Kara Jacobs vividly remembers the day she got the news about her sister Amy Fry-Pitzen from her mother.
"I think anybody who’s experienced a loss like this, the first thing you feel is just incomprehension. Just, 'I don’t understand. No, no,'" Jacobs recalled.
It was May 14, 2011, when Kara learned her sister Fry-Pitzen, 43, had died by suicide in a Rockford motel and that her son Timmothy Pitzen was missing.
"And I thought, 'what do you mean Tim's not there? How could he not be? Where is he?'" said Jacobs.
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Jacobs is Timmothy's aunt. Her sister Fry-Pitzen was the missing boy’s mother.
Fry-Pitzen picked Timmothy up early at Greenman Elementary school in Aurora on that fateful 2011 day and drove over 500 miles in three days, taking Timmothy to his favorite zoo and two water parks in Wisconsin and Illinois before taking her life.
Timmothy has never been found.
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Fry-Pitzen, who struggled with mental illness, left a note in the motel saying she was sorry and that Timmothy was with people who would take good care of him, but that they’d never find him.
Timmothy was 6 years old back then, and Tuesday marked his 18th birthday.
Jacobs strongly believes Timmothy’s disappearance will be solved one day.
"It’s 100% a story of hope for us. The entire family believes that Tim is out there, and Tim is alive,” said Jacobs.
"It’s not over yet. He’s not living the life that we think he should be living because I think he should be with his father," Jacobs added. "But one day, we are going to see him and you’re gonna see the other side of the story. And that’s going to be amazing."
Jacobs and Timmothy's father Jim emphatically reject the theory that the situation may have been a murder-suicide.
"Not for one second did I think Timmothy was in danger," said Jacobs. "It never occurred to me."
Jacobs described her sister’s relationship with Timmothy like "peas in a pod," saying, "they were practically inseparable. … It was the one thing that I thought, 'Wow, Amy was meant to be a mom. This is what Amy was meant to do.'"
But Jacobs acknowledges there was another side of Fry-Pitzen that she didn’t see.
"I think that I believed what she presented to us, and I believed she was better than she was," said Jacobs. "I knew she was depressed. I knew she had challenges. I didn’t know that it was as bad, obviously, as it was. That was a surprise."
At the time, Fry-Pitzen and her husband were struggling with their marriage and Jacobs said that her sister thought a history of mental illness would not help her win a custody fight.
"She was worried that her losing custody of Tim was a real possibility, and that was just not something that she could handle," Jacobs said.
Now, Jacobs will not accept a life without Timmothy.
She’s worked with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and retraced her sister’s steps, searching each stop along a 500-mile route.
"It took me 10 years to get the courage myself to make that drive. And when I did, it was like a lightbulb went off and I'm like, now I get it. Now, I know where she went. Now I could see her steps and I could be in her head and see what she was doing," said Jacobs.
Based on Fry-Pitzen's cellphone and I-PASS records, Jacobs said that she believes Fry-Pitzen headed west on I-88 and took exit 44 into Sterling, Illinois.
"Somewhere between Sterling and Mount Carroll, she makes the phone calls,” said Jacobs as she showed NBC 5 Investigates the location on a map.
Those phone calls were to family members saying Timmothy was fine. Then, Fry-Pitzen turned off her phone and apparently tossed it behind a grain storage building off a remote road in Mount Carroll.
Jacobs said she feels that at that point in the saga, her sister Fry-Pitzen had made up her mind and that the phone calls to family were to say goodbye.
However, she says that in the calls there was no hint of trouble. Fry-Pitzen even let Timmothy talk to a relative, but he was not heard or seen after that.
Jacobs believes her sister then drove north on Highway 78 and onto Route 20.
“If you turn left, that will take you to Dubuque,” Jacobs said.
She remembered this road was one she and her sister had traveled as children.
Dubuque, Iowa, was a place that her family often visited.
“We spent a lot of time on Route 20 back and forth when we were young, visiting our grandparents and an aunt and uncle. Amy actually lived with my grandparents for a period of time in the '90s. She met people in Iowa. I believe [behind] whatever happened was a connection she made there," said Jacobs.
Jacobs believes that Timmothy was handed off to another family in Iowa.
No one has reported seeing Timmothy after his disappearance, but Jacobs sees her search for answers as a long road with one destination. Not a place but a person, a little boy who would now be a man.
"We are not done. I am not done until I can see Tim standing in front of his dad, and then I’ll feel complete, like the circle is closed," Jacobs said.
