Two arrested in Smart case
San Pedro man booked on suspicion of murder; father also arrested
A San Pedro resident long tied by authorities to the 1996 disappearance of fellow student Kristin Smart from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s campus was booked into jail Tuesday afternoon on suspicion of murder.
Paul Flores, now 44, was taken into custody at his home at 7:30 a.m. and is being held without the possibility of bail, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said hours later during a press conference at the university.
Flores’ father, Ruben Flores, 80, also was arrested Tuesday, in Arroyo Grande where he lives, on suspicion of accessory after the fact, inmate records show. He was being held on $250,000 bail in the same facility as his son, San Luis Obispo County Jail.
The 19-year-old woman’s body has never been found.
“My hope is that we can take the first step toward justice for the Smart family,” Parkinson said. “They’re feeling a bit of relief, but as you can imagine, until we return Kristin to them, it’s not over and we’re not going to stop until we find her.
“We will continue to focus on finding her remains regardless of any court action.
We will continue the process of finding out where Kristin is. We know that’s an important issue with the family.”
Investigators have dug in 18 locations with no success in the last decade, but Parkinson said he believed investigators were getting closer to finding her body.
Paul Flores, who officials for years described as a person of interest in the case before recently upgrading that to “suspect,” grew up in Torrance and has lived in San Pedro for 10 years. Investigators searched his home last year and the father’s last month.
“For over 24 years, we have waited for this bittersweet day,” the Smart family said in a 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 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 its statement that thanked the Sheriff’s Department.
About 2 a.m. on May 25, 1996, Smart went missing as she walked to her dorm room from an off-campus party.
Flores was seen walking with Smart and became a person of interest shortly after her disappearance, authorities said.
In an initial interview with investigators, according to authorities, Flores said Smart was extremely drunk when he left her, but he refused to answer further questions. He later invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when Smart’s family sued him.
In 2002, a judge declared Smart dead.
In 2016, a portion of the Cal Poly campus was excavated in an effort to find her remains. Bones were found, but it was announced they were not a match to Smart.
Physical evidence related to Smart’s disappearance was found during the service of search warrants last year at the homes of the father and son as well as two others belonging to Paul Flores’ mother and sister, Parkinson said.
Last month, another search of Ruben Flores’ home prompted the seizures of a car; cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar were deployed. Afterward, officials, for the first time, called Paul Flores the “prime suspect” in the case. Two more search warrants were executed Tuesday, but it is unclear where.
Over the years, investigators served numerous search warrants for the case, including at least one in Washington. Among the items seized were two trucks that belonged to Flores’ family members in 1996.
The sheriff did not elaborate on the evidence. He did say that there was enough for a San Luis Obispo County Superior Court judge to sign arrest warrants for Paul and Ruben Flores.
The sheriff, who did not disclose a possible motive, said his office has turned the case over to the District Attorney’s Office.
An eight-part series, ‘Your Own Backyard Podcast’ by a Central California freelance journalist, turned up a new witness that the sheriff credited with helping investigators. They interviewed the witness in 2019 and obtained a court order authorizing them to monitor Flores’ cell phone and text messages.
In February, Paul Flores was arrested near his home on suspicion of being a felon in possession of a firearm based on information authorities gleaned through search warrants, officials said. He posted bail and was released.
Just since 2011 when Parkinson became sheriff, he said, his investigators have searched 16 locations, re-examined 37 items of evidence from the early days of the case, found 193 new items he labeled as evidence and conducted 137 person-to-person interviews.
“It’s been a puzzle, and a very slow process to find each of those pieces,” Parkinson said. “At the end of the day, we have to see what that puzzle reveals.”