Crime Junkie - MISSING: Timmothy Pitzen

Episode Date: April 15, 2019

On April 3, 2019 someone claiming Timmothy Pitzen approached a stranger in KY and told them he had escaped abductors. The news went wild with this information as the public waited for DNA results to come in. We learned that the man was not Timmothy but it reignited one of the most mysterious disappearance cases in IL history. On this episode of Crime Junkie, we will tell you about the day Timmothy left school with his mom in 2011 and the strange circumstances surrounding their whereabouts after. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-timmothy-pitzen/    

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And you guys, if you were following us on any social media a couple of weeks ago, I think we had one of the craziest true crime days ever. Yeah, it was like the second or third of April, right? Yeah, it was... Like right after April Fool's Day. Yeah, and so that's what it felt like the whole time, like someone was playing a joke on us

because it was truly a bizarre day for true crime stories. I woke up to breaking news that there was a development in the Mora Murray case, which for brand new listeners, go back and listen to our two-parter on missing Mora Murray. You'll get how crazy this is, like what happened. But FBI and state police were searching a home on Wild Aminoosek Road, which was the same road that she went missing on. And over the last few months, there's been like a ton of speculation about this house. And Fred, Mora's dad, always heard rumors about this house,

would try and search it repeatedly, but the owners would never let him in. And then finally, the house ended up getting sold to new people who let him in, let civilian searchers come in. And apparently, this was a couple of months ago, three separate civilian searchers with cadaver dogs hit on the same spot in a basement. Like every time, boom, boom, boom. So they end up bringing in ground penetrating radar. And there's an anomaly in the floor right where these dogs hit.

So the family and other people who are really invested in this case wanted police to go dig up this basement floor. But at first, police were like, no. So it kind of died off for a couple of months, then boom, out of nowhere. The state police and FBI are at this house and we see like them carrying in jackhammers. And Fred says something to the effect of like, listen, they're going to find a body there and I think it's Mora's. So I don't know about you, but I was holding my breath all day.

I was at an airport flying and like freaking out because I wouldn't have access to talk to you about this as the press conference was happening. Yeah, and it blew my mind that like the thought of her actually being there so close to where she actually went missing from. I mean, yeah, it would have completely explained how she went missing so quickly. Yeah, but at the same time, it made me rethink everything I thought about the case because I've always thought there was like a missing person in this puzzle. Someone who was with her or someone she was going to meet

and her being like in this house a few feet away didn't really fit into that. But then they did a press conference in the afternoon and police announced that the only thing they found in the basement was like some piping or like a pottery. I think they said pottery that was under the basement floor and there was no body of any kind, not Mora's and no one else's. And the press kept asking like why did you search them? Like why now? Why did you do this?

And the police couldn't say it, but I feel like they danced around it a little and I kind of wanted to answer for them. Like if I were them, I'd be like people aren't trusting us to do our jobs. They wouldn't leave us alone about it. Like we've said for years that that house had nothing to do with it. We've already investigated it. We're doing this to get them to shut up. Yeah, like that kind of the end of the day. Like we're finally we're just going to do it.

If you guys won't leave us alone about it, like now we did it. Will you please just like let us do our jobs? We might actually know. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a full roller coaster of emotions. And then but then yes, the day was not over. Then all of a sudden out of a small town in Kentucky, a teenage boy approached some people in a parking lot. He looked disheveled.

He had bruises on his chin. And when people asked him who he was or if he needed help, he said his name was Timothy Pitzen, a boy who was abducted by his own mother from Illinois back in 2011. And this boy said he had been kept in hiding by strange men who were keeping him captive, but he had escaped. Everyone on the internet was losing their minds because the story of Timothy Pitzen's disappearance is a very bizarre one.

One that is unexplained and has been debated fiercely in the corners of the internet for years. So I decided I should tell our crime junkies that story today. So you can appreciate what a big deal it was to hear that he might have been found. And then at the end, I'll tell you the outcome of the most recent breaking news. On May 11th, 2011, James Pitzen, who goes by Jim, dropped off his six-year-old son Timothy at school in their home of Aurora, Illinois. It was like any other day for Jim. Nothing felt off.

There was nothing in the back of his mind that made him worry about his son during the day. And the worry wouldn't come until the afternoon when he went to pick up Timothy from school and the office said, well, he's not here. And Jim's like, what do you mean he's not here? They tell Jim that less than an hour after he dropped off Timothy for school, Jim's wife, Amy, had come to the school to retrieve Timothy. She told the office there that there had been a family emergency and he had to leave with her. She didn't say what kind of emergency and the office didn't dare to ask.

This was his mother, so she signed him out. They leave together both Timothy and Amy showing no signs of distress. Jim at this point had no idea what's going on. There was no family emergency. What was Amy talking about? And did she know something he didn't? Or maybe she was just wanting to play hooky with her son, but it's weird that she hadn't mentioned anything to him about it.

Not even like, hey, don't bother picking him up. I've got him. Nothing. No. So Jim goes home to see if they might be there. And they're not. He tries calling Amy over and over, but keeps getting sent to voicemail. He checks Amy's work to find that she hasn't been there either. So Jim keeps leaving messages. Amy, please just call me. Let me know that you're okay. When he doesn't hear from Amy, he tries reaching out to her mom and dad.

Other family members and friends, but call after call. He learns that she wasn't with any of them and none of them had heard from her. And no one had known about her plan to take Timothy out of school or where they might be going. Jim begins to assume, like most people would, I think that Amy's mad at him. That's why she was picking him up. And you see their relationship wasn't all roses. It had been pretty rocky recently. And there was even talk of divorce.

Jim wasn't abusive to Amy or Timothy. It was nothing like that where Amy would need to like run away for their safety, but they would fight a lot. Jim was Amy's fourth husband and he suspected that she was still in love with one of her exes. Sometime before this day on May 11th, Jim had even caught her messaging her ex-husband and he made her choose him or me. Amy chose Jim. She had a family together and she wanted to make it work, but making it work seemed harder and harder every single day. So Jim decided to give her the night away, a decision he would later come to regret. The next morning, when Amy and Timothy still weren't home, Jim decides he needs to notify police.

Police filed a report and started looking for Amy and Timothy, but just a day later, it seems like maybe they didn't need to. On May 13th, Jim gets word from Amy's family. She's called them. She'd called her brother-in-law and her mother to tell them that everything was totally fine. They weren't in danger. She just needed some time away and she'd be back in a day or two. Timothy could actually be heard in the background at one point making a comment about being hungry, but like that's me every five minutes.

The family said he sounded totally fine. Maybe typical little kids. Yeah, maybe they really just did need to unplug. It still seems kind of like a weird way to just get away. I can't imagine picking up one of my kids and just being like, we're going to go away for a little bit and just not tell anybody. Yeah, and not answer Justin's calls. Right.

He'd be freaking out too. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so I think it's super weird as well, but I don't have a ton of background on Amy prior to this to know how normal or abnormal this was for her. Some people are just like way more spontaneous than others, I think. Yeah, I was even going to say there are people in my extended family that this wouldn't be that off course for them, but for me and a lot of people that I know and I'm close to, it'd be really, really off the beaten path for us to do this.

Yeah, so it would be weird for me too, but clearly this didn't raise any red flags for her family. Again, her husband is willing to give her the night, her family when they heard from her was like, okay, they just need some time away. So this must have seemed pretty normal for them. There was something though that she said at the time that wasn't cause for concern, but looking back on it might have given some insight to her state of mind and what she was about to do. When talking to her brother-in-law, she made a comment. She said, Timothy belongs to me.

What does that even mean? Well, her brother-in-law didn't know, but when her husband heard about this later, he thought maybe he did know what it was about. When they had had that fight about her ex-husband, Jim had made a comment. He was basically like, you know, you have to choose, but like go ahead and leave. See what happens. I'm going to get custody of Timothy. I'm the stable one.

I'm the one with a job and you won't see him anymore. So maybe she was feeling kind of threatened. I don't know how long ago the fight was, but clearly this is like something, that's kind of a big threat so I can see it like festering in her mind. Yeah, definitely. But Jim wouldn't know how threatened that she actually felt for another day. Through the 13th and most of the 14th, the family remained ignorantly blissful about Amy's true intentions.

That is, until May 14th, when Jim would get a knock on his door that would change his life forever. Police are at Jim's door and they have some awful news. They have found Amy in Rockford, Illinois. Mades at the Rockford Inn had come to clean her room that afternoon and found her deceased. She had died by a parent's suicide. Amy had used a razor blade knife to cut both her wrists and her own throat after ingesting a lethal dose of antihistamines. Jim can barely speak.

This is so hard to believe. People just talked to her yesterday. Why would she go out to Rockford to take her own life? But more importantly, one thought kept coming to the top of his mind. Do you have Timothy? Is he okay? No. Cop said that Timothy wasn't in the room with her. I'm somehow relieved that he wasn't there to see that.

I mean, truly, it was a brutal way to go, but they had no idea where he was. Not that he just wasn't in the room. He was missing. There was no sign of him in the hotel room, no sign of him in the car. And when I say no sign of him, not just him. Like, no clothes, no toothbrush, no backpack that he had when he left school. None of his stuff? It was like he vanished into thin air.

And this is so confusing for Jim. Like, getting hit with everything all at once. He's realizing his wife essentially abducted their son. Now she's deceased. Their son is missing. So police are trying to calm him down and they say it's their number one priority to find Timothy. And they're going to do everything they can to track Amy's movements from the time that she picked him up until she was found. And hopefully that's going to lead them to Tim.

But when they start getting her records, like her cell phone, banking info, toll passes, and they start looking at surveillance footage from the places she went with Timothy, things seem to make even less sense. Investigators are able to tell that after Amy picked up Timothy from school, she took her car to a repair shop and I don't know what was being done if it was like something getting fixed or just an oil change or whatever. But whatever she was preparing for, it seemed like she was preparing her vehicle to do some serious mileage in the upcoming days.

While her car was being repaired, she took Timothy to a local zoo. Once they get back to her car, the two drive up north to Keyline Resort in Gurney, Illinois. They stay the night there and then hit the road the next morning. And they can be seen on surveillance footage. So we know Timothy's with her, they both look just fine. So everything seems normal. Timothy, Amy, they all seem happy. Amy doesn't seem like manic or under any kind of distress.

So no one really knows what's going on as they're like finding these videos. After they leave Gurney, Illinois, they drive even farther up north into Wisconsin about 200 miles away from their home. There's this water park resort there where they check into and Timothy again can be seen on camera with Amy. Everyone looking totally happy, totally fine. And Brad, I actually want you to take a look at this surveillance footage. I put it on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com, if anyone wants to see it.

There's like a couple of places where they get spotted on camera every single time. Again, seems totally fine. Timothy seems happy, almost like a little mini vacation. I mean, yeah, they're just walking through to an elevator. He's kind of looking around at one point in time. They're like a cash register and he kind of starts to stray is wandering around. She's constantly has her eye on him, making sure that he's not going too far. Yeah.

So that's them like checking into the next motel. Yeah. I mean, it's it looks how I am with my 11 year old, honestly. Yeah. So on May 13th is when they leave the resort and they drive to Sterling Rock Falls. This is like four hours south of where they were. So they went north and then back south. Like their, their trail doesn't really make sense,

but maybe they're just like hitting some spots they wanted to. Now we know she was there because when police look up the cell phone records, those calls that she made to her family saying that everything was fine and that they would be home in a couple of days were made from cell towers in that area. We also know, based on her credit card transactions, that she went into a dollar store and bought some stationary. There wasn't any footage from the store that I could find. So I don't know if Timothy was with her and I haven't seen like whether he was

or not reported anywhere. So he may or may not be. I'm not sure. I mean, wouldn't he have been with her everywhere else? It's pretty safe to assume that he would be with her, right? Well, yes, except when they look at her next transaction, it's from a grocery store and when they pull that video of her walking in, she's alone.

There's no Timothy. Oh my God, really? Yeah. So we aren't a hundred percent sure where Timothy is. Is he in the car? Is he no longer with her? If so, since when? So after buying this food, this is around like eight o'clock that she bought this on the 13th.

Amy then drives to Rockford, Illinois and checks in at the Rockford Inn where she would be found the next day. She checks in at about 11 p.m. Was Timothy seen at all at the Rockford Inn? No. The person who checked her in said they never saw any little boy with her. And from all the other hotels and resorts where we have video, we see that he was always by her side.

So I have to believe that he was never there, which probably means when she went into that grocery store, he wasn't either. But like you never know, she checked into the hotel at 11 p.m. So there are hours between like when she was at the store to when she checked in where she could have done something with him. But what that something is, is what makes this case so crazy. Because when Amy's body was found the next day, it was found with a note. And that note is what has everybody scratching their head over this case so many years later.

So there was rumored to be three notes in total. One in the hotel room where Amy was found. Another was mailed to her mother and possibly a third was rumored to have been mailed to a friend. All three notes were written on the stationery that she bought from the dollar store the same night she checked into the inn, which for me kind of sheds light on her state of mind throughout this whole thing. Like we see her on video at the grocery store after she bought the stationery. She clearly bought the stationery to write her goodbye notes on.

And when we see her on video just a couple hours later, she's cool and calm and collected just like she is the rest of the time. So to me that says all of this like is something that she's been planning and finally putting into motion. You don't think the stationery could have been for anything else, right? I mean what like why buy stationery on a road trip? I don't know. All this just seems so calculated, but I also know more of the story up until this point.

So let me continue and fill in the pieces for you. So the note that she sent her mother reads like this. I've tried very hard to fit in and be happy and to be good to those around me. But somehow I've always felt apart from everything. Tim helped with that for a while, but maybe if Jim and I had been better, I would have been okay, but everything fell apart. And this time there were just too many pieces for me to pick up again. I can't take the chance of Jim hurting Tim because of my choices.

So I've taken him somewhere safe and he will be well cared for. And he says that he loves you. Please know there is nothing you could have said or done that would have changed my mind. I'm sorry for the hurt and difficulties I know you're going to face. I just hope you'll be able to forgive me one day. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, we don't know what the note to her friend said because as far as I could tell, it's never been publicized.

But the one left in her room is very similar. She basically apologizes for the mess that she's created and says that Tim is safe with people who love him and he would be well cared for but never found. So she's saying she gave him away to someone? I mean basically that's kind of how it comes across. But who? Do we know if she knew anybody in the areas where she was traveling to and from?

Well that's the million dollar question or at least one of them. I think the first question is was she telling the truth in her note? Did she really give him away to someone or did she do something more sinister? Then the second question then is if she did give him away who could she have possibly given him to? To answer the questions, police have no choice but to take inventory of what little evidence they have to try and track down Timothy. There were a couple of things they find that make them believe possibly

Timothy could be dead. First, in the room, they find a nearly empty bottle of child's medicine. So the first thought is maybe she drugged Timothy but remember she had a lethal dose of anihistamines in her system. So I wasn't able to find any report on like the amount of medication. Was the medication something she bought while she was on the road? Was it a new bottle, old bottle? Was it the amount in the bottle the same as in her system?

So I don't know that. There's always speculation around this but my personal feeling is that she probably took this medicine herself. So there was barely anything left in the room so for this bottle to be there to me that means that it has to be the one that she took shortly before she died. And on that note talking about what was found in the room I mentioned that nothing of Timothy's was found and what's weird to me as well is that the clothes that she was wearing

weren't found either, the ones that she was wearing earlier in the day. So she's seen on surveillance video but the one that you look at there's like this black shirt with white writing and apparently the clothes that she's found in were not those but the clothes that she was seen in on surveillance like weren't found anywhere else either. Really? Yeah and not only was her stuff missing but like I said everything that Timothy would have had like his backpack from school

his toothbrush all of that was missing as well and we can tell by her credit card transactions that she had bought stuff for Timothy like clothes and toys but none of that was found in the room or in her car either. But if she gave Timothy away what would be the point of getting rid of her stuff too? I don't know to me this is one of the things that makes me think she did something to him. Something that would have left evidence on her clothes like blood or maybe dirt if she'd buried him

but you know for most people that's not what makes people think something happened to Timothy. They think something bad could have happened because of other things found in Amy's car. When police search Amy's car the first thing they saw was not good. It was a blood stain in the back where Timothy would normally be. Like what size of blood stain? So here's the thing I've heard different reports some say it was a lot of blood some say it was a significant amount of blood

some say it was a small amount of blood and apparently this blood stain is very subjective there are no photos of it but either way when police tested it was Timothy's. So something may have happened to him while he was in the car? Possibly but not necessarily. Now here's the thing so many people point to that saying that's proof that she did something but all of their family swears that Timothy always got bad nosebleeds and the stain was an old stain and they're adamant about this

and they don't want people getting distracted and just like writing him off his dead. Was Timothy's blood found anywhere else in the hotel room or anything? No they even checked the same like razor cutting knife that Amy used on herself and his blood was nowhere on it it was just hers. So the fact that his blood is isolated to the car could really back up what the family is saying but they did find something else and I don't know what this something else means so you tell me what you think.

So on the undercarriage of her car they find a bunch of long like unkept grass and they find weeds that were like Queen Anne's lace and black mustard seed there's some gravel so this tells police that at some point she pulled off of a main road onto some like side gravel dirt area maybe even pulled out into some kind of field of some kind and now depending on what you think of this story she either pulled off to dispose of a body or she pulled off to make a transfer

and give him to whoever it was or is that's keeping him and taking care of him. Police were able to use the magic of science to help them narrow down the actual specific grass and weeds and like it blows my mind that they can do this but they narrowed it down to one specific county and they searched a ton of areas by foot and with dogs but they didn't find anything no sign of Timothy

which to me means like if you've narrowed down all the places and you search those places and he wasn't there then doesn't he have to be with someone else? I mean it certainly sounds like it where else should you look? I mean I don't know so I mean I tend to think like wherever she was it has to be some kind of meetup point but with who?

like don't get me wrong I hope he's okay but this makes zero sense to me she takes this wild road trip with what seems like no direction and then just like meet someone to give her kid to what are the odds? well maybe not so slim maybe it wasn't a total stranger she met on this road trip because remember how I told you that they pulled all of her records

like including her toll passes? yeah well what they learned from her toll records was really bizarre when they pull her toll pass records it showed that she had visited the same area twice in the previous two months none of her family or her friends knew about these trips

so one kind of comes to the assumption that she was going out there to like scope stuff out or like make preparation it doesn't really explain how she got in touch with somebody to take Timothy because there was nothing to indicate she made contact with anyone by like phone or the internet but if she's going out there did she make contact with a stranger before and like then come up with this idea

was it pure accident that she ran into someone she had she heard about someone like all of this is still a huge mystery yeah and here's the thing I keep coming back to like okay say she convinced someone to take her son I'm sure she had to make up a story about why he shouldn't be with his dad but don't you think after so many years the person keeping Timothy would realize that

maybe whatever they were told isn't real I mean Timothy is not a baby he's got to be at least a little bit aware of what's going on and asking about his family and his dad and his mom it just seems so unreal and I totally agree like I think he's asking questions I think six is young enough that I mean under the right circumstances you can probably still get them to believe

like maybe they're part of another family and I think it depends on the actual kid as well but like more than that I guess I don't know how this other family would have bought into whatever story Amy told them like I mean unless they're just like kind of evil people who wanted their own kid and don't care that this other family is suffering I don't know how they wouldn't realize that like if she did lie and be like oh he's you know he's abusive and we have to keep my son away eventually like his story was everywhere

like don't you like wouldn't they have seen that? yeah and I mean again because I foster kids of a whole bunch of different ages I've been exposed to kids who ask questions about their biological families a lot and it even for me it becomes kind of an awkward conversation with other adults when they say things and I have to say like oh they're asking about this parent oh yeah even think about that who isn't me you know like I feel like

especially as a six year old they have no filters if his face is on the news people are looking out for him in maybe not even the area but the country and he's asking questions or talking to people about his mom and dad his real mom and dad I feel like that'd be really hard to conceal so yeah and here's the thing like there's been this theory that has emerged that I don't love because I think instead of like looking at the evidence

and then coming up with a theory I think people are like well why hasn't anyone come forward and they've kind of like built this theory around it that kind of puts it into this nice tiny package but the theory is that perhaps he was given to someone from the Amish community and then that way he really is isolated with like one community they don't have the radio they don't have TV so they're not hearing the story of Timothy's like loving family who's actually looking for him they may have never

and he's almost disguised yeah they may have never known like what happened like what Amy's like real fate was so it's a theory that keeps coming up over and over because again I mean it's nice and tidy it seems to be the only one that explains how she could convince someone to take him and love him and care for him and then those people then eventually don't find out that he actually still has this family who wants to take care of him and love him and care for him well but all of her letters specifically stated how she was keeping Timothy from Jim

but what motive would she have to keep Timothy away from her family I think the truth of it is that at the time this happened she just wasn't well and I don't know how that was affecting her emotionally I mean she clearly was feeling possessive over Timothy I mean again she told her brother-in-law that he belongs to me well kind of like a if I can't have him no one can mentality possibly so in her mind maybe she wanted to have complete control over what happened to him even after she was gone and I can't decide if the note that she left

was her trying to be kind or her trying to be cruel like option one is that this really is the truth she thought she was doing what's best for him he's with somebody and for whatever reason she thought he'd be better off there option two she did something to him that maybe she didn't want to be remembered for that way or maybe in her head she thought that it would be better for the family to think that he was out there and happy than to know that he was deceased and what she had done so she says he's with somebody else who loves him and is taking care of him

or option three she knew how much it would hurt to not have closure and this was just like one more stab at her husband when she was just like in a bad place mentally I'm sorry to like backtrack a little bit but did all of this come out of nowhere like I mean she clearly wasn't so unmindfully stable because her family wasn't even alarmed when she you know picked Timothy up from school an hour in and took him on this crazy road trip well yes it knows so she had a history with depression

and even had another incident where she took some pills near a cliff's edge and almost fell over and people thought that that was an attempt to kill herself so there is this history in that regard but even with that every person who knew her in her family still to this day says that she would never do anything to harm her son and they all fully believe that he's still alive but years and years went by no one came forward there was no sign of Timothy until this April

when that boy who was claiming to be 14 years old said he was Timothy Pitson now this was crazy because I think it had everyone like all our conspiracy minds going like he said he was being held captive by some men did that mean that like his mom gave him to bad people or worse was his mom murdered and he was taken in all this time people didn't know and we weren't looking but within a couple of days DNA had been taken and it was found that this boy who was actually not a boy at all

was not Timothy it was actually a 23 year old man named Brian Michael Rini Brian is a man who seems to be very mentally ill he's presented himself apparently in the past as a juvenile victim of sex trafficking before multiple times this is like something that he like puts on he's been arrested now he's going to trial for false claims but he's caused a lot of damage Jim says that this whole thing has ripped open this wound

just so wide like it happened yesterday and he's grieving all over again but he said that he hopes that out of this tragedy maybe something good will happen maybe people will start talking about his son again and start looking for his son again he says that to him the worst thing people can do is assume that his son is dead he does not think Amy killed him

and he doesn't want anyone else to think that either because as soon as you do you'll stop keeping an eye out for him as of this recording Timothy would be 14 years old you can actually go see an age-progressed picture of him on our website crimejunkiepodcast.com I'll also post it on our social media and we hope everyone will go look and keep an eye out for the real Timothy Pitson he was six when he was taken

he may not even know he's missing anymore and depending on who he's with I mean they might not know that a good family is looking for him so share his picture share his story and hopefully one day Jim will really get to reunite with his son and we'll be back next week with a brand new episode Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production

so what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?