Rodriguez, a 29-year-old Houston paralegal and mother, was last seen on June 21, 2018. Prosecutors argued that Arceneaux, Rodriguez’s boyfriend of six months, sent deceptive text messages from her phone the day she disappeared, according to the district attorney’s office.<\/p>\n
![\"Erik](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/65181fc1f2c3caf582783ed94b784da9.jpeg\"\/)
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Erik Fardell Arceneaux
Credit: Houston Police Department<\/p>\n
At the time of Rodriguez’s disappearance, investigators told PEOPLE<\/a> they were examining several text messages sent from her phone because of their “suspicious” nature.<\/p>\n A co-worker received messages saying Rodriguez would be late to work because she needed to pick up her sick daughter and later that she was on her way to the office, but she never arrived, PEOPLE previously reported.<\/p>\n Prosecutors also told jurors that surveillance footage from a Home Depot captured Arceneaux purchasing a chainsaw and a box of heavy-duty 42-gallon trash bags the same day Rodriguez vanished. They alleged the chainsaw was likely used to dismember Rodriguez’s body, which has never been recovered, according to the district attorney’s office.<\/p>\n The jury also viewed surveillance video showing Arceneaux driving Rodriguez’s truck in the area where authorities later found it abandoned, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n Rodriguez’s daughter, Destiny, was 3 years old when her mother disappeared, according to the district attorney’s office.<\/p>\n “Today was justice for Maria,” the Harris County District Attorney’s Office wrote in a social media post announcing the verdict. “And it was justice for Destiny, too.”<\/p>\n The conviction comes years after investigators accused Arceneaux of killing Rodriguez following what the Houston Police Department described as an extensive investigation into her disappearance.<\/p>\n Rodriguez’s family reported her missing after she was last seen in 2018. Investigators later determined that Arceneaux had killed her, and he was charged with murder in August 2019, according to the Houston Police Department<\/a>.<\/p>\n