The Blue Blanket Mystery

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Save at zepbound.ca. Exclusions and exceptions may play. Tonight on Dateline. Michelle was hysterical.

She said Timmy's missing. If somebody has him, I don't care who you are. I just want him to send back. They just kept drilling her and drilling her and drilling her.

We kind of felt like there was more to this than she was telling us. There's news reports that Michelle has been kidnapped. That was a showstopper. I don't think like the same people that took Timmy, they came back and now they're going to kill her.

It was a blanket recovered about 15 feet on the banknet. You recognize that blanket right away. Right away. Without the blanket, there was no case.

You crack a cold case, you get on Dateline. A crowded carnival. A missing child at a rollercoaster ride with a head snapping twist. You're like, I don't understand.

How could they arrest you? You didn't do anything. This is where it gets even crazier. We expect that once the jury makes our decision, he'll move her.

But not in this case. I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea canning with the blue blanket mystery. It was a moment that devastated nearly everyone in this quiet corner of suburbia.

This is really a parent's worst nightmare. Yes, absolutely. The little boy at a carnival who suddenly vanished. The innocence that we had as a community was changed when they are.

Everyone was touched by this case, from the parents who swore never to lose sight of their children again. I went home, I hugged my kids, they felt so bad. To the tireless detectives who searched and labored, losing hope, they would ever find answers. I have nightmares every May 25th when he disappeared.

30 years of twists and turns. It's like mystery on top of mystery on top of mystery. And then, the case suddenly came to a dramatic and controversial end. That we didn't see coming.

I screamed. Kind of my knees. This is one of the most shocking twists for the end of a case that I've ever seen. Yes.

Unbelievable. It was Memorial Day weekend, May 25th, 1991, when this carnival rolled into a working-class New Jersey town. The rattle of rides and laughter of children marked the unofficial start of summer in Seyerville. It was packed.

A lot of rides, and I could just hear the noise, smell the popcorn, and, you know, all the food. A couple of hundred locals, many of them with kids in tow, enjoyed the warm Saturday night. Music was loud, you know, it just seemed like everyone was having a good time. Seems like nothing out of the ordinary, like another carnival.

Jennifer Dilcher was 15 years old at the time. She and her friend arrived around seven. So I walk into the carnival, it's still light out. She was excited to meet up with her aunt, 23-year-old Michelle Lidsinski, and Michelle's five-year-old son, Timmy.

That was my baby. Even my choice for a son, if I could choose. She babysat Timmy most weekends. She called him her little man.

Are you aware of Michelle and Timmy already there? It's the time we're supposed to meet them. Nicely Michelle just standing there. Something was wrong.

Timmy wasn't with his mom and she looked worried. Me and my friend walk up to her and like, Michelle wears Timmy at. She's like, I don't know, I can't find him. So we ran off and we got a police officer.

She spotted Kevin Skolnick, an auxiliary officer with the Seyerville Police Department, and brought him to Michelle. He just starts asking her questions. She tells him, you know, she can't find her little boy. She says to me I was at the food stand getting a Masota, which was in her hand, and I turned around to give it to him and he was on.

What are you thinking? I said to myself, okay, we'll see if we can find him. So we walked around almost like an O pattern. Michelle described Timmy to the officer.

He was wearing a red tank top, red shorts, and teenage mutant ninja turtle sneakers. Are you thinking, I'm sure he's just, you know, wandered off to a game or a ride and I'm sure he's fine. This is not a dangerous location. It wasn't that big of it.

You could see from one side to the other. But after 20 minutes of looking, a no sign of Timmy, the officer knew he needed help. So I notified my lieutenant who was on duty and then that's when we notified police headquarters that we have a possible missing child. You're starting to get worried.

Yeah, very worried. Definitely. Now I'm very worried because nobody's seen him. So the police suggested Michelle make an announcement.

She, that doesn't allow to be her, you know, to say Timmy, you know, if you can hear me, I'm usually to come out now. At that point, the happy sounds of the carnival abruptly stopped. The music was shut off. More units showed up and that's when the detectives came and the whole thing started to turn.

By now, the fire department and rescue squad had joined the police along with hundreds of volunteers. The search went well beyond the carnival grounds. I would say within an hour and a half, that's when we had all these people. This is a big search.

Yes. I mean, it's a big, huge, huge area. Keith Hackett was a detective with a New Jersey state police. Well, running around in my troop car, I heard it on a radio that they had a missing kid from a carnival and said, oh, wow, you know, that's right at my alley.

He was normally a plainclothes detective in the missing persons unit. But because it was a holiday weekend, he had been assigned highway traffic duty. They said to my sergeant, I said, hey, I'd leave the detail and make some phone calls. He said, well, you know, just finished the detail and you can make a call.

Really? The detective felt frustrated, but he was told law enforcement was doing everything to find Timmy. They had a state police helicopter above. They had a bunch of local police officers and I think we had the sheriff's department there searching as well as civilians helping out.

The search went on for hours with no sign of Timmy. Finally, it was called off around 2 a.m. That's when your kind of your heart dropped. That this is serious moment.

Yeah, definitely. It was hard to leave, you know, to get in the car and be like, you're leaving in behind, you know, like, I don't want to go. Michelle in these early morning hours, how's she holding up? He was pretty emotional.

Usually when we have that moment of panic and, you know, child disappears, you find them, you know, minutes later, hopefully, but not in this case. No. Timmy did not turn up. No, he didn't turn up.

And when his suit was an answer to investigation. When we come back, Timmy's best friend from childhood still remembers that awful night. My mom, my God, is searching the backyard? They searched the whole apartment?

When someone goes missing, the first 24 hours can be critical. Was it already too late? He just didn't wander off. And he didn't fall in the water or he wasn't lost in the surrounding woods.

It got serious. If somebody hasn't, I just want him back. I don't care who you are. I just want my son back.

It was 2 a.m. And 5-year-old Timmy was still missing. His mother Michelle had some gut-wrenching early morning calls to make, including one to her big sister, Linda Heisey, who was in Florida. She was hysterical.

And she said, Timmy's missing, you know, and I'm like, what? And, you know, I was just trying to wrap my head around it. You know, you wake up out of a dead sleep. Did you immediately get out of bed?

And what was your plan of action? Eventually, I just said, do you need me to come there? And I went. The search for Timmy resumed at sunrise.

More than 300 people anxiously searched every inch of the 10-acre park and surrounding area. The state police chopper flew overhead again, and a diving unit waited through two nearby ponds. Everyone waited for news. We really hope and pray that this little boy is fennel.

Detective Keith Hackett was now officially on the case. 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. It got serious.

The community was rising up like everyone wanted to do something. Jim Ryan, then in his 20s, was head of the volunteer first aid squad from the neighboring town of South Amboy. We initially started with 20 members on Sunday night helping out, and it's been in the hundreds of people that have come forward to assist us at the point in time. Timmy and Michelle lived just a few blocks from the first aid station where Jim's squad was located.

And so this is one of your own that's gone missing. You immediately spring into action. We decided that we were going to create flyers. Creating flyers was an urgent need.

There was no social media back then to blast out Timmy's photo. The challenge was actually getting the flyers we made because it was how they weakened. So we asked people, could they open up the businesses that had a copy machine to make copies for us? Was everyone complying?

Yeah, it spoke to the community we were in that everyone was all hands on deck to try to figure out what they could do. Michelle's sister arrived from Florida ready to help. How is Michelle doing when you get there? She's just devastated and you know talk a lot, she cried a lot.

Linda did her best to comfort Michelle. 11 years older. She'd always been like a second mother to her. I was the big sister.

There was six of us. And Michelle was the only other girl. I helped cook dinners. You know, I took them roller skating.

Linda and her siblings grew up on the Jersey Shore. She says they didn't have a lot of money but they made the best of it. We were right down the street from the beach and we'd swim and so we'd have fun there. We had the little store down front and we'd go have a soda or you know it was cute little town.

Even though Linda was the oldest, she says Michelle was the stronger one. She would give you the shirt off her back. She's definitely a stronger personality than I am. So it kind of switched around?

In high school, she says Michelle was quiet but also had an adventurous spirit. When her oldest brother, who lived in Iowa, invited Michelle to visit, she jumped at the chance. So she goes out there to take a little trip? Just something different.

Because we didn't travel a lot. We didn't want vacations a lot. It was supposed to be a short getaway but Michelle met someone and stayed for a while. Then the whirlwind romance got serious.

She got pregnant. And even though Michelle was only 17, Linda said she wanted the baby. I do remember the call when she called to say the baby was born, you know. How excited was she?

She was excited. She was very excited. Michelle's son Timothy was born on August 6th, 1985 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Did she want to say in Iowa and raise the baby?

I believe she was going to stay because she was with George and I think she thought that was the right thing to do. That was the plan to stay with Timmy's father, George Wiltsy. But young love is precarious, especially with a baby. And things between the couple quickly deteriorated.

Eventually she asked for my husband to come get her because it wasn't good. So Michelle and Timmy moved back to New Jersey and then with Linda and her family. Timmy was less than a year old. How was she as a mom?

Now you're living with her and Timmy, you're seeing it firsthand. She was a good mom who just, you know, that was her life. She did whatever she needed to to support him. Including working several jobs to make sure Timmy was always well-dressed and well-fed.

She says Michelle was very active in her son's life and was always around to celebrate every birthday, every holiday, every milestone. And how did you feel having a baby around the house again? I loved it. I had two boys too.

So they were his bigger brothers, you know. It was a happy extended family. But a few years later, Linda and her husband struggling financially felt they needed a change. So they packed up and moved to Florida.

Michelle chose to stay in New Jersey and eventually found that apartment near the first aid station. I'm so excited. Tera Packard was six years old when Michelle and Timmy moved into the other half of her parents' duplex. Her parents knew Michelle because Tera and Timmy were classmates and best friends at the local Catholic school.

Michelle had scraped enough money to send her son there. Did you and Timmy only grow closer living in that duplex? Yes, we were pretty much together every day. Like we walked the school together.

It was just shared backyard. So we go out and play together. We would eat dinner at each other's houses. So you two actually shared a wall between your bedrooms and the duplex?

We did. And I knocked on the wall with a toy so he could hear me. It was sort of like we'd do like a coat. Tera says she and Timmy complimented each other perfectly.

She was painfully shy and he was anything but. His personality was the biggest one in the room. And he was as cute as his pictures are. He loved playing in the backyard.

He had like lots of trucks, like dump trucks out there. And he also loved Ninja Turtles. That was his favorite. On the night Timmy went missing, Tera remembers her family was in the middle of dinner.

Her mother got a call from Michelle asking if she'd seen him. We immediately stopped eating and my mom and my dad started searching the backyard. They searched the whole apartment because the police were concerned like what if he somehow somebody found him and brought him back or he walked back. But there was no sign of Timmy.

Tera eventually went to bed. You tried to communicate with him with your secret knock, your secret code through the wall. Well yes, I was so scared and worried about him. So I went over and my closet got one of my toys out and knocked on the wall.

And like, listen. Tera was never in here for a sound back. Defining silence, Tera says excruciating days went by with no news. Camera crews were camped outside their duplex.

Michelle had mostly been staying inside. But did agree to this interview with the WNBC reporter. No clues at this point, no leads, no. Kind of the police are looking to everything that they get.

If somebody has them, I just want them back. I don't care who you are. I just want my son back. We were on the street and let someone find him.

I just want him back. As Michelle was pleading for her son's safe return, police were pursuing their first real lead in the case. They had a possible suspect to track down. A woman named Ellen with a mysterious past.

Ellen is at the carnival. What a child, a two-year-old child. Police got a tip that she might have something to do with Timmy's disappearance. An urgent search was on.

Find Ellen, and hopefully find Timmy. Coming up. Who is Ellen? She said it was just grown in Ellen, who she was familiar with.

And Ellen said, listen, have Timmy stay with me. I'll put him on the ride, go get him a soda. But Michelle says she came back and Ellen and Timmy were gone. Right.

When Dateline continues. Just a few days after his disappearance, the case of missing five-year-old Timmy Wiltsi had captivated the nation. It was a feature on America's most wanted. Fliers got sent out all over the country.

His face ended up on Milpert. Yes, yes. New York Yankee, Don Mattingly, appeared in the paper holding a photo of Timmy and asking for a safe return. And Michelle's mother made a tearful plea on local news.

It's her only child. This is all she has in life. Please, God, if you have any mercy, give this girl a kid and give me back my grandchild. The whole area was on edge.

Parents kept their children close while their kids looked over their shoulders. We really were all afraid that something terrible was going to happen to us. Timmy's cousin Jennifer did her best to comfort her Aunt Michelle. I think I slipped over right next to her and she was on the couch and I was on the floor.

You all loved Timmy so much. How are you coping as the days go by? And he's just vanished. It's hard, I'm zombies.

And you all had the added pressure of the media. You know, came to outside the door and that was rough. Me and Michelle would try to go on the back porch to get some solace from them all in the front, hanging on the door and everything. And I remember looking over and I see this new reporter and he's standing on top of somebody's ledge or car or something.

And he is actually trying to record us in her backyard. Away from the media's glare, police were working tirelessly to find Timmy. For Detective Keith Hackett, this case felt personal. You yourself have young sons when this is happening four and six right around Timmy's age.

Was that hitting you? Yes, that could be my son that's missing. The public was putting enormous pressure on law enforcement to solve the case, but investigators weren't saying much. One who lead Detective Hackett and other investigators jumped on came from Michelle herself.

It had to do with when she last saw Timmy. She'd only told police part of the story. Timothy won the ride. He was also thirsty.

So she went to get him a drink. When she came back, he was missing. But now she added new details. She said it was just grown in Ellen, who she was familiar with.

And Ellen was there with a little girl about two years old and two men. Michelle said she left Timmy with Ellen so she could get that drink. Apparently, Timmy wanted to go on the ride before more people got on. So Ellen said, listen, have Timmy stay with me.

I'll put him on the ride. Go get him a soda. But Michelle says she came back and Ellen and Timmy were gone. Right.

Michelle told investigators she had been afraid to tell them about Ellen. She was worried when they found out more about this woman. They would think she was a bad mom for leaving Timmy with someone with a questionable reputation. She explained that when she worked as a bank teller, Ellen used to come to her window to cash her welfare checks.

Ellen, not only cashed welfare checks at the bank, but also was a go-go girl. Oh, wow. Is that also sort of exotic dancer like Gentleman's Club? That's how we perceived it.

It was a place in Cerebral Go-Go-Rama, I guess, where it had exotic dancers. Michelle felt that this was not the most upstanding profession and was embarrassed that she had left her child with someone like. Right. That's the reason why she said I didn't tell you about Ellen initially.

So the hunt for Ellen was on. Police started searching Local Gentleman's clubs. To say, please, do we get a sketch of what Ellen looked like to try to track her down to find out who she was? And the FBI put together a list of all welfare recipients named Ellen or with names similar to Ellen.

They printed out photos of those women and showed them to Michelle, but she said none of them looked familiar. The FBI ran down extensively, and so did Cerebral, trying to identify her. And while the search for Ellen continued, detectives had plenty of other leads to follow. With all the media attention, their phones hadn't stopped ringing all summer.

You get a lot of tips and sightings. You might have someone call up and say, we think we saw a kid that looked like Timothy at a truck stop or we think we saw a kid that resembles Timothy Wilty in a can ground. So of course, when you get those leads coming in, you got to run them down. But nothing seemed to pan out and they were getting desperate.

The summer comes to an end. How frustrated are you feeling that you're no closer to finding Timmy or finding out what happened? Was it was frustrating that it's time goes on that opportunity of bringing them home alive shrinks. I mean, it's just a cold part fact.

Detective Hackett says he refused to get discouraged. He followed every clue. No lead was too small or too outrageous. At one point, we're asked to do a search of a portion.

Cerebral, we're a psychic, giving us information. So you took the psychic seriously? Well, the psychic's name was Dorothy Allison, a well-known psychic, and she had quality information. She told him Timmy might be near water at an abandoned factory behind the Cerebral police station.

So the detective grabbed the department's cadaver dog, Buffy, and went looking. So you checked? Yeah, well Buffy, for hours searching. Did you hit on anything?

No. No. Another dead end. But Hackett's lock was about to change.

Five months after Timmy disappeared, Dan O'Malley was hiking across the river from the carnal grounds in a marshy area when he spotted something that looked out of place. We're in a desolate deserted barren area. What is a child's particle of clothing doing here? This discovery made could potentially be a game changer.

In one of the biggest cases, this area has ever seen. I agree. Coming up, there was a teenage ninja turtle's child sneaker. A breakthrough or another dead end.

He showed it to Michelle and she initially said that it wasn't his. Like everyone else in the Cerebral, New Jersey area, Dan O'Malley, a high school science teacher, knew all about missing Timmy Wilsey. It was impossible to avoid. It was so well publicized.

He'd read the news and seen the flyers with Timmy's picture in store windows and on telephone poles. I had a 10-year-old boy at the time. Every parent was focused on the story. So Dan knew what Timmy looked like and what he'd been wearing when he disappeared.

It was teenage men and ninja turtles makers. An important detail that would pay off on a Saturday afternoon that October. It's about five months after Timmy went missing. And you're out for the day.

You're at a sports memorabilia. It was a two-day expo, yeah. Dan and a friend attended the expo at the Raritan Center in Edison, New Jersey. We both had an interest in sports cars and sports memorabilia and also the interest in the wildlife.

So after they'd had enough of the expo, they decided to take a walk in a marshy area behind the Raritan Center. It was the kind of area that would harbor smaller animals that we were interested in. Dan took us to the place where he and his friend went exploring. And so you went in here?

And we went in right about here. They hadn't been walking very long when something caught his eye. I looked down and there was a teenage ninja turtle child sneaker. Was your gut telling you that this is connected to Timmy's disappearance?

I always had a sense of unbelief about it because who expects to get the stumble on? What could be a potentials? A clue. A big clue.

Another piece of evidence. Tell us what you did next. I took the sneaker to my car. I put it in a plastic bag.

He took the sneaker straight to the Sayerville Police Department. It was a nice young officer, took a written report. And I left and I expected them to contact me. This was a Saturday.

So I thought, OK, it'll be Monday. And Monday came and went. Nothing. Nothing.

But what Dan didn't know was that the police were in fact working hard to determine if the shoe belonged to Timmy. It was a last shoe, size 13. The same size Timmy was wearing. Did you think that this could be maybe the brakes you were looking for?

You know what? It was just one shoe. Back then, Ninja Turtles was big. It was huge.

People had balloons. They had to shoes. They had to t-shirts. But where the sneaker was found was close to the carnival grounds.

Where the crows fly, it's a very short distance. You know, you're at the carnival, you cross the river, and then there's a Olympic drive. Sayerville Police sent the shoe to the FBI, hoping for a DNA evidence that would confirm it was Timmy's. But the results came back inconclusive.

So police tried something else. Eventually showed it to Michelle. And she initially said that it wasn't his. It had a different emblem on it or something.

All the while, Dan O'Malley had been waiting for his phone to ring, hoping someone from law enforcement would contact him. I went about my business teaching. I gave it three weeks. And that was very painful and hard just to go three weeks.

Was still no word from the police. He called the local paper to tell them about the sneaker he'd found. And did they bite? Were they interested in what you had to say?

Whoever picked up the phone referred it to the editor. And he got on the line. And the next day it was from patient news. Now everyone was talking about the sneaker.

Detective Hackett says that prompted Michelle to contact the police. Does Michelle take a second look at the sneaker? I believe you took a second look at it and say, hey, maybe his. And then she also brought in a pair of shoes, dress shoes.

And they were sent to the FBI lab for a forensic analysis. They do an examination of the wear pattern of the shoes. Again, the results were inconclusive. But investigators were able to match the model number on the sneaker to the shoebox that Michelle gave them.

So was it now appearing that this was Timmy's shoe? I still don't know if they conclusively made that determination that it was his. Timmy's cousin, Jennifer, didn't need police to confirm what she instinctively knew. The day I heard about the sneaker I would be doing, what did it say to you about what had happened to him?

I just thought that whoever took him, this had to change his clothes. So they would just scatter in his stuff around maybe. But there was nothing in me that was going to let me believe that he wasn't coming home. There was no way my life was going to go on.

And Timmy wasn't going to be here. Still, the sneaker didn't seem to be leading investigators anywhere. And a search of the area where the sneaker had been found was no help either. The first search that was done after the shoe was found turned up nothing.

Well, it sure did that and made me find anything. More months went by without any new clues. Until another big discovery in that marshy area. And I got chills on me that much, Mike.

And this time, a possible answer to the question, where was Timmy? They said, God, if he's here, let's give us a sign, let us find something. And it was just like a miracle. Coming up, was the search about to end.

We found the second sneaker, about 30 yards away from the first sneaker that was found back in October. Detectives also found what might be a key piece of evidence. It was a blanket recovered about 15 feet on the bankman. Who did it belong to when Dateline continues?

It had been more than five months with no sign of little Timmy. But volunteer EMT, Jim Ryan, was still determined to find him. I was 20 years old. I believe we could save the world.

So he came up with a plan. We didn't want Timmy's story to feed from the spotlight. The National Center for Missing Children, I indicated the best way to find missing kids, is keep the attention on it. So we're like, okay, how can we do that?

Let's get billboards. But billboards were expensive. So to raise money, Jim and the principal of Timmy's Catholic school decided to form a group called Friends of Timmy. Jim had a meeting with Timmy's mom, Michelle.

Or do you have a conversation with her and ask if this is an idea that she'd be receptive to? Was she receptive? She was. Michelle even joined the Friends of Timmy board.

She helped play on their first fundraiser, a basketball game at her son's school. The basketball game involved a radio station on New York City called WPLJ and the Chippon Nails. I'm assuming you're talking about hunky kind of men who show off their abs and their muscles. Yes.

Jim says the community's response to hunky dancers in a Catholic school gym was lukewarm, to say the least. I think there was people interpreted that the Chippon Nails are here or a small community. I have to say, the Chippon Nails to me doesn't seem overly appropriate for a missing child. It doesn't, it doesn't at all.

He knew it was a misstep, so Jim and the other board members worked on a new strategy. One of the things that you could do easily with Timmy's case is get lost in distractions, so I tried to focus on a five-year-old missing. And so did the FBI. Almost a year after Timmy went missing, agents had a new game plan.

The overall conclusion was go back and redo almost every investigative step that had been done and do it again and again. Which meant taking a second look at the place where the sneaker was found. On April 23rd, 1992, a team of investigators began scouring the marshy area behind the Raritan Center. Detective Hackett was on the team.

You got a call from the FBI to come down here. Yes, the FBI contacted us and requested that we come out here with our good average dog to do a search of this area. Within minutes, they made a discovery. We found a second sneaker, about 30 yards away from the first sneaker that was found back in October.

It was another teenage mutant ninja turtle sneaker, size 13, a right shoe. It appeared to be a match to the left sneaker found months earlier. Why police hadn't spotted it before was a head scratcher. They continued searching for several more hours but didn't find anything else.

Detective Hackett was getting antsy and had an idea. He calls it divine intervention. The search was concentrated on that side of the road because that's where the sneaker was found. But you decided to search this side, even though everyone else was searching that side.

Yes, after a few hours, I just kind of took a walk over here on my own to get a little bit away in the land. You had said a prayer that day. Yes, everything frustrated. And as I was walking up on the bank right there, I said, God, if He's here, let's give us a sign, let us find something.

And it was just like a miracle. I just happened to look down into the drainage area, Greek, and I saw what appeared to be a skull. Of course, I was very emotional, and I felt in my heart that it had to be Timothy. He raced back up the embankment to alert the others.

What is that moment like where you see what looks like a skull? And it's a small one that could be a child's life? Well, a lot of stuff was when I had kids at age, you know. But I was like, thank you, God.

It was like the craziest thing. Along with a small skull, they found several other bones, remnants from the waistband of child's size underwear and shorts, a pillowcase, and something else. There was a blanket recovered about 15 feet on the embankment that was taken as evidence to. A large blue and white, heavy cotton blanket.

Is it becoming more and more apparent to you that this is highly likely that this is Timmy? Well, the next day, they had a forensic dentist look at the skull and compare the teeth with Timmy's dental records. It made a positive identification that it was Timothy Wiltley. Timmy's remains were found.

You finally had to give up that hope. How did you find out? My grandmother called me and told me to come over to Michelle's house. And so I thought that Timmy was going to be there.

I thought they found him. When I got there, he wasn't there. And my grandmother told me they found him. He was a criminal.

She says Michelle had been told by police at the station and immediately called her sister Linda. How are you feeling when you get this news that it is him? Devastated but relieved that the search is over and that, I mean, he's with God, he's gone. How's Michelle doing during this time?

She's devastated and she's turning to me. Michelle's mom told reporters her daughter was up in Timmy's room on his bed crying. We want them to find who did this to my grandson. To please just let her grieve at peace.

A few weeks later, Timmy's family held a funeral mask for him. How was Michelle at the funeral? He was a strut. He was crying.

She was upset. But I was upset. I felt like I lost my own son. Michelle was in shock.

You're not had to hold her up as she walked up the stairs. My dad was on my dad's side and I was on the other. It was so hard to see a tiny little casket. It was heartbreaking.

My cousin was narrowed down to a shoebox. That's basically what his remains fit into. The medical examiner didn't find evidence of trauma in the remains that were found and couldn't determine how Timmy died. But he did rule it a homicide.

Detectives were now on the hunt for a killer and one person was in their sights. I learned it immediately from the first answer she gave that she was not being truthful about this. She would be near something. Coming up, detectives question Michelle's story.

And an anonymous letter offers a new story and a possible new suspect. The home it may can turn. In the case of Timothy Wilte, the man you're looking for, is… Grief settled over this close-knit community as neighbors shared the grim news that Timmy Wilte's remains had been found. I just felt so cold inside.

The five-year-old had been murdered. I was best-minute shocked because I don't even remember crying. Who could have done such a horrific thing? Timmy's after school teacher, Sister Yvonne, prayed for police to find his killer.

Hopefully, my career and hard work, in the end, it will be taken care of. Detectives had been quietly building a list of possible suspects. One of them was George Wilte's Timmy's father. He hadn't been a part of Timmy's life for years, but they still needed to check him out.

He was quickly ruled out. That had anything to do with it. Why was he ruled out so quickly? Because he was nowhere near New Jersey at the time that Timmy was missing.

Police also interviewed several of Michelle's former boyfriends, but that went nowhere. And as for the elusive Ellen, the woman Michelle said she left Timmy with at the carnival. Ellen was never found. We could never, despite the massive investigative aspect of that.

Remember, Michelle never even mentioned Ellen the first time she talked to the police. The fact that she told her story in bits and pieces, nagged at them, and so did what police perceived as Michelle's lack of emotion the night of Timmy's disappearance. She was at the police station describing the last moment she saw Timmy. To detectives, she sounded nothing like a desperate mom.

Is it possible that people handle these situations differently? Of course, but some of her friends in acquaintance couldn't understand her demeanor. Police had been speaking to several people who knew Michelle, and hearing more stories about her puzzling behavior during the time Timmy was still missing. Jim Ryan told them something odd about the Chippendales fundraiser.

Did Michelle get upset when she heard that Chippendales would be a part of the fundraising efforts? My recollection was that Chippendales might have been a contact that she might have developed. And Jim said she wanted the next fundraiser to involve the dancers too. But the board of friends of Timmy said no.

Then Michelle quit. So that was why you ended up parting ways you believe over the over Chippendales? I believe that that would be one of the factors. Jim says he couldn't believe what happened next.

The board got a letter from Michelle's attorney saying they were no longer allowed to use Timmy's image. We're kind of like confused and overwhelmed. Our efforts are to locate a five-year-old missing boy who is still missing. And yet, a lawyer is wrapped in a letter, informing us that if we put his image up, that we could be sued.

Detectives eyebrows were raised, but none of this made Michelle guilty of anything. It just seems strange. And there was more. While police were working tirelessly to find her son, Michelle took off with a friend on a Caribbean vacation.

Once you have the Timothy was missing, she's in a Bahamas, you know, dancing a night away. Detective Hackett heard about the trip because two off-duty state troopers just happened to be at the same resort. Sorry there. And recognized her as, hey, this is the woman who was kids missing.

And they said, well, basically she was out having like none of care in the world. Detectives continued to work every angle, including a baffling, unexpected clue. An anonymous letter had arrived at the Seyerville Police Department, the very day Timmy's remains were found. Jerry Lewis was a detective sergeant with the New Jersey State Police.

He was asked to examine the letter. To whom it made concern, in the case of Timothy Wilte, the man you were looking for, is... The letter claimed a former boyfriend of Michelle's killed Timmy, and it even gave a motive. He had a grudge against Michelle and wanted to get back at her.

I know this to be a fact because last February 1991, he wanted me to help him kill Michelle or her little boy. Whoever wrote it made it clear they wanted to stay anonymous. I will not, under any circumstances, come forward voluntarily, because I have waited too long already. I don't know if he found someone else to help him or he did this terrible thing himself, but be certain that he did it.

What was your analysis of the note? Well, it's interesting that Michelle's name, both times, was spelled with one L. Michelle's name has two Ls. The detective wondered, was it spelled wrong on purpose?

So is this someone trying to make it look like it's not them? But the most interesting part of this is this part of the statement. I will not, under any circumstances, come forward voluntarily. Most people say, because I'm afraid, if I come forward and tell you this person's name, they're going to get me, they're going to kill me.

And this note says, I can't come forward voluntarily, because I've waited too long already. It makes no sense, it's not a reason. They're already coming forward with the note. Jerry didn't believe a word of it, and he had a surprising suspicion about who was behind it.

I think Michelle wrote it. The man that's spelled out here is a former boyfriend of Michelle's that helped the FBI fill out their behavioral analysis. He was helping them with a profile of Michelle. Oh, detective sent the letter to the FBI to see if there were fingerprints or DNA that might reveal if she sent it.

The results were not what they were expecting. Someone's DNA was on there, but it wasn't Michelle's. They had no idea who it belonged to and couldn't prove Michelle wrote the letter. So this went nowhere, this letter.

Right. But Michelle was hardly in the clear, just the opposite. Police were growing increasingly focused on her. Turns out the reason the FBI did that second search and found Timmy's remains was because agents did a deeper dive into Michelle's work history.

They learned she worked near that marshy area, but hadn't disclosed it in her initial interviews. So this for them was a critical piece of information. Why not include that? Right.

So law enforcement kept going back to those interviews. And for one investigator, there'd been a moment he thought Michelle just might crack. Coming up, more strange behavior from Michelle. She exploded and ran out of her house.

She dropped an F-bomb on the way up. And she shares a terrifying new detail. She said all of a sudden the man next to Timmy took out a knife and held it to Timmy. When Dateline continues.

It had been weeks since the discovery of Timmy Wilsey's remains, and detectives still hadn't made any arrests. They poured over every detail of the case from the beginning, focusing on their earlier interviews with Timmy's mother, Michelle Edzinski. Things weren't adding up. Her stories changing constantly and not sticking to anything.

And they couldn't verify her statements, things as she said. It was three weeks after Timmy went missing when Detective Sergeant Jerry Lewis brought Michelle into his office. I was expecting angry, frustrated from everything that I had heard. She was actually lighthearted and laughing.

He started the interview by asking her to tell him what happened. She quickly brought up the go-go dancer, Ellen. She said Ellen left him on a ride and came back and Ellen's gone. But then she added something new.

She said two men with knives were there and one of them threatened her. 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. And she said he showed me a knife in his hand.

Jerry says he told Michelle that story didn't make sense. If they want to kidnap Timmy, you're already leaving him with him and you're walking away. No reason for this man to alert you that they're going to take Timmy by coming up and threatening you. And he questioned something else.

If you're in the middle of a carnival, the stream do something. And she said, well, I was going to but all of a sudden the man next to Timmy took out a knife and held it to Timmy. This is all new information that you're getting out of her about. Now these men have knives.

Are you believing any of this? No. If this was really what happened, there would have been her original story. Two men threatened us with knives and took Timmy.

So he decided to take the interview in a new direction and try something unconventional. He told her he knew who had taken Timmy, a diabolical gang. And he assured her none of it was her fault. I was trying to come up with an interview theme that would allow her to tell me where Timmy's body was located and yet not accept any guilt for it.

He told her the kidnappers were college students making their way across the country. Psychology majors from Berkeley University in California. And they decided to form a gang to kidnap kids starting on the west coast, moving east. And we've been tracking this group of people and trying to catch them.

Wow. So you're telling her a big lie. He went on to say he knew the kidnappers told her where they would drop off Timmy. But she wasn't allowed to tell anyone or else they'd kill him.

And then they say, keep your mouth shut. Don't say anything about what we're telling you and you're going to get Timmy back. He told her he knew that's why she'd been lying to the police. Is she buying us?

She was looking at me intently. She was leaning forward and I said, so where is this place? And she goes, well, it's in the woods and there's an abandoned building there. And there's a big tree.

I said, man, that's excellent. We're not going to go there and we're not going to look. I said, just one last thing we show. Where is this abandoned building?

So she just leaned forward and she was looking down at the ground and she just never said another word. That was it. And it's just silence. Then another detective who was in the room broke the silence.

That person said to me, Jerry, I think she might be lying. And she merely jumped up. So charge me or I'm leaving and she woke up. And with that, the interview was over, but it was hardly a bust.

Michelle had changed her story once again and she played along with Detective Lewis' kidnappers story. No innocent, truthful mom would be going with this story. Five days after that interview, investigators arranged to speak with Michelle again. So far she only spoke into male detectives.

This time they sent a woman to talk to her. And it was sort of the last resort. Mary Robillard was a detective with the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office, a rarity at the time. In a very large, all-male department, there were three of us.

Did you have a kind of strategy going in? Yes, I did. The FBI had suggested that I find a toy of Timmy's and put it on the table between us and play with it to make her uncomfortable. She arrived at Michelle's house accompanied by two male officers.

From the moment Michelle answered the door, they were taken aback. What was her demeanor like? Hostel. Hostel from the ghetto.

In fact, she was chilling. I worked with all kinds of suspects, all kinds of witnesses over the years. And she literally made the hair stand up on my arms. And as soon as Mary walked into the house, she noticed something that didn't seem right.

And the right-hand side on the way in was a stairway banister. And it was being stripped. All the varnish and everything was off it. The paint cans were there.

And I thought it was odd that her child was missing for a couple of weeks. And she was, I commented to her on the banister. What did she say was wrong with it? She just said it had to be done.

Did you think something had happened with that banister that she was trying to cover up? Certainly the thought occurred to me, yes. That it could have been an accidental fault. That he could have been pushed.

There were a number of possibilities. Mary and Michelle then left the two officers and moved into the dining room where they could be alone. Did you find a toy, as the FBI suggested? I did.

It was a small stuffed animal. She never looked at it, never said a word about it, just was continually hostile. Do you think maybe she was getting tired of sort of, you know, playing the role of suspect? I'm sure she was.

I would have been tired of it if I'd been in her shoes. However, if my son were missing, I would probably be more cooperative. The interview continued with Michelle giving one-word answers. And then Mary says Michelle started laughing.