Cal Poly student Kristin Smart went missing 25 years ago. Here’s what’s happened since
Kristin Smart, a 19-year-old Cal Poly freshman from Stockton, disappeared early on the Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend in 1996, after leaving a house party just off campus. She would have turned 44 years old in 2021.
Though the case had long remained unsolved, a podcast series hosted by Orcutt resident Chris Lambert sparked renewed interest in the community — as well as calls to search the Arroyo Grande property of Susan and Ruben Flores, parents of the only suspect in Smart’s disappearance.
Paul Flores, who was also a Cal Poly student in 1996 and now resides in San Pedro, was the last person seen with Kristin Smart, who was officially declared deceased in 2002.
Flores was arrested April 13, 2021, and has been charged by the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office with a count of murder, which District Attorney Dan Dow says was committed during the commission of rape.
Flores’ father, Ruben Flores of Arroyo Grande, was also arrested and charged with being an accessory to the crime.
The men have pleaded not guilty to the charges and criminal proceedings are ongoing.
Here’s a detailed timeline of Smart’s disappearance and the investigation into her alleged murder.
Timeline of Kristin Smart missing person case
May 25, 1996: Kristin Smart is last seen around 2 a.m. walking with students Paul Flores and Cheryl Anderson from a party at 135 Crandall Way near the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo. Anderson separates from Smart and Flores at the intersection of Perimeter Road and Grand Avenue.
May 27, 1996: Student Jennifer Phipps calls Cal Poly police to report Smart missing. A report is not started at that time.
May 28, 1996: Phipps calls the San Luis Obispo Police Department to report Smart missing. A report is started and Phipps is referred to the Cal Poly Univerity Police Department. Cal Poly police take a missing person report, which is the first time Smart’s parents, Stan and Denise, learn anything is amiss. Paul Flores is interviewed for the first time. He tells a campus officer that he and Smart separated near the Santa Lucia Hall, and that he hasn’t seen her since.
May 30, 1996: Campus investigators Ray Barrett and Mike Kennedy interview Flores at their office. Meanwhile, the first of several searches for the missing student is conducted on campus.
May 31, 1996: Campus police follow up on several alleged sightings of Smart, a 6-foot 1-inch blonde woman. San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s office investigators Bill Hanley and Larry Hobson interview Flores at the Cal Poly Police Department.
June 5, 1996: Cal Poly Police Det. Mike Kennedy searches Smart’s dormitory room for evidence and seizes the room’s contents for safekeeping.
June 10, 1996: Campus investigator Kennedy secures Flores’ dorm room at Santa Lucia Hall after he and his roommate have moved out. None of Flores’ property is found in his room.
June 19, 1996: District Attorney’s investigators Hanley and Hobson interview Flores at the Arroyo Grande Police Department. During the videotaped interview, Flores tells investigators that he lied when he previously stated he received a black eye playing basketball. He says he actually received the injury while working on his truck. Flores abruptly walks out of the interview before it concludes and says he won’t answer any more questions.
June 26, 1996: Amid a flurry of criticism from the Smart family and friends, University Police Chief Tom Mitchell asks San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ed Williams to assist in the investigation. Williams obliges and the Sheriff’s Office takes over the case.
June 29-30, 1996: Nearly 400 volunteers turn out for a massive campus search. Cold Canyon Landfill in rural San Luis Obispo is also searched at an expense to the university of $16,000. Dogs trained to search for human remains are brought in to search for clues. Four dogs independently react to Flores’ dorm room at Santa Lucia Hall. Dogs also react to his stripped mattress.
July 17, 1996: Sheriff’s Office investigators search Flores’ Arroyo Grande home. The search doesn’t yield any clues to Smart’s whereabouts.
July 19, 1996: Employees with San Luis Obispo’s Lininger Construction install a billboard on Highway 101, a daily reminder of Smart’s disappearance.
Oct. 15, 1996: In a rare move, prosecutors subpoena people to testify before the county grand jury in the case of the missing Cal Poly student. Among those called are Flores and his parents, Ruben and Susan Flores.
Nov. 26, 1996: Stan and Denise Smart file a $40 million wrongful death lawsuit against Paul Flores. The lawsuit — which remains ongoing — alleges that Flores murdered their daughter at Cal Poly. The Smarts later add Cal Poly as a defendant, alleging campus officials failed to keep their daughter safe. A San Luis Obispo Superior Court judge initially dismisses the university from the complaint, but gave the Smarts a second chance to prove their case. The university appealed and is awaiting the judge’s final decision.
Jan. 24, 1997: The Smarts’ Arroyo Grande attorney, James Murphy, begins interviewing potential witnesses in the civil suit. Ultimately, no substantial revelations come out of the depositions. The Smarts subpoena all law enforcement reports and files in the case of their missing daughter. The named agencies — Cal Poly University Police, the Sheriff’s Office, and the District Attorney’s Office — continue to fight the request in court in a hearing each year, due to the ongoing and criminal nature of the missing persons investigation.
Feb. 21, 1997: California Gov. Pete Wilson offers a $50,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case of Kristin Smart. The offer boosts the total reward to $75,000.
March 4, 1997: Murphy, the Smarts’ attorney, initiates a search of an Arroyo Grande rental property owned by Flores’ parents. The search fails to turn up any new leads in the case.
April 13, 1997: A fundraiser to help with the Smarts’ legal bills draws roughly 200 people in Arroyo Grande.
May 23, 1997: Sheriff Williams states “There are no other suspects” in the case besides Paul Flores.
May 8, 1999: San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Pat Hedges asks for the FBI’s assistance in the investigation. Sheriff’s deputies sift through dirt around Paul Flores’ old Santa Lucia Hall dorm. Hedges announced that no new evidence had been found at the site. FBI agents interview hundreds of Cal Poly students and staff.
Aug. 12, 1998: Gov. Wilson signs the Kristin Smart Campus Safety Act of 1998 into law. The law requires universities to contact law enforcement when violent crimes occur on campus.
May 25, 2002: Kristin Smart is declared legally dead.
May 24, 2016: On the 20th anniversary of Kristin Smart’s disappearance, the Smart family issues a statement saying: “She was a girl with dreams and visions for the future. We plan to find a way for them to live on.”
Sept. 6, 2016: San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson announces that a new lead “strongly suggests” Smart’s remains may be buried on a hillside on the Cal Poly campus near the Cal Poly “P” that had been searched by about 400 volunteers in June 1996. A joint Sheriff’s Office-FBI excavation takes place over five days. The agencies sift through approximately 20,000 cubic feet of dirt, taking away bones and a possible “item of interest” to a facility out of the county for analysis. The bones are later revealed to be animal bones.
May 28, 2017: The Smart family creates a website, kristinsmart.org, where people, businesses and other organizations can donate to a nonprofit, tax-exempt scholarship fund for women seeking degrees in law enforcement, forensic science or architecture.
Sept. 6, 2017: A year after the Cal Poly excavation, the Sheriff’s Office calls the effort “beneficial,” but hasn’t released any further information since.
Sept. 25, 2019: Santa Maria resident Chris Lambert launches Your Own Backyard, a podcast devoted to Kristin Smart’s disappearance. The podcast generates massive public interest in and outside San Luis Obispo County.
Nov. 17, 2019: A large crowd gathers for a public candlelight vigil in Arroyo Grande.
Jan. 18, 2020: The Stockton Record publishes an article based on a reported interview with Denise Smart, who told a reporter she was told by “the FBI” that a new development in the case was imminent and to “be ready.” The story goes viral.
Jan. 22, 2020: Following an inundation of public and media requests for more information, a spokesman hired by the Smart family clarifies that the information shared with The Stockton Record came from a “former FBI agent,” and not someone associated with the investigation. The family says that no new developments are expected to be announced in the near future, but that the Sheriff’s Office, not the FBI, would be making any such announcement.
Jan. 29, 2020: The Sheriff’s Office announces that, since 2011, it has served 18 search warrants, conducted physical evidence searches at nine locations, submitted 37 evidence items from the early days of the case for modern DNA testing, recovered 140 new items of evidence, including two trucks that belonged to members of the Flores family in 1996. In addition, the agency says it has conducted 91 in-person interviews, written 364 supplemental reports related to the case and spent approximately $62,000 in investigative expenses during this time.
Feb. 5, 2020: Sheriff’s officials and FBI agents search the home of Susan Flores in Arroyo Grande and the home of Paul Flores in San Pedro. One additional property in San Luis Obispo County and another in Washington State are also searched. Officials do not say why they searched the properties.
Feb. 11, 2021: Paul Flores is arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Office says the arrest was “a result of information obtained during our search warrants last year at the home of Paul Flores as part of the Kristin Smart investigation.”
March 15, 2021: The Sheriff’s Office serves a search warrant at the Arroyo Grande home of Ruben Flores, the father of Paul Flores. “The Sheriff’s Office has been authorized to utilize cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar during the course of the search,” which could take up to two days to complete,” the agency says.
March 16, 2021: The Sheriff’s Office concludes its search of Ruben Flores’s house. No details are announced about what was found.
April 13, 2021: Paul Flores is taken into custody in San Pedro while Ruben Flores is taken into custody in San Luis Obispo County. The Sheriff’s Office conducts another search of Ruben Flores’ Arroyo Grande property.
At a news conference on the Cal Poly campus, Sheriff Parkinson announces that new evidence recovered in the recent searches shoe that Paul Flores murdered Smart and his father Ruben Flores helped cover up the crime. Both men are booked into San Luis Obispo County Jail; Paul Flores is held without bail while Ruben Flores’ bail is set at $250,000.
The Smart family releases a statement saying they had “waited for this bittersweet day” for almost 25 years. The family thanked Parkinson, law enforcement officials, and podcaster Lambert. A candlelight vigil is organized by students on the Cal Poly campus.
April 14, 2021: San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow announces formal charges against Paul and Ruben Flores. Paul Flores is charged with murder and Ruben Flores is charged with accessory. Dow says for the first time that Smart’s murder occurred during the commission of a rape, and he said prosecutors intend to introduce evidence of Paul Flores’ past sexual assaults in support of the murder case.
April 15, 2021: Paul and Ruben Flores appear at an arraignment via Zoom from the County Jail, but enter no plea. Another hearing is scheduled for April 19, when both parties are expected to argue over bail. Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen grants a defense motion for a protective order barring any parties in the case from publicly commenting on proceedings.
April 19, 2021: Paul and Ruben Flores plead not guilty to their charges. Following arguments by deputy district attorney Christopher Peuvrelle, and defense attorneys Robert Sanger (representing Paul Flores) and Harold Mesick (representing Ruben Flores), Superior Court Judge van Rooyen denies bail for Paul Flores, finding him a public safety risk. Van Rooyen indicates that he will lower bail for Ruben Flores and schedules a bail reduction hearing for Ruben Flores.
A county probation report submitted to the court in opposition to bail for either defendant, obtained by The Tribune, reveals for the first time that prosecutors say “dozens of women have recounted Paul Flores’ sexual assaults and predatory behavior that document his 25 years as a serial rapist.”
The documents also quotes Peuvrelle, who wrote: “The excavation below (Ruben Flores’) deck at 710 White Court showed damning evidence that a body had been buried in that location and then recently moved.”
April 21, 2021: Finding that Ruben Flores is not a public safety risk, van Rooyen lowers his bail to $50,000. He is released that evening, with a court orders that he does not leave San Luis Obispo County, surrenders his passport and submits to electronic monitoring.
April 22, 2021: Jim Murphy, the Smart family’s civil attorney, files a lawsuit in San Luis Obispo Superior Court against Ruben Flores, accusing him of intentionally inflicting emotional distress on the family over the nearly 25 years Smart was missing.
The lawsuit alleges that Ruben Flores, with the help of Susan Flores and her boyfriend Mike McConville, moved Smart’s remains from under the porch of Ruben Flores’ property during the night of Feb. 9, 2020 — four days after the Sheriff’s Office search — and transported them to an unknown location. Murphy claims to have a witness who is known to law enforcement.
April 27, 2021: A Los Angeles Times report reveals details about Paul Flores’ criminal history, including that Paul Flores was the subject of two ongoing sexual assault investigations by the Los Angeles Police Department, and had been linked by DNA evidence to an alleged 2007 rape investigated by the Redondo Police Department. No charges were filed in the latter case due to a lack of evidence, the newspaper reported.
This article will be updated as more information becomes available.
This story was originally published April 27, 2021 at 5:29 PM with the headline "Cal Poly student Kristin Smart went missing 25 years ago. Here’s what’s happened since."
