Four private investigators who tried to find Rudy Farias, who went missing in 2015, say they were not surprised by his “miraculous” return.
Brenda Paradise narrated Insider that some aspects of the case “were not right” and said they were not surprised it would turn into a nightmare.
“There’s something dark and dirty here,” she said.
His mother Janie Santana had reported him missing in 2015 when he was 17 and said his coming to 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 as a sex slave by Santana, and relatives and neighbors saying he was never missing.
Farias is photographed when he was 17, in 2015, and was reported missing by his mother
Speaking to the media after meeting with Farias and investigators, a local activist, Quanell X, claims that Farias told him he was never missing and instead endured years of vicious abuse from his mother.
Houston police have yet to confirm Quanell’s claims, having only confirmed that the case is still under investigation. It remains unclear whether Farias stayed with his mother.
Paradise worked on the original disappearance case from 2015 and onwards. She said there were unconfirmed rumors that Farias had been seen nearby and in relatives’ homes.
“There were bizarre billboards in Houston” announcing he was missing, she told the outlet.
Paradise claims that Santana set off alarm bells after she provided the wrong birthday for the missing fliers, listing Farias as 17 instead of 18.
“He was 18 when he went missing,” Paradise said. ‘I found the original intake form, which shows that Mom wrote down the wrong date. She said he was 17.’
Paradise claims Santana wouldn’t provide any recent photos of Farias either, only one of him as a 14-year-old.
“She told me she thought if he looked younger there would be more empathy,” Paradise said.
When searchers found an asthma inhaler and 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 only 13 years old when his big brother and ‘best friend’ Charles (pictured left) died in the tragic road accident in 2011. His father Rudolph died by suicide in 2014
Rudy Farias’ cousin, Cassandra Lopez, said their grandmother said she saw him regularly and knew he wasn’t missing
“Rudy never even had asthma. In the backpack was an elementary school kid’s homework, and it wasn’t Rudy’s either,’ she said.
“But the mother had sworn up and down it was his.
“I’d like to hear that he really has been missing all these years and has finally been found.”
She added, “I mean, God, I’d love to hear he’s been found and getting help. But I just don’t trust that family.’
Ryan Grayson, another private investigator and defense investigator, said that as of 2015, he, Paradise and Barbara, and Martin Renteria were the main PIs on the case.
“She claimed there was a woman holding him in Mexico,” Grayson told the outlet on Santana — a clue she said she was raising money for.
“She showed up late for the fundraiser and she didn’t go around saying hello to the people who donated or to the fundraiser,” he said.
He claimed to have tracked down the human trafficker Santana said had detained Farias in Mexico.
“She said Rudy’s mom talked to her. I told Janie I didn’t want to be involved in her scam.”
On another occasion, Santana reportedly shared messages from her son’s alleged traffickers in Tijuana, Mexico, in a dialect foreign to that region.
“It was like Chicano, Tex-Mex Spanish, like what Janie spoke.[I] washed my hands of the matter [after that].’
“I strongly feel he was a victim,” Grayson added. “I know he had special needs. It’s a pretty sad situation.’
“There is much, much more to this case and the Houston Police Department, when we were working on it, just wasn’t very interested. It’s true,’ said Barbara Renteria.
“She had us looking from Mexico to Louisiana. It was all a lie.’
Farias’ older brother Charles Uresti, 21, was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2011 when Farias was 13.
His father, Houston police officer Rudolph Farias III, committed suicide in 2014. He was a 21-year veteran and was facing an internal affairs investigation at the time of his death.
Other members of the family said they suspected Farias was not missing and blamed his mother for keeping him away from them all these years.
“We are angry that (the authorities) are not going to do anything,” said Pauline Sanchez Rodriguez, another of Farias’s aunts.
Investigators concluded that Farias returned home the day after he was reported missing, but “the mother, Janie, continued to deceive the police by remaining adamant that Rudy was still missing,” Lieutenant Christopher Zamora said at a news conference.
Over the past eight years, Farias and his mother have had several interactions with officers, police said.
“In these contacts, fictitious names and dates of birth were given – misleading to the officers – and Rudy would remain missing,” Zamora said.
Sanchez Rodriguez said her late mother, Rosa Sosa Rodriguez, lived with Santana and kept telling relatives that Farias lived with them.
“My mom used to tell me, ‘Rudy’s here… He’s there.’ He’s in that room,” Rodriguez said.
And Janie said, ‘No, she’s lying, she’s losing it.’
Sanchez Rodriguez’s daughter, Cassandra Lopez, told KPRC 2 that they always knew “in our hearts” that the story of Farias’s disappearance was not true.
“I was in shock,” she said. “I was like, I couldn’t believe it.
“I mean, I was happy, but I just wondered what would come out. Like, what would be the story behind it?
“Because we just always knew in our hearts that he wasn’t really missing.”
Lopez said she called 911 in 2018 after relatives saw Farias at his mother’s house, and their grandmother, Sosa Rodriguez, saw him frequently.
“She’d just say, I’ve seen Rudy. You know, he came to check on me and we said hello and we had a little talk. She never went into details, but she would say she saw him,” Lopez said.
Lopez said the rest of the family would like to hear from him.
“I mean, half of his life — almost a quarter of his life — has already been taken away,” Lopez said.
‘Do not you know that? That’s just not right. He didn’t deserve it, nobody deserves that.’
Zamora said Santana claimed the person friends and family saw was not Farias but her cousin, but “we disputed that.”
Rodriguez and other family members also accused Santana of not giving people an accurate picture of herself and not caring about family members.
Court records show that Santana used at least three different names and was accused of assaulting her mother while they lived together.
During a 2020 dispute over her mother’s custody, Santana’s sisters accused her of forcing their mother to live in a house where there was “animal urine and feces everywhere” and that she had “significant bedsores” because she “had no bed and slept on the sofa.’
In a 2011 affidavit filed in a lawsuit that declared Santana’s marriage “null and void” because a judge concluded she was married to another man at the time, Sanchez Rodriguez said her sister “has always been a pathological liar.” She lies about everything.’
Sanchez Rodriguez said she and other family members have not yet spoken to Farias and are still concerned about him.
But Zamora, from the police’s Missing Persons Unit, said Farias was safe and that he had decided to “stay with his mother.”
Police Chief Troy Finner said when Farias was reported missing he was 17 years old, which is considered an adult in Texas.
Now in his twenties, Farias is “a grown man,” he said.
After police announced that Farias had been found, Santana released a statement saying he is “being given the care he needs to overcome his trauma, but at this time he is non-verbal and unable to communicate with to communicate to us’. She also asked for privacy.
Finner declined to answer questions on Thursday about Farias’ or his mother’s mental health and would not say what might have motivated their actions.
He said police are “at the beginning” of their investigation into what happened.
Police also said police officers were responding to a break-in at the family’s home on Wednesday evening and that it is now part of their investigation.