BY KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer
NEW BRUNSWICK — Bernard Joseph McShane took the stand on his own free will last week and told the jury he did not kill five-year-old Timothy “Timmy” Wiltsey in 1991 at a carnival in Sayreville.
The state, in the trial of Michelle Lodzinski, who is being tried for the murder of her son in 1991, began their rebuttal case on May 4 in Middlesex County Superior Court.
In November 2015, McShane, of Phoenix, Arizona, said he learned that he was implicated by his former lover Damien Dowdle, of Tucson, Arizona, for killing a young boy while he was on the run from police in 1991.
“I was very surprised,” McShane said of learning of the implication.
On direct examination, McShane said he had never been to New Jersey, adding that his first time traveling to the Garden State was to testify in this case.
Dowdle, who testified for the defense, told the jury he and McShane, who he said molested him when he was 17 year -old in 1990, went on the run after committing robberies of a video store, a fast food restaurant and a gas station in Arizona.
Shortly arriving in Texas, he said the two men split ways before meeting again in a prison cell in Arizona a year later.
While in prison, Dowdle said McShane opened up about what happened when they went their separate ways.
“He told me he ended up going and killing a little kid over by ‘Atlanta City,’” Dowdle said, explaining that he thought McShane was referring to Atlanta, Georgia, at first and later learned it might by Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Dowdle said McShane told him that he was really bored trying to find things to do.
“He went to a park area and there was a big event going on nearby,” he said.
Dowdle said at the event, a little boy had gone off into the woods, which he said he could not remember if McShane said he lured, enticed and/or the child went into woods by himself.
“He took the opportunity to attempt to molest this kid,” he said. “The kid started screaming and crying and Joe got scared. … I remember him saying there were people not far at all and he ended up killing the kid.”
McShane testified that when he and Dowdle split up on the run in January 1991, he traveled to Georgia to visit a good friend from when they served in the United States Army.
Aside from trips to Disney World and another place in Florida and a trip to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, McShane said he stayed with his good friend until July 1991 before he turned himself into police on July 30, 1991.
On cross-examination, McShane said he had rented a car when he left Texas on Jan. 14, 1991, to travel to Georgia and a week later traveled back to Georgia to return the vehicle.
Gerald Krovatin, defense attorney for Lodzinski, asked McShane if he remembered putting 2,100 miles on the rental car, and why he had not returned the rental car in Georgia.
McShane said he doesn’t remember racking up the mileage and said he didn’t want to return the vehicle in Atlanta because he was on the run from police and didn’t want them to have the location where he was staying.
Scottsdale Police Detective Thomas Van Meter, who is now retired, said when Dowdle initially told police in September 1991 about McShane possibly killing a five to six-year-old boy in Georgia, they followed up.
Van Meter said Dowdle’s story involved a mother, daughter, son and boyfriend and the boyfriend had abused the daughter and hit the boy, which Dowdle refuted he told the detective when he took the witness stand.
The retired detective said they also followed up on Dowdle’s other allegations at the time that McShane killed a gay man after putting an advertisement in a local paper, which he said both led to negative results.
On cross-examination, Van Meter said he did not follow up on Dowdle’s claims of where McShane went on the run and did not know why McShane racked up 2,100 miles on the rental vehicle.
Police Sgt. Scott Crocco of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, who led the reopening of the Timothy Wiltsey cold case in 2011, told the jury that they investigated the information that Dowdle told Krovatin in October 2015.
He said he traveled to Arizona and took taped statements from Van Meter, McShane and Dowdle.
As part of the investigation, investigators court-ordered phone records of Dowdle on Jan. 11, 2016, which records showed a series of phone calls and text messages between Dowdle and Krovatin.
Crocco said they interviewed McShane’s friend who he said he stayed with in Georgia while on the run from police in 1991.
“[The friend] said after 25 years, he believes [McShane] stayed for a month or a little longer,” he said.
Crocco said through their investigation, there was no evidence that McShane was in New Jersey.
Krovatin countered and said the investigation into where McShane’s whereabouts after March 1991 is what McShane told investigators.
Crocco answered “Correct” and said he does not believe McShane’s friend was certain on the timeframe of when McShane stayed with him.
The trial is in its third month.
