It took 24 years for an arrest in the disappearance of Kristin Smart. Here’s how it happened
For nearly 25 years, the case of missing Cal Poly student Kristin Smart has remained unsolved.
There were no suspects under arrest. No body to recover. And no end in sight for her family.
That changed Tuesday.
Just after 2 p.m., under the beige arches of Cal Poly’s Orfalea College of Business, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office announced it had made its first arrests in the missing persons case.
There, Sheriff Ian Parkinson announced Paul Flores — the last person to be seen with Smart before her disappearance in 1996 — had been arrested on suspicion of murder.
Paul Flores’ father, Ruben Flores, was also arrested and booked into San Luis Obispo County jail on suspicion of a charge of accessory.
“We’re beginning here today because this is where it all began, on the campus of Cal Poly university,” Parkinson said during the news conference at the San Luis Obispo university. “It’s been 24, almost 25, years since Kristen went missing. Twenty-four years without a resolution. Until today.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Parkinson confirmed that Paul Flores and Ruben Flores had been arrested that morning thanks to new evidence the department acquired in the past two years — putting a partial end to more than two decades of speculation around the case.
Though many applauded what felt like a resolution to a decades-long mystery on the Central Coast, Parkinson noted there is still much to be done.
That includes finding Smart’s body.
“We have not recovered Kristin,” he said. “We will continue to focus on finding her remains, regardless of any court action. ... We know that’s an important part or an important issue with the family.”
He said the Smart family had expressed “a bit of relief,” but “until we return Kristin to them, this is not over.”
“It’s my hope we can take the first steps for justice for this family,” Parkinson said.
Deputies ‘assembling the puzzle’ of evidence in 1996 disappearance
Smart went missing from San Luis Obispo in May 1996 after attending a Memorial Day weekend house party.
Paul Flores has long been a person of interest in the case, but was only recently upgraded to the Sheriff’s Office’s “prime suspect.”
On Tuesday, the Sheriff’s Office arrested Paul Flores at his San Pedro home, and his father, Ruben Flores, at the latter’s Arroyo Grande home.
Parkinson said thanks to new information, and recent searches of the Flores father and son’s homes, the department was able to recover new forensic physical evidence it believes ties Paul Flores to the murder of Smart.
The Sheriff’s Office also secured a court order for surveillance of Paul Flores’ electronic communications, including cell phone and text message records.
“We’re assembling the puzzle,” Parkinson said of the new electronic evidence. “It’s a very slow process to find each of those little (missing) pieces.”
Since 2011, Parkinson said 41 search warrants have been served and 16 locations searched. The Sheriff’s Office has re-examined all the evidence in the case, he said.
In total, investigators have secured 193 new pieces of evidence, and filed more than 500 police reports.
Ahead of the news conference, San Luis Obispo County Jail logs showed both Paul and Ruben Flores were booked into County Jail on Tuesday.
Paul Flores was booked on suspicion of a charge of murder, while Ruben Flores was booked on suspicion of a charge of accessory. The elder Flores’ bail was set at $250,000, but as of Tuesday evening, no bail for Paul Flores was listed on the jail site.
The case has been turned over to the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office for review.
San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow issued a brief statement following the announcement of arrests Tuesday, saying his office is evaluating the investigation.
“We are carefully reviewing the evidence and will provide more information as it becomes available,” he wrote. A news conference from the District Attorney’s Office is expected sometime Wednesday.
‘Your Own Backyard’ podcast breaks news of arrests
Parkinson said the arrests were due in part to new information brought forth by the “Your Own Backyard” podcast, created by Orcutt resident Chris Lambert, including at least one new witness who had not been previously interviewed by police.
“He took a local story and generated it internationally,” Parkinson said. “It did produce some information that I believe was useful.”
To date, Lambert’s podcast, which dove into the disappearance and subsequent investigation, has been downloaded nearly 7 million times.
Lambert had another role to play in the Smart missing persons case Tuesday morning. For many people, he was also the person who broke the news of the arrests of Paul and Ruben Flores.
Around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Lambert streamed live video from near Ruben Flores’ home in Arroyo Grande, showing Sheriff’s Office deputies searching the property and removing a deck from the back of the house.
Later in the day, after being publicly name-checked by the Sheriff’s Office for his help in the case, Lambert told The Tribune that he “felt good about the case at this point.”
“I know what (evidence) I gave them, so I know what they’ve moved forward with, but they probably don’t want me to share the details,” Lambert said. “I feel good about the case at this point. But I’ve felt good about it for a long time. It was just a matter of the way the machinery works.
“You just have to wait awhile for things to get done — the District Attorney’s Office, the Sheriff’s Office and who’s going to do which part. I’ve been waiting for a long, long time to come to some sort of resolution.”
Lambert said he did have one more major priority, however: finding Smart’s body.
“My concern is just in locating a body,” he said. “So, at the point it gets in front of a jury and all of the stuff that comes along with that, I’m not as interested in that as in locating her body. Whatever happens, that’s the result of it.”
Community responds to arrests in Kristin Smart case
A crowd of onlookers spent much of Tuesday morning outside Ruben Flores’ Arroyo Grande house trying to catch a glimpse of investigators at work.
Witnesses outside the home could hear loud cutting machinery and see sparks coming from the garage, and a forensics tent was set up nearby.
Investigators could be seen wheeling in ground-penetrating radar, similar to what was used during the investigation of the backyard when investigators searched the property on March 15 and 16.
Eventually, a Sheriff’s Office vehicle parked at the end of the street to prevent more vehicles from clogging the road. Even so, people wandered up on foot, bringing strollers and dogs with them.
Arroyo Grande resident Ali Anderson, who was sitting in her car Tuesday morning, said she heard about what was happening through texts from her friends.
“Our community is so small,” she told The Tribune. “Everyone is so connected and had a good idea of what was going to happen this week.”
Anderson said the arrests of the two Flores men give her “excitement and hope.” Anderson said she hopes the Smart family can get some closure.
Some bystanders on Tuesday said they’d been following the case since childhood and couldn’t remember a time before billboards with Smart’s face hadn’t been displayed prominently in the Village of Arroyo Grande.
Lisa Gibson of Arroyo Grande said her sister went to Cal Poly when Smart was there and has followed the missing woman’s case for many years.
.jpg "Image from iOS (2).jpg")
Gibson spent Tuesday morning at the Flores house reporting what she saw on a Zoom call until her phone battery dipped too low.
“I think it’s awesome,” Gibson said of the arrests and activity at the house.
“Personally, I don’t think she’s here anymore. I think she’s been moved,” Gibson said of Smart.
On Tuesday, Lori Ralls of Atascadero walked near the Arroyo Grande house and watched the activity with a thermos of coffee. She said she’s been very invested in the Smart case and Lambert’s podcast.
As a parent, she can’t fathom the pain Smart’s family has dealt with during the past few decades.
“No parents should ever have to go through what these people have gone through,” Ralls said.
She said she hopes Tuesday’s developments mean the Smarts will be able to lay their daughter to rest.
“I get butterflies in my stomach thinking about how they must be feeling right now about getting closure after 30 years,” Ralls said.
.jpg "Image from iOS (38).jpg")
Missing student’s family responds to Flores arrests
Soon after the news of the arrests broke, the Smart family released a preliminary statement early Tuesday, saying they would not be meeting with reporters or conducting interviews “in the foreseeable future.”
After Tuesday’s conference, the family released a lengthier statement thanking the Sheriff’s Office, and specifically Parkinson and cold case Detective Clint Cole, for their hard work on their daughter’s case.
They also thanked Lambert for his “exceptional skills, indefatigable work and unselfish dedication,” in the production of his podcast regarding Smart’s disappearance.
“For over 24 years, we have waited for this bittersweet day,” read the statement. “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.”
The Smart family also said that it was now putting its “faith in the justice system.”
“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,” the family said in the statement. “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.”
What’s happened in Kristin Smart case over years?
Kristin Smart, a 19-year-old college freshman, was last seen Memorial Day weekend 1996, leaving a house party at 135 Crandall Way near the Cal Poly campus at about 2 a.m. on May 25 with Paul Flores and a friend.
The friend later told investigators that she left Smart with Flores at the intersection of Perimeter Road and Grand Avenue so that Smart could walk back to her Muir Hall dorm room.
Flores later told police the two parted ways near his room at Santa Lucia Hall.
On May 27, 1996, a friend of Smart’s at Muir Hall, reported Smart missing to the Cal Poly University Police Department.
Over the coming months, numerous local police agencies would become involved in the search, but Smart was never located.
Critics accused Cal Poly and later agencies of bungling the investigation early on to the point where it was unsure if the case would ever be solved.
On Tuesday, Parkinson also acknowledged “missteps” in the investigation early on, long before his agency took it over, but did not elaborate.
The Smarts filed a $40 million wrongful death lawsuit against Flores in November 1996, alleging that Flores murdered Kristin on the Cal Poly campus. The Smarts later added Cal Poly to the lawsuit, alleging the university failed to keep their daughter safe.
Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong, who was not at the university at the time of Smart’s disappearance, on Tuesday thanked authorities for bringing “a measure of relief and hope for resolution” to the Cal Poly community.
“Our Cal Poly and Central Coast communities have watched the case of Kristin Smart’s disappearance closely and hoped for justice for Kristin and resolution for the family for years,” Armstrong said. “The news today of arrest in connection with this, with the case, brings sadness, but also a measure of relief and hope for resolution.”
Over the years, the case has run mostly lukewarm, never officially going cold.
In 2002, Smart was declared legally dead. In 2016, the SLO County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI excavated a hillside at Cal Poly, saying a tip “strongly suggested” Smart was buried on the campus property. Officials later called the dig “beneficial” but declined to disclose what was found.
In 2019, Lambert launched his “Your Own Backyard” podcast examining the case, sparking new attention.
Tuesday’s arrests come nearly a month after the Sheriff’s Office searched the Arroyo Grande house of Ruben Flores.
On March 15 and 16, the Sheriff’s Office searched Ruben Flores’ property, confiscating a Volkswagen Cabriolet from the driveway and using cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar under a porch and in the backyard.
The search of the home took place about a month after Paul Flores was arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
That arrest “originated as a result of information obtained” during the service of several search warrants in 2020, including one at Flores’ home in San Pedro, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tony Cipolla said at the time.
Why were arrests made 24 years after disappearance?
Over time, the department has faced questions regarding why the case was still unsolved, despite numerous attempts.
On Tuesday, Parkinson said the reason the case has lingered over decades is because arrests cannot be based on “what we might believe, it has to be based on physical evidence.”
The department was able to get some of that physical evidence due to recent searches, Parkinson said, leading to the arrests. Parkinson declined to disclose what manner of physical evidence had been found, saying only that it is “forensic physical evidence” and ties the Flores men to Kristin Smart.
“Yes, we believe it’s linked to Kristin, and, yes, we did find physical evidence at at least two homes,” he said.
Meanwhile, one major loose end remains: Where is Kristin Smart’s body?
At the news conference Tuesday, Parkinson said deputies had yet to recover Smart’s remains, but would continue to work to find them.
Parkinson said he believes the agency is closer to recovering Smart’s body now than it has been previously.
“I believe we are, but only time will tell,” he said. “It’s safe to say we are checking everywhere possible.”
This story was originally published April 13, 2021 at 6:20 PM with the headline "It took 24 years for an arrest in the disappearance of Kristin Smart. Here’s how it happened."
%20Cropped.jpg)