The Brooklyn mom who has repeatedly denied her missing 11-year-old autistic son even existed – claiming she is “barren” – has a tattoo with the child’s name on her arm, according to the NYPD.
Little Jacob Pritchett is still nowhere to be found after he was reported missing from mother Jacqueline Pritchett’s NYCHA apartment on Howard Avenue in Brownsville in October, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Friday.
“We brought the mom in to speak to her,” Kenny said.
“She tells us that she is barren [and claims] she does not have a child named Jacob, although she has a Jacob tattoo on her arm,” he revealed.
Jacqueline, 50, “keeps getting sent to Rikers” for failing to reveal Jacob’s whereabouts but was most recently sprung from custody in late December when a judge dismissed the case, Kenny said.
In the early stages of the investigation in the fall, cadaver dogs sniffed out the Brownsville unit and detected blood both on the refrigerator and on a mattress near the dumpsters outside but no sign of Jacob, the police official said.
Determined investigators also sifted through trash at a waste management plant in Greenpoint and even traveled to the High Acres Landfill in upstate Rochester for any traces of Jacob, according to Kenny.
“A total of 2,920,360 pounds of raw garbage was gone through by the NYPD and the New York State Police, unfortunately yielding negative results,” the chief said.
The last confirmed sighting of Jacob was on April 2 when a property manager saw him, according to Kenny. And earlier in 2025, Jacob waved from a window as his aunt spoke with his mother outside, the chief said.
Officials from the city’s Administration for Children’s Services informed the NYPD that “there are no records of [Jacob] ever going to school” and that relatives say he was being homeschooled, according to Kenny.
Jacob was still missing Monday, the NYPD confirmed.
At this point, the ongoing case is “most likely going to be a homicide” due to the blood found in the apartment, Kenny said Friday.
“We know he exists,” he said. “We know that for a fact. It’s just where is he now?”