With last week marking the six months since anyone had known contact with 6 year old Timmothy Pitzen, Aurora Police say that preliminary results from an outside forensics lab hired to assist with the case may help narrow areas that will lead to evidence and assist in pinpointing what happened to the boy.

The private, undisclosed forensics lab has been processing materials taken off of the SUV that the boy’s mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen was driving and Timmothy occupied, before she committed suicide on either May 13 or 14.  The lab has determined that:
Sediments and plant material on the vehicle indicate that it was stopped for an unknown period of time on a wide gravel shoulder, gravel road, or short gravel turnout either adjacent to, or just off of, an asphalt secondary road that had at one time, been treated with glass road-marking beads.  
In close proximity to the gravel shoulder or road where the vehicle stopped, it backed into a grassy meadow or field to a spot that is nearly treeless.  There are birch and oak trees in the general area but not directly over or at the spot where the SUV stopped.  
Both Queen Anne’s Lace and black mustard plants grow in a row along the border of the field or the shoulder of the road.
In addition, there is no corn growing in or adjacent to the spot where the SUV stopped, nor is there any indication that the area had been used for agriculture in the recent past.  
Instead, the evidence strongly suggests that grasses have been the only major plants growing in the immediate area which leads scientists to believe that it is a meadow and not, for example, a field that had once been farmland and not recently sown.  
Forensic results indicate that the grass was not cut which helps rule out a rural residential lawn or a park.  There is also a strong likelihood that there is a pond, small stream, or creek in the area.
Scientists further believe that the meadow is most likely in Northwestern Illinois with Lee and Whiteside Counties as the most likely locations.  
However, areas in Carroll, Ogle, Stephenson, and Winnebago Counties cannot be ruled out at this time.  The last time anyone had contact with Timmothy was on May 13 when he talked to a relative on Amy’s cell phone at about 1:30 p.m.  
That call was traced to a point about five miles west of Sterling, IL, near Route 40.  Further processing of the materials found on the vehicle are continuing.
While the findings are helpful to investigators, they still do not have enough information with which to plan ground searches.  
However, they are asking landowners and residents of those counties whose properties match the outlined description; and  hunters, outdoor enthusiasts and other visitors to similar areas, to check for items that have been missing from the Pitzen vehicle since it was discovered on May 14.  
Those items include Timmothy’s Spider Man backpack, several toys and a tube of toothpaste Amy had bought for Timmothy before he disappeared, and Amy’s cell phone and I-Pass device.  Pictures of several of the items are posted on the City’s website at www.aurora-il.org under the “Police Department” tab on the left side of the homepage and then going to the “Timmothy Pitzen” tab from the pull-down menu.  
Aurora Police have also posted the photos on their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/aurorapolice.  
Anyone finding any of the items should immediately call Aurora Police at 630-256-5500.