The murder mystery that gripped the US for 26 YEARS: Kristin Smart’s killer is found GUILTY

Freshman Kristin Smart disappeared without a trace after a Californian college party 26 years ago – and now the prime murder suspect has been found guilty after a crime podcast helped cops crack the case. 

The podcast Your Own Backyard saw the host interview those close to the cold case, leading to a breakthrough with Paul Flores, now 45, charged with Smart’s murder. 

His father Ruben Flores, 81, was charged with acting as an accessory after the fact. 

More than two and a half decades after Kristin’s disappearance, the younger Flores was found guilty of the crime at Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas, California. 

He was handed his verdict on October 18. Kristin Smart’s body has still never been found.  

Smart, 19, was a ‘bright’ student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. She attended a party one night in May 1996, and was never seen again.

Flores’ father, now 81, was alleged to have helped bury Kristin behind his home in Arroyo Grande, and later dug up the remains and moved them. But the jury found Ruben not guilty.

Now, partly thanks to the podcast and its host Chris Lambert, Smart’s family have finally received some measure of the closure they have been seeking after their daughter’s death.

Here, DailyMail.com examines the mystery that’s gripped the US for nearly three decades. 

The last time Kristin was seen: College party, May 1996

Kristin Smart, from Stockton, California, was in her freshmen year at college when she disappeared after a party on May 25, 1996. 

On the night she was last seen, Smart and her friends from California Polytechnic State University grabbed a ride in a truck and arrived at an unofficial fraternity house near campus. 

According to her college friend Margarita Campos, Smart was ‘not under the influence at all’ when she last saw her at around 10pm on the intersection of California and Foothill Boulevards. 

Former student Ross Ketchum recalled speaking to 19-year-old Smart about surfing and school at the Memorial Day weekend party, held at 135 Crandall Way.

There were about 70 people at the gathering and everyone was ‘shoulder-to-shoulder,’ Ketchum said.

Tim Davis, a senior who helped host the party, told investigators that towards the end of the night he spotted Smart sprawled on the lawn, apparently passed out. 

Davis was going to walk her home with another student, Cheryl Anderson.

But Paul Flores, then 19, volunteered to help after appearing ‘out of nowhere,’ Anderson recalled. 

Anderson said Smart appeared ‘very intoxicated’ and her speech was slurred. Davis and Anderson walked with Flores and Smart, but parted ways before reaching their dorm buildings.

Flores was then the only person left helping Smart stagger back from the party at around 2am. 

He was the last person to see her alive.

A missing-person report was filed with campus police on May 28. Searches were conducted on campus and in her Muir Hall dorm room, where they found her wallet and other belongings.

Smart was formally declared dead in 2002, and her body has never been found.  

Recalling moments from 1996, Smart’s heartbroken mother Denise said she contacted police shortly after Kristin failed to call home on Sunday, May 26. 

Kristin’s cheerful call home was a weekly ritual, she said.

Before she vanished on May 25, Kristin sent her parents an excited voicemail claiming to have good news. They never found out what it was.

Worried Denise had days earlier called the college president, but was redirected to a residential advisor who refused to give any information about Kristin on ‘privacy’ grounds.

A sheriff at the local San Luis Obispo Police Department then told Denise he had no jurisdiction over the college campus.

Four days after her disappearance, police filed a missing persons report.

Smart’s former roommate Crystal Teschendorf claimed police didn’t take her seriously when she reported the 19-year-old missing twice before police finally filed a report.

Teschendorf said she and several other residents in the dorm contacted police two days after Smart failed to return to her room, and then, again, two days later when she didn’t show up for class.

‘We had talked about possible scenarios of why she would not have come back to the dorms,’ Teschendorf said of the concerned students. ‘We kind of thought it was unusual.’

Testifying about her last interaction with Smart, Teschendorf said her roommate appeared to be in a ‘good mood’ as they parted ways on Friday, May 24.

When Teschendorf returned to their room, she noticed that Smart’s keys and personal belongings that she normally took everywhere were still in the room, untouched, and her roommate was nowhere to be found.

Teschendorf said it was odd because although they weren’t particularly close, Smart would usually tell her if she was going to spend the night out of their dorm.

She said that she and the other girls in the dorm grew uneasy when none of them heard from Smart as they decided to make their first call to police on Sunday, May 26. 

The beginning of the investigation 

Flores downplayed his interactions with Smart when he first spoke with police in the days after she was declared missing, saying she walked to her dorm under her own power.

San Luis Obispo County district attorney’s officials interviewed Flores in June 1996, but he later invoked his Fifth Amendment right before a grand jury, and then again during a civil disposition.  

When Flores was first interviewed, he had a black eye. He told them he got it playing basketball with friends, who denied his account, according to court records. 

He later changed his story to say he bumped his head while working on his car. 

At a preliminary hearing, prosecutors presented evidence that four cadaver dogs stopped at Flores’ room and alerted to the scent of death near his bed.

Over the years, women called him ‘Chester the molester’ and ‘Psycho Paul,’ according to a court document.

In the months after Smart disappeared, her frustrated parents hired attorney James Murphy who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against both Ruben and Paul Flores. 

During the deposition for the civil suit, he only spoke to confirm his name and invoke the Fifth Amendment 27 times. It was dropped when the father filed for bankruptcy. 

The revival of public interest: Your Own Backyard podcast 

Despite over two decades without an answer, her heartbroken mother and father never gave up hope. Then in April 2021, Flores was charged for her murder. 

And it was during the announcement of the arrest that San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson gave credit to the tireless work of podcast host Chris Lambert.

Citing the podcast, Your Own Backyard, Parkinson said: ‘In 2019, (we) interviewed several witnesses that had not been previously interviewed.

‘Some of that information came to light through the podcast … that was produced and eventually led to our interviewing that witness.’ 

Lambert was one of the few journalists and members of the public who have been privy to what is happening inside the court room. He was updating his followers on the closing statements via his Twitter account.

The man from Orcutt, California, started the podcast in 2019, and has since been credited with renewing worldwide interest in the unsolved case. 

Lambert forensically interviewed Smart’s parents, best friend, college roommate, and others who knew Flores.

Born out of a desire to simply learn about what happened to the missing girl, Lambert embarked on the pet project without knowing the massive impact it would have for Smart’s family. 

He started asking simple questions to people close to Kristin in 2019 – and soon garnered over 12 million downloads across the globe. 

Since the trial started, Lambert said that the defense team have unsuccessfully requested to go through his emails, text messages, and gain access to his podcast notes.

Lambert previously told the Santa Maria Sun: ‘They want to go through my emails, my text messages and it’s just not going to happen. I’m not willing to turn that stuff over because there are so many anonymous sources I’m not willing to jeopardize. 

‘They’re trying to poke holes in the witnesses’ credibility and they want to do it through me, and I think that’s improper.’ 

Speaking about his journey documenting aspects of the unsolved case, Lambert said: ‘This didn’t seem like it was ever going to happen. At the time I picked it up, it felt like the Kristin Smart case is that local case we all talk about, how come it never got solved? 

‘It didn’t feel like this would happen.’

He said that during the trial, defense attorneys have said ‘a number of times’ that the podcast was ‘designed to convict Paul Flores.’

In response, Lambeth said afterwards: ‘I know that’s just smear, that’s their angle on it, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.

‘That was not my goal. It was just, does anyone know what happened? Does anyone know where Kristin is? 

‘Getting into court was not a goal of mine and I didn’t see it happening. And honestly once it’s done, I think we’re all just going to be relieved that it’s over, regardless of the outcome.’ 

The breakthrough – Flores men are arrested 

Smart’s case was never closed, but momentum was revived in the last two years.

Investigators conducted dozens of searches over two decades, but turned their attention in 2020 to Ruben Flores’ home about 12 miles south of Cal Poly. 

It’s believed that the new-found impetus was driven by the fresh interviews police conducted, which first came to light via the Your Own Backyard podcast.

They arrested Paul Flores on suspicion of being a felon in possession of a firearm in February 2021 when his home was searched.

Then in March, detectives served a search warrant for his father’s home. They used ground-penetrating radar and a cadaver dog during the probe.

Behind lattice work beneath the deck of his large house on a dead end street off Tally Ho Road, archaeologists working for police in March found a soil disturbance about the size of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said.

The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample. While an expert said it was human blood, the test used did not rule out the possibility it was from a ferret or primate, though court records said no remains of either such animal were found there.

In April 2021, the Smart family lawyer James Murphy filed a lawsuit against Ruben Flores alleging that ‘under cover of darkness,’ the father and unnamed accomplices moved the body four days after investigators searched his house in 2020.

Flores was previously accused of moving Smart’s remains from the burial site ‘in the event of an additional search of the property.’ 

An additional search did indeed take place – a year later. Investigators only searched underneath the deck of his home in 2021. 

During Rubens’ trial in October, Deputy DA Christopher Peuvrelle said during the closing statements: ‘Only one spot in that entire backyard happened to have a surface disturbance showing it had been dug down into. 

‘Happened to be the perfect size for a human burial site,’ he said. 

However, a jury did not find the evidence credible enough to convict Ruben Flores. 

Paul Flores was arrested at his San Pedro, California home on April 13, 2021 and charged with murder.

His father was then taken into custody. Both men pleaded not guilty.

At the time of their arrest, the Smart family said in a statement: ‘It is impossible to put into words what this day means for our family.

‘We now put our faith in the justice system and move forward, comforted in the knowledge that Kristin has been held in the hearts of so many and that she has not been forgotten.’ 

Authorities also said that they linked two other attacks on women in Los Angeles to Paul Flores.

Prosecutors in July 2021 added that Paul Flores ‘has a specific fetish for forcing himself upon women especially when they are drugged or inebriated, which is exactly the state of Kristin Smart in the early morning of March 25, 1996.’

The trial begins – 26 years after Kristin’s disappearance  

Opening arguments for the 1996 mystery started on July 18, 2022.  

Prosecutors believed that Flores killed Smart in his dorm room after trying to rape her. They claimed that he was then helped by his father to bury the girl’s body under the deck behind his home in Arroyo Grande, California.

They said that they later dug up her remains and moved them when law enforcements returned to search the house in 2020.  

During the trial, San Luis Obispo County Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle sensationally pointed at Ruben Flores and his ex-wife, Susan Flores, and said of Kristin: ‘She was under their deck.’

He told the court that there are no witnesses who can corroborate Flores’ story of what happened in his dorm room on May 25, 1996. 

And he said that at the time, Paul Flores and his father did not join in the community hunt for the missing teenager. 

‘Paul Flores is guilty as sin. Justice delayed does not have to be justice denied. You now know the truth of what happened,’ he said, according to those in the court. 

Peuvrelle said: ‘Now you know where she was all along. She was under their deck.

‘The community moved Heaven and Earth to try to find her. Paul and Ruben, they moved the dirt under their deck to hide her.’

Also heard during the trial was a recorded conversation between Paul Flores and his mother Susan Flores.

During the call, the mother tells her son he needed to tell her where they can ‘punch holes’ in the ‘Your Own Backyard’ podcast because ‘only you can.’

Robert Sanger, defending Paul Flores, said there was no evidence against his client, and insisted the case was based on rumor. 

‘Conspiracy theories can be fun. We love to hear them,’ said Sanger.

‘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.’

Sanger picked holes in the witness testimony, noting it had been 26 years since Smart’s death, and questioning their memories.

In his closing arguments, Sanger said the prosecution’s case was not to showcase evidence, but rather to evoke an emotional prejudice against Paul Flores by using phrases like ‘guilty as sin’ and quoting witness testimony that says Paul Flores called Smart a ‘d*** tease.’

The publicity of the case is ‘the elephant in the room,’ Sanger said, adding that there were people ‘inserting themselves’ into the case along with extensive news coverage locally and nationally.

‘A lot of this had an influence on testimony,’ Sanger said.

He also tried to undercut the prosecution’s idea of Smart as a young innocent, insisting she was wild.

‘It’d be nice to just preserve this idea that everything was fine and she was angelic, but the reality is she engaged in at-risk behavior and you have to interpret how that affects the events that may have transpired,’ he said.

‘You have a pretty straightforward job. You have to decide whether or not a murder was committed, beyond a reasonable doubt,’ Sanger told the jury.

‘Short answer – it was not.’ 

But the jury decided it was. They handed Paul Flores a guilty verdict. 

Sanger spoke about ‘uncharged acts’ witnesses that were presented, referring to the two women who came forward alleging Paul Flores raped or attempted to rape them.

‘He’s charged with murder, not rape or attempted rape,’ he said.

He continued: ‘That’s wrong, that’s bad, that’s a crime he can be convicted of, but that’s not your job. What you have to decide is whether Paul Flores committed murder.’

Sanger also told the jurors that they needed to question whether the expert witnesses who testified for the prosecution are actually experts. ‘It’s junk science coming into the courtroom,’ he argued.

Sanger said the case was straightforward: ‘There is no evidence of a murder, so that is really the end of it.’ 

He finished his closing arguments by telling jurors: ‘You must decide the case for yourself. It depends on all 12 of you to deliberate to show whether there’s proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The only proper verdict, in this case, is not guilty.’

During the prosecution’s rebuttal, Peuvrelle asked the jury to find Paul Flores guilty of first-degree murder and summarized the evidence that had been presented during the trial that started on July 18. 

He said: ‘Sometimes we tell our kids monsters do not exist, but they do. I ask you to render a truthful verdict that Paul Flores is guilty of first-degree murder.’

Describing Paul Flores during the final statements, Rubens’ attorney Harold Mesick said: ‘He was an awkward freshman who liked to wear baseball caps. He liked to play pool and he liked to drink. 

‘Paul Flores was innocent, and his actions were helpful. When Kristin Smart fell at the party, he helped her up. He was doing a good deed.’

That ‘good deed,’ it now transpires, was the murder of 19-year-old Kristin Smart. 

Paul Flores was found guilty of first degree murder on October 18. He faces a minimum of 25 years in jail. 

He will be sentenced on December 9, at 9am. 

His father Ruben Flores was found not guilty by a separate jury.