HOUSTON — Long before Rudolph "Rudy" Farias was reported missing in 2015 when he was 17, he had already endured more tragedies and heartache than most kids his age.
A good Samaritan found Rudy in front of a Houston church on June 29 and called police.
A week later, HPD announced that Farias had not been missing for the last eight years after all. They said he returned to his mom's house the day after she reported him missing, but she continued to deceive police all these years.
Relatives said today that Rudy seemed to go downhill after the death of his half-brother more than 13 years ago. Charles Uresti, 21, was killed in a motorcycle crash in 2011 when Rudy was 13.
"His [Rudy's] mind just went off," Pauline Sanchez, his aunt, said at a news conference.
Three years later, when Rudy was 16, his father died by suicide after being fired by the Houston Police Department for his role in a ticket-rigging scandal uncovered by the KHOU 11 Investigates team.
Farias, 51, killed himself in a police parking garage in August of 2014 after the scandal broke. He was a 21-year HPD veteran.
An I-Team analysis of months of tickets and GPS records revealed how Rudolph Farias, Rudy's father, and three other officers listed each other as "witnesses" on speeding violations when they were never there. Instead, records show those officers were writing tickets at the same time at completely different locations, sometimes miles away.
The motivation was to appear in court more often and collect more overtime. Records show Farias made $158,000 in overtime in the three years preceding his death.
Records show the four officers wrote more than 5,000 tickets combined, with fines and fees totaling more than $350,000. Thousands of tickets were thrown out based on the award-winning series of reports by KHOU 11 Investigates' Jeremy Rogalski.
Now, police are trying to figure out what was going on inside Rudy's home all these years.
In a news conference Thursday, HPD disputed allegations made by community activist Quanell X on Wednesday. Quanell X claimed Rudy told him that his mother hid him all these years, drugged him and sexually abused him.
Police said Farias didn't report sexual abuse by his mother when they interviewed him Wednesday.
"If there is a disclosure made, we will continue to investigate," Lt. Christopher Zamora said. "We do take all allegations seriously and any new information or facts that we receive will be investigated."
They said Rudy is safe and remains with his mother by choice.
WATCH: Full coverage of HPD and relatives' news conferences
