Kriti Mehrotra
NBC’s ‘Dateline: Justice For Kristin Smart’ as the title suggests, examines the case of Kristin Smart, a 19-year-old California Polytechnic State University freshman student, who vanished from the face of the earth on May 25, 1996, never to be seen or heard from again. More than 26 years after the fact, this news magazine highlights what transpired that day by delving into all the latest developments of the case in an attempt to get to the heart of it.
How Did Kristin Smart Die?
Kristin Denise Smart was born on February 20, 1977, in Augsburg, Germany, to Stan and Denise Smart. But when she was just a child, her family relocated to the United States of America, so she was primarily raised in Stockton, California. On the night she disappeared, she, a student of the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, had attended a party. At roughly 2:00 a.m. on May 25, 1996, two fellow students — Cheryl Anderson and Tim Davis — who’d just left the same party, found her passed out on a neighbor’s lawn.
Together, the two of them decided to help Kristin walk back to her dormitory. Then, as they were getting her to her feet, another student, Paul Flores, joined them and offered assistance. Tim and Cheryl left soon after as they lived further away, and Paul, according to his own account, walked her as far as his dormitory hall before allowing her to go the rest of the way herself. He said that Kristin appeared stable by that point, so he didn’t worry. Yet that was the last anyone ever saw of her. No one even knows if she actually made it back to her room or not.
For decades, the University Police, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office, and the FBI have collaborated to search for the missing teen, but to no avail. Warrant executions, DNA testing, physical evidence, and in-person interviews have led them nowhere, either. They were even able to excavate a hillside on the Cal Poly campus in 2016 after announcing the receipt of information suggesting Kristin might be buried there, yet she wasn’t. However, officials now think she might’ve been under the deck of a White Court home and was only recently removed.
Paul Flores Convicted in Kristin Smart’s Murder
Kristin Smart was legally declared dead on May 25, 2002, on the sixth anniversary of her disappearance. It is believed she was abducted, possibly sexually assaulted, and killed on the night she left the party itself. And the truth is suspicion from the very beginning has befallen Paul Flores as he was admittedly the last person to have seen Kristin alive. “There are no other suspects” other than Paul in connection to Kristin’s sudden disappearance and death, a former San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s officer once said, making it clear he has been carefully looked into.
It’s thus imperative to note there is a possibility crucial evidence that could have implicated Paul got lost along the way as the Cal Poly police didn’t even search his room until June 10, 1996. Though, by this point, as the academic session had already ended, he had shifted to a completely new place. Then there is also the fact that a bloody earring belonging to Kristin was recovered from Paul’s mother’s former residence — this earring has since been misplaced, but the reports of it remain. Furthermore, in one of his early taped interviews, he even admitted to lying about a fact to the investigators, following which he abruptly ended the session by refusing to answer any questions.
In the nearly three decades that went by, every aspect of Paul’s life has hence been examined, resulting in a search warrant being executed at his San Pedro, California, home in April 2020. This actually yielded an ample supply of date rape drugs, along with several homemade videos depicting him getting sexually involved with, sodomizing, and raping other young women. These discoveries then seemingly inadvertently led to a search of his father’s, Ruben Flores’, White Court, Arroyo Grande, California home, nearly a year later in March 2021. That’s where cadaver dogs as well as a ground-penetrating radar uncovered evidence indicating Kristin was possibly once buried there.
Therefore, on April 13, 2021, Paul and Ruben were arrested on one count each of first-degree murder and accomplice after the fact, respectively. In other words, while the latter was accused of helping his son hide the then-teen’s body on purpose, the former directly faced the allegation of possible sexual assault turned homicide. With all this, the duo ultimately went on trial in the summer of 2022, the October results of which found Kristin’s batchmate guilty as charged and his father clean of any wrongdoing. Paul was subsequently sentenced accordingly — 25 years to life in prison.
Read More: Where Is Paul Flores Now?
