The Murderer of Kristin Smart Found After Nearly Thirty Years

Kristin Smart disappeared on 25 May 1996. She disappeared whilst walking back to her dorm at the California Polytechnic University. She had just left an off-campus party.

For six years, it was as if the nineteen-year-old had vanished into thin air. With no news or sightings of her, she was declared legally dead in 2002.

The police continued to investigate her case, especially looking at Paul Flores.

Kristin Smart

Kristin was born on 20 February 1977 in West Germany to parents Stan and Denise Smart. Both parents taught children of American service members when they were posted overseas.

Later, the family would move to Stockton, California, where their children attended the local school. Kristin graduated in 1995 and enrolled in the Polytechnic.

On 25 May, she attended the party, leaving at 2 am with three other students, one of whom was Flores. Being new to the area, Kristin was unaware of Flores's reputation with women.

Paul Flores

Flores had earned himself the nickname 'Chester the Molester' women had learned to stay clear of this young man.

According to Flores, he left the party walking with Kristin as far as his dormitory in Santa Lucia Hall, and Kristin had carried on to her room alone.

It would not be for another two days before Kristin was reported missing. Her neighbours in her dorm reached out to campus police and Kristin's parents to say that she had disappeared into thin air. Campus police quickly opened an investigation.

Investigation

The campus police at the time seemed to judge Kristin harshly for drinking alcohol at the party. Two district attorney investigators were called in to help at her family's insistence. It was these that marked Flores as a person of interest.

When they interviewed him, they noticed many inconsistencies in his story, most notably that he kept changing how he had received a black eye.

Police, volunteers and cadaver dogs searched the campus to no avail. However, it was noticed that three of the dogs seemed to take a particular interest in Flores's room.

In June 1996, the local Sheriff's office took over the case entirely. In the autumn of that year, a woman named Mary Lassiter was renting a room belonging to Flores's mother. She found a single woman's earring in the driveway that appeared to match a necklace Kristin had been wearing on one of the missing persons' billboards. Lassiter turned the earring over to the police, who lost it before it was marked as evidence.

Police could not build a case against Flores, so he was never arrested or charged with any offences. Despite this, the family filed a $40 million lawsuit against Flores. During the trial, Flores invoked the Fifth Amendment a total of twenty-seven times against the advice of his lawyer.

New Sheriff in Town

In 2011, San Luis got a new Sheriff who promised the Smart family that solving Kristin's case would be his top priority.

Two decades after the investigation began, police searched the house Lassiter had stayed in, but there was no evidence there by this time. They did, however, find biological evidence of Kristin in one of the other Flores's properties.

The police would carry out twenty-three search warrants and ninety-six interviews. Through this process, they collected 258 pieces of evidence; despite this, they still did not have enough evidence to arrest Flores, although he was still their prime suspect.

Your Own Backyard

The case would remain a cold case until a podcast became interested in the case. Budding freelance journalist Chris Lambert decided to cover Kristin's case in his podcast.

This coverage reignited the interest in the case, none more so than Lambert, who had told friends he would solve this case. The evidence would go on and provide evidence that would ultimately lead again to Flores.

Lambert, who was eight years old when Kristin disappeared, had always been fascinated with the case. He lived half an hour from the university. When he repeated his claim he was going to solve the case with a friend of his, the friend told him, "I went to school with the guy who walked her home that night. I went to high school with him. We all called him Scary Paul."

The podcast aired in 2019 and received 75,000 streams on the first day. Word quickly spread about the episode, and more people contacted Lambert with new information about Kristin and Flores.

Multiple people came forward and stated that Flores had taken advantage of many women when drunk; some went as far as to accuse Flores of sexual assault.

The police reached out to Lambert to work with them. Lambert would let the police interview these women who were coming forward before he interviewed them.

Arrest

In April 2021, Flores was arrested for the murder of Kristin. His father, Ruben, was also arrested and charged with being an accessory after the murder; it was believed that he had helped his son hide the body.

Flores went to trial on 18 October 2022; he was now forty-five. The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to twenty-five years to life. His father was acquitted of all charges by a separate jury.

The family believe that Lambert's podcast was the driving force behind the investigation; true to his word, he had solved Kristin's murder.

The case had been flawed from the start, with the police judging Kristin for drinking the night of her murder. Their victim shaming stopped them from investigating initially and led a guilty man to remain free for many years≥

Oh, it's that girl with shorts going to a party and getting drunk? Oh, well, that's what happens when you do that. - Denise Smart