Crime & Safety
Man Who Said He Was Timmothy Pitzen To Be Sentenced Tuesday
A 25-year-old Ohio man will be sentenced Tuesday after telling police he was Timmothy Pitzen, an Aurora boy who was last seen in 2011.
CINCINNATI — An Ohio man who told police last year he was missing Aurora boy Timmothy Pitzen is expected to be sentenced Tuesday, the Associated Press reports.
Brian Michael Rini, 25, was sentenced earlier this year to serve two years in prison for identity theft, but an Ohio judge will complete Rini’s sentencing Tuesday after seeing the results of a pre-sentencing investigation that was repeatedly extended amid the coronavirus pandemic, the report states.
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In April 2019, Rini told police his name was Timmothy Pitzen after he was found wandering around Newport, Kentucky. Rini was 23, while Timmothy would have been 14 at the time.
Rini told police he was abducted when he was 6 years old and claimed to have recently escaped from an Ohio hotel room where two men held him captive before running across the border to Kentucky, according to media reports.
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The FBI conducted a DNA test that revealed Rini's identity and his history of portraying himself as a juvenile sex-trafficking victim. He was charged last year with identity theft and pleaded guilty in January, as previously reported.
Timmothy was 6 years old in May 2011, when he was last seen on surveillance footage with his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen. The footage was taken at the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells, several days after Fry-Pitzen took her son out of Greenman Elementary School on Aurora's West Side.
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The two then went to Kalahari Resort on May 13, after visiting Brookfield Zoo and Key Lime Cove in Gurnee, as previously reported. Fry-Pitzen was found dead May 14 in a Rockford hotel room, alongside a suicide note that said she gave Timmothy away.
"You will never find him," Fry-Pitzen wrote in her suicide note.
Police later said she had self-inflicted cuts to her wrists and neck, as well as a lethal amount of drugs in her system.
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In a recent episode of HLN’s “Real Life Nightmare” featuring Timmothy’s disappearance, his aunt Kara Jacobs forgave Rini for lying about being her nephew.
"Even though what he put us through was very difficult and challenging, at the very least, it got people talking about Tim again," Jacobs said.
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The Aurora Police Department has encouraged anyone with information on Pitzen's location to call its Timmothy Pitzen Tip line at 630-256-5516 or email tips@apd.aurora.il.us.
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