Authorities: It was a 23-year-old man claiming to be teenage Timmothy Pitzen
Hopes of finding missing Aurora boy Timmothy Pitzen were dashed again Thursday when the FBI announced DNA evidence showed a person in northern Kentucky who claimed to be the boy is actually a 23-year-old man.
“DNA results have been returned indicating the person in question is not Timmothy Pitzen,” said Tim Beam, chief division counsel for the FBI's Louisville field office. “A local investigation continues into this person's true identity.”
“To be clear, law enforcement has not and will not forget Timmothy, and we hope to one day reunite him with his family. Unfortunately, that day will not be today.”
Timmothy's aunt, Kara Jacobs, and grandmother, Alana Anderson, said they were “devastated” by the news.
“We know that you are out there somewhere, Tim, and we will never stop looking for you, praying for you and loving you,” Jacobs said. “We hope that everyone will join us in praying for the young man who claims to be Timmothy Pitzen.”
The man who claimed to be a 14-year-old boy told police in Kentucky on Wednesday that he was Timmothy and had escaped from two men who held him captive for seven years.
But Police Chief Tom Collins of Newport, Kentucky, said the “boy” turned out not to be a teenager at all but rather a 23-year-old man approaching his 24th birthday.
He said authorities are still investigating and no charges are immediately pending. The Daily Herald is following its policy of not identifying the suspect before charges are filed or imminent.
Timmothy was a 6-year-old kindergartner when his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, removed him the morning of May 11, 2011, from Greenman Elementary School in Aurora.
Accordin> to Aurora police, she took the boy to Brookfield Zoo and then to Key Lime Cove water park in Gurnee.
His father, James, reported the two missing May 12. It was later discovered they went that day to the Kalahari Water Resort in Wisconsin Dells, and the mother also was seen at a store in Racine, Wisconsin.
Phone records indicate Fry-Pitzen called friends and relatives May 13 while in northwestern Illinois. Timmothy was heard in the background, saying he was hungry.
She then checked in to a Rockford hotel. A maid found her body May 14; she had killed herself, according to authorities. There was a note: “Tim is somewhere safe with people who love him and will take care of him. You will never find him,” it said.
Life in Aurora
The Pitzens had lived with Timmothy, their only child, in a house on the 400 block of North Highland Avenue in Aurora. Jim Pitzen held the house until 2013 when it went into foreclosure. The foreclosure was vacated, however, when he was able to sell it. He moved back to his hometown of Clinton, Iowa.
Fry-Pitzen had grown up in Lake County, graduating from Libertyville High School, then Iowa State University, according to her obituary.
James Pitzen told a writer from People magazine in 2015 that his wife suffered from depression and the two had argued about money. Fry-Pitzen had been married several times before meeting Pitzen, according to one of her ex-husbands.
Police determined that Fry-Pitzen had made trips earlier in the year to the Dixon area, seemingly with no reason, without telling her husband. They also determined that she had been somewhere near I-39 and I-88 at the time Timmothy disappeared.
According to the People report, authorities discovered she maintained email addresses under her maiden name. Police asked landowners in several northern Illinois counties and southern Wisconsin to keep an eye out for items of Timmothy's that were missing, including a Spider-Man backpack and an aquatic-rig toy.
The hoax
On Wednesday, police in Newport, Kentucky, were called by a resident reporting a suspicious person in the neighborhood. Residents told police the man looked confused and nervous.
When police picked him up, he told them he was Timmothy Pitzen and had escaped from two men who had held him for seven years.
That turned out to be untrue and Aurora police declared it a hoax.
Aurora Sgt. Bill Rowley said his department sent two detectives to Ohio and tried to be “judicious” in its handling of the case.
“We don't want to give false hope to families,” he said.
“We knew that there was DNA information that was available that we provided to the FBI. Our role in this specific case was to provide this information to them.”
Collins said he is discussing with a local prosecutor what, if anything, to charge the man with.
Collins said the man has a criminal record and that when they took a DNA sample, it came up in a database. He also said the man didn't want to give a sample.
“He didn't want to give that stuff up,” Collins said.
If there is anything positive to come from the case, Aurora's Rowley said, it's that “it created a renewed awareness of the case. It has people looking at the case with new eyes.”
The FBI said it will support the continuing investigation in any way possible. Anyone with genuine information about the case is asked to call the Aurora Police Department at (630) 256-5000 or 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678).