My nephew disappeared into skinny air 14 years in the past. Tim in the event you’re studying this, please attempt to bear in mind

‘You will never find him.’

Those were the ominous parting words of Timmothy Pitzen’s mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, before she took her own life in a Rockford, Illinois motel room, with razor blade cuts to her wrists and an overdose of allergy medication.

Amy’s self-inflicted demise came at the culmination of a three-day road trip with her six-year-old son Timmothy, whom she’d taken out of elementary school early on May 11, 2011, to visit zoos and waterparks all over the state without telling the boy’s father.

There was no sign of Timmothy in Amy’s room; his beloved Spiderman backpack and the handful of belongings Amy had purchased for him on the road were nowhere in sight.

In her suicide note, Amy cryptically shared she’d given the boy away to someone who loves him and who would take care of him, but withheld their identity.

And true to her sinister promise, almost 14 years later, Timmothy has still not been found.

His devastated relatives cling to the hope that he’s alive and they’ll one day find him, united in their belief that Amy would’ve never her son.

But leads in the case remain scarce. Without any answers, his family is left with only theories as to where Amy may have taken him.

‘It’s kind of unfathomable that you can just go missing and nobody ever sees you again,’ Timmothy’s aunt, Jen West, told DailyMail.com.

‘I’ve never allowed myself to believe that we’re never going to find him, even though we may not.

‘I believe he’s okay and out there living somewhere. He probably doesn’t even know who he really is.

‘But he’s an adult now and I’ve always thought that maybe something would happen, maybe a memory would pop up and start a chain reaction in his mind to help him realize […] and I still think that’s the most likely way we’ll get him back.’

Jim Pitzen last saw his son Timmothy on the morning school run on May 11, 2011, when he dropped him off at Greenman Elementary, in Aurora, at 7.45am.

He told the always energetic Timmothy – or ‘Tim’ – that he loved him, and to be good, and watched as the boy ran towards his kindergarten teacher, swinging his Spiderman backpack from side to side.

Around 45 minutes later, Amy arrived at the school. She told staff there had been a family emergency and she needed to urgently sign her son out of school for the day.

Surveillance footage captured Amy and Tim walking out of Greenman hand-in-hand at 8.30am.

Jim was only made aware Tim had left school when he arrived to collect him at the end of the day.

He also hadn’t been informed of any ongoing family emergency.

A wave of panic hit Jim almost immediately.

He and Amy had been enduring a difficult spell in their marriage of late. Amy had recently reconnected with one of her ex-husbands, and Jim threatened to divorce her and take full custody of the boy if her behavior continued.

Frantically, Jim called and texted Amy’s phone but received no response.

He checked the house and Amy’s work, but the pair were nowhere to be found.

While Jim was suspended in a state of panic, Amy and Tim were enjoying a fun-filled, carefree day out at Brookfield Zoo, roughly 30 miles east of Aurora.

Later that day, the mother and son headed northbound for an hour to Key Lime Resort, a hotel and waterpark in Gurnee.

Amy continued to stonewall a flurry of calls from Jim and other family members who were desperately seeking answers regarding her whereabouts.

The following morning, on May 12, Amy took Timmothy to the Wisconsin Dells.

They stopped to buy clothes, toys, gas, and a small arts and crafts kit along the way before checking in to Kalahari Resort.

Back home in Aurora, Jim called the police to report his son missing, having not heard from Amy in almost 24 hours.

Amy finally made contact on May 13 but she didn’t call Jim. Instead, she called his brother Chuck, assuring him Tim was fine.

‘Tim is my son, I can do what I want,’ Amy told him. ‘Don’t you trust me? I’m not going to hurt myself. I’m not going to hurt Tim.’

She also called her mom and told her ‘everything is fine,’ she just wanted to spend some quality time with her son.

Amy promised she’d come home in a day or two.

But, in reality, she had other plans. 

The last known images of Tim and his mom together would be caught on the morning of May 13 as they checked out of Kalahari Resort around 10am.

Tim is seen in the footage holding his mom’s hand as they wait in line. He appears to be happy and doesn’t seem to be in any kind of distress.

He is still wearing the same Spiderman backpack he’d worn to school two days before.

Amy and Tim’s movements from that moment continue to puzzle investigators more than a decade later.

Data from Amy’s cellphone showed she drove for 170 miles along the Rock River towards Sterling, a small rural town around 80 miles west of Aurora, before switching her phone off for good.

Amy had no known connections to Sterling.

But her I-Pass records would later reveal she’d made two trips to the town in the months prior: once in February and again in March.

Investigators believe Amy may have been scouting out a discreet location to hand Tim over to someone else or perhaps be looking for a remote spot to bury a body.

No evidence has emerged to substantiate either theory.

Where Amy spent the next several hours is still unknown.

She eventually surfaced at a supermarket in Winnebago at 8pm, just outside of Rockford.

Inside the store, she purchased a pen, paper and envelopes, items that would later be used to craft her cryptic suicide note.

At 11.15pm she checked into the Rockford Inn alone.

Her body was found the following morning by housekeeping staff.

Amy had suffered self-inflicted cuts on her neck and wrists and had consumed a lethal dose of antihistamines. She was 42.

In the days that followed, two letters from Amy arrived in the mail to her mom and a friend.

In those letters, Amy expressed her sorrow, claiming that she didn’t feel as though she ‘ever belonged in the world.’

‘I felt for a long time that I belonged with Timmothy but in the end, that wasn’t even enough, and I need to go,’ she wrote.

Today, her tombstone is inscribed with a two-word tribute: Loving mother.

It’s that description, and the words in Amy’s parting note, that gives Tim’s family hope he’s still alive.

‘It’s the not knowing that’s so hard; not knowing if he’s alive or dead, but I still can’t believe that Amy killed him because I don’t think she did,’ said Tim’s grandmother, Linda Pitzen, speaking last year.

‘She wouldn’t have done that. He was everything to her.

‘I believe he’s out there somewhere, and he’s at the age now, depending on the situation, where he might start questioning things.’

Between Amy’s cell phone data and the last footage of her and Tim together, investigators had little else to work with in their hunt to find the boy.

There are thousands of miles of open land between the motel where Amy killed herself and the furthest location to which she was known to have traveled.

Quickly, Tim’s trail went cold.

One potentially crucial piece of evidence was collected from underneath Amy’s SUV: pieces of long weeds, tall grass, and dirt that was lodged beneath the rear bumper.

Testing the materials, forensic investigators were able to determine that Amy had stopped somewhere on a wide gravel shoulder or road either next to or close to an asphalt secondary road that had been treated with glass road marking beats.

They also determined that Amy’s car had backed onto a grass meadow or field that had very few surrounding trees. Birch and oak trees were in the general area but not near to where the car stopped.

Queen Anne’s lace and black mustard plants were also believed to be growing nearby, and scientists say it’s likely there was a pond, stream, or small creek in the area.

Their findings signaled that Amy had stopped somewhere in Northwest Illinois but a specific location has never been determined.

Traces of Timmothy’s blood were found in Amy’s car but his family believes those droplets were caused by a nosebleed he’d suffered not long before.

The evidence in the case signals that Amy had been planning Tim’s disappearance for some time.

But a forensic examination of her computers, phones, and financial records found no evidence of a secret adoption.

Before marrying Jim, Amy had two previous suicide attempts and three failed marriages.

Her family believes she plotted Tim’s disappearance after Jim threatened divorce, believing her history of mental illness would prevent her from getting custody of her son.

She had also converted to Mormonism before disappearing with Tim.

Both Jen West and Linda Pitzen believe Amy’s religious beliefs may hold a clue as to what happened to the boy.

They believe Tim was handed over to a family within the church and may possibly be being held in a remote Mormon commune with limited access to the outside world.

Jen believes Tim was first taken to Texas and now possibly resides within one of the numerous Mormon communities south of the border in Mexico, which would account for the lack of credible sightings of Tim over the years.

‘Amy was the only Mormon in her family and our family, and I think she wanted Tim to be raised within the church,’ said Jen.

‘It’s the only thing I can think of that is plausible, where else can you go where nobody recognizes you and you can stay hidden?

‘We think he was told something happened to his parents and ‘you’re going to live with us now’, something along those lines.

‘I think he’s in Mexico, within one of these communities that protects their own.

‘I don’t have proof, of course but it’s just a gut feeling.’

There have been a handful of reported sightings of Tim over the last decade but none have provided concrete leads.

The first promising tip came in December 2011 when a boy matching Tim’s description was sighted at a Denny’s in North Aurora.

Police tracked down the car the boy was seen in but the child wasn’t Tim.

A month earlier, someone also filed a report claiming to have seen Timmothy in Massachusetts – but again the lead was a dead-end.

The most promising tip came in 2014 when a woman in Rockton, Illinois, called police to report a boy resembling Tim had appeared at her garage sale.

She made the connection after the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children released an age-progression image showing what Timmothy would have looked like at the age of 9.

The boy at the center of the tip was never found.

Jen shared there was another promising sighting of Tim at a local fast-food restaurant when he would’ve been either 9 or 10.

Someone was sitting next to a table of children and believed they had spotted Tim among the group.

However, the tipster waited two days before alerting authorities and by then the lead was worthless.

Jen said that incident is a cautionary tale the public should heed.

‘If you think you see somebody who is missing, you need to say something when you see them and not think about it later,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to be confrontational or approach anyone, just call the police and report it because time is of the essence.

‘We’ll now never know if that little boy was Tim. And it’s almost been 14 years without him now.’

In 2019, the family fell victim to a cruel hoax when a mentally-disturbed individial came forward claiming to be Timmothy, telling police he’d just escaped from a motel where his sexually abusive captors had been holding him prisoner.

The individual, Brian Rini, was soon revealed to be lying but the false hope the hoax provided Tim’s loved ones, however fleetingly, totally ‘destroyed’ them, Jen said.

The Aurora police department said its officers remain committed to solving the case.

Last year the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released a new age progression photo of Tim in the hope of generating new leads.

If he is still alive, Tim would be 20 years old.

Above all, Jen said she hopes her nephew is somewhere where he is happy, and safe, and loved.

Her confidence that Tim is alive far outweighs her confidence he will be found.

‘He’s fully grown now and he can do what he wants, if he does one day realize who he is,’ shared Jen.

‘We only know six-year-old Tim and not 20-year-old Tim. There would be so many things to adjust to and catch up on, which would be just wonderful.

‘I hope he can come back to us, so we can all be a big happy family again.’

Jen shared that the toll of losing his son continues to weigh heavily on Jim, who only speaks to the media sparingly to avoid reopening old emotional wounds.

Jim released a message of hope, addressed to Tim, on the anniversary of his disappearance last year.

‘Dear Timmothy, the years apart have been hard, I am so looking forward for us to be reunited,’ he wrote.

‘There is so much of your young life I have not been able to be a part of while you have been missing. The future is bright, and I look forward to spending time with you, and getting to know my son again.

‘Till I see you again. Love, Dad.’

Jen said it feels as though both a lifetime and no time at all has passed since her family last saw Tim.

The trauma of losing her nephew never leaves, she said, adding: ‘The grief doesn’t get smaller, the vessel just gets bigger.’

‘But hopefully this year is the year we get him back again.’

If you have any information about the disappearance of Timmothy Pitzen, please contact the Aurora Police Department at 630-256-5516.