Timmothy Pitzen Disappearance To Feature On ‘Real Life Nightmare’

AURORA, IL — Nearly a decade after Aurora boy Timmothy Pitzen was last seen, his family is set to tell the story of his disappearance Sunday on HLN’s “Real Life Nightmare.” The show airs at 9 p.m. Central time.

Timmothy was 6 years old in May 2011, when he was last seen on surveillance footage with his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen. The footage was taken at the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells, several days after Fry-Pitzen took her son out of Greenman Elementary School on Aurora’s West Side.

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In a preview for Sunday’s episode of “Real Life Nightmare,” Timmothy’s father, Jim Pitzen, recalls seeing his son for the last time May 11, 2011, outside the school.

“I dropped Timmothy off at school, and Timmothy goes, ‘Love you, Dad.’ I go, ‘Love you, buddy. I’ll pick you up later,'” Pitzen said, adding he then took his wife to work just a few blocks away. “I drop her off, give her a kiss. I watch her buzz into the building, and that’s the last time I see her.”

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Fry-Pitzen took Timmothy out of school later that morning, before going to the Brookfield Zoo and Key Lime Cove in Gurnee, as previously reported. The two then went to Kalahari Resort on May 13.

Fry-Pitzen was found dead the next day in a Rockford hotel room, alongside a suicide note that said she gave Timmothy away.

“You will never find him,” Fry-Pitzen wrote in her suicide note.

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Police later said she had self-inflicted cuts to her wrists and neck, as well as a lethal amount of drugs in her system.

In the episode set to air Sunday, Timmothy's aunt Kara Jacobs forgave a man who lied last year about being her nephew, the Chicago Tribune reports.

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Brian Michael Rini, 23, told police his name was Timmothy Pitzen after he was found wandering around Newport, Kentucky in April 2019. Timmothy would have been 14 at that time.

Rini told police he was abducted when he was 6 years old and claimed to have recently escaped from an Ohio hotel room where two men held him captive before running across the border to Kentucky, according to media reports.

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The FBI conducted a DNA test that revealed Rini's identity and his history of portraying himself as a juvenile sex-trafficking victim. He was charged last year with identity theft and pleaded guilty in January, as previously reported. He was sentenced to serve two years in prison and one year on probation.

“Even though what he put us through was very difficult and challenging, at the very least, it got people talking about Tim again,” Jacobs says, according to the Tribune report.

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A video posted to YouTube in July prompted numerous calls to Aurora police from people saying they believed it showed Timmothy, but detectives investigated the video and determined it was not the missing Aurora boy.

In 2019, a spokesperson for the Aurora police said they receive thousands of tips each day about Timmothy’s case.

Timmothy’s disappearance was also featured in December 2019 on “Vanished,” a Facebook Watch series.

The Aurora Police Department has encouraged anyone with information on Pitzen's location to call its Timmothy Pitzen Tip line at 630-256-5516 or email tips@apd.aurora.il.us.

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