The Latest: False ID Is ‘Like Reliving The Day,’ Family Of Timmothy Pitzen Says
CINCINNATI (AP) — The Latest on efforts to confirm the identity of a person who told police he is Timmothy Pitzen, an Illinois boy who has been missing since 2011 (all times local):
6:05 p.m.
The family of an Illinois boy missing since 2011 says they are heartbroken after police determined that a person claiming to be Timmothy Pitzen apparently carried out a hoax.
Kara Jacobs told reporters Thursday that learning her nephew had not been found is “like reliving the day” he disappeared over again. Anderson also said his father, James Pitzen, “is devastated once again.”
A person claiming to be 14 years old also told police in Kentucky Wednesday that he had just escaped from kidnappers in the Cincinnati area after being held captive for seven years. The FBI said Thursday that DNA testing ruled him out as being Timmothy who was removed at age 6 by his mother from his Aurora school.
Amy Fry-Pitzen later was found dead at a hotel in Illinois in a suicide. She left a note that said Timmothy was with others who would love and care for him.
Aurora police Sgt. Bill Rowley called the person’s claim “a disappointment” and that this was another time the family had their “hope raised.”
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5:55 p.m.
Authorities say the person who claimed to be a long-missing Illinois boy is actually a 23-year-old Ohio man.
Newport, Kentucky, police chief Tom Collins told ABC News that the person is Brian Rini of Medina in northeast Ohio.
State prison records show a man by that name was released from a state prison on March 7, after serving time for burglary and vandalism charges.
A man by that name also pleaded guilty to burglary charges in January 2018 and passing bad checks in December 2015, according to Medina County Court records. The same man had multiple citations in Medina Municipal Court, including driving without a valid license, disorderly conduct and theft.
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4:45 p.m.
Authorities have rejected a teenager’s claim that he is an Illinois boy who disappeared in 2011 at age 6.
The FBI says DNA testing ruled out the teenager as being Timmothy Pitzen, missing from Aurora, Illinois. Police say the story of the teenager found wandering streets in Newport, Kentucky, on Wednesday didn’t check out.
The teenager told police that he was Timmothy and that he had escaped two kidnappers.
Authorities didn’t immediately release the teenager’s true identity or other information.
Timmothy Pitzen disappeared around the time his mother killed herself after leaving a note that her 6-year-old son was fine but that no one would ever find him.
Police and the boy’s family say there have been other false sightings over the years.
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2:25 p.m.
The former principal at Timmothy Pitzen’s elementary school says his thoughts have been with the boy’s family since a teenager told police in Kentucky he was Timmothy, who disappeared in 2011.
As authorities tried Thursday to confirm the teen’s identity, Nick Baughman said he hopes the results provide the Pitzen family with “peace and closure and they would heal.” The teen was found Wednesday in Newport, near Cincinnati.
Baughman now is an administrator at another Illinois school district. He was Greenman Elementary principal in Aurora, Illinois, when Amy Fry-Pitzen removed her 6-year-old son early from school.
Fry-Pitzen later was found dead at a hotel in Illinois in a suicide. She left a note that said Timmothy was with others who would love and care for him.
Baughman says “it was just one of those moments where you maintain hope and be supportive and say a lot of prayers.”
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12 p.m.
Police in the Illinois hometown of a boy missing since 2011 say they can’t yet confirm that he is in fact a teenager found wandering in Kentucky.
The Aurora police department says they are assisting an FBI investigation and hope to have something more definitive later Thursday.
Authorities are trying to confirm the identity of a 14-year-old boy who told police in Newport, Kentucky, that he escaped two kidnappers in the Cincinnati area and ran across a bridge. He said his name is Timmothy Pitzen.
In 2011, Timmothy Pitzen’s mother killed herself, leaving a note saying her son was fine but that no one would ever find him. Timmothy was 6 years old.
Aurora police sent two detectives to check out the teenager’s story. Timmothy’s grandmother and an aunt said that police were using DNA testing.
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10:50 a.m.
The grandmother of an Illinois boy missing since 2011 says she’s trying not to get her hopes up after hearing that he might be alive.
Speaking from her home in northern Illinois, Alana Anderson says “there have been so many tips and sightings and what not and you try not to panic or be overly excited.”
Authorities are trying to confirm the identity of a 14-year-old boy who told police in Newport, Kentucky, that he escaped two kidnappers in the Cincinnati area and ran across a bridge. He said his name is Timmothy Pitzen.
In 2011, then-6-year-old Timmothy Pitzen’s mother killed herself, leaving a note saying her son was fine but that no one would ever find him.
Anderson says her daughter was having problems with her fourth marriage and had battled depression for years.
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8:30 a.m.
Authorities are trying to confirm the identity of a teenager who told police he is an Illinois boy missing since 2011.
A 14-year-old boy told police in Newport, Kentucky, on Wednesday that he escaped two kidnappers in the Cincinnati area and ran across a bridge. He said his name was Timmothy Pitzen.
In 2011, then-6-year-old Timmothy Pitzen’s mother picked him up at school in Illinois, took him to the zoo and a water park, and later killed herself at a hotel, leaving a note saying her son was fine but that no one would ever find him.
Police from Aurora, Illinois, sent two detectives to the Cincinnati area, where the FBI and local police are investigating. The boy was taken to a hospital, but no information was released.