Six months after the disappearance of Timmothy Pitzen, police are hoping that a detailed analysis of his mother?s SUV will help lead them to the boy.
Police released some results on Friday of a forensic analysis of the grass, dirt and debris that had accumulated on Amy Fry-Pitzen?s 2004 Ford Expedition.
They are also hoping that surveillance videos and details about where Amy may have travelled that were released Friday will help jog a memory.
On May 11, Amy took her only son out of school and, without telling any family members, she and Timmothy went on a three-day, 500-mile road trip, stopping at zoos and water parks in northern Illinois and Wisconsin.
On the third day, Amy finally called family to report she was fine. The next morning, police found her body in a Rockford motel.
Police announced on Friday that the lab has determined that plant material on the SUV indicate it was stopped for a time on a wide gravel shoulder or a gravel road.
Near the gravel area where the vehicle stopped, the SUV was backed into a grassy field, the beaconnews.suntimes.com reports.
The lab results have given police a clearer indication of where Timmothy may have been dropped off.
A few weeks ago, six months after the Illinois schoolboy disappeared when his mother killed herself in a roadside motel room, his grandmother Alana Anderson and father Jim Pitzen marked what would have been his seventh birthday by planting a 7-year-old blue spruce tree in the back garden.
Anderson told the Chicago Tribune: 'I bought him a birthday card and cut out pictures of the things I would have bought for him,' 'A lighted skateboard. A remote-control helicopter.'
The lively schoolboy vanished on May 11, when Fry-Pitzen, picked him up from his Aurora elementary school.
In what were to be her final days mother and son went to the zoo and a water park, one in the far north east Illinois, the other in Wisconsin, before travelling west back into Illinois.
Fry Pitzen eventually checked into a motel near Rockford, northern Illinois alone and slit her wrists, leaving a suicide note and several letters in the post.
In the notes to her husband, her mother and a close friend, she said her son was safe, and with people who loved him, but she did not say who she had left him with.
According to Anderson, one of the notes warns, 'You will never find Timmothy'.
And despite a massive search operation investigators have not been able to track down the missing child.
Three months ago police revealed that they found ?a concerning amount? of the child?s blood in the backseat of his mother?s 2004 Ford Expedition SUV.
The clothes Fry-Pitzen was wearing when captured on surveillance video have never been found.
This includes the clothing she was wearing when she and her son checked out of the Wisconsin Dells resorts, hours before she checked in alone to the hotel room where her body was found.
But the family continues to believe that Timmothy is alive.
The blood may have come from a nose bleed Timmothy had about a year ago, they say.
And testing of the knife Fry Pitzen used to kill herself revealed no traces of her son's DNA.
'I just try to do one day at a time,' Jim Pitzen told the Chicago Tribune. 'I hope whoever has Tim understands that he's not theirs and he needs to come home to his family.'
The family?s steadfast belief that Timothy is alive is based on two things. Fry-Pitzen cared for her son deeply and showed her affection often.
The 43-year-old had periodically battled depression, but, her mother insisted, 'was not a crazy person. She absolutely never acted bizarrely.'
And she methodically planned her suicide, leading Anderson and Pitzen to conclude that she'd made similarly comprehensive plans for her son's upbringing.
The mother-of-one had helped Anderson, a retired emergency room nurse, paint her house and clear up her backyard in recent months, asking, 'Is there anything else I need to do for you?'
She had also given her mother some antique furniture of hers that Anderson had long coveted.
Toll records reveal she made unexplained trips, in February and March, to the area where the pair were last known to have been travelling, and to which she had no prior connection.
With the holidays approaching, Anderson, who lives on her own, says she misses her grandson, who would sleep at her home every other weekend.
For now she is just 'trying to put the pieces of my life together. They're just not that many of them left anymore.'
'It's been rough,' Anderson told the Tribune. 'I think the first couple of months you're in such shock, you're almost numb and it doesn't quite sink in. But now ? I don't expect it to be a whole lot better anytime soon.'
She started a journal about a week after Timmothy vanished, in which she writes 'cute, little stories about him so he'll know what he was like, how I felt about him; how hard we looked for him; the places we went and things we did together.'
Jim Pitzen has lost his job in manufacturing since his son?s disappearance, but tries to keep occupied to distract himself from his loss, and his questions.
He is still angry with his wife, the Tribune reported.
He said: 'I think about her all the time.'
'I just wonder what she did with our son and why she wanted him to be with someone else.'
Police are expected to release new video of Timmothy today, hoping that new leads may emerge.
Forensic investigators have been working to try to identify tall grass or weeds found on the underside of the SUV to link the materials to a more specific area.
After Timothy's disappearance officers searched a remote area about 100 miles west of Chicago, where cellphone records indicated Fry-Pitzen and Timmothy were last together.
Meanwhile, mindful of time passing, the loving grandmother has started to throw away some of her grandson's things, disposing of clothes that no longer would fit, and toys that he had outgrown.
To remind her of Timmothy, she is holding on to his favorites: some cars and truck, a much-loved book, 'Diary of a Worm,' and even a plastic spoon he used the last time they visited Dairy Queen.
She said: 'He's out there. And I think when he's old enough, he'll find us.'