By KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer
NEW BRUNSWICK — The cause of how five-year-old Timothy “Timmy” Wiltsey died was undetermined; however, the manner in how he died was opined to be a homicide, according to Dr. Geetha Natarajan, a retired chief medical examiner in Middlesex County.
“You do not find a child dying of natural causes in a creek in skeletonized form,” she said.
The retired medical examiner told the jury last week during the trial of Timmy’s mother, Michelle Lodzinski, who is accused of the murder of her son in 1991, that she was asked to review all the reports for the upcoming trial, including the autopsy report of Timmy’s remains made by the late Dr. Marvin Shuster, who was the chief medical examiner at the time.
Timmy’s skeletal remains were found in a creek on April 23, 1992, in a remote section of the Raritan Center industrial park in Edison, which is made up of swampy marsh and wetlands, 11 months after he was reported missing from a carnival held at Kennedy Park in Sayreville on May 25, 1991.
Natarajan said the young boy had no evidence to signify he would die of a natural disease, and he had no evidence of skeletal injury where he would have died accidentally. In both of those cases, the body would have been at a home or a hospital, she said.
She continued to say she also ruled out suicide because she said a five-year-old is too young to process the enormity of a suicide and the investigation did not reveal anything that would call for that opinion.
Week five of the trial concluded with the state resting on April 12 and the defense beginning its portion of the trial on April 14 after Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Dennis Nieves denied a motion by Lodzinski’s attorney, Gerald Krovatin, to acquit Lodzinski.
Krovatin, on cross-examination, had asked Natarajan why she did not request to exhume Timmy’s remains for her own analysis.
“If I felt the need, I would have recommended it,” she said, adding that the photographs of the bones that were taken in 1992 were sufficient.
Donna Fontana, a forensic anthropologist for the New Jersey State Police, analyzed the 11 bones that belonged to Timmy. As the bones of her son were displayed for the jury, Lodzinski, at times, dabbed her eyes with a tissue.
Fontana said based on her expertise, she concluded that she believes Timmy’s body decomposed in the location he was found due to the fact that the bones were found in and around the area of where the skull was found.
Also, the bones that were found, which included the femur, part of a foot bone and heel bone, two sections of a tail bone and part of the hip bone, are heavier bones of the body.
She said another factor that she looked at for her determination is the coloration of the bones, some which were darker and others which were partially lighter due to exposure to sunlight, explaining that bones take the color of their environment.
Adipocere — fat decomposition — was also recovered on and with the bones. Krovatin, on cross-examination, asked Fontana if she observed any red fabric on the tissue, which she said she did not observe.
Natarajan, on cross-examination, told the jury she was not aware that the red fabric on 46 grams of adipose that was recovered had been tested and determined not to match the waistband of the shorts recovered where the body was found.
She also said the adipose had been destroyed, according to state statute on how long to keep the tissue.
The experts concluded state witness testimony of the trial that is expected to last three months.