Over 25 years after California Polytechnic State University freshman Kristin Smart mysteriously vanished from a frat party, a former classmate and his father are on trial over her murder.
Paul Flores, 45, is facing a murder charge after allegedly slaying Smart despite claims he simply walked her home from the off-campus party on Memorial Day weekend in 1996. Prosecutors say that after the grisly crime, Flores’ father, Ruben Flores, helped his son hide the 19-year-old’s body. The pair were arrested in April 2021 in connection with Kristin’s presumed death and disappearance, even though her body has never been discovered.
Now, two sets of Monterey County Superior Court jurors must decide the fate of a notorious murder suspect and the patriarch prosecutors say became an accessory after the fact by buying Smart’s body in his yard—and then besmirching her even in death.
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“The evidence will show Kristin was murdered by Paul Flores, and that Paul Flores and Ruben Flores buried her under Ruben Flores’ deck,” San Luis Obispo County Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle said during opening arguments on Monday, according to the San Luis Obisco Tribune. “And while the entire community banded together to search for Kristin desperately, Paul and Ruben Flores did not join in. You will hear Ruben Flores would tear down missing posters of Kristin—tore down her smiling beautiful face—called her a ‘dirty slut,’ all while her corpse was decomposing underneath his deck.”
Paul Flores’ defense attorney, Robert Sanger, insisted during his opening statement that while Smart’s death was a “tragic situation in one sense or another,” his client was not responsible for her death. Noting that Smart’s body has still not been found, Sanger insisted that the Flores family had been subject to a “concerted media campaign” and harassed for decades.
“Kristin Smart has never returned home, she is believed now to be deceased, but there is no evidence of what happened to her,” Sanger added. The attorney for Flores’ 81-year-old father, Ruben, was set to begin his opening statements Monday afternoon. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
Peuvrelle spent time on Monday introducing Smart to the jury, explaining how the 19-year-old would call her family every Sunday. The night of the murder, Flores allegedly joined Smart and her friend Cheryl Anderson as they walked back to the dorms after the party.
At the time, prosecutors say, Smart was “incapacitated” by something she drank. Anderson, who was expected to testify during the trial, last saw Smart walk off with Flores. It was a decision “she’s regretted ever since,” Peuvrelle said.
According to police, several of Smart’s college friends said the suspect would linger around the 19-year-old before the night in question. An old roommate told investigators that Flores was “unnaturally interested in Kristin,” while another college friend claimed Flores would hang outside of Smart’s dorm even though he didn’t live there.
The friend “noticed Paul Flores would randomly walk through the halls of Muir Dorm. Paul would try to get Kristin’s attention and she was too nice to tell him off. She was too kind-hearted,” Peuvrelle said.
As The Daily Beast reported, Flores told told cops that on the night she went missing, Kristin was “walking real slow” and that he hugged her waist to keep her warm on the stroll back to her Muir Hall dorm. Flores told authorities that he returned to his room in Santa Lucia Hall after dropping her off.
Peuvrelle noted on Monday that Flores was sporting a light bruise under his eye during his first police interview. In subsequent interviews, the prosecutor said that Flores would often change his story about the night Smart was missing and how he ended up getting the bruise.
Despite the suspicion around Flores—and Smart’s parents accusing him of harming their daughter in a wrongful death lawsuit—authorities were not able to pin the murder on him for years. Peuvrelle on Monday laid out the investigation to jurors, indicating that crucial search warrants in recent years finally allowed authorities to tie the murder to Flores and his father.
The prosecutor noted that three women were expected to testify against Flores, accusing him of drugging and raping them. In November 2016, The Daily Beast exclusively reported on four women accusing Flores of sexual assault. One of them alleged that Flores and a friend drugged and raped her in 1994 when she was a sophomore in high school. A second woman, who also attended Cal Poly, claimed Flores groped her at a 1995 Halloween dance party—and tried to rape her in the bathroom at her friend’s birthday later that year.
“At the end of this case, I’m going to ask you to review all the evidence to come to a true full verdict,” Peuvrelle told the jurors. “I expect you to find Paul Flores guilty for murdering Kristin Smart and Ruben Flores guilty for being an accessory.”
