Overview
- A Harris County jury found Erik Arceneaux guilty of murder on Thursday after less than three hours of deliberation, and a punishment phase to set his sentence is pending.
- Prosecutors told jurors that cellphone location data showed Arceneaux’s and Maria Rodriguez’s phones moving together after her June 21, 2018 disappearance and linked him to key locations.
- Surveillance footage and a Home Depot receipt were used to place a man matching Arceneaux’s description buying a chainsaw and contractor trash bags, evidence prosecutors said supported an allegation of dismemberment.
- Arceneaux was first charged in 2019 and remained at large until his arrest in September 2023 by the U.S. Marshals’ Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Task Force.
- The verdict brings criminal accountability but not full closure for Rodriguez’s family because her human remains have never been found and the exact cause and location of death remain unresolved.