Video: Police said they had a lead in Kentucky on April 4 in regards to Timmothy Pitzen, an Illinois boy who went missing nearly eight years ago.
Federal law enforcement authorities said that the person who was found on a street corner in Newport, Kentucky, this week is not Timmothy Pitzen, who disappeared as a child in 2011 and whom the person claimed to be.
“DNA results have been returned indicating the person in question is not Timmothy Pitzen,” Timothy Beam, a supervisory special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Louisville said in a statement. “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 Pitzen is shown in an undated photo. The Illinois boy went missing in 2011 when he was 6 years old. Aurora Police Department via Associated Press
Police in Newport said the man is Brian Michael Rini, from Medina, Ohio, whom they identified in the DNA test. He is 23 years old, not 14, the age Pitzen would be, Chief Thomas Collins told the Washington Post. Collins said that Rini was in police custody as prosecutors weighed charges such as falsely reporting an incident.
Rini appears to have a criminal record. He had recently been released from prison in Ohio after more than a year-long sentence stemming from convictions for burglary and vandalism, according to state prison records.
The disclosures marked a stunning turn of events in a case that has drawn headlines across the country. The man told authorities his name was Timmothy Pitzen after a stranger found him on the street early Wednesday morning.
In May 2011, 6-year-old Timmothy was last seen leaving his elementary school in Aurora, Ill., with his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen. Three days later, she was found dead in a motel room from an apparent suicide. The boy and his Spider-Man backpack were gone. The 43-year-old mother left behind several cryptic notes about her son’s whereabouts, and questions that have haunted family members and authorities with each passing year.
As national attention fixed on the case, police continued their search. Each clue, however, only seemed to sink the disappearance into more confusion.
The Chicago Tribune reported that detectives from Aurora left for Ohio on Wednesday; the DNA test they planned to conduct was widely anticipated.
“We have no idea if this is Timmothy Pitzen,” Aurora police Sgt. Bill Rowley had told the Tribune. “We don’t know if it’s a hoax. Obviously, everyone’s hopeful, but we have to be super judicious.”
Alarm bells went off for Jim Pitzen on May 11, 2011, when he went to pick up his giddy, gregarious 6-year-old son from Greenman Elementary School in Aurora, a suburb about 40 miles west of Chicago.
“Well, he’s not here,” Timmothy’s teacher told Jim when he arrived at the school that afternoon, the father later recounted for MyStateline in 2017.
“What do you mean he’s not here?” the father replied.
“Well, he got picked up around 8:10 or 8:15 in the morning,” the teacher responded. Timmothy’s mother, Amy, had taken her son from the school for a family emergency, Jim learned.
The couple were going through a trouble spot in their relationship. Amy had struggled with depression for years, and she had survived at least one previous suicide attempt, according to “Crime Watch Daily,” an investigative national television show. When Jim’s calls kicked over to his wife’s voicemail, he tried to put the situation in the best light.
“I’m like, ‘Okay, she’s upset with me for some reason, she needs some time to calm down,’” Jim told “Crime Watch Daily.” “I figured everything would be fine and we’d be one big happy family again.”
When Amy didn’t make contact with her husband the next day, Jim called police.
As “Crime Watch Daily” reported, security footage recovered by police would lay out Amy and Timmothy’s wandering movements over the next days in snapshots: footage of the mother leading her son out of school by his hand on the day they disappeared; footage of the two at the nearby Brookfield Zoo, then 40 miles north at the KeyLime Cove resort in Gurnee, Ill.; footage of Amy and Timmothy 160 miles northwest checking into a Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells, Wis.; footage of Amy 120 miles south in Rockford, Ill., walking into a grocery store — alone.
On May 14, Amy was discovered dead in her room at a Rockford motel. She had slashed her wrists and also swallowed a fatal amount of antihistamines. Timmothy was gone.
Boy Found in Kentucky NOT Timmothy Pitzen.
As details emerge, the search for #TimmothyPitzen continues.
For eight long years, Timmothy’s family has never given up hope that he will be found. Here at @MissingKids we will keep working to make sure this happens. #Hope💛 pic.twitter.com/OMQ2t3cJc8
— National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (@NCMEC) April 4, 2019
Amy left behind suicide notes: one in the room where she died, two others mailed to family and a friend. The notes said she had given her son away and he would never be found, CBS Chicago reported.
“I’ve taken him somewhere safe,” a portion of one of the notes read, according to “Crime Watch Daily.” “He will be well cared for and he says that he loves you. Please know that there is nothing you could have said or done that would have changed my mind.”
Amy’s cellphone was also missing.
In the early days of the investigation, authorities learned that Amy had taken two trips to the area where she later killed herself. Police said the excursions may have indicated she had planned her son’s disappearance in advance.
An inspection of her car also revealed the vehicle had recently been on unpaved roads. Searches, however, turned up nothing.
In 2013, Amy’s phone was discovered on the side of a northern Illinois road. But data from the device did not point in any new directions.
“I always wonder what she told Timmothy,” Jim told People in 2015. “Why hasn’t he tried to call? We taught him how to dial 911. ‘This is your number, this is your mom’s number, you know where you live, your address,’ all the stuff you do.”
The father continued: “He’s not with his mom. He’s not with his dad. Who are these people he’s with? And how do they know him?”
Jim could not be reached for comment by The Post on Thursday.
According to a police report released Wednesday by authorities in Sharonville, Ohio, one of the departments that helped search for alleged kidnappers, the 14-year-old said he had been held by two men for seven years.
He described the men as white, with “body-builder type” physiques, according to the report. One man was described as having black curly hair, a Mountain Dew T-shirt and a spider-web tattoo across his neck. The second man is short, with a snake tattoo on his arm, the report said.
The 14-year-old also told authorities he had been held captive by the men in a Red Roof Inn before escaping on foot. He told police the men were driving a white Ford SUV with Wisconsin plates.
According to WCPO, authorities have searched multiple locations of the motel chain in the Cincinnati and northern Kentucky region. So far, they have yet to locate men matching the teen’s description.
As authorities investigated the teen’s claims, Timmothy’s grandmother told the Associated Press that she was trying not “to panic or be overly excited.”
Over the years, Anderson said, the family has endured multiple false alarms about his return.
“There have been so many tips and sightings and what not,” she said.
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