A teen who told Kentucky police he was Timmothy Pitzen, an Illinois boy who went missing in 2011, is not the long-lost child, the FBI said on Thursday.
Hopes were briefly raised that the teen, who said he had escaped kidnappers, was Timmothy, last seen after his mother pulled him out of school in Aurora, a far-west suburb of Chicago, and then took her own life.
But FBI officials in Kentucky and Ohio said DNA tests conducted at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital showed that the teen is not Timmothy.
"A local investigation continues into this person's true identity," Louisville FBI agent Tim Beam said in a statement emailed to Reuters.
“Law enforcement has not and will not forget Timmothy, and we hope to one day reunite him with his family,” the statement added. “Unfortunately, that day will not be today.”
Pitzen went missing in May 2011 at the age of six, after his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, pulled him out of school and took him on a trip to a zoo and a water park. She took her own life soon afterwards in a motel room, leaving a note that local media said made the boy’s whereabouts a mystery.
“Tim is somewhere safe with people who love him and will care for him,” she wrote in the note, according to reports by ABC7 Chicago. “You will never find him.”
On Wednesday a boy who said his name was Timmothy told police in Newport, Kentucky, that he had been held captive for seven years by two white men he described as “body-builder types”, until he escaped and ran across a bridge from Ohio into Kentucky. – Reuters