A California man who killed a college student about 27 years ago was given a 25-year prison term.
Judge Jennifer O’Keefe dubbed Paul Flores, 46, a ‘disease to society’ before awarding him a maximum term.
On Memorial Day weekend in 1996, Kristin Smart, a 19-year-old student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, was murdered. Flores was found to be guilty for her death.
Since she vanished, Smart’s body has never been discovered.
In 2002, she was ruled to be legally dead.
Flores was the last person seen with Smart before her disappearance. The two were seen returning to a dormitory after an off-campus party around 2am.
Prosecutors argued that Smart was killed when Flores attempted to rape her after the party. Flores insisted that he last saw Smart a block away from their dorms after walking home.
Although he was always considered a suspect, investigators did not have enough evidence to charge Flores with any crime until 2021.
At the time, University Police believed Smart had gone on an ‘unannounced vacation’ over Memorial Day weekend. They did not report her as a missing person and open an investigation for an entire week, despite requests from her family.
Prosecutors believe this delay gave Flores enough time to hide Smart’s body.
New evidence against Flores emerged after a popular podcast, ‘Your Own Back Yard,’ began looking into the case in 2019. Investigators searched the homes of Flores and his father, Ruben Flores in the following years.
At Flores’s apartment in Los Angeles, they found date rape drugs and homemade videos of the suspect sexually assaulting young women.
A year later, police executed a search warrant at his father’s home in Arroyo Grande using cadaver dogs and a ground-penetrating radar system. They recovered some ‘items of interest,’ including Ruben Flores’s car.
Additionally, investigators found a spot under Ruben’s deck where they believe the father and son re-buried Smart’s body after her death.
Paul and Ruben Flores were arrested and charged in April 2021, just two months after the search in Arroyo Grande. Paul was charged with first-degree murder during a rape or attempted rape, and Ruben was charged with accessory to the crime.
A jury found Flores guilty in October, 2022. Ruben Flores was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
At his sentencing hearing on Friday, Judge O’Keefe struck down Paul Flores’s attorney’s motion for a new trial.
‘Mr. Flores, you have been a cancer to society,’ the judge told the defendant. She emphasized that he was allowed to live free while preying on women for decades after Smart’s death.
‘This predatory behavior has spanned your adult life,’ Judge O’Keefe said. ‘You deserve to spend every day you have left behind bars.’
Smart’s family was given a chance to speak during victim impact statements. They began by showing the court a video composed photos and home movies collected from Smart’s brief life.
They also pleaded with Flores to confess and help the family locate the victim’s body.
‘It is clearly too late for us, but Paul – it is not too late for you to tell the truth, to free your soul and your heart from the weight it must be carrying,’ Smart’s mother Denise Smart said in her statement.