Four private investigators who have been trying to find Rudy Farias, who disappeared in 2015, say they are not surprised by his ‘miraculous’ reappearance.
brenda paradise said Well-informed person that a number of aspects of the case “didn’t add up” and said they are not surprised that it is turning into a nightmare.
“There is something dark and dirty here,” he said.
His mother, Janie Santana, had reported him missing in 2015, when he was 17, and said his appearance at church was a miracle.
In the days that followed, the story took a surreal and disturbing turn, with explosive claims that Farias was actually being held by Santana as a sex slave, and family and neighbors saying he was never missing.
Farias appears in the photo when he was 17 years old, in 2015, and his mother reported him missing.
A local activist, Quanell X, spoke to the media after meeting with Farias and investigators and claims that Farias had told him that she had never disappeared and had instead endured years of sordid abuse at the hands of her mother.
Houston police have yet to confirm the claims made by Quanell and have only confirmed that the matter is still under investigation. It is not clear if Farias has stayed with his mother.
Paradise worked on the original disappearance case from 2015 and years after. She said there were unconfirmed rumors that she had seen Farias in the neighborhood and at the homes of family members.
“There were billboards in Houston,” announcing that he was missing, she told the outlet.
Paradise claims Santana set off alarm bells after he provided the wrong birth date for the missing flyers, listing Farias as 17, instead of 18.
“He was 18 years old when he disappeared,” Paradise said. ‘I found the original intake form, it shows that mom wrote the wrong date. She said that she was 17 years old.
Paradise claims that Santana did not provide any recent photos of Farias either, only providing one of him when he was 14 years old.
“He told me that he thought if he looked younger, there would be more empathy,” Paradise said.
When searchers found an asthma inhaler and a backpack at the scene of the disappearance, family members were quick to say they were the missing teens at the time.
Rudy Farias, now 25, was just 13 when his older brother and ‘best friend’ Charles (pictured left) died in the tragic traffic accident in 2011. His father, Rudolph, committed suicide in 2014.
Rudy Farias’ cousin, Cassandra Lopez, said her grandmother said she saw him regularly and knew he wasn’t missing.
Rudy never had asthma. The backpack had an elementary school kid’s homework in it, and it wasn’t Rudy’s either,” he said.
‘But the mother had sworn up and down that it was hers.
“I would love to know that he really has been missing all these years and that he has finally been found.”
She added: ‘I mean, gosh, I’d love to know he was found and he’s getting help. But I just don’t trust anything that comes from that family.
Ryan Grayson, another private investigator and investigator for the defense, said that he, Paradise, Barbara and Martin Renteria were the lead private investigators on the case as of 2015.
“She claimed there was a woman holding him in Mexico,” Grayson told the outlet about Santana, a lead for which he claims she raised funds.
“He was late for the fundraiser and didn’t greet any of the people who were donating money or at the fundraiser,” he said.
He claimed he tracked down the trafficker who Santana said had been holding Farias in Mexico.
She said that Rudy’s mother had spoken to her. I told Janie that she didn’t want me involved in her scam.
On another occasion, Santana allegedly shared communications from her son’s alleged traffickers in Tijuana, Mexico, that were in a dialect foreign to that region.
‘It was like Chicano Spanish, Tex-Mex, like what Janie spoke.[I] i washed my hands of the case [after that].’
“I have a strong feeling that he was a victim,” Grayson added. I know that she had special needs. It is quite a sad situation.
‘There’s much, much more to this case and the Houston Police Department, when we worked on it, just wasn’t very interested. It’s true,’ said Bárbara Rentería.
He had us search from Mexico to Louisiana. It was all a lie.
Farias’ older brother, 21-year-old Charles Uresti, was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2011, when Farias was 13 years old.
His father, Houston police officer Rudolph Farias III, committed suicide in 2014. He had 21 years of experience and was facing an internal affairs investigation at the time of his death.
Other family members said they suspected Farias was not missing and blamed his mother for keeping him away from them all these years.
“We are upset because (the authorities) are not going to do anything,” said Pauline Sánchez Rodríguez, another aunt of Farias.
Investigators concluded that Farias returned home the day after he was reported missing, but “the mother, Janie, continued to mislead police by remaining adamant that Rudy was still missing,” Lt. Christopher Zamora said during a conference call. press.
Over the past eight years, Farias and her mother had several interactions with officers, police said.
“During these contacts, fictitious names and dates of birth were given, misleading officers, and Rudy would remain missing,” Zamora said.
Sánchez Rodríguez said her late mother, Rosa Sosa Rodríguez, had been living with Santana and told relatives that Farias lived in the house with them.
‘My mom would always tell me: ‘Rudy is here… He is there.’ He’s in that room,’ Rodriguez said.
And Janie was like, ‘No, she’s lying, she’s freaking out.
Sánchez Rodríguez’s daughter, Cassandra López, told KPRC 2 that they always knew ‘in our hearts’ that the story of Farias’ disappearance was not true.
“I was in shock,” he said. ‘I was like, I couldn’t believe it.
‘I mean, I was glad, but I was wondering what would develop from that. Like, what was the story behind this going to be?
‘Because it’s just that in our hearts we always knew that he wasn’t really lost.’
Lopez said she called 911 in 2018 after family members saw Farias at her mother’s house, and her grandmother, Sosa Rodríguez, saw him regularly.
‘She was just saying, I saw Rudy. You know, she came over to see how she was doing and we said hello and had a little chat. She never went into details, but she would say that she saw it,” Lopez said.
Lopez said the rest of the family is eager to hear from him.
“I mean, half of his life, almost a quarter of his life, it’s already been taken away from him,” Lopez said.
Don’t you know that? That is not right. He didn’t deserve it, nobody deserves it.
Zamora said Santana claimed the person his friends and family were seeing was not Farias but his nephew, but “we discussed it.”
Rodriguez and other family members also accused Santana of not presenting an accurate image of herself to people and of not caring about family members.
Court records show that Santana has used at least three different names and was accused of abusing her mother while they lived together.
During a 2020 dispute over custody of their mother, Santana’s sisters accused her of forcing their mother to live in a house that had “animal urine and feces everywhere” and causing her “significant bed sores” because ” It had no bed and I slept on the sofa.
In a 2011 affidavit filed in a court case in which Santana’s marriage was declared “null and void” because a judge concluded that she was married to another man at the time, Sánchez Rodríguez said that her sister “has always been a pathological liar.” He lies about everything.
Sánchez Rodríguez said that she and other family members have not yet spoken to Farias and remain concerned about him.
But Zamora, of the police department’s Missing Persons Unit, said Farias was safe and had decided to stay “with her mother by choice.”
Police Chief Troy Finner said that when Farias was reported missing, he was 17 years old, which is considered an adult in Texas.
Now twenty, Farias is “a grown man,” he said.
After police announced that Farias had been found, Santana released a statement saying that “he is receiving the care he needs to get over his trauma, but at this time he is not speaking and unable to communicate with us.” She also asked for privacy.
Finner declined Thursday to answer questions about the mental health of Farias or his mother and did not say what might have motivated his actions.
He said police are “just at the beginning” of their investigation into what happened.
Police also said patrol officers responded to a burglary call Wednesday night at the family’s home and that it is now part of their investigation.
