Neighbors of Texas teen reported missing eight years ago were shocked last week when the now 25-year-old man was found alive, bruised and bloodied, outside a Houston church — but not because Rudolph “Rudy” Farias had resurfaced after all those years.
“He used to come in my garage, chill with my cousin, son, and daughter,” said Kisha Ross. “That boy has never been missing.”
Ross and her cousin, Broderick Conley, told KTRK they knew Farias as “Dolph” — short for Rudolph — and said that that although he stopped by often, they hadn’t seen him for the last few weeks.
Another neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, said he’d seen Farias living at his mother’s home for years.
“I was just shocked someone over here was missing, and we see him,” he said. “It’s shocking to everyone.”
As CrimeOnline reported, someone reportedly found Farias lying unresponsive outside of the Immaculate Heart Church in southeast Houston on Thursday. He had cuts, bruising, and a bloody head. Houston police said he had a family member’s identification with him, which enabled investigators to contact his mother.
Farias’s mother reported him missing in 2015, when he was 17, after he didn’t return from walking his dogs. The dogs were found, but Farias remained on the Texas Center for the Missing list of missing persons until last week.
According to KTRK, Farias refused to be transported to the hospital by ambulance — which his mother agreed to. She later showed photos to the station of Farias in a hospital bed, saying she had taken him to a hospital. She told the station he had been uncommunicative since he was found, sometimes saying a few words but then curling into a fetal position.
Houston police said they have not yet spoken with him, although they are scheduled to do so on Wednesday.
Ross and Conley, the neighbors, say Farias visited them frequently and that he even spoke of losing his brother in a motorcycle accident in 2011, before he was reported missing. Farias’s mother told investigators at the time of his disappearance about the accident, saying her son suffered from depression and PTSD as a result.
“He said he had lost a brother in a motorcycle accident,” Ross said. “I know when he was thinking about his brother, he wouldn’t come to hang out; he would go and sit there in the back in the woods by himself.”‘
Farias’s mother told KTRK that the neighbors had seen her nephew and not her son in the neighborhood. She shared a photo of the nephew, but when the neighbors saw it, they said that was not the same man.
For the latest true crime and justice news, subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast.
[Featured image: Rudy Farias in 2015/Texas Center for the Missing]