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What began as a routine morning in May 2011, ended in absolute confusion after 6-year-old Timmothy Pitzen was signed out of school early by his mom. While teachers were told there was a family emergency, this later proved to be absolutely untrue. Although nearly fifteen years have gone by, Tim’s family, including his father, Jim Pitzen, have never seen him again. Through their immense grief, they are left to wonder if he was murdered or secretly given away, that he’s still alive somewhere, not knowing who he really is.
At only 21-years-old, Jim Pitzen was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma & although the chemotherapy cured him of cancer, he was told that he would never be able to have children. This was a devastating blow since he’d grown up in a large family & always pictured having children of his own one day.
By his early-thirties, Jim fell in love with a woman named Amy Fry, who wasn’t bothered by the fact that he couldn’t have children. Amy’s sister Kara was so happy for her & felt that she & Jim were a fantastic match.
While Jim was laying in bed one day, in & out of sleep, he heard Amy talking in her sleep when she said, You’ve got to marry me, I’m pregnant. The next morning, when he asked her about it, Jim was stunned when she confirmed that she was four months pregnant. The couple soon got married in a small outdoor ceremony & relocated from Clifton, Iowa to Aurora, Illinois.
When their son, Timmothy Pitzen was born on October 18, 2004, Jim was over the moon, holding the baby that he always dreamed of, but didn’t think was possible. They chose their son’s name after Amy’s brother, who died at birth, but added two Ms to make it his own unique name.
Amy blossomed in motherhood & it was clear that she was destined to be his mom as Timmothy was the center of her world. He was a happy, energetic boy who adored his parents, his dog & four cats. He was always riding around the neighborhood on his bike, while his parents reminded him to stay close.
In 2011, 6-year-old Timmothy was attending kindergarten at Greenman Elementary school in Aurora, attending ½ day classes. As a precautionary measure in case any of the students got lost, the school created ID cards with fingerprints for each student & Jim also ordered his son an Illinois state ID as an extra precaution.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 began as a typical weekday when 39-year-old Jim & 43-year-old Amy got up early to take Tim to school. Since Amy suffered a bout of vertigo the day before & was still feeling dizzy & unsteady, Jim insisted that they drive Tim to school together & then he would drop her off at work before heading to work himself.
As they pulled up to the school at 7:45 am, Tim hopped out of the car & called out, Love you, Dad, see you later! From here, Jim dropped Amy off at her job only blocks away & then headed to his nearby office.
About 2 ½ hours later at 10:30 am, Jim headed back to Greenman Elementary to pick Tim up. Their daily routine was for Jim to then drop him off at daycare before going back to work. But on this day, as he pulled up & climbed out of the car, Tim’s teacher asked him what he was doing there since Tim had already been picked up by Amy that morning.
After Amy arrived back at the school at 8:30 am, security footage showed Tim carrying his Spiderman backpack, walking toward the front office while Amy calmly stood by, waving at him as he approached. The two then held hands & walked out the front doors. Jim was scared & highly confused by this footage; why had Amy picked him up early without letting him know, where did they go & why?
School employees told Jim that when Amy came into the office to sign Tim out, she indicated they were dealing with a family emergency. This made no sense since Jim was completely unaware of any issues & Amy hadn’t contacted him about it.
As he continued to call her over & over, she never once picked up. Trying to make sense of what was going on, Jim rushed home to find his wife’s Ford Expedition gone, but he felt a sense of relief when he noticed that her suitcase was still there. He hoped that she only wanted to clear her head & would come back home soon.
When Jim spoke with Amy’s sister, Kara, she also hadn’t heard anything & couldn’t imagine where Amy had taken Tim. Jim admitted that he & Amy had been arguing as she had just come back from a girl’s trip to the Bahamas one week earlier, something he wasn’t happy about. However, at the time, Kara wasn’t worried, believing her sister only wanted a little space to cool off.
By Thursday morning, Jim’s worry only grew when he was still unable to reach Amy, a time when he decided to report them missing to the Aurora Police. Since it had only been 24 hours & Timmothy was with his mom, who was a legal guardian, they told him to give it some time. Jim went back home & began combing through the house in search of a clue that might help him find his wife & son.
Since Amy had a history of depression, Jim checked the bathroom cabinet to see if she’d taken her prescribed medications with her, Wellbutrin & Lexapro. When he came across two full bottles that had yet to be opened, he realized that not only did she not take her medication with her, but she also hadn’t been taking them as prescribed for some time.
At the time, Jim never worried that Amy would harm their son, but he did worry for her safety since she was dealing with vertigo just prior to leaving. He questioned the safety of her driving around & worried she would get into a car accident. The morning they dropped Tim off at school together, Amy had wanted to drive him to school herself in her own car, something Jim was against.
Kara has since retraced her sister’s steps after Tim was dropped off at school that day. About twenty minutes after Jim dropped her off at work, she told her co-workers she wasn’t feeling well & walked over to Greenman Elementary to pick her son up at 8:30 am, only 45 minutes after he had been dropped off. Based on the school’s surveillance video, Amy appeared very steady on her feet & not at all wobbly as she had been due to the vertigo.
From the school, they walked back home together & drove off in her car, heading to Brookfield Zoo, a 45 minute drive. Before they arrived at the zoo, Amy’s alternator light came on so she stopped off at a repair shop near the zoo in LaGrange. The helpful mechanic drove Amy & Tim over to the zoo where they stayed while he worked on her car.
After a few hours at the zoo, they left at 3 pm to pick up her now repaired car. Rather than coming home, Amy drove them to a water park they’d gone to many times before since it was a favorite of Tim’s, KeyLime Cove in Gurnee, now a Great Wolf Lodge, about an hour’s drive north of the zoo. They spent the night there as surveillance video from the hotel depicted Amy & Tim walking hand-in-hand to their room.
On Thursday morning, they headed to another water park, this time in Wisconsin Dells, a 2 ½ hour drive northwest from KeyLime Cove & a nearly 3 hour drive from their home in Aurora. According to credit card receipts, at 11:30 am Amy stopped off at a Shopko store in Racine, Wisconsin to get children’s toys & clothes. At 2:20 pm, she stopped at a Kwik Trip gas station for gas & drinks off of Interstate 94 in Johnson Creek.
Kara believes that her sister was so focused on wanting to have fun with her son that she was only thinking from one moment to the next.
On Thursday night, she & Tim checked into the Kalahari Resort waterpark within Wisconsin Dells. When there was still no word from her by Friday, investigators began taking the case more seriously.
On Friday morning, Amy & Tim ordered room service for breakfast at 7:30 am. A couple hours later, they checked out at 10:10 am where they were once again seen on surveillance, this time leaving the hotel. As they got back on the road, they drove in the direction of Illinois & based on cell phone records, Amy pulled off near Rock Falls, Illinois, a place her family would eventually learn that she’d secretly visited before.
At this point, Amy was aware that her friends & family were highly concerned by her sudden, unexplained disappearance with Tim & the fact they were unable to reach her. While she was stopped in Rock Falls, she began calling people back just after noon on Friday, first the police, letting them know that she & Tim were just fine.
However, rather than calling Jim, Amy then called his brother, Charles, who lived in Waterloo, Iowa. Not only did he hear Tim in the background, but he was also able to speak to him. Tim mentioned that he was fine, maybe a little hungry, but he sounded happy.
As Charles tried to understand what was going on & where she was, Amy explained that she only needed a break. When he suggested that she come out to Waterloo where he lived, she asked, Don’t you trust me? I’m not going to hurt myself or Tim. When she spoke these words, Charles believed her.
After Charles told Jim that he heard from Amy & Tim, he recalls feeling a tremendous sense of relief, knowing that they were safe. Charles was unable to tell Jim when he could expect them to come home because when he asked that question, Amy said, Timmothy is mine, I’ll do with him what I want.
Kara believes that while her sister was driving from location to location, hotel to hotel, beginning on Friday, she decided that she was not going to come home. Rather than driving home, she went to Rockford, Illinois, 71 miles northwest of Aurora.
On Saturday, May 14, three days after Jim last saw or heard from his wife & son, a housekeeper from the Rockford Motel approached room 108 to clean the room. As she opened the door, she was met with a horrific, bloody sight.
Hours later, when Jim heard knocking at his front door, he found two detectives from the Aurora Police Department standing on his porch. He only assumed they were there to tell him that they finally tracked down his wife & son, but instead, they asked if they could come inside.
When the officers asked him where he had been the night before, he told them that he just had some beers, watched TV & fell asleep, waiting for his wife & son to come home. Jim felt like the floor dropped from beneath him when the officers told him they found Amy, but she was deceased & Tim was nowhere to be found. When it came time to identify his wife’s body, he drove to the morgue with his mom by his side for support, all the while worried sick over where Tim could be.
At about noon on Saturday, when the housekeeper began knocking on the door of room 108, she utilized her key to enter after no one answered. As she pushed the door, she realized that the security chain was engaged, meaning someone was still in the room.
Through the small gap, she was able to see a great deal of blood, so she immediately backed away & called the police. When officers entered the room, they found Amy Pitzen with her throat slit & initially believed they were dealing with a homicide as sharp force constitutes only 2-3% of all self-inflicted deaths in developed countries. However, because the room had no sign of forced-entry & the security chain was engaged, police quickly realized that her death was a suicide.
Based on the evidence in the room, investigators were able to establish that Amy had gotten undressed, climbed into the bathtub & began slashing at her left arm with a box cutter. Likely growing desperate & impatient, she climbed out of the tub, stood in front of the mirror in the main area of the room, slit her throat & eventually collapsed to the floor.
Amy’s sister Kara had been living in Washington state at the time & had gone to the beach that Saturday, leaving her cell phone in the car. Once back, she realized she had missed multiple calls from her mom & when she called her back, she learned the devastating news.
As investigators continued to process the motel room, they found little signs that Tim had even been in the room. Once they were able to establish Amy’s movements from Wednesday on, they found none of the toys or new clothing she’d purchased along the way. Tim’s Spiderman backpack was also gone. The only thing in the room that belonged to him was a t-shirt Amy bought for him at the zoo on Wednesday.
They found Amy’s driver’s license, Tim’s ID card & a five-sentence suicide note on the desk where Amy had even apologized to the housekeeper for the bloody mess she left behind. According to Kara, the note went on to say something to the effect of, I’m sorry, I know this will be hard on all of you, but in time, you’ll get over it & you’ll move on. I don’t feel like I’ve ever belonged in the world & I’ve felt for a long time like I belong with Timmothy, but in the end, that wasn’t even enough. I need to go & I’ve taken him somewhere & he’s with people who will love him & care for him, but you will never see him again.
When she mentioned Jim in the note, she only expressed anger toward him, calling him a loser & other derogatory words. It was clear to Jim that his wife was focused on hurting him far more than she had been hurt by taking their son away from him.
Those who loved Amy & Tim were left to wonder if she actually left him with someone or if Amy had done something to harm her son, concealing his body somewhere.
Although Kara realized that her sister struggled with depression, she hadn’t realized the extent, but admits that Amy had tried to take her life twice before. Before she met Jim, she drove her car to the railroad tracks, but at the last minute, she changed her mind & admitted herself to a hospital.
The second time was when she was dating Jim & they had gotten into an argument. After she took a bunch of sleeping pills, she fell to the bottom of a ravine at a park. According to Kara, when this happened, a fisherman found her sister & not only had she broken a bone in her back, but she was also hypothermic. Had she not been found, she would have died. Amy spent the next two weeks recovering at a hospital.
Prior to meeting & marrying Jim, Amy had three failed marriages. After she married Jim, he admitted that there was an incident when she began talking to one of her ex-husbands. He told her that she was free to make her choice, but he would be getting custody of their son. According to Kara, Amy did worry about losing custody of Tim, an idea she was unable to handle.
In the days after Amy’s death, two letters arrived in the mail, one to a friend & another to her mom, Alana Anderson. To her mother she wrote, I can’t take the chance of Jim hurting Tim because of my choices.
The FBI & the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children quickly got involved in the search for 6-year-old Tim. Amy’s blue Ford Expedition was left parked outside the motel room & there was what FBI agents described as, a concerning amount of blood, found in the backseat. When the results came back, it proved that this blood belonged to Tim.
They also recovered soil, grass & minerals from the tires, the undercarriage & the sideboards of the car that they hoped could pinpoint areas they may have gone which could potentially lead them to Tim’s whereabouts.
Investigators poured over the notes, the phone calls Amy made while she & Tim were gone, as well as the evidence left behind to determine if Tim was truly somewhere safe as Amy claimed or if something terrible happened to him. They found over-the-counter children’s medicine in the motel room that could have potentially been used to sedate him.
Amy’s cell phone was missing, but pinged off a cell tower five miles northwest of Sterling, Illinois between 12-1:30 pm on Friday, one day before her body was found, possibly the last location she & Tim had been together.
With this information, investigators began searching state parks & wooded areas in the surrounding locations from where her phone last pinged, but there was no sign of Tim. Not only had Amy turned off & gotten rid of her cell phone, but also her Illinois tollway I-Pass so her car couldn’t be tracked.
Seven hours after her phone was turned off, Amy was seen alone on surveillance at Sullivan’s Foods grocery store in Winnebago, Illinois, buying Ritz crackers & milk at about 8 pm on Friday night, not far from the motel where she was later found. Since the store is only 55 miles from Sterling, Illinois where her phone last pinged that afternoon, everyone was left to wonder what she did during that gap of time.
Police believe that whatever happened to Tim happened during this timeframe. Although the drive from Sterling to Winnebago was an easy one along Interstates 88 & 39, investigators theorize that she likely chose to drive along back roads that twist & turn through hundreds of farms, past state parks & open spaces that amount to thousands of square miles to search.
It’s very unlikely that Tim went to Winnebago with his mom. At 7:25 pm on that Friday, Amy purchased a pen, paper & envelopes at the Family Dollar & then walked next door to Sullivan’s Foods. About three hours later, she checked into the Rockford Motel alone, using her real name & address, requesting a non-smoking, single room for $40 in cash.
In the grocery store’s surveillance, she wore different clothing than what she was seen wearing in the earlier video when she was still with Tim, clothing that has never been found. It’s possible she disposed of it in order to conceal a crime. Based on the blood found in the back of her car, this was highly possible.
After Amy got back to her car in the parking lot, she sat inside for some time & Kara believes that her sister was contemplating what to write in her suicide note & the notes she later mailed from the post office just across the street.
Jim turned to the media in hopes of spreading the word about his missing son so that if another family did have Tim, they would contact him or authorities.
Authorities hired a scientist, Skip Palenik, whose work helped link Gary Ridgway, otherwise known as the Green River Killer, to his victims. Using advanced infrared microscopy, he discovered hundreds of microscopic spheres of Imron paint on the clothing of six of Ridgway’s victims around Seattle. Because this type of paint was rare & used exclusively at the Kenworth truck factory where Ridgeway worked as a paint dealer, they were linked back to him.
When Palenik visited the Washington crime lab back in 1985 to train staff members in discovering microscopic trace evidence, he offered his help in the case, but sadly, he wasn’t taken up on it. It wasn’t until seventeen years later when his phone did ring & his assistance was requested, but in the meantime, Ridgway was able to commit more murders. His murderspree went on from 1982 to as long as 2001 & after his arrest on November 30, 2001, he was convicted on 49 counts of first-degree murder, his victims all female, but he is suspected of killing as many as 90 or more women.
In Tim’s case, Skip Palenik focused on soil samples from Amy’s SUV that were found on both the inside & outside, specifically on the back passenger seat where Tim’s blood had been found. He determined that the soil had been wet & in the hours leading up to Amy’s suicide, it had been raining. Based on the mud found on the undercarriage of the car, it was clear that she’d driven off-road.
Palenik found an unusual mineral, anhydrite, & based on its perfect condition, it had been recently mined. Anhydrite can be found in gravel used by construction crews, who spray it along the side of roads that are being paved.
According to forensic psychiatrists who have studied cases of what’s known as altruistic filicide, when a parent rationalizes that killing their child is in the best interest of the child, these cases are often associated with suicide. These parents have the mindset that they don’t want to leave their child to face a cruel world alone so they murder them before taking their own life.
Sadly, time continued on, there was still no sign of Tim while the media began moving on to covering newer stories. However, in April 2019, a little more than 8 years after Tim was last seen, a 911 call was placed 342 miles away on the border of Ohio & Kentucky. A frantic 14-year-old boy told the dispatcher that he’d been kidnapped by two people & who had been holding him against his will since 2011 & he said his name was Timmothy Pitzen.
Jim recalls the phone call from his sister, who saw the coverage on the news about the young boy. The boy was found distraught by passersby who called 911, claiming that he escaped his kidnappers at a Red Roof Inn. After he indicated that he’d been trafficked & passed around, he was taken to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for a medical evaluation. He described his captors as white men who looked like body builders, one with a spider tattoo on his neck, the other with a snake tattoo on his arm.
While investigators waited for DNA results to come back, they spoke with the boy about simple facts that hadn’t been shared with the media that Tim would know if it was truly him. When police asked him about the pets he had when he shared a home with his parents, he said that they didn’t have any pets which wasn’t true. He also declined to have his fingerprints taken & when the FBI got the DNA results back, it confirmed that the boy was not Timmothy Pitzen.
The boy in question was actually Brian Rini, who was actually 23-years-old & had only just been released from prison for burglary & vandalism charges. According to his estranged brother, Jonathan, his brother had not been taking his prescribed psychiatric medications. After Brian watched a TV show about Tim, he became obsessed & decided he wanted to be him.
Rini pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft & was given a 2 year sentence until he was released to his father’s custody in May 2022.
Jim was utterly destroyed by this after holding out hope that this could have been his son.
In 2021, ten years after her sister’s death & her nephew’s disappearance, Kara decided to retrace her sister’s steps from the point when Amy took Tim out of school on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 in hopes of finding answers.
A few years after Amy’s death, a couple found her missing cell phone behind a grain storage facility off a remote road on the border of Illinois & Iowa in Pleasant Valley Township. Kara realized that this was a place that she & her sister had previously driven by.
It was somewhere between Sterling & Mount Carroll, Illinois when Amy made phone calls to family members from 12-1:30 pm on Friday, May 13, 2011, one day before her body was found. After this point, Amy’s phone went dead & she tossed it behind the grain storage building so she could no longer be tracked.
Kara believes from here, her sister drove north on Route 78 toward Dubuque, Iowa where their family often traveled when Kara & Amy were children. In the early 1990s, Amy had even lived with her grandparents in this area for a period of time. Because of this, she did know people who lived in the area & Kara believes it’s possible that her sister handed Tim over to another family & that her nephew is alive & well.
In regards to the large amount of blood in the backseat of Amy’s car, Kara said that Tim had had a nosebleed before he vanished & was prone to nosebleeds. Jim confirmed his son’s recent nosebleed & described the blood as gushing. Blood found on the boxcutter that Amy utilized to take her own life, did not contain Tim’s blood.
Like Kara, Jim also believes that his wife handed their son over to a loving person or people before she took her own life & feels in his heart that Tim is still alive. However, when investigators poured over Amy’s electronic devices, they found no arrangements of a secret adoption.
Jim last laid eyes on his son when Timmothy was a 6-year-old in kindergarten yet this October 18 will mark his 22nd birthday. If you have any information regarding his whereabouts, please contact the Aurora police at 630-256-5516.
As of December 31, 2024, there were 25,493 active missing children records in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. This number accounts for active cases at a specific point in time, rather than the total number of children that were reported missing throughout that year which amounted to 349,557.
Despite the years of extensive searches, tips & false leads, there has never been a single confirmed sighting of Timmothy Pitzen after the day he disappeared. Despite Amy’s note, which indicated he was safe & being cared for, there has been no evidence to support this. For his family left behind, the pain isn’t just the loss; it’s in the not knowing. There have been no answers, no closure, just a child frozen in time as a 6-year-old.
References:
- NBC News: How a crime lab missed evidence that could have stopped the Green River Killer
- Wikipedia: Gary Ridgway
- NBC 5 Chicago: Timmothy Pitzen case: What we know so far
- CBS News: One month later, no sign of Aurora boy whose mom committed suicide
- ScienceDirect: Atypical suicide by single incising cut to the throat without hesitation marks: Case report & review of the literature
