Paul Flores Guilty Of Murdering College Student Kristin Smart

LOS ANGELES, CA — A jury on Tuesday convicted a Los Angeles man, who was the last person seen with college freshman Kristin Smart more than 25 years ago, of murdering her.

Jurors unanimously found Paul Flores guilty of first-degree murder, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported. Flores lived for more than a decade in San Pedro. The case was largely circumstantial because Smart's body has never been found. Key testimony in the trial came from two Los Angeles County women who said Flores drugged and raped them, establishing him as a serial rapist whose predatory behavior evolved after he killed Smart so many years ago, prosecutors said.

Their graphic and emotional testimony frequently elicited tears from the jurors throughout the trial.

A jury in a separate trial found his father, Ruben Flores, not guilty of charges of being an accessory to murder after the fact for allegedly helping to conceal the crime. Prosecutors had argued that he helped his son hide Smart's body under his house for nearly a quarter century before removing it under the cover of darkness as investigators closed in.

The conflicting verdicts were read moments apart in the same courtroom.

Smart disappeared from California Polytechnic State University over Memorial Day weekend in 1996. Her remains were never found.

Prosecutors maintain the younger Flores, now 45, killed the 19-year-old during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room at Cal Poly, where both were first-year students. He was the last person seen with Smart as he walked her home from an off-campus party where she became intoxicated.

Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe thanked the jurors for their service after the guilty verdict in the murder case was announced.

“I wish to express to you the appreciation and that of the parties for your service in this case,” she said. “It is a great personal sacrifice to serve as a juror. ... You have been very attentive and conscientious throughout this case.”

The son’s defense attorney, Robert Sanger, had tried to pin the killing on someone else — noting that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted at a sensational trial of killing his pregnant wife and the fetus she was carrying — was also a Cal Poly student at the time.

During his closing arguments, Sanger told jurors that no attempted rape occurred and he cast doubt on testimony from witnesses, including a student who was in Smart’s dorm who testified to seeing Flores in Smart’s room.

He also referred to forensic evidence offered by the prosecution as “junk science.”

“This case was not prosecuted for all these years because there’s no evidence,” Sanger said. “It’s sad Kristin Smart disappeared, and she may have gone out on her own, but who knows?”

Paul Flores had long been considered a suspect in the killing. He had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He told them he got it playing basketball with friends, who denied his account, according to court records. He later changed his story to say he bumped his head while working on his car.

However, the father and son were only arrested in 2021 after the case was revived.

Investigators conducted dozens of fruitless searches for Smart’s body over two decades but in the past two years they turned their attention to Ruben Flores’ home about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Cal Poly in the community of Arroyo Grande.

Behind latticework beneath the deck of his large house on a dead-end street, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 found a soil disturbance about the size of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample.

The trial was held in Salinas, 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of San Luis Obispo, after a judge granted a defense request to move it. The defense argued that it was unlikely the Flores’ could receive a fair trial with so much much notoriety in the city of about 47,000 people.

Key testimony came from a Redondo Beach woman identified only as 'Ronda Doe.'

Doe testified that she was raped by Paul Flores in 2008 after she met him outside a bar in Redondo Beach.

When she saw Flores’ photo in her news feed regarding his arrest in connection to Smart’s murder, she said she was shocked.

“I almost couldn’t breathe. I was in disbelief that it was the same person (who raped me),” she testified, according to a report in the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

According to investigators who served a search warrant on Flores' San Pedro home, they found video footage that appeared to show Flores sexually assaulting unconscious women as well as seeming 'trophies' such as years of clippings from the Smart case.

The cases stalled for years until new witnesses came forward, allowing police to obtain warrants to intercept texts and calls made by Flores and his family members, including his mother, father and sister. The search warrants yielded evidence of Smart’s murder, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said at when Flores was arrested.

"Forensic physical evidence was located, and, yes, we believe it's linked to Kristin, and, yes, we did find physical evidence at two homes," said Parkinson. "During the search warrant, the detectives recovered evidence related to the murder of Kristin Smart."

In a statement released after the arrests, the Smart family said, "For over 24 years, we have waited for this bittersweet day. It is impossible to put into words what this day means for our family. We pray it is the first step to bringing our daughter home. While Kristin's loving spirit will always live in our hearts, our life without her hugs, laughs and smiles is a heartache that never abates.

"The knowledge that a father and son, despite our desperate pleas for help, could have withheld this horrible secret for nearly 25 years, denying us the chance to lay our daughter to rest, is an unrelenting and unforgiving pain," their statement says. "We now put our faith in the justice system and move forward, comforted in the knowledge that Kristin has been held in the hearts of so many and that she has not been forgotten ..."

City News Service, The Associated Press and Patch staffers Mark Nero and Paige Austin contributed to this report.