The father of missing boy Timmothy Pitzen said that Brian Michael Rini, 23, who claimed to be Timmothy, caused great pain to the boy’s relatives.
“It was like a scab being ripped open,” James Pitzen told NBC News on April 7. “It’s just painful. Now you’ve gotta wait for the scab to heal.”
Other relatives of Timmothy said that they were hopeful when Rini first claimed he was the missing boy but described both pain and sympathy for Rini after a DNA test revealed he was an imposter.
“It’s been awful,” Timmothy’s grandmother, Alana Anderson, told reporters at a press conference. “We’ve been alternately hopeful and frightened. It’s just been exhausting. I feel so sorry for the young man who’s obviously had a horrible time and felt the need to say he was someone else.”
James Pitzen, Timmothy’s father, added that the imposter was able to provide the correct birth date for Timmothy but struggled to answer question’s about the boy’s life before he vanished at age 6, such as if he had any pets.
“The detectives asked him a bunch of questions, and he said he didn’t have any pets and I was like ‘that’s wrong,’” James Pitzen told NBC.
The signals caused doubt in the father’s mind as to whether the claim was real.
“The detectives also said he didn’t carry himself like a 14-year-old, so I pretty much knew it wasn’t him to begin with after that time,” the dad said.
The FBI announced on April 5 that Rini was charged with making false statements to a federal agent.
“False reports like this can be painful to the families of missing children and also divert law enforcement resources in order to investigate these untruthful claims,” Herb Stapleton, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cincinnati office, said in a statement.
“Law enforcement takes dishonest reports very seriously and we caution that people making false claims can and will face criminal penalties.”
Rini’s brother, Jonathon, said that Rini has mental problems, including Asperger’s, a bipolar disorder, and ADHD.
“The list goes on, he said.
Newport Police Chief Tom Collins told the Cincinnati Enquirer. that he doesn’t know why Rini, who has a string of convictions dating back to 2013, pretended to be the missing boy.
One of Rini’s convictions was for throwing a massive party in a model house in Brunswick Hills, Ohio, after he convinced a realtor that he had $800,000 in his bank account to buy the $400,000 home.
The party caused thousands of dollars in damage and led to Rini spending 18 months in jail. He was released on March 7.
“He’s a mastermind,” Tim Sopkovich, the chief of police at Brunswick Hills Police Department, told Fox 8. “I don’t know if he has multiple personalities or what, but he had our realtor convinced he was buying the house, he had neighbors convinced he was living there.”
Sopkovich said that he’s not surprised Rini lied to law enforcement in Kentucky.
“How sad and pathetic that he’s making up this story just to get fame for himself. My heart goes out to the families,” the police chief added.
Records show Rini made a false police report, telling officers that he was being threatened by his mother’s boyfriend, who told Rini that his trust fund would be taken away. Officers found that Rini’s mother didn’t have a boyfriend at the time and that there was no trust fund.
He was convicted of passing bad checks in 2015 and had several other convictions since 2013.
“Brain Rini is the type of dirtbag who is going to go out and do whatever he feels and will do whatever he can get away [with],” Sopkovich said. “We caught him in my town and prosecuted him and from there I don’t understand why he’s doing what he’s doing, it just doesn’t make sense.”
