother Michelle Lodzinski said he vanished from a carnival in Sayreville, New Jersey, wearing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sneakers and a red tank top and shorts.

In the aftermath of his 1991 Memorial Day weekend disappearance, the community banded together to search for the missing child — but Timmy would never be seen alive again.

Then, less than three years later, Lodzinski disappeared, leading some to wonder whether someone was targeting the family or if there was another explanation, according to the “The Blue Blanket Mystery” episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered. 

“She was a good mom,” Lodzinski’s sister Linda Hisey told Dateline correspondent Andrea Canning. “You know, that was her life. She did whatever she needed to do to support him.” 

Lodzinski’s 15-year-old niece Jennifer Dilcher often pitched in to help her young aunt by babysitting Timmy. 

“That was my baby,” Dilcher recalled. “He’d have been my choice for a son if I could choose.” 

A Little Boy Vanishes at a Carnival: What Happened to 5-Year-Old Tim Wiltsey?

Dilcher ran to get Sayreville Police Officer Kevin Skolnik. Lodzinski told him that she’d been at a food stand getting Timmy a soda and when she turned around to give it to him, he was gone. 

Skolnik said he initially believed Timmy had just run off and would be found in a matter of minutes, but after 20 minutes of searching the small carnival grounds without any luck finding the child, he called his lieutenant, who quickly called in reinforcements. Lodzinski got on a loudspeaker and pleaded for her son to come forward, but there was no sign of the young boy.

“The music was shut off, more units showed up and that’s when the detectives came and the whole thing started to turn,” Skolnik remembered. 

Investigators search the carnival grounds for Timmy Wiltsey

Police and volunteers scoured the carnival and surrounding areas into the early morning hours of the next day, but Timmy was nowhere to be found.

Lodzinski called her sister that same night to tell her that that Timmy was missing.

“She was hysterical,” Hisey said.

When the sun came up, more than 300 people arrived at the 10-acre park where the carnival was held to search the area again by foot, while a state police helicopter flew overhead. Authorities also brought in a dive team to wade through two nearby ponds, but they could find no evidence of the boy.

“I was getting concerned because he just didn’t wander off and he didn’t fall in the water or he wasn’t lost in the surrounding woods,” then-New Jersey State Police Detective Keith Hackett recalled. “It got serious.”

Timmy Wiltsey’s sneaker found, and then a skull

As the days stretched into weeks and then months, there was still no sign of Timmy. Then, about five months after the disappearance, a high school teacher searching for wildlife in some marshlands in Edison, New Jersey, just across the river from the carnival grounds, found a child’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sneaker on the ground.

He took the shoe to Sayreville Police, who were able to confirm that the shoe was the same size and style number of the pair that Timmy had been wearing the night he disappeared, although DNA testing used to try to confirm the link was inconclusive.

An initial search of the area produced no additional evidence, but the FBI organized another search of the wooded area on April 23, 1992. This time, authorities discovered a second sneaker that matched the first shoe. 

While most of the searchers focused on the side of the road where the shoes had been found, Hackett made his way across the street and said a prayer. 

“I was getting frustrated and as I was walking up on the bank right there, I said, ‘God, if he’s here, give us a sign, let us find something,’ and it was just like a miracle,” Hackett said. “I just happened to look down into this drainage area of the creek and I saw what appeared to be a skull and, of course, that was very emotional and uh, I felt in my heart that had to be Timothy.” 

Human remains confirmed to be that of Timmy Wiltsey

A forensic dentist would confirm Hackett’s suspicions the next day. Timmy’s skull, along with some other small bones and remnants of clothing were recovered by authorities. A pillow and distinctive blue and white blanket were also found not far from the remains.

Hisey said her sister was “devastated.” 

Due to the condition of the remains, the medical examiner was unable to determine a cause of death.

Investigators suspicious of Michelle Lodzinski’s story 

From the beginning, investigators had been suspicious of Lodzinkski’s changing story about what happened to her son. Although she initially told the officer at the scene that she had turned to give Timmy his drink and realized he was gone, she later told authorities that she’d seen a woman she knew named Ellen at the carnival, who was there with her 2-year-old daughter. 

She told detectives that Ellen had volunteered to help Timmy get on a ride while she got the soda, but said that when she returned, both Timmy and Ellen were gone.

According to Hackett, Lodzinski had claimed that she initially did not mentioned Ellen because she was worried that people would question her decision to leave the child with Ellen — a woman she knew was both an exotic dancer and on welfare. Based on her description of Ellen, police created a sketch, but they were never able to track the woman down. The FBI even put together a list of welfare recipients named Ellen or something similar, but Lodzinski claimed none looked familiar. 

In a separate interview with now retired State Police Detective Sgt. Jerry Lewis, Lodzinski changed her story again, saying this time that there had been two men there that threatened her with knives.

“She said, ‘This man came over and he put his right arm around my shoulder,’ and he said, you know, ‘Timmy has a pretty face and you wouldn’t want to do anything to mess that up, so just keep walking and shut up,’” Lewis said, adding that Lodzinski had claimed that one of the men then threatened her with a knife.

Lewis said that the story had never made any sense to him. Lodzinski also allegedly failed two polygraph tests, but the results weren’t admissible in court.

Michelle Lodzinski vanishes

The case took an even stranger turn about three years after Timmy disappeared, when Lodzinkski vanished under mysterious circumstances. 

“Michelle’s brother says that he found Michelle’s car empty, engine still running, and her glasses and purse still in the car,” TV reporter Sibile Marcellus told Dateline: Secrets Uncovered. 

Investigators found a business card at the scene that appeared to be from an FBI agent, with the handwritten words “See you soon” and “It’s not over” written on it.

When Dilcher learned that her aunt had vanished, she was terrified. 

“I’m thinking like, the same people that took Timmy, they came back and now they’re gonna kill her and that’s all I could think about,” Dilcher said. “I was a wreck again.”

The next day, Lodzinski called police and said that she’d been released by kidnappers more than 600 miles away in Detroit. According to her account, two FBI agents had approached her at gunpoint, put a blanket on top of her, kidnapped her and brought her to Detroit before letting her go.

But authorities found out that Lodzinski had placed the call from a pay phone outside a bus station and evidence showed she had purchased a bus ticket from Newark, New Jersey, to Detroit. The name listed on the business card also did not match any active FBI agents.

Authorities concluded that Lodzinski had planned a hoax to try to get out of testifying before a grand jury. Her boyfriend — who was a Union County police officer — had gotten in trouble at work for using state resources to look up the license plate of a car she believed had been following her. Although no charges were ever filed against him, a grand jury had been called to look into the matter and Lodzinski didn’t want to take the stand.

“She got busted,” Marcellus said.

Lodzinski pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and fraudulent use of a government seal and was sentenced to six months of house arrest. 

Although authorities were suspicious about Lodzinski’s account of what happened to Timmy, they didn’t have enough evidence to charge her and the years went by without any progress in the case.

Michelle Lodzinski marries and has two more kids

Lodzinski moved to Minnesota, got married and had two more children. When the marriage fell apart, she moved to Florida with her kids to be near her sister.

Then, 20 years after Timmy disappeared, a new prosecutor set out to solve the case and called Dilcher into the office on June 30, 2011. Dilcher was shown the blue and white blanket found near Timmy’s body and she immediately recognized it as something she believed came from Lodzinski’s house. 

“I just broke down when I saw it,” Dilcher told Canning. “There was no reason for that blanket to be next to him, unless somebody in his house did something to him and wrapped him in it and threw him away.”

Two other babysitters also later came forward to tell authorities they recognized the blanket.

Timmy Wiltsey’s mom charged with his murder

Prosecutors believed Timmy had never made it to the carnival and was killed at his home. Although there was no physical evidence to link her to the case, Lodzinski was arrested and charged with her son’s murder. 

At trial, Lodzinski’s defense attorney Gerald Krovatin argued that the state’s case was about “character assassination” and not evidence, and called a witness who reported seeing Timmy at the carnival that day.

“This was a good mother who cared deeply for this little boy,” he insisted to Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.