Kristin Smart scenario: Prosecutors attempt to demonstrate 1996 killing with physique lacking

By BRIAN MELLEY | The Related Press

LOS ANGELES  — The smiling deal with of Kristin Clever even now appears to be out from a billboard in front of attorney James Murphy Jr.’s legislation business office extra than 25 a long time after the college freshman vanished from a campus on California’s picturesque central coast.

It after supplied a $75,000 reward to aid come across the college pupil, but these days the billboard only claims: “Justice For Kristin.”

Intelligent is still missing, but the man last witnessed with her at California Polytechnic State College in San Luis Obispo in 1996 is on trial extra than a calendar year following he was arrested on a murder demand along with his father, who is accused of serving to conceal her body.

Opening statements are scheduled Monday in Monterey County Remarkable Courtroom in Salinas in the demo of Paul Flores and his father, Ruben Flores, who is billed as an accent. The two gentlemen have pleaded not responsible.

The youthful Flores, now 45, killed the 19-calendar year-previous through an attempted rape on Could 25, 1996 in his dorm room at Cal Poly, the place both of those ended up very first-year learners, prosecutors stated. His father, now 81, allegedly helped bury the slain university student at the rear of his dwelling in the nearby local community of Arroyo Grande and later on dug up the remains and moved them.

Paul Flores experienced very long been deemed a suspect in the killing, but prosecutors only arrested him and his father in 2021 after the investigation was revived.

San Luis Obispo Sheriff Ian Parkinson acknowledged missteps by detectives in excess of the yrs and he credited a well known podcast about Smart’s disappearance termed “Your Have Backyard” for supporting unearth new data and inspiring witnesses to speak with investigators.

Smart’s remains have hardly ever been identified and the secret of how she vanished from the scenic campus tucked from a verdant coastal mountain vary is likely to be central to the demo.

Investigators have carried out dozens of lookups about two decades, but turned their interest in the earlier two decades to Ruben Flores’ dwelling about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Cal Poly in the community of Arroyo Grande.

At the rear of lattice work beneath the deck of his massive house on a dead close avenue off Tally Ho Highway, archaeologists working for law enforcement in March 2021 discovered a soil disturbance about the sizing of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said.

The blood was far too degraded to extract a DNA sample. Although a blood expert claimed it was human blood, the take a look at employed did not rule out the likelihood it was from a ferret or ape, even though court docket documents mentioned no continues to be of such an animal were discovered there.

Murphy, who has sued the father and son on behalf of Smart’s dad and mom, scoffed at the plan that it was nearly anything other than human blood.

“The dimensions of the area in which the blood was uncovered would make it a prehistoric ferret that would be in Jurassic Park,” Murphy stated. “When was the past time you drove down Tally Ho Road in Arroyo Grande and noticed a primate?”

The lawsuit Murphy filed from Ruben Flores alleged that “under cover of darkness,” the father and unnamed accomplices moved the human body 4 times just after investigators searched his household in February 2020. Investigators did not conduct their dig beneath the deck right up until extra than a calendar year later.

San Luis Obispo Outstanding Courtroom Judge Craig Van Rooyen ordered the pair to demo just after a 22-day preliminary listening to in which he found a “strong suspicion” the father and son fully commited the crimes they have been charged with, that a grave existed underneath Ruben Flores’ deck and it when held Smart’s continues to be.

Prosecutors, defense lawyers and San Luis Obispo sheriff’s deputies are constrained by a court docket buy prohibiting them from talking about the scenario.

Attorney Harold Mesick, who signifies Ruben Flores, formerly mentioned the proof unearthed was ambiguous. He claimed that soil underneath the deck had been dumped there following becoming excavated to lay a basis nearby.

“It was a hot mess since it is been beforehand excavated,” Mesick stated. “If we even contact it proof, it is so minimal as to shock the conscience.”

Paul Flores was the very last human being noticed with Wise on Could 25, 1996 as he walked her home from an off-campus party exactly where she obtained intoxicated.

He downplayed his interactions with her when he initially spoke with police a few times afterwards, expressing she walked to her dorm underneath her personal electric power, even though other witnesses stated that she had handed out earlier in the night and Flores aided keep her up as they walked again to campus.

Flores had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He instructed them he acquired it enjoying basketball with buddies, who denied his account, according to court docket data. He later altered his story to say he bumped his head though performing on his car or truck.

At a preliminary hearing last yr, prosecutors presented proof that four cadaver canine stopped at Flores’ place and alerted to the scent of demise in the vicinity of his bed.

Van Rooyen prohibited prosecutors from presenting evidence alleging Paul Flores had a heritage of stalking, inappropriate touching and aggressive sexual conduct towards girls, such as allegations he drugged and raped four gals in the Los Angeles location years soon after Sensible disappeared. About the many years, women of all ages referred to as him “Chester the molester” and “psycho Paul,” according to a courtroom doc.

Van Rooyen ruled in favor of a protection ask for to move the demo out of San Luis Obispo County simply because it was not likely the Flores’ could get a honest demo with so a great deal substantially notoriety in the city of about 47,000 people.

The situation was moved 110 miles (177 kilometers) north to Salinas, a small city in the agricultural area the place John Steinbeck established some of his very best-recognized novels.