TIMMOTHY Pitzen’s grandmother is sure that the missing boy is still alive and may be living in a remote Mormon commune. The way his mom said goodbye makes her think he’s still out there somewhere.
This is the last time anyone saw six-year-old Timmothy alive. He was leaving a water park hotel resort in the Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, with his mom, Amy Fry-Pitzen, holding his hand.
Two days before, Amy took Timmothy out of Aurora, Illinois, school early and told the teachers there was a family emergency. She then went on a last-minute road trip across state lines to visit zoos and water parks.
Amy, 43, seemed to have been planning the trip for a while, but Jim Pitzen, Timmothy’s dad, was shocked when he got to pick up his son from school on May 11, 2011, and was told Amy had already picked him up hours before.
Jim Pitzen would never talk to or see his son and wife again.
On May 13, in the afternoon, Amy finally spoke up after 48 hours of silence. She called her mom and Jim’s brother to let them know she would be home soon.
People could hear Timothy talking in the background of the calls, and at one point he spoke over the receiver.
“What, don’t you trust me?” Amy told Jim’s brother on the phone. The boy Timothy is mine […] I’m not going to hurt myself. I’m not going to hurt Tim.
In a few seconds, Amy’s phone would be turned off for good.
The next day, she was found dead in a motel room in Rockford. She had killed herself by taking too much prescription medicine and cutting her wrists deeply with a razor.
Timmothy wasn’t to be found.
The short note Amy left before she killed herself said she had given him to someone who loves him and will take care of him, but it also said that he would never be found.
After thirteen years, almost no signs of Timmothy have been found.
Linda Pitzen, the boy’s paternal grandmother, told The U.S. Sun that she has been through a lot of pain trying to figure out Amy’s mysterious last words and what she might have been thinking when she died.
Linda is sure that Amy would never have hurt Timothy, just like the rest of her family. She also thinks that Amy was telling the truth when she said she had given the boy away.
Linda isn’t sure why she gave the boy away, but she thinks it might have had something to do with her Mormon beliefs.
“I think she wanted Timm to be raised Mormon,” Linda said.
“I think this was her way of making sure he was Mormon after she left. The rest of us aren’t Mormon.”
“Aside from Jim, she never pushed it on anyone else.” But he didn’t want to, and I think her church might have been pushing her a little.
“But she went to a Mormon church.” She became a Christian after meeting Jim; she wasn’t raised that way.
IMPACT OF THE MORMONS?
Hannah Soukup, one of Timmothy’s classmates, gave The U.S. Sun an exclusive interview earlier this month. She has been looking into the boy’s whereabouts on her own.
Soukup said she thinks Timothy is being held in a religious commune in the middle of nowhere that doesn’t have much contact with the outside world or the internet.
“I still think about Timmothy a lot and what happened to him, and with Amy, there were a lot of unexplained visits to certain places,” Soukup shared.
“I think she left him somewhere—I’m not sure if it was a religious area or something—and gave him to people she knew would keep him safe and hidden.”
“And I think she made it clear that either his identity had to be changed or that he had to stay away from the internet so he’d never know he was missing.”
Before Amy turned off her phone for good on May 13, the last ping from her phone was picked up in Sterling, a small rural town about 80 miles west of Aurora.
Amy’s I-Pass records later showed that she had been to Sterling twice before, in February and March 2011. This confused her family, who didn’t know about the trips and didn’t think she had any ties to the area.
It’s still not clear where she went after Sterling.
Plants and dirt discovered under Amy’s car showed that she had stopped somewhere in northwest Illinois, most likely near a body of water, and then driven back to Rockford by herself. A precise location has not yet been chosen.
Linda Pitzen said that she has always believed the same thing that Soukup does.
“It is very likely to happen.” Linda said, “That would explain a lot about why Amy might have left her son at a Mormon commune.”
“I’ve always agreed with that theory. I read the suicide note. If you know her, I think she probably gave someone a place to live in a compound on that note.
“I have to hope that’s true because it’d be a lot better option for me to deal with, as opposed to what the other options are.”
TRYING TO FIND ANSWERS
Questions and rumors about a plot have been going around for years about what Amy’s suicide note and strange visits to Sterling meant.
Was Amy able to find someone to adopt Timmothy without permission? Or was she not telling the truth? Had she done something bad to the boy that she didn’t want anyone to know about?
The police have looked into both theories a lot, but they are still not closer to proving either one.
Amy had already tried to kill herself twice and was on depression medication when Timmothy disappeared.
Her marriage to Jim was also going through a rough patch.
Jim told Amy, who had been married three times before, that he wanted to divorce her.
Friends and family have thought that Amy’s actions were caused by her fear that her history of mental illness would make it impossible for her to get custody of Timothy if she and Jim got divorced.
With the benefit of hindsight, Linda said she thinks Amy needed serious psychiatric help. However, Amy was so good at making people think she was fine that it was hard to know how badly she was struggling.
“I fight myself on the question of ‘what was going through her mind’ all the time,” said Linda.
“But I really believe she was nice to me.” She was like a daughter to me. It’s been hard to deal with everything and see how hurt everyone is now.
She may have been trying to find happiness through her many marriages, and Tim may have provided that until he grew up and became more independent. Then the depression came back.
She might not have had this happen if she had gotten the right care. That being said, treatment doesn’t always work. It’s one of those things.”
“But she always put Timm first,” Linda said. I believe she was looking for answers within herself but couldn’t locate them.