Timmothy Pitzen's aunt hopeful 8 years after his disappearance: 'The family believes he's alive'
It has been eight years since Timmothy Pitzen disappeared, and the family is still hoping the missing Illinois child is alive and expects to find him someday. A month ago, the family also had to deal with an imposter who falsely claimed that he was the child who went missing. Pitzen's aunt Kara Jacobs has spoken about how the family dealt with the same, and using the opportunity to advocate for families of other missing children.
According to a report in People, Jacobs said that she and her mother wanted to thank the women who came forward to report the imposter.
"So many times in our lives we see something and we don’t know what we should do. But they did exactly what they should do. They saw something that was off, and they reported it," she said and added, "Sometimes we all go through our own lives so consumed with our own thoughts and feelings that we don’t look around and see who might need help or is hurting."
Pitzen was six years old when his mother, Amy picked him up from the kindergarten for the last time. She did not inform her husband and the child's father, Jim. For the next two days, the mother and son visited the zoo, stayed at water park resorts all the while keeping the father at bay. They did make phone calls to Jim's brother and the police to let them know that the child was safe.
On May 14, 2011, Amy was found dead by the Rockford Inn employees with self-inflicted slash wounds and she had left a suicide note which said that Pitzen was safe with others who would care for him. She also wrote, "You will never find him."
Amy struggled with bouts of depression and had tried to kill herself twice before. She was in her fourth marriage which also happened to be on the rocks. Jacobs recalled, "Amy, all of a sudden felt that she wanted this child more than anything. From the time Tim was born he was the absolute center of her life. Not only does the family believe he’s alive, but every single law enforcement agency that has looked into this believes he is alive."
Jacobs also added, "Whoever does have him, they know something, clearly. I would want whoever’s holding him to know that whatever Amy said about Jim or about their life or about Tim’s safety is misguided. Jim deserves the chance to be a father to his own child. They had no more or less marital problems than almost every other couple in this country, and Jim does not deserve what happened."