Rudy Farias, Who Vanished 8 Years Ago, Has Been Found near Church with Late Brother’s Necklace

• Rudolph “Rudy” Farias IV was finally found after going missing eight years ago.
• He’s currently in a hospital in a bad state and hardly speaks.
• His mother believed the necklace that belonged to Farias IV’s late brother kept him alive.

On July 3, 2023, reports revealed that Rudolph “Rudy” Farias IV was found on July 1, 2023, after he disappeared eight years ago in 2015. The last time his family saw him was when he went to walk his two dogs on March 6, 2015, near his Houston, Texas, home.

Only one of the dogs returned without its leash before the second one returned in the same condition. Farias IV disappeared that day at age 17 and was never heard of again until age 25.

Farias IV suffered from depression, especially after he lost his older brother in 2011 in a motorcycle accident. Brenda Paradise, a private investigator hired by the Farias family to find the missing boy, said this in April 2015:

“He watched his best friend die right in front of him.”

Paradise shared how Farias IV’s brother had been his best friend and went through a lot for someone his age. Despite his state when he was found, the young man still had his late brother’s necklace.

According to ABC13’s Brooke Taylor, a stranger called 911 after finding the young man unresponsive outside a church at Tidwell Road and Park Drive. The missing man couldn’t say much except a few words before he balled himself up in a fetal position and shut down completely.

On the day Farias IV was found, Stephenie Renee Southerland Martinez took to her Facebook account to emotionally reveal details about the missing man’s discovery. Southerland Martinez explained that Farias IV was her nephew’s brother.

The family member shared how the missing man was in the hospital in “pretty bad shape” with cuts, small holes, soft tissue tumors, and swelled soles on his feet. Farias IV was also bruised with scrapes and cuts on his body, some old and others fresh.

The young man had dried up blood on his hair and head and was dark in complexion, with Southerland Martinez noting how he was “almost unrecognizable.” She said it was apparent he’d been through a lot and was abused.

He shared that he was in pain and flinched when his family members tried to hug or touch him in false anticipation of being beaten. Considering what he’d gone through, the doctor revealed that it was expected.

Farias IV also thought he was 14, and his name was Julio Torres. Southerland Martinez noted how the young man clearly wasn’t the same person they knew before, and he was thin and frail with underdeveloped hands and fingers that were smaller than hers.

Farias IV’s mother stayed put by her son’s side at the hospital as he received treatment. She believed that the man who went missing as a teenager had one thing that kept him alive over all those years.

Farias IV’s mother believed his older brother’s necklace kept him going. When he disappeared in 2015, that was the same necklace he wore, and Tim Miller, the director of Texas EquuSearch, who’d continued searching all over for the missing man, said:

“This certainly was a miracle.”

Miller noted how tips came in about Farias IV’s whereabouts until one day, they just stopped. After eight years of going missing, the man who was part of the search party confessed that he never anticipated that Farias IV would be found alive.

More details on this developing story will be added later.