Crime & Safety
Aurora Police Debunk Timmothy Pitzen ‘Sighting’ In YouTube Video
Police received numerous calls about a video that shows a boy singing but determined it was not Pitzen, who was last seen in 2011.
AURORA, IL — A video posted last month to YouTube prompted numerous calls to Aurora police from people saying they believed it showed Timmothy Pitzen. But detectives investigated the video and determined it was not the Aurora boy, who disappeared more than nine years ago, police said.
Pitzen was 6 years old in May 2011, when he was last seen on surveillance footage with his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, at the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells.
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Fry-Pitzen took her son out of Greenman Elementary School on Aurora’s West Side on the morning of May 11, 2011, then went to Brookfield Zoo and Key Lime Cove in Gurnee, before heading to the Kalahari Resort on May 13, as previously reported.
Fry-Pitzen was found dead May 14 in a Rockford hotel room. Police later said she had self-inflicted cuts to her wrists and neck, and a lethal amount of drugs in her system. She left behind a suicide note that said she had given her son away, adding, “You will never find him.”
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Local and federal authorities have investigated numerous tips about Pitzen’s disappearance and location over the past nine years, but there has still been no breakthrough in the case. In 2019, an Aurora police spokesperson said the department receives thousands of tips each day about Pitzen’s case.
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“We appreciate the community’s assistance and tips throughout this case,” the Aurora Police Department said Friday in a Facebook post.
A young man found in Kentucky in April 2019 claimed to be Pitzen, but an investigation by the FBI and Aurora police determined he was from Ohio — and nine years older than Pitzen would have been at the time.
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Brian Michael Rini — who was 23 when he was found wandering the streets in Newport, Kentucky — told police his name was Timmothy Pitzen. Pitzen would have been 14 in April 2019.
Rini said he was abducted when he was 6 years old and claimed to have recently escaped from an Ohio hotel room where two men were holding him captive before running across the border to Kentucky, according to media reports.
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The FBI conducted a DNA test that revealed Rini’s identity, as well as a history of portraying himself as a juvenile sex-trafficking victim. Rini was charged last year with identity theft and pleaded guilty in January, as previously reported. He was sentenced to serve two years in prison and one year on probation.
Pitzen's disappearance was featured in December 2019 on "Vanished," a Facebook Watch series.
The Aurora Police Department is encouraging anyone with information on Pitzen’s location to call its Timmothy Pitzen Tip line at 630-256-5516 or email [email protected].
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