Disappearance of Timmothy Pitzen

Timmothy Pitzen was born in Aurora, Illinois, on October 18, 2004, the only child of his parents. On Wednesday, May 11, 2011, Timmothy's father dropped him off at his kindergarten class at Greenman Elementary School in Aurora. Between 8:10 and 8:15 a.m. that day, his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, checked him out of class, citing a family emergency that did not exist. Fry-Pitzen left her car at a repair shop, whose employee drove her and Timmothy to the Brookfield Zoo; that afternoon they retrieved the vehicle and drove to the KeyLime Cove Resort in Gurnee for the night. The next day, May 12, 2011, the pair drove to the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, where security cameras recorded them checking out at 10:00 a.m. on May 13, 2011. Timmothy has not been seen since.

Between 12:00 and 1:30 p.m. on May 13, 2011, Fry-Pitzen telephoned several family members, saying she and Timmothy were safe; cell phone records placed the calls near Route 40, northwest of Sterling, Illinois, where Timmothy could be heard in the background, hungry. She did not contact Timmothy's father, who had been searching for the pair since the school told him his son had not been picked up as expected on May 11. That evening, Fry-Pitzen was recorded alone on security cameras at a Family Dollar store in Winnebago, Illinois, at 7:25 p.m., buying a pen, notepaper, and envelopes, then at a nearby Sullivan's Food store at 8:00 p.m. At 11:15 p.m., she checked into the Rockford Inn in Rockford, Illinois. Sometime that night or the next morning, she died by suicide, slashing her wrists and neck and overdosing on antihistamines. A hotel maid found her body and a note at 12:30 p.m. on May 14, 2011; in it, Fry-Pitzen apologized for the situation she had created and wrote that Timmothy would never be found but was safe with people who would care for him.

Investigators found the knife Fry-Pitzen used held only her own blood, though a concerning amount of blood in her car belonged to Timmothy — later attributed by a family member to a nosebleed Timmothy had suffered that month. Fry-Pitzen's missing cell phone was not recovered until 2013, when it turned up beside Route 78, yielding no new evidence, according to police. Timmothy's father believes his son is alive and was given into someone else's care. In November 2022, Fry-Pitzen's sister told NBC that Amy had a history of mental illness and had worried it would affect custody of Timmothy amid an expected divorce; both have said they do not believe a murder-suicide occurred.

The case later drew renewed media coverage, including a Live PD segment on August 25, 2018, featuring an age-progression photo of Timmothy at 13, and an HLN Real Life Nightmare episode, "You'll Never Find Him," on December 6, 2020. On April 3, 2019, Newport, Kentucky, residents called police after a teenager ran across a bridge over the Ohio River and wandered the streets; the shaken, distraught boy told officers he was Timmothy. The FBI's Louisville field office said the next day, via Twitter, that the boy was not Timmothy. Aurora Police spokesman Sgt. Bill Rowley said the department remained diligent and that the case remained unsolved. The boy was identified as 23-year-old Brian Michael Rini, released from Belmont Correctional Institution in Ohio weeks earlier after serving about fourteen months for burglary and vandalism in Medina County; his brother said Rini had a history of mental illness, including Asperger syndrome and bipolar disorder. Rini was sentenced to two years in prison for the hoax.