EVERMAN, Texas — Investigators searching for 6-year-old Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez in Everman said Tuesday that new information has led them to believe human remains were present at some point on the property where his family once lived.
Noel has not yet been found in the search, and while cadaver dogs alerted to certain topsoil areas, police said nothing forensic was found and they couldn't indicate specifically whether Noel’s remains were potentially there at one point.
Authorities have said they are investigating the boy's disappearance as a death, although his body has not been located.
On Monday, Texas Search and Rescue (TEXSAR) joined officers in looking around the 3700 block of Wisteria Drive, where Noel lived with his immediate family. That evening, investigators starting focusing more on the backyard where the family rented a converted shed from the man who owned the property.
According to a press release from police on Tuesday, their focus on the backyard came from an earlier find in the investigation when they learned about a carpet that Noel's stepfather had thrown out the day before the family flew out of the country. With assistance from TEXSAR on Monday, multiple Human Remain Detection Canines alerted officials to a carpet found in a nearby dumpster to the property where the family lived. According to officials, that carpet once lined the floor of a "make-shift" storage shed where a patio in the backyard now sits.
(This "make-shift" shed is separate from the shed on the property in which Rodriguez-Alvarez and his family lived.)
Police said Noel's mother, Cindy Rodriguez-Singh, paid for the concrete to be laid and for a patio to be built where that storage shed once stood in early March 2023.
That led investigators to secure a search warrant for crews to remove the concrete patio. After removing the patio, the Detection Canines again alerted officials -- this time to the top soil underneath the concrete.
Anthropologists from the Tarrant County Medical Examiners Office were called to the scene to help guide crews and investigators as they dug out the topsoil.
The crews placed the removed topsoil in specific areas nearby. According to police, the canines stopped alerting to the soil underneath the patio, but focused their attention on the soil that was already removed.
Because of that, investigators now believe that at some point, there were human remains kept in the shed.
Police said the search around the property where the family lived is over unless they gather new evidence.
"Although this search revealed minimal physical evidence, it has certainly provided additional guidance for investigators," police said.
Everman police turned the search for Noel into a death investigation on April 6. It's not clear what led police to shift the investigation from the Endangered Missing Alert that was issued on March 25.
Police said search crews worked for about 20 hours and were taking Tuesday to rest. Investigators are still working behind the scenes to figure out more areas to search. Search efforts will continue again on Wednesday.
City crews will clear out the backyard debris. A registered contractor will then replace the patio, police say.
What we know now about Noel's disappearance
Everman police first learned about Noel on March 20. The Texas Child Protective Investigations (CPI) reached out saying family members hadn't seen the 6-year-old since November 2022.
Police chief Craig Spencer said officers went to the home on Wisteria, where Noel's mother, 37-year-old Cindy Rodriguez-Singh, said he was with his biological father in Mexico.
On March 23, CPI said they found the father who said he never got to meet Noel before he was deported to Mexico. Police tried to reach the mother again, but she didn't answer.
An AMBER Alert for Noel was issued on March 25. Later that night, authorities learned that the boy's mother, stepfather, and six siblings boarded to flight to Turkey, then possibly India, on March 23. Noel was not listed on that flight.
On April 6, the chief said Noel is no longer an endangered missing person, and that investigators have determined he is likely dead.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to more clearly denote that the carpet the dogs identified on Monday was formerly used on the flooring of shed separate from the one the family lived in on the same property.