Kristin Smart
UPDATE: An article posted by the Stockton Record on Saturday said an FBI agent contacted Kristin's mother, Denise Smart, about possible new details in her daughter's case, telling her to, "Be ready. This is really going to be something you don’t expect."
Denise was told to hire a family spokesperson and to consider getting away for a while.
Kristin was attending California Polytechnic State University when she went missing after a frat party, when she was 19 years old on May 25, 1996.
Around 2:00 a.m., she was found passed out on a neighbor's lawn by fellow students. They helped her to her feet and decided to walk her back to her nearby dorm. One of those students, Paul Flores was the last to see her alive. He stated to police that he walked Smart as far as his dormitory, Santa Lucia Hall, and then allowed her to walk back to her Muir Hall dorm by herself. Two days later, Flores turned himself into police for driving under the influence.
He was sporting a black eye in his booking photo. His story of how he got that black eye would change several times over the next few months. Investigators brought him in later for a deposition, he
invoked his Fifth Amendment right for every question, refusing to help detectives figure out what happened to Kristin.
Three items were reported stolen from the Cal Poly campus the weekend she when missing. One was an electric golf cart and two car-covers from vehicles behind Santa Lucia Hall. Paul worked on campus with the golf carts. The golf car covers were never found.
The golf cart was discovered by San Luis Obispo police. When the electric golf cart was returned to campus, some students who worked in the maintenance or transportation department were ordered by their supervisor to wash down the cart. They thought that was odd because the cart, to them, appeared very clean.
When the students were too slow at washing down the cart, the saw their supervisor out there with a bucket of soap scrubbing down the cart.
Administrators at Cal Poly also went to great lengths to make sure there was no evidence found in Paul’s dorm room by first sanitizing it, then completely renovating it. Even though Paul’s room had been sanitized, cadaver dogs were taken to Santa Lucia Hall.
Dog handlers were not told specifics of the case and escorted their dogs through the dormitory, one at a time. Each of the dogs independently alerted at the door of room number 128, the dorm room belonging to Paul Flores.“She about broke her neck,” is how one handler described her dog’s alert. Once inside, each dog alerted independently at three specific areas: the edge of a bed where Paul slept, a wastepaper basket, and the telephone. Authorities had fairly high confidence that either a dead body was in the room or someone who had access to that room had touched a dead body and then touched the bed, wastepaper basket, and telephone.
Paul called his dad on the night of Kristin's disappearance. Paul's father, Ruben Flores, lived 15 miles from campus. Paul's mother, Susan Flores, purportedly told a co-worker that something must have happened (that night), because right after her husband received a phone call in the middle of the night, he left the house like “a bat out of hell”. Paul's roommate, who had been away for the weekend, was told by Flores that he walked Kristin home and then came back to his room. The roommate, according to a police report, said he did joke with Flores about the case and asked Flores what he did with Kristin. Flores told his roommate, “She’s home with my parents.” Two days after Kristin disappeared, the Flores family poured concrete behind one of the homes they own. An earring appearing to have dried blood and believed to be one of Kristin’s favorite, was found on the back patio by Mary Lassiter who rented the home from the Flores. Police lost the earring however. An eyewitness believes he saw Paul Flores digging Kristin a grave the weekend she disappeared. Paul’s father allegedly under the influence of alcohol, told Elmer Rice and his wife that Kristin’s body was rolled up in carpet and buried.
She did not have money or credit cards with her when she went missing.
