The father of a Texas man who went missing as a teenager in 2015—before being found alive this week—was previously investigated as a police officer for alleged ticket rigging.
Rudolph Farias is the father of Rudolph "Rudy" Farias, who was found in Houston outside a church eight years after he was last seen in public walking his dogs.
Questions have since been raised about where the now-25-year-old Rudy Farias has been for the past several years, with speculation that he had been living with his mother, Janie Santana, or even held captive by her.
In 2014, Rudy's father, 51, took his own life. Rudolph Farias died after he was relieved of his duties following a Houston Police Department internal affairs investigation into ticket rigging allegedly carried out by four HPD officers.
As reported by KHOU at the time, an investigation of speeding tickets written by the Houston Police Traffic Enforcement Unit found dozens of cases in which officers, allegedly including Rudolph Farias, were citing speeding tickets in two places at once several miles apart.
In 2011, Rudy's older brother, Charles, also died in a motorbike accident. Brenda Paradise, a private investigator working for the Farias family, told NBC's Dateline in 2015 that Rudy and his mother were the first at the scene of the accident.
"He watched his best friend die right in front of him. His brother was his best friend in the world. He's just gone through so much more than anyone his age ever should," Paradise said.
Family members claim that Rudy has been suffering from depression for months as a result of losing his brother. A missing flier from 2015 stated that Rudy had been diagnosed with depression, PTSD and anxiety and had likely stopped taking his medication prior to his disappearance.
In a statement on Wednesday, Houston Police confirmed they have interviewed both Rudy Farias, 25, and his mother as part of their inquiries.
"While there are reports of some of the content of the interviews being released, our detectives are not in a position at this time to discuss specifics of the interviews or if the content being released is entirely factual," the department said.
Police said that they would be issuing no other information until the news conference on Thursday morning.
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