The Tarrant County District Attorney's Office announced Friday that a decaying corpse discovered behind a home in Everman, Texas, belongs to six-year-old Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez, a boy investigators believe was murdered by his own mother, who allegedly starved him, called him "evil," and then fled the country with her other children.
Noel had not been seen alive since shortly after October 2022. His mother, Cindy Rodriguez-Singh, faces a capital murder charge in Tarrant County. District Attorney Phil Sorrells said she will stand trial.
The discovery ends one chapter of a case that stretches across two continents and more than two years, and opens another. A six-year-old boy who suffered physical and developmental challenges was allegedly denied food and water by the person responsible for keeping him alive. When authorities finally came looking, his mother lied about where he was, then disappeared.
Noel was last seen alive just after the October 2022 birth of his twin siblings. AP News reported that Everman police said the boy appeared unhealthy and malnourished before his disappearance and suffered from physical and developmental challenges.
Detectives alleged that Rodriguez-Singh believed Noel was "possessed" by a demon and used that belief as justification to abuse and neglect him. Police found an altar for Santa Muerte, a folk figure associated with death, inside the family's home.
Everman Police Chief Craig Spencer described the alleged neglect in blunt terms.
"Relatives and witnesses stated that food and water were often withheld from Noel because Cindy did not like changing Noel's dirty diapers."
That quote alone tells you what kind of household this child lived in. A boy with developmental challenges, denied the most basic sustenance, by the one adult the law expected to protect him.
Authorities conducted a welfare check on Noel in March 2023, roughly five months after he was last seen alive. Rodriguez-Singh gave shifting, contradictory explanations. She allegedly told authorities the boy was staying in Mexico with his biological father. She also claimed he had been sold at a local market.
Neither story was true.
Hours after that welfare check, Rodriguez-Singh, her husband, and six other children fled to India. Fox News reported the family left on a one-way flight days before an Amber Alert was issued. Investigators believe her husband stole $10,000 and dumped a human body wrapped in a carpet before they departed.
That detail, a body wrapped in carpet, proved significant. Cadaver dogs later detected human remains on carpet recovered from the family's property, Fox News reported. The case was treated as a death investigation even before a body was formally identified.
In cases involving fugitives who flee overseas, the pursuit can take years. This one did.
A Tarrant County grand jury indicted Rodriguez-Singh on a capital murder charge in October 2023. Chief Spencer said at the time that the indictment was filed under "manner and means unknown to the grand jury", meaning prosecutors moved forward without a confirmed cause of death.
"These indictments [would] significantly support our effort to apprehend and extradite Cindy back to the United States."
Rodriguez-Singh landed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. It took authorities nearly two years to track her down and extradite her from India.
The case bears some resemblance to other high-profile Texas child murder cases in its grim trajectory: a missing child, a delayed discovery, and a community left to reckon with how a vulnerable kid fell through the cracks.
Rodriguez-Singh was deemed incompetent in April, a finding that might have derailed the prosecution. But DA Phil Sorrells made clear Friday that the delay would be temporary, not permanent.
Sorrells told reporters that a report indicated Rodriguez-Singh is expected to regain competency in the foreseeable future.
"The report further said they believe that in the foreseeable future, she will regain competency. So, she will stand trial for this."
He added a direct pledge on behalf of his office, as the New York Post reported.
"Here at the district attorney's office, we will continue to seek justice for Noel. We owe that to him and to the citizens of Tarrant County."
The case now hinges on Rodriguez-Singh's mental competency timeline. Until she is deemed fit to stand trial, the capital murder charge hangs in procedural limbo, even as the physical evidence, the cadaver-dog hits, the remains found behind the house, and the testimony of relatives all point in one direction.
Authorities have not publicly disclosed how the remains were identified, whether through DNA, dental records, or another method. The exact cause of death has not been stated. Rodriguez-Singh's husband has not been publicly named in the available reporting, and it remains unclear what charges, if any, he faces in connection with the allegation that he dumped a body wrapped in carpet and stole $10,000.
The broader question is institutional. Noel was known to be malnourished. Relatives and witnesses told police that food and water were withheld from him. Yet the welfare check did not come until March 2023, months after the boy was last seen alive. By then, his mother had a story ready and a plane ticket booked.
Cases like this one, and like the recent Massachusetts case involving a mother charged with killing her two children, raise hard questions about whether child-welfare systems are equipped to intervene before it is too late. The answer, too often, is no.
Rodriguez-Singh allegedly told authorities her son had been "sold at a local market." That claim alone should have set off alarms loud enough to ground every flight out of DFW. Instead, she was on a plane to India within hours.
There is also the matter of the other six children. They traveled with Rodriguez-Singh and her husband to India. They lived in that house. They were present during the period when Noel allegedly suffered abuse and starvation. What they witnessed, and what their own experience was, remains an open and deeply troubling question.
The capital murder framework in Texas carries the possibility of the death penalty or life without parole. Whether Rodriguez-Singh ultimately faces that sentencing range depends on whether she regains competency and on the strength of the evidence prosecutors present.
Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez was six years old. He had physical and developmental challenges. He depended entirely on adults who, if the allegations hold, treated him not as a child to be cared for but as a burden to be discarded.
His remains were found behind the house where he lived. Not in some distant location. Not hidden across state lines. Behind the house. That proximity is its own indictment, of the people who lived there, and of every system that was supposed to notice a small boy had vanished.
DA Sorrells says Rodriguez-Singh will stand trial. Good. Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez cannot speak for himself. The least the justice system can do is make sure someone answers for what happened to him.
