Timmothy Pitzen would be 21 years old — perhaps finishing up college or already starting a career and carving out a life of his own.
Instead, he remains a tragic headline and the cherub-faced center of one of the most haunting mysteries to ever come out of the Fox Valley.
After the 6-year-old kindergartener at Greenman Elementary School in Aurora was picked up by his mother the morning of May 11, 2011, to go on a trip filled with the zoo and water parks, he vanished. Three days later Amy Fry-Pitzen was found dead by suicide in a Rockford motel room, leaving behind a note that offered little comfort and even less clarity: Her only child was safe and with people who love him, she wrote, but would never be found.
Despite 15 years of extensive searches, tips and false leads, that message remains tragically prophetic. There have been no confirmed sightings of Timmothy, which has meant a lifetime of heartache for his family and continued frustration for those who dedicated so much time and energy into finding the little boy.
“Timmothy’s case has remained a part of this community. His family has lived with many unanswered questions and that is not something we lose sight of,” said Aurora Police Chief Matt Thomas. “As many of us at the APD have children of our own, we can only imagine the impact and uncertainty a tragedy like this can bring to a family.”
It would be hard, indeed, to watch your only child grow into a handsome young man through age progression photos released by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
For his father Jim Pitzen, Timmothy has “always been remembered” as the little boy who “pushed the boundaries and always had fun riding his bike or riding on his go-kart or just swinging on a swing at the playground.
“I hope he is a well-mannered young man now and is doing well in his life,” said Pitzen in a recent email from his home in Clinton, Iowa.
The entire Pitzen family, he told me, believes “Tim is alive and doing well” and that “he will find one of us one day.”
It’s an unwavering hope stemming from the belief that, despite a troubled marriage and Amy’s mental health issues that included several previous suicide attempts, under no circumstances would she harm the child she adored.
In a conversation we had a few years ago, paternal grandmother Linda Pitzen seemed convinced her grandson was placed with a Mormon family because his mother wanted him to be raised in the religion Amy had recently converted to.
“I am waiting to be reunited with my son and make new memories with him,” wrote Jim Pitzen, “like going fishing and just talking (about) how his day has been.”
That sort of resolve has helped keep Timmothy’s case in the public eye. As Chief Thomas noted, the little boy’s disappearance has “drawn attention well beyond Aurora,” and continues to “resonate with people” who have learned about this story over the years.
Indeed. As interest in the mystery grew, so did the number of blogs, podcasts, true crime and investigative programs that focused on the case. And it turned into national breaking news in 2019 when a Kentucky man claimed to be Timmothy, pulling the Aurora Police Department back into the spotlight, along with the FBI, until DNA testing exposed him as a cruel fraudster.
Timmothy’s fate also continues to fascinate communities of web sleuths and armchair detectives, including a Joliet woman I interviewed five years ago who was making regular trips to a wooded area in Whiteside County because she was convinced from her research the boy’s body had been placed there by his mother.
“This case lives in a difficult and complicated limbo,” said National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Director of Communications Angeline Hartmann in a blog released Thursday for the 15th anniversary of Timmothy’s disappearance. “While many fear the worst, we can’t ignore the very real possibility that Timmothy is still out there.”
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Hartmann herself, who joined the center a couple years after the Aurora child’s disappearance, has remained especially close to the Pitzen case, which was used to launch the organization’s original video content.
Hartmann, who devoted multiple episodes of her “Inside Crime” podcast to this case, also finds it hard to believe 15 years have come and gone. That cherub-faced photo on the center’s website now shares space with a version of what Timmothy would look like at 19, an image that will be updated every five years, she noted, now that he would be an adult.
It’s not surprising these anniversaries are “always a hard time to get through” for his father, who says he remains in contact with the APD.
“The pain that was created that day is still fresh,” he wrote in the email, and will never be “fully healed until Timmothy has been reunited with his family.”
If you have any information that could possibly help bring closure to this father, call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 800-843-5678 or the Aurora Police Department at 630-256-5516.
“We remain committed to reviewing information, following up on leads and keeping this investigation moving forward,” said Thomas. “That work will continue until answers are found.”