For grandmother, it’s hope, then heartache
Ohio man’s hoax dashes brief optimism Pitzen finally found
Linda Pitzen heard the news from a journalist from Cincinnati: Someone had turned up outside the southern Ohio city claiming to be her missing grandson.
It was April, nearly eight years since Timmothy Pitzen went missing. Linda Pitzen was anxious, cautious, but optimistic. Memories of the day she first learned her grandson had disappeared came flooding back.
Then her heart broke when she and her family learned it wasn’t Timmothy after all, but instead a man from northeastern Ohio whom authorities have said claimed to be the Aurora boy.
Through the rest of 2019, Pitzen has held out hope — as she has for all the years Timmothy has been missing — that out of the heartbreak, something good will come. Echoing the thoughts Aurora police detectives expressed in the days after the hoax was exposed, Pitzen has continued to hope renewed attention on her grandson’s case will bring in new information and new leads.
Timmothy’s disappearance as a 6-year-old haunted Aurora for years before it took its latest twist earlier this year. His mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, took her son out of school in May 2011, and they visited a zoo and water parks before she died by suicide. Her body was found in a Rockford motel room. She left behind a note saying she had left Timmothy in the care of responsible adults who loved him, but he would never be found.
In the years since, Linda Pitzen has prayed part of that note would be proven true — that Timmothy was in the care of responsible adults who loved him. She prayed her family would prove the other part of the note false.
So, when she heard someone was claiming to be her grandson, a rush of thoughts and emotions hit her. She hoped it was him, so the family could close one door and open a new chapter on a new kind of normal. But it had been eight years. What did he look like? What would he be like? Would he remember his family? She’d always thought a family had him somewhere and was raising him.
DNA tests ultimately proved the man was Brian Rini, then 23. He was charged with lying to a federal agent, and his case is ongoing.
“I guess I didn’t have to be anxious, did I?” Pitzen said from her northern Ohio home. “It didn’t turn out that way.”
Part of Pitzen was relieved. The man claimed to be a victim of human trafficking, and she was glad that wasn’t the case. But the man’s “adventure,” as she called it, hurt her family and opened up their old wounds, and it probably hurt Rini’s own family too, she said.
Still, she said, the situation may have a silver lining.
“I think, in a way, this has been a blessing in disguise,” she said. “Because it was a very hurtful thing that happened, it just broke all of our hearts all over again … but it brought enough attention to it that people are looking again, and they’re watching, and the age progression photos (of Timmothy) are out there.”
Timmothy is one of 117 people currently listed as missing in Illinois. Aurora police Lt. Robb Wallers said the department is continuing to investigate his disappearance.
“This case over the years has been investigated by numerous detectives and is currently assigned to a veteran detective with extensive experience investigating cold cases,” he said in a statement. “The Aurora Police Department to this day is still in contact with Timmothy’s relatives with our end goal of bringing peace to his family after all these years.”
Police declined to comment on specifics of Timmothy’s case, including whether the April hoax generated any new leads, because it remains ongoing, spokesman Paris Lewbel said. But he said in any case there’s a potential that a small piece of information can go a long way when combined with other information detectives have gathered over the years, and the police department’s plea is for people to come forward with any information they have.
Pitzen’s family keep hoping and looking, and wondering. Does he have long hair or short? Is he heavy or skinny? He’d probably be tall, Pitzen guesses.
For years at Christmas, Pitzen bought Timmothy a gift. The first year he was gone, it was a Thomas the Train toy she saw in a store and, before she realized what she was doing, she thought to buy it for her grandson.
She doesn’t buy him presents anymore, but the family still prays for Timmothy, Pitzen said.
“I believe he’s out there,” she said. “I may never see him again, but I just believe he’s out there. I mean, I don’t even know if he remembers who he is. I’m sure his name’s not Tim anymore. But I just hope that we can be reunited sometime. You never know.”