What really happened to Rudy Farias? Mom Janie lied to private investigators on missing persons case for years, they say

• Insider spoke to four private investigators who worked on the Rudy Farias case for years.
• All four said they had questions on the mom's fundraising — and whether Farias was really missing.

Four private investigators who tried to find Rudy Farias — the Houston teen reported missing in 2015 — told Insider that they are hardly surprised that the "miracle" of his recent reappearance is shaping up to be more like a nightmare.

"Something doesn't add up," said Brenda Paradise, one of the investigators who was quoted in some of the earliest stories about Farias' disappearance, including on NBC's "Dateline."

"There's something dark and dirty here," she added.

On Wednesday, a local activist, Quanell X, spoke with the press after meeting with Farias and investigators and said that Farias told him that he was never missing at all, and had instead endured years of abuse at the hands of his own mother.

Houston police have not confirmed X's claims, having only said that the matter is under investigation.

Janie Santana, Farias' mother, did not return Insider's multiple requests for comment. It is unclear if she is with Farias while the investigation continues.

Paradise and the other private investigators that Insider spoke to said they, too, had had their doubts over the past eight years about Santana.

Their questions only deepened over the weekend after a family representative announced "It's Rudy!!!" on a Facebook discussion group. The post said that he was in an undisclosed hospital, barely responsive, and covered in old and new bruises.

Quickly, that same Facebook page, the Rudy Farias IV Discussion Group, began filling with skepticism and conspiracy theories, with some posting screenshots of what appear to be family members' past fundraising efforts.

But some neighbors told a local television network that they'd seen Farias around the neighborhood for years.

"He used to come in my garage, chill with my cousin, son, and daughter," Kisha Ross, a neighbor of the family, told ABC News in Houston. Efforts by Insider to reach Ross were unsuccessful.

Broderick Conley, Ross's cousin, said he and Rudy shared "laughing good times." Another neighbor told the station that the guy they knew as "Dolph," short for Rudolph, had been living at his mother's house for years.

On Thursday, after questions about Santana's story were raised by press, including Insider, the Houston Police Department held a press conference. In it, they revealed Farias returned home on March 8, 2015 — just one day after he was reported missing.

"Mother Janie continued to deceive police," said Lt. Christopher Zamora of the Houston Police Department.

Paradise worked on the original 2015 disappearance case for years as part of a network of search-and-rescue volunteers.

She said that there had been unconfirmed rumors for years that "Rudy" had been seen in the neighborhood and in the homes of family members.

How, she wondered, could he have gone undiscovered all these years, if the activist's claims are right and he was home all along?

"There were freakin' billboards in Houston," announcing he was missing, she said.

Even from the earliest days of the investigation, as dozens of volunteers pitched in to find the teen, Paradise said alarm bells were ringing.

Santana gave investigators the wrong year of birth and "we had to redo the flyers," she said.

"He was 18 when he went missing," Paradise said Wednesday night.

"Tonight I found the original intake form. It shows that mom wrote the wrong date. She said he was 17."

Santana also would not provide any recent pictures of Farias. The one on the "missing" flyers shows him at 14 years old.

"She told me that she 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 and forwarded photos, family members quickly said they belonged to Farias. But after these items were forwarded to the police, they turned out not to belong to Farias at all.

"Rudy never even had asthma," Paradise said. "The backpack had some elementary-school kid's homework inside it, and that wasn't Rudy's either," she said.

"But the mom had swore up and down that it was his," Paradise added.

The family had posted hospital photos they said showed Farias in a hospital bed, his face obscured.

"It doesn't look like any Houston hospital I've ever seen," Paradise said of the grainy snapshots.

"I would love to hear that he's truly been missing all these years, and has finally been found," she added.

"I mean, God, I'd love to hear that he was found and is getting help," she added. "But I just don't trust anything that comes from that family."

Ryan Grayson is a private investigator and defense investigator who practices in Texas and Mexico. He, Paradise, and the husband-and-wife investigation team Barbara and Martin Renteria were the four core PIs working on the case from 2015 onward.

"She claimed that there was a woman that was holding him in Mexico," Grayson told Insider of Farias' mother.

This was a lead, early on, that Paradise and Grayson said Santana fundraised for. But Grayson said Santana did not act like a grieving, worried mother.

"She showed up late for the fundraiser," Grayson said. "And she didn't go around and say hello to any of the people who were donating money or at the fundraiser."

Grayson said he tracked the supposed trafficker down and called her.

"She said that Rudy's mom had talked to her," he said. "She said, 'I told Janie I didn't want to be involved in her scam."

On another occasion, Santana shared with him communications from her son's purported traffickers in Tijuana, Mexico. The communications were in a dialect distinctly foreign to that region.

"It was like Chicano, Tex-Mex Spanish, like what Janie was speaking," he said.

Grayson said that after that, he "washed my hands of the case."

"I've got a strong feeling he was a victim," Grayson added. "I know he was special needs. It's a pretty sad situation."

"This is just insane," Barbara Renteria said of the X's claims that Farias' trafficker might have been in his own home.

"There is much, much more to this case. And the Houston PD, when we worked it, was just not very interested. It's true," she said.

"She had us searching from Mexico to Louisiana," Renteria said. "All of it was a lie."

July 6, 2023: This story, originally published on July 5, has been updated to include statements from the Houston Police Department.