FBI in Louisville have confirmed the boy found in Kentucky yesterday is not Timmothy Pitzen, after DNA results come back negative.
Newport Police say the boy, who claimed to be 14, is actually Bryan Michael Rini, a 24-year-old man from Medina, Ohio.
Police say Rini told officers on Wednesday his name was Timmothy Pitzen and he had escaped two kidnappers in Cincinnati and ran across a bridge to Newport, Kentucky.
However, in a tweet on Thursday evening, the FBI said a DNA test conducted on the boy concluded that he wasn’t missing Timmothy – who vanished on May 11 2011, after being taken out of school by his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen.
She took him on a three-day holiday before checking in alone to a motel and killing herself. She left a not saying her son was safe, but added: ‘You’ll never find him’.
The results confirm the Aurora’s skepticism that the incident could have been an elaborate hoax, where they say they’ve investigated false leads over the past eight years.
‘FBILouisville, Newport PD, and HCSO have been conducting a missing person investigation. DNA results have been returned indicating the person in question is not Timmothy Pitzen,’ FBI Louisville tweeted on Thursday.
‘A local investigation continues into this person’s true identity. 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.’
Timmothy Pitzen’s grandmother has said her family will ‘do everything to get him back to a good life’ after a teenager came forward claiming to be the missing youngster (pictured before disappearing in 2011)
Residents who live near where the 14-year-old boy was found in Newport, Kentucky, have said the his face was bruised and was ‘very scared and agitated’ (pictured: a photo submitted to CBS Chicago allegedly depicts the boy who claims to be Pitzen)
According to an officer’s dispatch report, the boy told police he was born on October 18, 2004, the same day as Timmothy, and also gave his correct middle name of James.
The report also says the boy claimed that he’d managed to flee ‘from two kidnappers that have been holding him for seven years’.
He said his abductors had most recently been keeping him in a Red Roof Inn, thought to be in Cincinnati, Ohio.
When he saw his chance to escape he fled and ‘kept running across a bridge’ – the state line – and into Newport, Kentucky, police say.
Locals who saw the ‘fidgety’ 14-year-old boy when he was found said that his face was bruised and he appeared to be ‘very scared and agitated’.
‘He walked up to my car and he went, “Can you help me? I just want to get home. Can you just please help me?'” a good Samaritan told a 911 dispatcher. ‘And I asked him what was going on and he told me he’s been kidnapped.’
One woman revealed to CBS Chicago that the boy told her he’d been running for two hours and that he had ‘been passed around for seven years’.
‘Really you felt bad for him, his face looked like he’d been beat up,’ she said. ‘He had a really big bruise on his face. I was hurt for him’
Another resident told ABC7: “He looked like he had been beat up, punched in the face a couple of times. You could see the fear on him and how nervous he was and how he kept pacing. He just looked odd.”
The boy found on Wednesday gave police a detailed description of his alleged kidnappers, who he says have held him captive for more than seven years.
‘Timmothy described the two kidnappers as two male, whites, body-builder type build,’ the police report details.
‘One had black curly hair, Mt. Dew shirt and jeans & has a spider web tattoo on his neck. The other was short in stature and had a snake tattoo on his arms.’
It’s now unclear who the boys is and whether or not he is a genuine victim of kidnap.
He then described his captor’s vehicle as a new white Ford SUV, with yellow transfer paint and a dent on the rear left bumper, registered to Wisconsin.
Several police departments were instructed to search Red Roof Inns in both Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky,but workers at several of the hotels said they failed to recall anyone matching the description.
His mother took Timmothy on a three-day holiday, visiting the zoo and several water-parks before she was found dead inside a Rockford motel room, having committed suicide
Timmothy disappeared on May 11, 2011, shortly after being dropped off at Greenman Elementary School, in Aurora, Illinois, by his father.
The boy, just six-years-old at the time, was later picked-up by his mother, who told the school she needed to take her son home because of a family emergency.
Fry-Pitzen, 43, then took her son on a three-day holiday, visiting the zoo and several water-parks across different state lines.
The last known images of Timmothy and his mother together were captured on CCTV, checking out of the Kalahari Resort, in Wisconsin Dells on May 12.