After years of suspicion, Paul Flores is arrested in the disappearance of Kristin Smart
San Luis Obispo County sheriffâs detectives arrested Paul Flores, 44, on suspicion of murder and booked him into the San Luis Obispo County Jail, according to law enforcement sources and jail records.
Early one Saturday morning nearly 25 years ago, Kristin Smart left a college party and vanished.
Investigators focused their suspicions on Paul Flores, a classmate of Smartâs at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and the last person seen with her. But despite multiple rounds of interrogations and searches using radar and cadaver dogs, Smartâs body was never found. Without hard evidence, authorities couldnât tie Flores to Smartâs disappearance and presumed death.
That changed Tuesday when San Luis Obispo County sheriffâs detectives arrested Flores, 44, on suspicion of murder. Floresâ father, Ruben Ricardo Flores, 80, was also arrested and is accused of helping his son dispose of Smartâs remains, Sheriff Ian Parkinson said.
On Tuesday, San Luis Obispo County authorities arrested longtime suspect Paul Flores along with his father in connection with Smartâs slaying.
The arrests were a startling breakthrough in a case that has maddened investigators and haunted Smartâs family for decades. Parkinson suggested Tuesday that a combination of physical evidence seized in recent years and statements from previously uninterviewed witnesses culminated in a judgeâs sign-off on arrest warrants for the son and father.
Flores, who was taken into custody at his home in San Pedro, and his family have steadfastly maintained his innocence. Last month, Floresâ mother reiterated the claim, telling a television reporter , âWe have no responsibility for her disappearance and what happened to that young woman.â
Smart was a 19-year-old freshman when she vanished on Memorial Day weekend of 1996. She had gone to an off-campus party and was making the roughly 10-minute walk back to her dormitory with two other students when, the students later told police, Flores appeared and promised to see her back to her room.
Smart was never seen again.
Despite numerous investigations, searches and legal procedures, it took 24 years for an arrest to be made in the disappearance of Kristin Smart.
From the start, investigators zeroed in on Paul Flores. Like Smart, he was 19 and in his freshman year. Classmates described him as awkward and unpopular; five months before Smart disappeared, a female student called the police and reported that Flores, apparently drunk, had climbed onto her balcony and refused to leave.
In interviews, Flores told investigators he had walked Smart to her dormitory and then returned to his room. He explained a black eye first by saying he had been elbowed in a pickup basketball game, then admitted he had lied and said heâd hit himself while working on a truck at his fatherâs home.
In one videotaped interview, as investigators stressed that Smart had last been seen with him, Flores âpulled his arms into his T-shirt, scrunched over at the waist in his chair and lifted his feet off the floor, as if moving toward a fetal position,â The Times reported in 2006, citing people familiar with the tape.
One warm Friday night in late spring 10 years ago, Kristin Denise Smart and three other young women started walking from their dorms at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
At the end of the questioning, though, Flores said: âIf you are so smart, then tell me where the body is.â
The investigators had no answer for him. Several attempts have been made to find Smartâs remains. Federal agents once dug up a hillside near the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus. Sheriffâs detectives have scoured the Arroyo Grande homes of Floresâ estranged parents with dogs trained to sniff out human remains, and used radar to probe the ground beneath the houses.

Last month, after refusing to speak with reporters for years, Susan Flores told a local television station she was tired of the enduring âharassmentâ by detectives who had treated her son as a âscapegoat.â She spoke with the KSBY news station a day after investigators came to her home with another search warrant and carried off her beloved Volkswagen.
âThey keep trying to find the answers with us and they keep failing because the answers are not here,â Susan Flores said. âIt is very simple.â
After speaking with investigators in the weeks after Smartâs disappearance, Paul Flores refused to discuss the case when called to testify before a grand jury and again in a deposition for a wrongful death suit brought by Smartâs family. Both times Flores invoked his 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination. He has consistently denied allegations raised in the Smart familyâs lawsuit that he was involved in her disappearance.
Robert Sanger, an attorney for Paul Flores, declined to comment Tuesday. Harold Mesick, a lawyer for Ruben Flores, said his client is âabsolutely innocent.â
Mesick said he had visited his client in jail Tuesday afternoon. âHeâs 80 years old. Heâs elderly. Heâs infirm,â he said. âHeâs seen his family harassed for 25 years, and now itâs led to his arrest. Itâs shocking to me.â
The arrest comes nearly 25 years after Smart vanished while walking back to her dorm at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Investigators have long pursued the theory that Paul Flores killed Smart, but that he alone could not have disposed of her remains.
Parkinson, the San Luis Obispo County sheriff, said detectives found evidence in 2016 confirming Flores was a suspect in Smartâs disappearance but refused to elaborate.
âDiscussing specific items of evidence is just not appropriate at this point,â he said, adding that he wanted to respect Paul and Ruben Floresâ right to fair legal proceedings.
Then in 2019, detectives interviewed witnesses who came forward after the release of Your Own Backyard, a podcast that examined Smartâs disappearance. Parkinson didnât identify the witnesses or explain what information they provided, but said they hadnât previously spoken with investigators.
With the evidence recovered in 2016 and statements from new witnesses, investigators secured a judgeâs permission to monitor Paul Floresâ phone calls and intercept his text messages, Parkinson said.
In February last year, detectives served search warrants on the homes of Flores, his father, mother and sister. They returned to Floresâ home two months later with another warrant. During that search, they found physical evidence ârelated to the murder of Kristin Smart,â the sheriff said, without elaborating.
Comparing Smartâs disappearance to âa puzzle,â Parkinson said it has been âa very slow process to find each of those little pieces.â
The sheriff suggested the publicâs understanding of the case, as chronicled in countless newspaper reports, television specials and now a podcast, represents only a fraction of it. Readers and viewers may have taken the suspicions dogging Flores through the years as a sign of his guilt. But as law enforcement authorities, âitâs not what you believe,â Parkinson said. âItâs what you can prove.â
Investigators have served a search warrant at the home of a former Cal Poly San Luis Obispo classmate of Kristin Smart, who disappeared 24 years ago.
Calling it a âbittersweet day,â Smartâs family said in a prepared statement, âThe 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.â
They said they hoped the arrests of Paul and Ruben Flores would prove âthe first step to bringing our daughter home.â
Investigators will continue searching for Smartâs remains, Parkinson said. He had spoken with her family twice Tuesday, he said. âTheyâre feeling a bit of relief, but as you can imagine, until we return Kristin to them, itâs not over.â
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