“A local investigation continues into this person’s true identity,” Timothy Beam, an FBI agent, said in an email. Beam added, “To be clear, law enforcement has not and will not forget Timmothy, and we hope to one day reunite him with his family. Unfortunately, that day will not be today.”
On Wednesday, a person who said that he was Timmothy and that he was 14 sprinted across a bridge from Cincinnati into Newport, Kentucky. Bystanders initially thought he might be trying to steal a car. But when they approached, they saw bruises and abrasions on his face. The person asked for help, saying he had been held against his will and traded among people for years, and that he just wanted to go home.
Law enforcement authorities in Illinois, where Timmothy had lived, and elsewhere had scrambled to determine whether the person was indeed the missing child, and family members of Timmothy — who have searched for him for years — said their hopes were raised.
Almost eight years ago, Timmothy, then 6, disappeared after his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, took him out of an elementary school in Aurora, Illinois, and drove him to Wisconsin, where they were last seen together at a water park. Her body was found soon after in a motel room in Rockford, Illinois, after an apparent suicide.
She left a note saying that her son, Timmothy, was now in safe hands with someone who loved him and that “You will never find him.”
Jen West, one of Timmothy’s aunts, said the family was disappointed that the person in Kentucky wasn’t Timmothy, but they have been through this before.
“It’s a downer,” West, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, said in a telephone interview shortly after the FBI disclosed the DNA results. “But the positive aspect of it is that Tim’s face is now on every news station and every newspaper. It’s a blessing in that respect, that the more coverage he gets, the better. If it couldn’t be him, at least his face gets out there and his name is out there, so more people saw him.
“The more we can get his face out there, the better,” she said. “It’s sad we don’t have him back, but this will lead to it.”
West said that her brother — Timmothy’s father, James — “has been through this a lot with sightings and things, so he really knew to keep his emotions down and not get his hopes up. He’s been through it a few times.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.