Left: Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez (Everman Police Department). Right: Cindy Rodriguez-Singh (Tarrant County).
The recently-arrested mother of a long-missing and presumed dead Texas boy is facing yet another felony charge in the Lone Star State.
In late August, Cindy Rodriguez Singh, 40, was arrested on an extant charge of capital murder of a person under 10 years old – over allegations which had been hounding the defendant for years.
Singh is the mother of Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez, a 6-year-old disabled boy from the Fort Worth suburb of Everman, who disappeared without a trace in the fall of 2022. Authorities soon determined the child had likely been murdered. Singh was indicted on the murder charge in October 2023 – a little over one year after he was last seen alive.
On Monday, a grand jury in Tarrant County handed up an indictment against the accused mother on one additional count of leaving a child without proper care.
A spokesperson for the Tarrant County District Attorney”s Office described the additional charge in an email as a second-degree felony. Singh was already facing two counts of injury to a child and one count of abandoning a child without intent to return, as Law&Crime previously reported.
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On Aug. 21, Singh was booked by authorities in Tarrant County on the murder charge and one count of repeat-offender DWI, jail records show.
Her apprehension came less than one month after she was added to the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list – becoming the 537th person to ever earn that distinction.
Since November 2022, various witnesses told law enforcement versions of stories — always sourced to Noel’s mother — purporting to account for the beloved little boy’s whereabouts. Those accounts and concerns put the Singh family on law enforcement radar. But charges were not filed until much later.
Then the family left the country.
Law enforcement learned Rodriguez-Singh boarded an international flight with a layover in Turkey, with India as the final destination, just two days before an Amber Alert was issued about Noel’s disappearance. Joining the defendant on that flight were her six other children and current husband, Arshdeep Singh, authorities say.
Several theories – such as human trafficking – supported the notion the boy was still alive. But those avenues of inquiry were quickly discarded and replaced by the belief he was killed by his mother.
Noel’s body has yet to be found. The cause of his presumed death remains unclear; a potential motive is similarly elusive – though occult-oriented explanations may feature in a criminal trial. Overall, physical evidence in the case has been nonexistent – at least in terms of what has been shared up to the point of her capture.
Noel suffered from a host of ailments that required attention and patience. He had not been seen for months by the extended family at the time law enforcement became involved. When initially contacted by police about her vanished son, Rodriguez-Singh said the child had been living with his biological father in Mexico since November 2022. Detectives later learned that was not true; the boy’s father had been deported before he ever had a chance to meet his son.
Eventually, all signs pointed to intentional homicide.
There is a concurrent civil case filed by Child Protective Services in Texas, according to Dallas-based Fox affiliate KDFW. That case aims to terminate Singh’s parental rights over her six other children. Last week, Singh appeared in family court for a hearing on that sealed dispute.
The defendant’s next court appearance for her criminal case is slated for Sept. 18. Singh is currently being detained in the Lon Evans Corrections Center on $10 million bond.
