her son and intimidated her into silence; pressed for further details, she walked out and challenged police to charge her. Later that day, she returned to the police station, with her sister and a friend, and recanted the story, as the police began to consider her a leading suspect. She returned the following day and, during a long and confrontational interview gave a third story, that two men and a woman had taken her son after offering to watch him briefly while she got sodas, so he could keep his place in line for a ride. Lodzinski claimed to have known the woman as Ellen, a local go-go dancer and customer of the bank where Lodzinski had previously worked as a teller. The FBI was unable to locate the woman. The police arranged with Bruno for him to call Lodzinski while they listened in to a call where he challenged her on her story. She said she would not talk with him about it over the phone and asked instead that they discuss it in person. The following day, they met in Bruno's car, where he had planted a microphone in for the police to listen in. She reiterated the last account she had given police, about Ellen and her companions abducting Wiltsey, adding that she had not told that story at first because she was afraid people would think her a bad mother for leaving her son with a woman she barely knew, even briefly. The following day, Lodzinksi was interviewed again by the state police for five hours. She repeated the Ellen story, but this time amended it. In this version one of the men with Ellen had put the knife to her throat. Challenged on this version, she again ended the interview and told police to charge her if that was what they wanted to do. Taken back to the Sayreville police for further questioning, she told the same story, adding that she had been told her son would be returned to her unharmed in a month if she kept quiet. When the interview ended at 9 p.m., Lodzinski, who had not eaten in 12 hours, was taken to the hospital by friends as she appeared to be suffering a mental breakdown. Another interview by an investigator with the county prosecutor's office at Lodzinski's home five days later had a similar outcome. The investigator recalled her as