Kristin Smart Murder Trial: Paul Flores Found Guilty
Police may be closing in on finally finding Kristin Smart after 30 years.
The California college student—who went missing in 1996 when she was 19 years old—was declared legally dead in 2002, though it wasn't until 2022 that a jury found Paul Flores guilty of first-degree murder in her case.
Now, authorities believe they may have found human remains on a property belonging to Paul's mother Susan Flores in Arroyo Grande, Calif. Soil tests showed that human remains either are or may have once been on the property, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said in a May 8 press conference.
“We believe that...human remains were there at one time or still there,” he told reporters. “I’m not going to go into the details, other than just to say with soil tests, it’s about the compounds in the soil that are related to a human, decomposing body."
Authorities have not determined if the remains may have belonged to Kristin.
“I think it’s safe to say that we have not recovered Kristin yet,” the sheriff said. “But our search goes on, and I don’t know how long we’re going to be there.”
Prosecutors accused Paul of killing Kristin during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, while she was a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
His dad Ruben Flores was then accused of helping Paul bury the teen's body in his backyard, though authorities believe her remains were later moved. Prosecutors said they found evidence of human blood and a soil disturbance that was about the size of a casket in the yard during a 2021 search, according to NBC News.
However, Ruben was found not guilty of being an accessory to Kristin's murder in 2022. At the time, his attorney argued that "it would be nice if the community would honor the presumptive of innocence” for Ruben.
FBI via AP
During their trial, Deputy San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle expressed hope in bringing peace to Kristin's family after all these years, even though her body was never found.
"For crimes that happen in a bedroom, there are no witnesses. But ground-penetrating radar, a forensic archeologist, and a lab supervisor tell us what Kristin could not. We don't have a full intact body in this case, but we have her blood," he said. "A couple grains of bloody sand. That's all the Smart family has left of their daughter."
Paul is currently serving a prison sentence of 25 years to life. His petition to the California Supreme Court to have his case reviewed was struck down in January.
San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office via AP
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