A new image was released into the world.
It was not a photograph taken by a camera.
It was a portrait shaped by time, science, and longing.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children unveiled an age-progressed image of a boy who vanished long ago.
A boy who once wore a backpack that was almost bigger than his shoulders.
A boy whose life paused at six years old.
His name was Timmothy Pitzen.
The image showed what he might look like at nineteen.
Older.
Taller.
Changed.
Yet unmistakably carrying echoes of the child who disappeared.
The release of the photo reopened a wound that had never healed.
It sent a quiet tremor through Chicago and far beyond.
It asked a single question without speaking it aloud.
Have you seen this face before.
Timmothy vanished at the age of six.
He disappeared after his mother picked him up from school.
It was a Wednesday.
May 11, 2011.
A day that began like any other.
At his kindergarten classroom, Timmothy sat among classmates.
Crayons.
Paper.
The ordinary rituals of childhood.
Then the door opened.
His mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, stood there.
She told school staff there was a family emergency.
No one questioned her.
Parents were allowed to take their children.
Teachers trusted mothers.
Timmothy slipped on his backpack.
He turned to his classmates and waved.
“See you tomorrow,” he said.
His teacher, Cheryl Broach, would remember that moment forever.
Because tomorrow never came.
Amy and her son climbed into her SUV.
The school faded behind them.
So did the last confirmed moment of Timmothy’s life as a child.
Police later said they traveled hundreds of miles.
Across Illinois.
Across Wisconsin.
They went on what appeared to be an adventure.
They visited the Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago.
They stayed at a suburban Chicago resort.
They traveled north to the Wisconsin Dells.
A place that proudly calls itself the “Waterpark Capital of the World.”
They checked into the Kalahari Resorts.
Security footage captured them walking through hallways.
They looked calm.
They looked normal.
They looked like a mother and son on vacation.
No one saw fear.
No one saw distress.
No one saw goodbye hiding in plain sight.
The next day, video footage showed them leaving the resort.
That was the last time they were ever seen together.
Amy Fry-Pitzen later checked into a motel in Rockford, Illinois.
She was alone.
About 120 miles from where they had been together just hours earlier.
On May 13, hotel staff would discover her body.
Amy had died by suicide.
There was no sign of her son.
No child in the room.
No backpack.
No toys.
No clothes.
Only a note.
In it, Amy wrote that Timmothy was safe.
She claimed he was being cared for by someone who loved him.
She said he was in a place where he would never be found.
Those words froze time.
Police searched.
Investigators followed every lead.
But Timmothy was gone.
Years passed.
Birthdays passed.
School years passed.
While one child vanished from time, others grew up.
In homes.
In classrooms.
In families that tucked them into bed.
For Timmothy’s father, Jim Pitzen, time did not move forward.
It hovered.
It circled.
It waited.
“It’s hard to believe that we have been searching for Timmothy for ten long years now,” Jim said in 2021.
His voice carried exhaustion.
And belief.
“We believe he is out there,” he said.
“And we hope every day that he will make his way home.”
Hope became a daily discipline.
Jim kept his son’s room as it was.
The memories stayed untouched.
He imagined what his son might look like now.
What his voice might sound like.
What his laugh might become.
Then the new image was released.
A face shaped by possibility.
By science.
By unanswered questions.
The age-progressed photo showed a nineteen-year-old young man.
But behind the eyes was still a six-year-old boy.
Aurora police continued to work the case.
They never closed it.
They never forgot it.
Lieutenant Greg Spayth addressed the public in 2021.
“I believe we’re going to go until we find him,” he said.
“Regardless of what that means.”
“Whether he’s alive or deceased.”
“We owe that to the family.”
The unknown haunted investigators.
The silence.
The gaps.
The missing years.
The hope was that the new photo would spark something.
A memory.
A recognition.
A truth someone had been carrying for too long.
Jim Pitzen still believes.
“I know he’s out there,” he said.
“I know he wants to come home.”
“I know he misses me.”
One day, he believes, one of them will find the other.
Until then, the image waits.
A face asking the world to look closer.
A story still unfolding.
