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The Hunt with John Walsh

The Disappearing. Aired 9-10p ET

Aired August 30, 2015 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[21:00:15] JOHN WALSH, CNN HOST: Back in 1981, I had the American dream, the beautiful wife, the house in the suburbs and a beautiful 6- year-old son. One day I went to work, kissed my son good-bye and never saw him again. In two weeks, I became the parent of a murdered child. And I'll always be the parent of a murdered child. I still have the heartache. I still have the rage. I waited years for justice. I know what it's like to be there waiting for some answers.

And over those years, I learned how to do one thing really well and that's how to catch these bastards and bring them back to justice. I've become a man hunter. I'm out there looking for bad guys.

(MUSIC)

(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know you are hurt and frustrated, and I wish I had something better to say than I love you.

I have tried very hard to fit in. But everything just fell apart and this time there were just too many pieces for me to pick up again.

So I have taken Tim somewhere safe. He will be well cared for, and he says that he loves you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You'll never find him.

JIM PITZEN, TIMMOTHY'S FATHER: I dropped Timmothy off at school. He undoes his seatbelt, hops out of the jeep and runs off to class.

When I go to pick him up from school, the teacher goes oh, he left early this morning. I'm like, what do you mean he left early this morning?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the video, you can see Amy speak to the front desk clerk and you can see Timmothy come up the front lobby at which point he and his mother left.

PITZEN: There was no indication at the time that Timmothy and Amy were going to be gone. None at all.

ALANA ANDERSON, AMY'S MOTHER: Amy's my middle child. Amy had not been a depressed child or a depressed teenager. I think her depression actually visibly started after she divorced her first husband, Michael. Didn't want to go to work. Didn't want to do anything.

LIZ BAUMAN, AMY'S FRIEND: She expected things to be -- go a certain way. And when it derailed from that in any small portion, it would set her off.

ANDERSON: She told me that she had gone to a party and she met this guy who was an engineer and she just really liked him and he was really delightful.

PITZEN: We dated long distance for a year or so. Amy revealed a few things about her history with her depression. I figured that eventually Amy would get off the medication and deal with her issues and we could move on with our lives together.

Early spring 2003, I get a phone call from the hospital saying that Amy's in the hospital in Cedar Rapids. Amy had gone to Backbone State Park. She had taken some pills, I guess. And sitting on the edge of a cliff and supposedly passed out and fell off the cliff.

[21:05:33] BAUMAN: I knew that was a suicide attempt. She didn't have to tell me. I just knew. Because I had told her a couple of times I had tried to, and, you know, in our eyes it was nothing to be ashamed of, it was just our life.

PITZEN: 2004, Amy became pregnant with our son Timmothy. We had talked about getting married later in 2004, but the news of her being pregnant accelerated things a little bit.

ANDERSON: He wanted her to go through with the pregnancy, and she became much happier about it as time went by.

PITZEN: October 18, 2004, about 3:30 in the afternoon is when he was born. It was a good day.

ANDERSON: Amy didn't want him to be called Timmy. She wanted Timmothy or Tim. I said why did you put that extra "M" in there, for heaven's sake? She said, I just wanted it a little different from Timothy. She just adored that little boy and he just adored her.

PITZEN: He was an energetic little boy. Loved his matchbox cars and his cats. He was in swimming lessons. He liked to play in the water.

BAUMAN: I thought, well, she's doing good. And she's going to be OK. But then the marriage started to have problems.

PITZEN: Marriage is, to me, it's like a permanent commitment. You get married for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health. We always talked about making it work and doing whatever had to be done to make our relationship work and stay together.

WALSH: The one thing I think most people can't comprehend is why so often in a disintegrating relationship or divorce, there is only one consistent victim and that victim is the child. Why those two people as adults can't say, you know what, let's take the high road. Whatever our problems are, our main job is the most important, most treasured possession of our marriage is that child. Everybody loved that little boy. But in the end, he has always been and still is collateral damage.

PITZEN: Her and her friend Liz went to Bahamas for a week. I told her I didn't want her to go and she went anyway.

ANDERSON: And when Amy came home, she said Jim had been very nasty to her friend and she was embarrassed by that.

And he kind of said, well, she's brought up divorce, but that's not going to happen with me. There will be no divorce. I will not let her divorce me. I think that she just felt that there was no way out.

PITZEN: Amy said she would do with Timmothy what she wanted because Timmothy belong to her.

ANDERSON: That was a really stupid thing to do, Amy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:13:23] ANDERSON: Jim was angry with her at that time and he kind of said, well, she's brought up divorce, but she's been depressed. She could be committed. I could have her son taken away from her.

BAUMAN: She was deathly afraid of that.

She goes, you know, he's keeping me here, hanging this over my head all the time. I said Amy, no judge is going to take your son away from you. And she goes, well, but he keeps telling me that.

PITZEN: Yes, I did say that. Yes, you are not going to get custody of my -- our son because you are not stable enough to take care of him.

LEE CATAVU, DETECTIVE, AURORA PD: On May the 11th at 8:30 a.m., she arrived at the Greenman Elementary School.

PITZEN: She told him that they had a family emergency and that she would be gone for a couple of days. I tried her cell phone 15,20 times. Didn't know where she was or what had gone on. Then I got to the point of I don't care where you are at or what you're doing, just call and say you're fine.

[21:15:03] WALSH: I know that this woman was so disturbed and in such serious need of some type of help. Somebody that loved her needed to intercede, and it didn't happen.

CATAVU: On Friday, she made a series of phone calls.

PITZEN: Friday afternoon I got a phone call from my brother saying that Amy had contacted him and that Amy said that she would do with Timmothy what she wanted because Timmothy belong to her.

ANDERSON: I was so happy to hear from her. I said, oh, thank God, you're all right. I'm kind of mad at you because this was a really stupid thing to do, Amy. You know, if you're thinking of divorcing Jim or leaving him, you shouldn't have done this. And I said, you know, please, just come home.

OK, mom.

PITZEN: Saturday morning is when they found her.

CATAVU: I was off duty but I was contacted by a colleague who would advise that Rockford PD had discovered Amy Pitzen in one of their local hotels. Timmothy was nowhere to be found.

ANDERSON: So evidently she went to this hotel room and killed herself. The bitch.

PITZEN: She had laid out some pictures of Timmothy, Timmothy's ID card, all nice and neat.

CATAVU: It's apparent from the note that she left behind that she did not want Timmothy to be with Jim, but what her motivation was behind that, we have not been able to determine because there's no evidence that Jim was abusive in anyway shape or form to his child.

The note stated that Tim is somewhere safe with people who love him and will take care of him. We immediately began treating it as if it were child abduction.

When we get to the last known location of where Timmothy and Amy had been, I mean, it's predominantly farmland. Any one of those locations could in theory be a spot where she could have done a hand-off of her child to someone.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:22:13] CATAVU: Since we had found Amy deceased, locating Timmothy became priority number one. At that point, we started to access some of her financial records. We had located some receipts on the scene and we're able to kind of start backtracking some of the locations that they had been.

After Amy checks Timmothy out of his elementary school, her next stop was a local zoo here in the area. And then Amy and Timmothy then traveled up to a water park in Gurnee, Illinois.

ANDERSON: We had been to the cove a year before and Tim just loved it. Probably just trying to give him something wonderful to remember.

CATAVU: The next morning they check out. They drive up into Wisconsin. There were a couple of various stops. They ultimately ended up at another water park resort in Wisconsin Dells.

PITZEN: There were places Timmothy always had fun and always wanted to go.

BAUMAN: You know, the morbidity of what was going through her mind, I just can't wrap my head around it. I'm going to do all these fun things with my son and then I'm going to kill myself.

CATAVU: The last surveillance video that included Tim would have been when she was checking out of the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells.

At around 7:30 that same day, we see Amy stopping to a grocery store in Winnebago, Illinois. This is the first time we see Amy is by herself.

PITZEN: You see her walking in and a couple minutes later you see her walking out with a bag of food in her hand and no Timmothy.

CATAVU: In this case, there are two viable theories. One that Amy brought harm to her son, but I have yet to meet one person who believes that she would ever harm her child.

[21:25:00] The other option is that she turned him over to someone who, as she wrote in her note, would love and care for him.

When we get to her last known location of where Timmothy and Amy had been when her phone was powered up, there are no buildings, there's no city, there's nothing but farmland. Any one of those locations could in theory be a spot where she could have done a hand-off of her child to someone.

ANDERSON: I think whoever took him did so out of goodness and wanting him to be OK, even though it's illegal.

WALSH: Let's pray that somebody is going to see this and see both sides of that story and do the right thing. We've got to do the right thing and get him back to the people who really love him.

PITZEN: He could be being home schooled. He could be in the middle of nowhere. He could be with some radical church group. I have no idea where he's at.

ANDERSON: He's very bright. If he was anywhere where he could possibly call, he would have called.

PITZEN: Who knows what she had told him to get them to take Timmothy that I could have been abusive or beating Timmothy, which never happened and never would have happened.

CATAVU: One would think that if someone let say were told a story to take Timmothy, that they would then ultimately see that he in fact does have a family out there who is, you know, still misses him and loves him and wants him to return. For them not to then reach out and try and reunite them, I mean, it's hard to figure out.

PITZEN: I mean, it's one thing to kill yourself, but it's another thing to do this and involve Timmothy. My only son, I really miss the little guy. And I have one image, the day I dropped him off to school and he's off running off to class. I mean, that's pretty much the last thing I have in my mind of him.

WALSH: Timmothy Pitzen is an outgoing, inquisitive child. He loves playing in and around water. He may be tall and mature-looking for his age.

If you have seen Timmothy Pitzen or have any information as to his whereabouts, please make that call, 1-866-THE-HUNT, or go online at CNN.com/TheHunt. You can remain anonymous and we'll pass your tip on to the proper authorities. If requested, we will not reveal your name

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I had a phone call about 3:25 in the morning. When I got up there, it just looked so doomed. There was other people inside the house.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mom was good people. She was even good to this man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some people embellish about their background. This guy, his whole life is a lie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:33:00] VALERIE JONES, VIVIAN'S SISTER: Over a hundred of my family are here in Petersburg. We have been here for generation to generation.

VIVIAN CHAVIS, PETERSBURG VA: I got a big family. We love each other.

JONES: We are a church-going family.

VANESSA WASHINGTON, VIVIAN'S SISTER: We were a close family anyway. But it made us closer.

CHAVIS: I was walking to the store. And I met him and we just started talking. He was like a gentleman, you know? If we went anywhere, he opened the door. He (INAUDIBLE) to me as Real Deal, but I knew he was Alexander Deville (ph) Hill.

WASHINGTON: Mother used to talk about how nice and sweet and kind he was with my sister, Vivian.

JONES: We thought he was the ideal man for my sister.

CHAVIS: I was in love. Actually, I used to talk about marrying him.

WASHINGTON: I saw a change in her. My mother saw a change in her. We didn't know a lot of things about him. He just appeared to be a nice guy.

JONES: It was just in my mind, just something about him, it was too good. He was too good.

[21:35:05] CHAVIS: There's a whole lot I found out about him that were totally lies.

WASHINGTON: That's when she found out about the wife.

CHAVIS: Wife. When was you going to tell me you was married. And he just like, oh, I thought I told you. I was like I think I would have remembered if you told me you was married.

We talked a lot about Trinidad but he never said places. You know what I'm saying? He never said where in Trinidad.

KEVIN CONNOLLY, SUPERVISOR, U.S. MARSHALS FUGITIVE TASK FORCE: He says he's from Trinidad. He's never been to Trinidad. He's born and raised in Virginia. He's basically a loser that spent his whole life here that's trying to impress people.

NA'SHAYLA NELSON, DETECTIVE, PETERSBURG BUREAU OF POLICE: Alexander Hill Jr. has a history of violence. He's been arrested in several jurisdictions here in Virginia. He's assaulted family members, pulled out a firearm on his mother.

WALSH: He certainly had those predator skills. He had a lot to hide. He had a wrap sheet a mile long. But he knew this family's tight, they're loving, somewhat naive, very, very trusting and I can get inside this family. It's like hunters picking out their prey.

CHAVIS: It started out by the food. He wanted me to cook every day. My job was to cook, clean. So you know we'd go at it.

In Virginia, you think it's my job to cater to you. You sitting up there trying to talk mess to me about why I ain't this way, why I ain't that way. Uh oh, that's too much for me. So, you know, me and my mamma had a talk and I was telling her I was going to leave him.

He told me if you feel like you can leave, I said oh, trust and believe. I'm heading out the door as soon as I can change my clothes. At that point, he started snatching clothes out of the closet. When I went back to pick the clothes up to put them in it, he attacked me from behind.

WASHINGTON: And somehow, she end up on the floor and he tried to pull her eyeball out.

CHAVIS: He's like I'm going to kill your ass. I was like, oh hell no. I was like, not to damn day. Today ain't the day I'm going to die.

WASHINGTON: That's over. I said you need to go down to Petersburg Police Department and take a warrant out on him for assault.

CHAVIS: So I go to the hospital to, you know, get my eye checked. As soon as they give me the paper work, the police was there to put handcuffs on me. I was like oh wow, he had me arrested.

WASHINGTON: He had the assault charges against Vivian so Vivian had to show up for court and the judge asked him three times to state his name and he kept on saying that it may be incriminating so what he may say may be held against him, what he may say.

CHAVIS: The judge was like you can't do that. You can't plead the fifth on your name. So he kept saying he plead the fifth. And he was like if you say it again, I'm going to find you in contempt.

WASHINGTON: The judge decided he was just going to go ahead and dismiss the case and that's what happened.

CHAVIS: I got all the phone calls about it.

JONES: He just changed. And the real Real came out.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:44:03] CHAVIS: He would call me every day, ten times a day. But sometimes I wouldn't even answer my phone to the point where I got will you please leave me alone and stop calling my phone?

Sometimes he wouldn't say nothing. He would talk like this. I'm going to kill you bitch.

JONES: One of the police told us that, you know -- that wherever we see him at, you know, to write it down in a book so they can get him on a stalking charge.

WASHINGTON: My sister Vicki found out you sleeping on Real because he's going to try to do something to us. I guess all of us underestimated the situation.

JONES: (INAUDIBLE) listen to Vicki.

[21:45:13] CHAVIS: It was the weekend.

WASHINGTON: My mom had went to church that Friday. She was a strong Christian woman. So she always said, well, she's not worried about nothing because God is going to take care of her.

CHAVIS: My mom was in the bed, because she had come from church. She was like, I'm tired, I'm going on to bed.

CONNOLLY: It was early morning hours of April 19 of 2014.

NELSON: We received a 911 call and there was a young lady saying that someone broke in their house and that he was attacking her mom. And then the line disconnects.

JONES: I had a phone call about 3:25 in the morning saying that my mom's house was on fire.

WASHINGTON: So when I got up there, I could see my mother house. I knew something was wrong because my family would have been out there. They would have been out there.

CHAVIS: My niece called me and she was like, you know, my mama's house is on fire. I was like the house on fire, my mama not outside? She was like, no. Grandma not out here. Vicki not out here. I was like, oh my God. Right then and there, I fell to my knees because I knew he did what he said he was going to do.

CONNOLLY: When first responders got there, four persons were discovered deceased inside.

WASHINGTON: And we were out there so long, and then finally the homicide detectives came and he said, well, I can't tell you everything that was going on, but you all need to call your pastors.

CHAVIS: Because when they brought them out --

NELSON: The grandmother Pauline Wilkins, her daughter Vicki, and the Vicki's daughter, Tanique and then her son, Delvari, so four generations perished in the fire.

JONES: Well, we had to identify the bodies. (INAUDIBLE) told us that they were stabbed.

WASHINGTON: My mother arm was broken. She received 23 stab wounds and my sister had 13. How can a person be so angry like that? To hurt people like that for nothing.

NELSON: Vivian had just left the house at 10:00 that night. So it's quite possible that she would have been a victim as well if she would have been home.

CHAVIS: Was he watching me? Did he make sure I wasn't in there? He wanted me to hurt this bad to kill my family?

WALSH: He wanted to hurt this woman so bad that she would never forget him. This man is a danger to society. He's taken revenge to a different level.

JONES: And just for him, just, in one night destroy the family lives that you never get back, not the memories.

WASHINGTON: The part that really gets me about him, he called my mother mom. And all my mother ever did was treat him like a son of hers. And he did this to her.

NELSON: More information was coming to light that Mr. Hill would be the person of interest in this homicide. We were checking everywhere for him.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:54:04] CONNOLLY: When we were contacted by Petersburg that there was a fire and that three women and a child were found deceased inside and that a person of interest was Alexander Hill Jr., we hit the ground running. On that Saturday, many of us working over 15 hours the day before Easter.

NELSON: We went to his house, executed a search warrant to try to see if he was there, looked for every relative that we could find.

On the 20th, about midnight, we found out that a local cab company had given him a ride.

CONNOLLY: Hill apparently showed up at the cab company in Petersburg asking for a ride, initially to Southern Virginia and Emporia, and then along the route change up and said I need to get to North Carolina.

[21:55:02] NELSON: They dropped him off at the "Waffle House" in Roanoke Rapids.

CONNOLLY: I sent fugitive task force members from Richmond down to Roanoke Rapids, obtained footage video of Hill walking into the "Waffle House" and then asked for someone to call a cab for him.

NELSON: He gets to ride further south into North Carolina and we were able to see him on surveillance at the Amtrak Station.

CONNOLLY: The Amtrak trains were running, but because it was Easter Sunday, the buses were not.

NELSON: He asked for fair prices but didn't purchase a ticket.

CONNOLLY: He never gets on a train. He ends up leaving the station never to be seen again. And that's the last location we have for him 24 hours after the murders.

WALSH: When you look at the videos, you know one thing. He's dangerous, he's evil, somewhat smart, the ultimate conman but he doesn't have any resources. He's a lone psychopath and this guy could go from city to city and get a meal, get a shower, find some place to live, find transient work and stay out there for years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eternal Father we thank you again for your many blessings and we thank you for family and fellowship. We thank you God for your loving kindness.

CHAVIS: How could I bring this man to my home and meet my family, take away my family?

WASHINGTON: Vivian is carrying a lot of weight on her now because she feel like it was her fault, which it wasn't her fault.

JONES: I think she feel guilt because she brought this man around her family, but it could have been anyone. And we just tell her we love her and it's not her fault. It's not her fault.

WASHINGTON: We're going to stand and be together with this. He will not bring us down.

WALSH: While we were shooting and producing this story, Alexander Hill was a really bad guy on the run. But just days after the one- year anniversary of this horrible crime, media attention led to a very stunning development.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: Breaking right now at 5:00, investigators have arrested a man suspected in the killing of a Petersburg family.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: U.S. Marshals captured Hill this morning after he was spotted at a soup kitchen in Buffalo.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: He was arrested this morning at a local homeless shelter where he had been staying and people I spoke with who worked there said they had no idea they had a murder suspect living under their roof. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: Police say Hill was going by the name Trent Dales here in buffalo, fingerprinting took hours because Hill refused to roll prints, he fought with officers, clenched his fist and threatened them.

WALSH: How Alexander Hill wound up in buffalo, we may never find out. Amazingly, this wasn't the first time that Hill got press coverage in this town. About six weeks before he was arrested, Alexander Hill calling himself Trent Dales agreed to do an interview with the homeless center he was staying in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: Trent Dales, a carpenter by trade, was laid off from his job and lost his home.

ALEXANDER HILL JR., SUSPECT: The minister has gave me an opportunity to decent work, you know, kept me out of the elements and so far it looks like it's going up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: Where else was this guy hiding? He was on the run for a year. They just happened to find him in Buffalo.

WALSH: Alexander Hill has been charged with four counts of first- degree murder and child pornography. The prosecutor may still file additional charges, including arson. He may face the death penalty. Hill has refused to speak with his attorney, attend hearings or participate in the court process in any way. He has not yet pled to these charges.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: Today, some of the family members were in court as Alexander Hill displayed some very bizarre behavior.

WALSH: First, this creep denied his identify in Buffalo. Then he refuse to sit up straight in a court room. He went on a hunger strike. He's doing anything he can to slow down the wheels of justice.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)