Who is Timmothy Pitzen, when did he disappear and has he been found?

TIMMOTHY Pitzen, who vanished in 2011, may have been found after a “bruised” teen told cops he escaped two kidnappers with “body builder-type physiques”.

Here’s what we know about the boy’s mysterious disappearance.

Who is Timmothy Pitzen and when did he disappear?

On May 11, 2011, Jim Pitzen dropped off his son, Timmothy Pitzen – then aged six – at his elementary school.

Later that day, the boy’s mum, Amy Fry-Pitzen, unexpectedly signed him out of class at his school in the Chicago-area suburb of Aurora, Illinois.

Although she claimed there was a family emergency, it later transpired that she took him on visits to local tourist attractions.

After going to the zoo and a water park, the pair spent the night of May 11 at the Kalahari Resort, another water park at Wisconsin Dells in the neighbouring state.

CCTV showed them checking out at 10am on May 12 – the last time Timmothy was seen.

Police found Amy dead in a hotel 100 miles away in Rockford, Illinois.

She left a cryptic suicide note, saying her son was fine and in the care of others who “love and will care for him”.

Bizarrely, she didn’t name them, and added: “You’ll never find him”, police in Aurora said.

A search in three states and numerous TV appeals failed to find any trace of the lad.

Cops discovered that Timmothy’s car booster seat and backpack were also gone.

What happened next?

According to WXYZ, his disappearance attracted widespread attention, and searchers looked for him across Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa – to no avail.

In 2017, ‘Crime Watch Daily’ covered the missing persons case, and Amazon’s adventure rally series ‘Fireball Run’ also drew attention to Timmothy’s disappearance.

Each rally team was assigned a missing child, handing out flyers with their information, while their photos were displayed on cars.

One of the competitors told reporters in 2017 that “Timmothy Pitzen was abducted out of a Wisconsin Dells amusement park… hasn’t been seen since.”

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children also highlighted the case, saying on a missing poster that “Timmothy may go by the nickname Tim or Timmy.”

Has he been found?

Hopes were raised on Wednesday, April 4, that Timmothy might have been found in Kentucky, almost 500 miles from where he was last seen in May 2011.

Police in Sharonville, Ohio, said that a 14-year-old boy told authorities he had “just escaped from two kidnappers”.

He described his alleged abductors as white men with body builder-type physiques.

They were in a Ford SUV with Wisconsin license plates and had been staying at a Red Roof Inn.

Witnesses said the “scared and agitated” teen with bruises on his face was seen running around for two hours before he flagged down a female motorist and begged for help.

She told a 911 dispatcher: “He walked up to my car and he went, ‘Can you help me? I just want to get home. Please help me.’

“I asked him what’s going on, and he tells me he’s been kidnapped and he’s been traded through all these people and he just wanted to go home.”

Witness Sharon Hall told CNN that she saw a boy “leaning against” one of her neighbour’s cars, and was worried he was about to commit a crime.

But, the boy said that he’d been running for two hours, his stomach hurt, he was tired, he had been “tossed around and didn’t know where he was”.

Police in Aurora have sent two detectives to the Cincinnati area to investigate the boy’s claim, alongside the FBI.

Aurora Police Sgt. Bill Rowley said the department doesn’t know who the boy is or if he is Timmothy Pitzen.

Rowley added: “We’ve probably had thousands of tips of him popping up in different areas. It could be Pitzen. It could be a hoax.”

The boy told cops that after escaping from his two “abductors” he “kept running across a bridge” from Cincinnati into Kentucky.

Sharonville Police Chief Steve Vanover said that cops are searching local motels for the alleged kidnappers.

The boy has not as yet been identified, and Aurora police said the results of DNA tests will take about 24 hours.

Timmothy’s grandma, Alana Anderson, told WISN-TV that authorities have told the family “very little”.

She added: “We just know a 14-year-old boy was found and went to the police.

“We don’t want to get our hopes up and our family’s hopes up until we know something.

“We’ve had false reports and false hopes before.”