Paul Flores is found GUILTY of murdering Kristin Smart

Kristin was a Cal Poly student who vanished after a night of partying in the college town in 1995

Paul Flores has been found guilty of the murder of Kristin Smart. 

The jury returned a verdict this afternoon. A verdict in the case of his father, Ruben, being an accessory to the crime has not yet been announced. 

Paul, 45, was accused of murdering Kristin while trying to rape her in 1996 after the pair attended a party at Cal Poly. 

He now faces a minimum of 25 years in prison. 

He was charged with murder, while his 81-year-old father Ruben was charged with being an accessory after the fact. 

Ruben faces three years in prison if convicted.  

Police say he helped Paul move the body from beneath the family’s backyard deck when the police started closing in on the pair. 

The case was cold for decades until a podcast drummed up fresh public interest in the case. 

Titled Your Own Backyard, the host was a local man who said he felt compelled to investigate the case. 

The podcast first launched in 2019. 

By 2020, it had amassed thousands of listeners and, police suspect, spooked the Flores family. 

Neighbors testified at the trial that Ruben Flores did yardwork that year, after the podcast cast suspicion on his family. 

Police searched the family home and yard. They did not find a body, but expert witnesses testified in court that the soil beneath the deck had been disturbed. 

They also testified that soil samples indicated it was entirely possible that a body wrapped in tarp had been stored there at some stage. Kristin’s remains have never been found. She was declared dead in 2002.  

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Ruben (left) and Paul (right) were arrested in April 2021. The jury finally reached a verdict today after two weeks of deliberations  

San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Office personnel search under the deck in the backyard of the home of Ruben Flores, Tuesday, March 16, 2021, in Arroyo Grande, California

Ruben Flores, 81, is shown yesterday in court. The prosecution said he helped his son hide Kristin’s body beneath their yard, then removed it when suspicion turned to them in 2020 

Kristin was a Cal Poly student who was last seen alive in May 1996. She vanished on her way back to her dorm after a night of drinking at a local party 

The jury in Ruben’s case reached a decision yesterday but were told they could not announce the decision until Paul’s case was closed. 

His attorneys filed a hail Mary motion asking for a mistrial to be declared, claiming it was improper for a member of the victim’s family to be seen by the jury hugging someone from the prosecution. 

The judge denied the request. 

The Flores’ defense teams have argued throughout the trial that they are the scapegoats of a police department and prosecution that are more eager to satisfy the public appetite for a conviction than they are to find the true killer. 

‘Conspiracy theories can be fun. We love to hear them. We like to watch shows, and you think, “I bet I know what happened”. ‘But you’re here as jurors. 

‘You took an oath that you would follow the rule of law,’ Paul’s attorney pleaded with them in closing arguments. 

Kristin was last seen alive walking home to her dorm with Paul Flores on May 25, 1996. 

They had attended the off-campus frat party with other friends, and their dorms were close to each other.

By the end of the night, college kids who had seen Kristin arrive sober said she was drunk and passed out on the lawn. 

At the trial, several other women testified that Paul Flores spiked their drinks then sexually assaulted them in the years after Kristin’s disappearance. 

They called him ‘Chester the molester’ and ‘psycho Paul’, they said. 

Prosecutors suggested that this was how he seized on Kristin, a popular blonde who he’d admired but could never win over. 

When he was first questioned in 1996, Paul Flores told police that Kristin had walked all the way to her own dorm room after the party. 

He had a black eye when he was questioned, but he told police it had come from a basketball injury. 

Later, he said it was the result of bumping his head on his car. 

He wasn’t arrested, despite the fact that four cadaver dogs singled out his dorm room as having a scent of death when they searched the entire dorm building of 120 rooms.  

Paul then stopped answering questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment right. 

He was sued by Kristin’s family as part of a civil wrongful death lawsuit, but wasn’t charged until April 2021.

The trials began in July this year in Monterey, California. They were moved out of the town where Kristin disappeared in the interest of giving the Flores men a fair trial. Kristin’s family were among the first to testify at the trial.