One year later: Where is Timmothy Pitzen?
By Matt Hanley mhanley@stmedianetwork.com May 11, 2012 9:10AM
Following Amy and Timmothy’s trail
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Amy Pitzen returns home from her annual trip to the Bahamas with a friend from Iowa. The friend reported nothing unusual about the trip and Amy seemed normal.
Wednesday, May 11
8:35 a.m. — Shortly after his father dropped him off at school, Amy checks their only son, Timmothy Pitzen, 6, out of his kindergarten class at Greenman Elementary on Aurora’s West Side.
10 a.m. — Amy drops her SUV off for repairs at a LaGrange body shop, and an employee drives mother and son to the Brookfield Zoo.
Around noon — Jim Pitzen comes to pick up his son at school and discovers that Amy has already checked the boy out.
3:34 p.m. — Amy and Timmothy check in to Key Lime Cove Resort, a waterpark near Gurnee
Thursday, May 12
11:15 a.m. — Amy buys children’s clothes and toys from a Shopko store in Racine, Wis.
1 p.m. — Jim Pitzen reports his wife and son missing to Aurora police.
2:20 p.m. — Amy buys gasoline and beverages from a Qwik-Trip just off I-94 in Johnson Creek, Wis.
3:43 p.m. — Amy and Timmothy check in at Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells.
Friday, May 13
10:10 a.m. — Amy and Timmothy are last seen together checking out of the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells.
Noon to 1:30 p.m. — Amy calls several family members while driving toward the Sterling-Rock Falls area in northwestern Illinois.
7:25 p.m. — Amy buys pen, paper and envelopes at the Family Dollar in Winnebago.
8 p.m. — Amy is seen alone at Sullivan’s Foods in Winnebago, where she buys crackers and milk.
Between 11:15 and 11:30 p.m. — Amy checks into the Rockford Motel in Rockford.
Saturday, May 14
12:30 p.m. — Rockford Motel staff find Amy’s body. She had cut her wrists and left a note saying Timmothy was safe. Police find “significant” amounts of blood in her truck.
Article Extras
Updated: May 14, 2012 10:04PM
One year after 6-year-old Timmothy Pitzen disappeared, Aurora police released new surveillance video of his mother checking into and leaving a Wisconsin resort.
On May 11, 2011, Amy Fry-Pitzen took her only son out of Greenman Elementary School in Aurora early on the school day. Without telling any family members, Timmothy and Amy went on a three-day, 500-mile road trip, stopping at zoos and water parks. On the third day, Amy finally called family to report that she was fine. Timmothy was heard in the background. Police found her body and a suicide note the next morning. Timmothy has not been found.
The clips released Friday represent the final surveillance footage Aurora police have of Amy and Timmothy. They have previously released several clips and a home video of Timmothy.
The clips show Amy and Timmothy walking into or leaving the Key Lime Cove Resort in Gurnee, on May 12, 2011; the fifth shows Amy and Timmohty at Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells. Like the previous clips, the video show ordinary mother-son interactions. In one, Timmothy drives a toy truck through the lobby while his mother checks in.
On Friday, police again asked residents in northwest Illinois to search their properties for several missing items that may help pinpoint what happened to the boy.
Last November, police issued their first appeal based on the forensics findings of Microtrace LLC, a private forensics lab based in Elgin, with whom they contracted last summer to process the dust, vegetation, and other materials found on Amy Fry-Pitzen’s SUV. Those findings indicated that:
Based on sediments and plant material, the vehicle was stopped for an unknown period of time on a wide gravel shoulder, gravel road, or short gravel turnout either adjacent to, or just off of, an asphalt secondary road that had at one time, been treated with glass road-marking beads. In close proximity to the gravel shoulder or road where the vehicle stopped, it backed into a grassy meadow or field to a spot that is nearly treeless. There are birch and oak trees in the general area but not directly over or at the spot where the SUV stopped. Both Queen Anne’s Lace and black mustard plants grow in a row along the border of the field or the shoulder of the road.
In addition, there is no corn growing in or adjacent to the spot where the SUV stopped, nor is there any indication that the area had been used for agriculture in the recent past. Instead, the evidence strongly suggests that grasses have been the only major plants growing in the immediate area which leads scientists to believe that it is a meadow and not, for example, a field that had once been farmland and not recently sown. Forensic results indicate that the grass was not cut which helps rule out a rural residential lawn or a park. There is also a strong likelihood that there is a pond, small stream, or creek in the area.
Scientists further believe that the meadow is most likely in Northwestern Illinois with Lee and Whiteside Counties as the most likely locations. However, areas in Carroll, Ogle, Stephenson, and Winnebago Counties cannot be ruled out. Microtrace has since performed other tests but has not been able to further narrow down the six-county area - an area much too large for police to conduct ground searches.
Missing items that may yield clues and those of which people should be looking for include Timmothy’s Spider Man backpack, several toys and a tube of toothpaste Amy had bought for Timmothy before he disappeared; and Amy’s cell phone and I-Pass device. Since there are several state parks and other popular areas for outdoor enthusiasts in that part of Illinois, police are also hoping that hikers, bikers, boaters, and other visitors will be on the lookout for the items. Anyone finding any of the items should immediately call Aurora Police at 630-256-5500.
While investigators continue to pursue any and all information that may come in, they still have no leads about whether Timmothy is still alive. The last time anyone heard from Timmothy was on May 13, 2011, when he talked to a relative via his mother’s cell phone as the pair were traveling about five miles west of Sterling, Illinois.
Aurora Police still receive periodic calls from people across the nation who think they have spotted Timmothy but after exhaustively following up on every report, no further information has developed.
