An artist’s rendering of what the toddler found dead last October on a Galveston beach — now known to be Jayden Lopez — would have looked like, center, flanked by mugshots of his mother, Rebecca Rivera, left, and her girlfriend, Dania Gomez, right, who have been arrested and charged with tampering with evidence in connection with his death.

A Houston woman and her girlfriend have been arrested after police and the FBI connected them to the body of a small boy found washed ashore on a Galveston beach last October 2017.

Galveston police first asked for help in identifying the toddler they dubbed “Little Jacob” last October when his body was first found, to no avail. But after authorities released an edited crime scene photo of the boy on Jan. 30, hundreds of new tips cane pouring in, including two from people who said the child was Jayden Alexander Lopez, 4, of Houston.

NBCDFW Channel 5 reports that investigators quickly learned that Jayden Lopez had not been seen since October 2017, and that he was supposed to be in the car of his mother, Rebecca Rivera, 34, and her girlfriend, Dania Amezquita-Gomez, 31, both of Houston.

Investigators then used DNA to confirm that the until-then unidentified child was, in fact, Jayden Lopez.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Rivera first told investigators that Jayden had been kidnapped, a story Gomez backed up before switching to the story that she thought the child was with Rivera’s family members.

Gomez, who was by that point in ICE detention, then said Rivera told her Jayden was fine but that they needed to leave, so they packed up and moved to Chicago for a short while. It wasn’t until after they moved back to Houston, Gomez said, that Rivera told her that her brother had notified her that Jayden was dead.

Investigators, using toll road records, proved that Rivera’s car was headed toward Galveston about the time the child’s body would have been dumped. Gomez eventually admitted she was in the car with Rivera that night, but said she was too drunk then to have known what was going on.

On Tuesday, June 19, investigators went back to Rivera’s apartment and she agreed to speak to them, finally telling them what happened to the boy. The Chronicle reports that Rivera told police that Jayden had fallen and hit his head on a wall. She said his face had swollen up and that over the following two weeks, his health deteriorated until he died. That was when she and Gomez took his body to the beach and left it there in the water because they knew Jayden had liked the beach, she said.

Rivera also told investigators she did not seek medical care for the boy after he was injured because she was afraid authorities would take him and her other child, a 3-year-old boy, away from her.

The 3-year-old is not in the custody of CPS.

Both Rivera and Gomez have been charged, so far, with tampering with evidence.