The murder of Kristin Smart

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple or Spotify.

There are predators out there who sadly prey on those who are in a vulnerable position, possibly out somewhere, alone & under the influence. Rather than seeing them as someone who needs help as most people would, a predator can look at the same situation & see reduced resistance, fewer witnesses, impaired memory & an opportunity to isolate them.

There’s also a social element that predators can use to their advantage while out at a party, a bar or a gathering. It might not look alarming when a person steps forward to say, I’ll walk her home, I’ll take care of her, since these words can also sound protective. Yet, this might only be a ploy to separate an impaired person from everyone else.

Predators don’t always drag their victims away kicking & screaming. Sometimes they simply position themselves as the person willing to help while everyone else assumes that help is being given in good faith.

19-year-old Kristin Smart had been a freshman at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) when she vanished after attending an off-campus party over Memorial Day weekend in 1996. Despite the passage of nearly 30 years, Kristin has never been found. As the days stretched into months & there was still no sign of her, her loved ones remained torn apart by the thoughts of what may have happened to her & where she might be.

Although everyone believed they knew exactly who was responsible for her disappearance & presumed murder, it took 25 long years to put the pieces of the puzzle together, making Kristin’s last known moments clear.

Kristin Denise Smart was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, West Germany on February 20, 1977 to parents Stan & Denise Smart, who educated children of American military members in Germany. She had two younger siblings, a brother, Matt & a sister, Lindsey.

When Kristin was a child, she & her family relocated to Stockton, California & in 1995, she graduated from Stockton Lincoln High School. She was exceptionally close with her family & if there was ever a squabble between herself & her siblings, she quickly came up with a fun new action plan to get them all back on the same page.

Although she may have seemed shy on the outside, she had an inner confidence that allowed her to pursue any ambition she had. She was quite the planner & always loved her family vacations & new adventures. During the summer of her sophomore year in high school, she stayed just outside of London & the following summer, Kristin traveled to Venezuela as an exchange student since it was her goal to become fluent in Spanish.

At 6’1” with long blond hair, brown eyes & a vibrant smile, Kristin was impossible to miss. She was an athletic girl who played volleyball & swam competitively. She loved poetry, sharing inspirational quotes & making her family & friends laugh by telling jokes.

During her last summer on earth, Kristin had her dream job working as a lifeguard & camp counselor at Camp Mokuleia in Hawaii before she enrolled at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo in the fall of 1995 as a communications major.

Kristin kept herself busy on campus, working as a lifeguard at the university’s Rec Center while living in the dorms at Muir Hall. She was frequently in touch with her family who were just under four hours south of where she was going to school, filling them in on what was going on in her life.

On Friday night, May 24, 1996, Kristin & her friend, who was also her next-door-neighbor in the dorms, Margarita Campos, went to a party together. The party ended up being a bust & when Margarita told her friend that she was going to head back to the dorms, Kristin wanted to stay out.

Since she didn’t have her keys to get back into Muir Hall, Margarita handed hers over & planned to get them back the next morning. As she headed back, she said that Kristin was absolutely sober.

From here, Kristin went to an off-campus party on her own at 135 Crandall Way at a privately owned house that was rented by Cal Poly students not far from campus. The party was a birthday celebration for one of the home’s renters.

When some of the party-goers were heading home at about 2 am, they saw Kristin passed out, lying face down to the left of the driveway. When freshman Cheryl Anderson left, she noticed a friend trying to get Kristin up & since she knew where Kristin lived on campus, she offered to walk her back to her dorm.

As they got Kristin on her feet, a fellow freshman at the party, 19-year-old Paul Flores, jumped in to say that he also knew where Kristin lived, so he would walk with them. According to Cheryl, as they made their way, Paul put his arm around Kristin’s waist & her arm around his neck.

Although he continued to tell Cheryl that she could go on ahead since he had Kristin, she slowed down & continued to walk with them. Once they reached the corner of Grand Avenue & Perimeter Road where Paul lived in room 128 in Santa Lucia Hall, Cheryl split off from them.

As she prepared to walk away, Cheryl said that Paul asked her for a kiss & then a hug, both of which she declined. When she asked him if he would walk Kristin back to her dorm 40 yards away, he said he would. This was the last time Kristin was ever seen.

When Kristin’s roommates woke up on Saturday morning, May 25, 1996, they were immediately concerned when they realized that she wasn’t there. Since she hadn’t taken her wallet or ID, they didn’t think she left campus.

They initially told themselves that maybe Kristin decided to go back home for the long weekend after all. Two days later, when she still wasn’t back, student Jennifer Phiipps contacted the Cal Poly police to report her friend missing on Monday, May 27, but a report wasn’t started at that time.

Denise Smart got a phone call from the University Police that same day, asking if Kristin was with them. Not only was Kristin not with them, but she hadn’t called home on Sunday as Denise had expected. This was when she learned that no one had seen her daughter since Friday night.

Frantic at this point, when the Smarts tried to file a missing person’s report with local police, they were told that it was too early while the FBI told them that the Cal Poly police were in charge. By the time they did begin investigating, the critical first 48 hours had passed & nearly four days had gone by since Kristin was last seen.

According to Sheriff Ian Parkinson of the San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Office, the University Police lacked the number of investigators as well as the experience to conduct an investigation in the early stages.

The ten square miles of fields around campus were scoured for Kristin, but there was absolutely no sign of her. For the Smart family, their fun, normal family life was flipped on its head & their lives have never been the same.

In retracing Kristin’s last known movements, police learned that she was last seen leaving the party in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 25 with freshman, Paul Flores, who continued on with her after Cheryl parted ways with them.

When he was brought in for questioning on Tuesday, May 28, his initial statements were inconsistent in terms of where exactly he parted ways with Kristin. In one version, he claimed to have walked her up to her dorm in Muir Hall, but in another, he said that when they reached a fork in the road, he left her to walk back to her dorm while he walked back to his own. According to Cheryl’s statements, they were last seen together near his dorm on Grand Avenue & Perimeter Road.

Paul would have had the room to himself that weekend since his roommate, Derrick Tse, left for Oakland on Friday & didn’t come back until Tuesday. When Derrick did get back, he heard the buzz around campus that Kristin was missing. When he asked Paul about it, he told him that he had been at the same party as her & was the last to have seen her.

When Derrick joked that he probably did something to her, Paul laughed as he said, yeah, she’s at my mom’s house right now. Although Derrick never went to parties with Paul, he was aware of how he acted after a night of drinking when he was usually louder & more aggressive than usual.

Although he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary in their dorm room when he came back on Tuesday, Derrick did notice that Paul seemed more serious.

As Cal Poly investigators spoke with him, all he could recall was that as they prepared to part ways, Kristin said she was freezing cold. They couldn’t help but notice that Paul not only had abrasions on his left knee, but also a black eye. When asked about the injuries, he claimed to have gotten the black eye when he was elbowed while playing basketball with friends on the Monday after the party.

During this initial questioning, he seemed calm, cooperative & readily agreed to take a polygraph test.

When fellow partygoers were questioned, they confirmed that Kristin had been extremely intoxicated that night despite the fact that no one recalled even seeing her drink throughout her time there. They also indicated that she seemed fine one minute & incapacitated the next.

By June 1996, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office took over the case after time had passed without leads from the campus police. Kristin’s family felt that while campus police didn’t rush to investigate Paul, they were quick to judge their daughter & her behavior on the night she vanished.

On June 19, 1996, when Kristin had been missing for 25 days, police brought Paul in for a second interview that was audio & video recorded. Unlike in his first interview, Paul seemed very nervous; he was fidgeting in his chair, speaking quickly & often stuttering.

When asked what he thought might have happened to Kristin, he theorized that she may have been hitchhiking & was likely abducted by someone else after they parted ways.

They once again discussed the black eye that he had during his first interview & the fact that his story about how it happened was inconsistent. Fellow basketball players had told authorities that he’d just shown up with the black eye on Memorial Day & hadn’t gotten it from them as he claimed.

While he told one friend that it happened when he was pushed at a party, he told another that he didn’t know how he got it. The story he seemed to be settling on during his second interview was that it happened while he was changing a radio in his truck & he struck his eye on his steering wheel.

He claimed to have lied because he didn’t think they would believe that the injury occurred from his steering wheel. He argued that it wasn’t a lie, it was a fib or a white lie. When they broached the subject of a polygraph test this time, he said he would have to talk about it with his parents first.

It was at this point in time when he ended the interview, asking for a lawyer which was the last time law enforcement interviewed him in relation to Kristin’s case.

It wasn’t until five weeks after Kristin vanished when law enforcement investigated Paul’s dorm room for any incriminating evidence. By this time, it was summer break so the dorm was empty & his room had already been cleaned by Cal Poly housing services.

When cadaver dogs were brought in on June 29, 1996, four separate dogs from three different handlers alerted on Paul’s former door in room 128 that was closed & locked. Each dog was brought in separately & the handlers were not informed as to what the others had found during their respective searches.

According to one of the handlers, her dog gave her the strongest alert she’s ever seen her do.

Once inside the room, the dogs alerted multiple times to the left side of the room which was Paul’s side, targeting the mattress, a desk & garbage can. The dogs had no interest in the right side of the room or any other room in Santa Lucia Hall. Despite this, nothing concrete was found in Paul’s room that definitely linked him to Kristin’s disappearance.

Since Paul’s window to the outside was so low to the ground & close to the street on the first floor, investigators realized that he could have easily slid her body out the window onto the ground below.

Although they fully believed he was involved in whatever happened to Kristin, they didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest. The FBI had also gotten involved & offered a $75,000 reward for information that led to finding her. Additionally, Terry Black, a man from the Delta area of California, offered anyone with definitive information about Kristin’s whereabouts a $100,000 reward.

At the time of her disappearance, Kristin was wearing a gray cropped t-shirt, black surfing shorts & red Puma athletic shoes. She’d recently dyed her blond hair dark brown.

Paul, like Kristin, was a 19-year-old freshman at Cal Poly, but that’s where the similarities end. Unlike Kristin, he struggled to make friends in high school as well as in college. Many people felt unsettled by his presence, which earned him the nickname, Chester the molester & Scary Paul since he was frequently touchy & inappropriate with girls.

While studying food science at Cal Poly, his grades were very poor & he spent many of his weekends drinking alone in his dorm room. Although he was only 19, he was a very heavy drinker.

In December 1995, five months before Kristin vanished, a female student contacted the San Luis Obispo Police after an intoxicated Paul climbed up her trellis & refused to leave. Six weeks later, his driver’s license was suspended after he was pulled over for speeding & failed a breathalyzer test.

Kristin’s family was growing frustrated at the lack of progress in her case. One year after she vanished, the sheriff told the local paper that if Paul Flores didn’t tell them what happened to Kristin, they didn’t see being able to complete her case. This meant that if he kept quiet, he would get away with murder.

In October 1996, Paul, his parents & others were subpoenaed to testify before the San Luis Obispo County grand jury, but no charges were filed. The Smarts refused to give up on getting answers from Paul as Denise remained relentless in seeking justice. They continued sending photos of Kristin to the Flores family in hopes their conscience would prevail & they would give them answers.

The following month, Stan & Denise filed a $40 million wrongful death lawsuit against Paul that alleges he murdered their daughter at Cal Poly. They later added the university as a defendant, accusing campus officials of failing to keep their daughter safe.

When Paul was deposed for the Smart’s civil suit in January 1997, the only thing he would confirm on tape was his name. He went on to invoke the 5th amendment 27 times, refusing to even confirm his address or the fact that he was a Cal Poly student when Kristin vanished.

Ruben & Susan Flores, who were also deposed, denied that their son was involved in Kristin’s disappearance & indicated that they also played no role.

Kristin Smart was officially declared dead on May 29, 2002 after six years with no signs of life. It became the Smart’s hope to one day recover her body in order to lay her to rest.

When Kristin vanished, Ruben & Susan Flores were separated & living apart, something investigators weren’t aware of so they didn’t immediately get a warrant to search Susan’s home. Four months later, when they attempted to reconcile, Susan rented out her Arroyo Grande home on Branch Street.

It wasn’t until two months after she went missing that they finally searched the family home at 710 White Court in Arroyo Grande where Paul had been living with his father Ruben at the time. When they did, they brought no cadaver dogs with them nor a forensics team. They also didn’t look in any of their vehicles.

Since Paul didn’t have a car on campus when Kristin vanished, the assumption was that he had help disposing of her body. In the months that she vanished, one truck was traded in while the other was reported stolen.

In 2011, 15 years after she vanished, when no progress had been made in Kristin’s case, the new sheriff, Ian Parkinson, vowed to get answers, ordering that Kristin’s case be re-evaluated. It was his hope that a new set of eyes might catch something that was initially missed.

Throughout this time, 96 interviews were conducted, 23 search warrants were issued & 258 new pieces of evidence were collected.

In 2019, a man named Chris Lambert felt inspired to create a podcast that focused on Kristin’s case. He realized that few people he spoke with knew about Kristin’s case, often confusing it with Elizabeth Smart, the 14-year-old girl who was abducted from her family home in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 5, 2002. After nine months of being raped daily & held captive, Elizabeth was rescued by police officers & safely returned to her family.

In September 2019, Chris released the first episode of his true crime podcast, Your Own Backyard which was titled, A Face on a Billboard. Rather than an investigative background, Chris was a muscian & music producer who grew up in the area & had always seen Kristin’s face on a billboard as he’d been only 8-years-old in 1996 when she went missing.

According to Kristin’s siblings, Lindsey & Matt, throughout the many conversations they’ve had with Chris & the time they’ve spent with him, they’ve basically come to view him as a sibling. His coverage about Kristin’s case reignited interest & played a pivotal role in finally catching her killer.

As the podcast grew, Chris was able to coax previously reluctant witnesses who refused to cooperate with the police to speak with him. He even spoke with witnesses who had never been questioned before.

The show was a tremendous success with the first episode getting over 75,000 downloads on the first day of its release. Because word spread so quickly, several people felt inspired to call in with new information.

Chris’ second episode title, The Only Suspect, focused on Paul Flores as the center of Kristin’s disappearance. He encouraged his listeners to come forward with anything that could challenge or confirm him as a suspect. He highlighted that not only had he been the last person to have seen Kristin, but he came into the station for his first interview with a mysterious black eye as well as inconsistencies as to how he got the injury.

After the episode was released, several women emailed allegations that Paul had a history of sexual misconduct, claiming that he was known to assault women who were intoxicated. Those who had attended high school with Paul also came forward to discuss his inappropriate interactions with the girls.

More & more witnesses emerged after episodes continued to be released. A former Australian exchange student attending Cal Poly in 1996 reported seeing Paul & Kristin struggling near the area of where she was last seen.

Another woman named Mary Lassiter also reached out to Chris about a couple of highly suspicious things. She rented Susan Flores’ Branch Street home in Arroyo Grande in October 1996, four months after Kristin went missing, when Susan moved back in with Ruben in hopes of reconciling.

Mary first became aware of the fact that Susan’s son was the prime suspect in a young college woman’s disappearance after postcards meant for Susan continued to arrive. The messages urged her to cooperate with police & have her son come forward.

Shortly after she moved into the home, she was washing her car in the driveway when she noticed a silver & turquoise woman’s earring lying next to her left front tire. Since it matched the necklace that Kristin wore in her photo on one of her billboards, Mary handed the earring over to the police, but they later reported it missing before it could be logged as evidence.

As she slept in the master bedroom, Mary was awoken every morning at 4:20 am by an incessant beeping noise that sounded like a digital watch alarm. The sound seemed to be coming from the backyard which was all concrete other than a couple of planter boxes that were filled with soil.

Shortly after Kristin went missing, Susan cut out big chunks of concrete in her backyard & filled it with soil to act as planter boxes. In one of Paul’s interviews, he actually said he wanted to leave so he could help clean up concrete at his mom’s house.

Although Mary searched the backyard on numerous occasions hoping to find the source of the beeping, she wasn’t successful. After the passage of several months, the noise finally stopped which likely meant that the batteries in the watch had died.

When Chris later told Denise about this, she was in shock because her daughter worked as a lifeguard at the university’s rec center & she set her alarm for very early each morning to be sure she was at the pool by 5 am. This could mean that Kristin and/or her belongings were buried in the backyard.

Susan’s house wasn’t searched until March 1997, ten months after Kristin disappeared & when it was, nothing was found. When authorities came back with a search warrant three years later on June 19, 2000, although their warrant allowed them to dig up the backyard, deputies chose not to excavate, which was a crushing blow for the Smart family.

Mary was evicted in March 1997, only five months after she began renting Susan’s home, so Susan could move back in with her former co-worker & boyfriend, Mike McConville. She still lives in that home on Branch Street to this day, but McConville passed away on July 11, 2025.

A former colleague of Susan Flores also spoke with Chris about something he remembers after Memorial Day weekend of 1996. Susan complained about a middle-of-the-night phone call that had awoken her that caused her husband to leave the house.

Another witness who came forward as a result of Chris’ podcast is Jennifer Hudson, a woman who was at her boyfriend’s house in 1996 in San Luis Obispo, watching him skate in the backyard. Paul, who she’d never met before, was also there. The radio was on & there was a public service announcement about Kristin’s disappearance. Paul turned to them & basically admitted to killing Kristin, calling her a tease, saying he got sick of her shit.

Jennifer was stunned when he went on to say that she was specifically under his skate ramp on his family’s property in Huasna. Sometime during the 1990s, he & his family had been living at the 21-acre rural property that was due east of their current home in Arroyo Grande. When satellite imagery was later used in the late 1990s & early 2000s, they confirmed that a large half-pipe skateboard ramp did exist on this property.

It wasn’t until 2021 when authorities focused a large-scale search on the Huasna Road area. The wooden skate ramp had long been disassembled & removed by this time, but Kristin’s remains were not found.

Jennifer was so unsettled by what Paul said that she didn’t speak out for fear he might harm her.

Police issued a search warrant for Paul’s San Pedro home on February 4, 2020, the same day that similar searches were happening at his parents’ two homes. After they seized all of his electronics, they found evidence that proved Paul was a sexual predator.

On an external hard drive was a folder labeled Practice, where investigators not only found child pornography, but also horrific homemade pornography that depicted Paul sexually assaulting & sodomizing women who were drifting in & out of consciousness. One of the women appeared to have a red ball gag in her mouth.

There were also Google searches on his computer that included, real drunken girls, drugged and raped while passed out. They also found two prescription medications that could be used as date-rape drugs. According to anesthesiologist Dr. Owen Shea, these two water soluble drugs are both in the opiate family & each cause narcosis, especially when taken with alcohol. The mixture would also cause memory loss & amnesia.

Thirty women came forward to describe allegations of sexual misconduct against Paul, some of which suspected they had been drugged after waking up in his home with no recollection as to how they got there. At least four of these women allege that he raped them.

On March 15 & 16, 2021, investigators dug up Ruben Flores’ Arroyo Grande yard at 710 White Court & excavated beneath the deck utilizing ground penetrating radar. Behind the lattice work of the underside of the deck, the radar signaled an 6 foot x 4 foot void that was the size of a casket that had recently been filled in.

As they began digging & reached 18 inches down, they found what appeared to be staining that was consistent with human decomposition. After obtaining soil samples, human blood was detected, but by this time, the blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample. Fibers of clothing were also found that matched what Kristin was wearing when she vanished.

With this evidence, 44-year-old Paul Flores & his 80-year-old dad, Ruben Flores, were arrested on April 13, 2021, nearly 25 years after Kristin vanished. Paul was charged with first-degree murder committed during the course of a rape & no bail was set, while Ruben was charged as an accessory after the fact with a bail set at $250,000.

In May 2021, Kristin’s family filed a lawsuit against Susan & her boyfriend, Mike McConville, for assisting Ruben Flores in moving Kristin’s remains following a search of his Arroyo Grande home in February 2020. The lawsuit was initially filed against only Ruben on April 22 & later amended to include Susan & Mike.

This was based on a witness who saw Ruben, Susan & Mike working under Ruben’s house in the middle of the night on or around February 9, 2020, only days after investigators served a search warrant at Ruben’s home. Neither Mike nor Susan have been charged.

Evidence came together to paint a picture of Kristin’s last moments. On Friday, May 24, 1996, she finished her classes early in anticipation of the holiday weekend. When she called her parents at about 5:30 pm, she left a voicemail & sounded excited about hearing good news about her previously missing biology papers. At about 8:30 pm, she met up with three friends & a fourth friend drove them in a truck to an off-campus house for a gathering.

Wanting to stay out longer, Kristin suggested they go to the nearby party on Crandall Way, but Margarita Campos wanted to get back to her dorm so Kristin went alone. She was dropped off a couple of blocks away from the house on Crandall Way at about 10:30 pm. During the party, Kristin introduced herself as Roxy, a nickname she often used for herself.

After she was found lying unconscious in the yard, she was escorted back to her dorm by Paul Flores, who likely led her back to his own dorm rather than taking her back to her dorm as he promised. Even in her intoxicated state, when he attempted to rape her, Kristin fought back, striking him, causing a black eye & scratches to his knee.

As the struggle escalated, Paul killed her. When he called his dad in a state of panic, Ruben Flores quickly drove to campus & with Paul’s help, they moved Kristin’s body to their home on White Court in Arroyo Grande where they buried her under under his deck & relocated her belongings, including her digital watch, to Susan’s home on Branch Street. Her body was then moved multiple times over the years to evade searches.

Investigators found a 6 foot by 4 foot anomaly under the deck of the Flores’ home at 710 White Court in Arroyo Grande about 12 miles south of Cal Poly. Soil samples extracted from this location tested positive for human blood while fibers found in the soil were a match to what Kristin was last seen wearing.

Biological evidence indicated that a body had been buried there for an extended period while forensic excavation showed the body had been dug up & moved.

Both Paul & Ruben pleaded not guilty & were tried together with two separate juries present in Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas, 110 miles north of San Luis Obispo on July 18, 2022.

The prosecution pointed out that Kristin had been last seen with Paul & throughout the investigation, all leads continued to point back at him as the prime & sole suspect.

Two women known as Rhonda Doe & Sarah Doe, came forward to testify about passing out after drinking something that Paul had given them. They awoke to Paul having sex with them without consent which is likely what happened to Kristin.

Each witness from the party on May 24, 1996 testified that Kristin had been incapacitated that night to the point that she struggled to walk despite the fact that no one recalled seeing her drinking. This would suggest that she had been drugged that night & Paul tried to take advantage of her in an incapacitated state.

Paul’s stories were inconsistent during his two police interviews in regards to where he left Kristin & why he had a black eye while cadaver dogs signaled the presence of human remains in his dorm room. Prosecutors believe that he murdered Kristin after an attempted rape in his dorm room on Saturday, May 25, 1996.

The Smart family were present at each & every day of the trial & will be forever thankful that these victims had the courage to come forward.

Kristin’s classmate & friend, Steven Fleming, testified that although he didn’t know Paul by name before Kristin went missing, he knew of him. He was aware that Paul’s presence made everyone in the dorms feel uneasy, especially the females. He’d also been seen lingering around Kristin’s room despite not living in the same building.

Jennifer Hudson also testified about her interaction with Paul in 1996 when she was 17-years-old & he confessed that Kristin was buried under his skate ramp in Huasna.

Despite the mounting evidence & witness testimony, Paul’s defense attorney, Robert Sanger, argued that the case against his client was weak. He pointed out that there were no eyewitnesses to any crime against Kristin, her body had never been found & the evidence was speculation rather than proof.

As far as Robert Sanger was concerned, Paul had simply escorted Kristin as far as his dorm that night where he left her to carry on to her own dorm before she went out on her own.

Sanger also introduced the idea that Scott Peterson was responsible for Kristin’s disappearance. He is serving a life sentence for murdering his wife, Laci Peterson, who was 8 months pregnant, on Christmas Eve 2002 & had been a student on the same campus as Kristin when she vanished. However, there was zero evidence that connected Peterson to the case so this idea was quickly dismissed.

After 11 weeks of testimony, the trial came to an end. On October 18, 2022, nearly 26 ½ years after Kristin vanished, Paul Flores was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Kristin Smart. That same day, his father, Ruben Flores, was found not guilty of being an accessory.

On March 10, 2023, 46-year-old Paul was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, the maximum sentence allowed under California law. He’ll be eligible for parole after serving 15 years. During his sentencing, Judge Jennifer O’Keefe called him a cancer to society, saying that while he lived free within the community for more than two decades, he engaged in predatory behavior against women during his adult life & he deserved to spend every day he has left behind bars.

Although the Smart family felt a sense of relief that Kristin’s voice was heard as well as the fact that there will be no further victims at Paul’s hands, they also feel that there will be no closure until they can find Kristin’s remains & lay her to rest.

Investigators continue to search for her remains & her case will not be over until she has been returned to her family.

In May 2026, 30 years after Kristin went missing, Susan Flores’ home on East Branch Street in Arroyo Grande was searched. It had been previously searched in June 2000, but her yard wasn’t dug up at the time. A search done on February 5, 2020 was limited to the collection of digital devices.

Ground penetrating radar as well as excavators were utilized & although they didn’t find Kristin’s remains, compounds in the soil were related to a human, decomposing body. This would suggest that her remains were there at one time or are potentially still there.

In the meantime, Paul continues to appeal his case & has filed a second petition for appeal last July citing evidence errors at trial, which were later denied in January.

The Smart family credit Chris Lambert’s investigative efforts which helped uncover new leads while maintaining public interest which finally led to justice in their daughter’s case.

To honor Kristin’s memory, her family created the Kristin Smart Scholarship to empower other college-bound women to pursue their ambitions in Kristin’s name. According to the website, this positive focus allows them to remember the sparkle in her eyes, the smile that melted hearts & her dreams & ambitions that were always on the table.

Today, we can remember Kristin as a young woman who always dreamed of something new, something bigger, something better. She never doubted her dreams & always seemed to know the right steps she needed to take in order to reach them.

She had been only 19-years-old when she suddenly vanished after what began as a typical college party. When she walked away with Paul Flores on that fateful night, she was still discovering the person she wanted to become. Although he may have given people the creeps, no one ever thought that Kristin was in danger.

Kristin’s favorite motto was, Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation. Although she was denied the chance to live out the years that should have been ahead of her, those words remind us how she always approached the life she was given.

References:

Recent Posts

Next PostThe disappearance of Rachel Mellon-Skemp

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Stay in the loop, join our newsletter