Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Monica Davey

The young man, who turned up Wednesday agitated and desperate along a Newport, Kentucky, street, said his name was Timmothy Pitzen — an Illinois boy who vanished in 2011 at the age of 6, setting off a national hunt and devastating a family that waited and hoped, year after year.

The prospect that Timmothy had been found sent law enforcement authorities in several states into a frenzy. DNA tests were ordered. Timmothy’s relatives waited and watched, renewed hopes rising as the word spread and the hours passed.

Late Thursday, the answer came: It wasn’t Timmothy. DNA tests proved it, FBI agents said. By Thursday evening, law enforcement authorities said they had determined that the person claiming to be Timmothy was actually Brian Michael Rini, a 23-year-old felon from Medina, Ohio.

His motives were unknown, some officers said, and it was not clear whether he will face charges for saying he was Timmothy.

For Timmothy’s family, the events were crushing.

“It’s been awful,” Alana Anderson, Timmothy’s grandmother, who lives in Illinois, told reporters. “We’ve been on tenterhooks. We’ve been alternatively hopeful and frightened. It’s just been exhausting.”

Anderson said police did not say why they believe someone had impersonated her grandson. “We have no idea why,” she said.

Kara Jacobs, an aunt of Timmothy, said the family was shattered.

“It’s like reliving that day all over again,” she said. “And Timmothy’s father is devastated, once again.”

In May 2011, the disappearance of Timmothy Pitzen stunned the communities around suburban Chicago. Timmothy vanished 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.

Fry-Pitzen’s 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.”

An expansive search began for Timmothy, as his panicked, grieving family — including his father, James Pitzen — pleaded for help.

Posters went up in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and beyond. Law enforcement authorities searched parks and woods across Northern Illinois with help from bloodhounds, planes and all-terrain vehicles. Family members passed out pictures of the boy — then 4-foot-2, with brown hair and brown eyes — in small towns in Illinois.

For months, authorities followed clues, cellphone logs, email accounts and forensic evidence inside the vehicle that Timmothy had been in with his mother before he vanished. The boy’s car seat, which initially seemed to have gone missing when he disappeared, turned out to be with relatives all along. Authorities continued looking for a Spider Man backpack, which Timmothy was believed to have had with him on the day of his disappearance.

Over the years, sightings were reported, but none panned out. Renderings of what Timmothy might look like, accounting for aging, were created and distributed. Someone thought they saw him at a travel plaza in Dixon, Illinois, but it turned out to be someone else. Another reported seeing a boy at a Denny’s in North Aurora, Illinois. Yet another lead took authorities to Massachusetts.

Then came the report this week. It raised hopes, in part because the young man himself was claiming to be Timmothy.

Some other long-missing children cases, too, had ended with joy. Jayme Closs, 13, whose kidnapper killed her parents in Wisconsin in October escaped after being held captive for three months. Also found were Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, who were teenagers when they were abducted by Ariel Castro in Ohio and kept in captivity for a decade before Berry escaped in 2013.

The story told by the man who appeared along the Kentucky street this week was elaborate and alarming.

He told authorities that he had fled from a Red Roof Inn in Ohio, and, according to a police report, “had just escaped from two kidnappers that have been holding him for seven years.”

He described his captors as two white men in a Ford SUV with Wisconsin plates, both of them built like bodybuilders. One had curly black hair and a tattoo of a spider web on his neck; the other man was short and had a snake tattoo on his arms.

A woman who said she was present when police arrived to take the man to a hospital said that he had appeared agitated, and that it looked like he had been struck in his face.

“All of this was red, and this was red, like he’d been punched,” the woman, Fray Knight, said, pointing to both of her cheeks, near her eyes.

Another witness told a police dispatcher that the man had approached and pleaded for help.

“He walked up to my car and he went, ‘Can you help me? I just want to get home. Please help me,’ ” the 911 caller said. “I asked him what’s going on, and he tells me he’s been kidnapped and he’s been traded through all these people and he just wanted to go home.”

By Thursday afternoon, authorities had completed tests and ruled out the possibility that the person was Timmothy.

Rini was released from prison a month ago after serving 14 months of an 18-month sentence for burglary and vandalism, Ohio prison records showed.

In that case, police said Rini had posed as a prospective homebuyer so that he could gain access to a $400,000 custom-built home in a Cleveland suburb and throw a drug-fueled party that he promoted on Facebook, causing thousands of dollars in damage.

In an email, Timothy Beam, an FBI agent, said: “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.”

Police in Timmothy’s hometown, Aurora, Illinois, said they were gravely disappointed, especially for the missing boy’s family. “This is yet another time where they’ve had their hopes raised potentially,” said Sgt. Bill Rowley of Aurora.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, about 3,000 children who were reported missing for at least a year have been found over the past five years. About 6 in 10 of those children were runaways, and almost all of the rest were abducted by a relative. Only 16 of the 3,000 had been abducted by someone who was not a family member. More than 25,000 children were reported missing to the center last year.

Jen West, another of Timmothy’s aunts, said the family had been through this before. But she saw some hope in the renewed interest in Timmothy, and in all the images of him that had shown, once more, on news stations.

“It’s a blessing in that respect, that the more coverage he gets, the better,” said West, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. “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.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/us/timmothy-pitzen-missing.html" id="fa1f2b52-d064-3017-a93f-a14d128ea431">The New York Times</a>.

He ran across a bridge into a Kentucky town and raced up to passers-by, urgently seeking help. He looked bruised, said he had been held against his will by kidnappers for years, and just wanted to go home. He said he was 14.

He Claimed to Be Missing Boy, but DNA Tests Show He Isn't

The young man, who turned up Wednesday agitated and desperate along a Newport, Kentucky, street, said his name was Timmothy Pitzen — an Illinois boy who vanished in 2011 at the age of 6.

The prospect that Timmothy had been found sent law enforcement authorities in several states into a frenzy. DNA tests were ordered.

Late Thursday, the answer came: It wasn’t Timmothy. DNA tests proved it, FBI agents said. By Thursday evening, law enforcement authorities said they had determined the person claiming to be Timmothy was actually Brian Michael Rini, a 23-year-old felon from Medina, Ohio.

Rini was released from prison a month ago after serving 14 months for burglary and vandalism, Ohio prison records showed.

In that case, police said Rini had posed as a prospective homebuyer so that he could gain access to a $400,000 home in a Cleveland suburb and throw a drug-fueled party that he promoted on Facebook.

“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.

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.”

A person who this week told police that he was Timmothy Pitzen, an Illinois child who vanished eight years ago, is not actually the long-missing child, authorities said late Thursday. DNA tests showed that the person who approached passers-by in Kentucky, saying that he had escaped from kidnappers, was not Timmothy after all, the FBI said.

He Said He Was Timmothy Pitzen, a Missing Boy. Tests Show He Isn't.

On Wednesday, a person who said 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 said their hopes were raised.

“It’s a downer,” West, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, said 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.”

West said 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.”

A person who this week told police he was Timmothy Pitzen, an Illinois child who vanished eight years ago, is not actually the long-missing child, authorities said late Thursday. DNA tests showed the person who approached passers-by in Kentucky, saying he had escaped from kidnappers, was not Timmothy after all, the FBI said.

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Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Monica Davey

Articles written by the author

He Claimed to Be Missing Boy, but DNA Tests Show He Isn't

He Claimed to Be Missing Boy, but DNA Tests Show He Isn't

He Said He Was Timmothy Pitzen, a Missing Boy. Tests Show He Isn't.

He Said He Was Timmothy Pitzen, a Missing Boy. Tests Show He Isn't.