SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif.
Paul Ruben Flores, 44, of San Pedro, was arrested at his home Tuesday and charged with murder in the May 25, 1996, disappearance of Smart, who was a freshman at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said Tuesday.
Flores’ father, Ruben Ricardo Flores, was arrested at his Arroyo Grande home, which was being searched again Tuesday, along with Paul Flores’ home.
Kristin Smart case: Paul Flores, left, and his father, Ruben Flores, right, were arrested Tuesday, April 13, 2021, and charged in the May 25, 1996, disappearance and murder of Kristin Smart.
Parkinson offered few details of what led to the arrests, citing the defendants’ due process and the fact that search warrants in the case have been sealed by a judge.
Smart, 19, of Stockton, was a classmate of Paul Flores’ at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, where she disappeared while walking home from a party.
A cloud of suspicion has long hung over Paul Flores, who was the last person to see Smart before she vanished.
“For over 24 years, we have waited for this bittersweet day,” the Smart family said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press.
Smart decided to attend a party the night of May 24, which was the Friday of the Memorial Day weekend.
While some said they saw the young woman drinking that night, others reported that they did not, leading to speculation that she might have been drugged.
Critics, including Smart’s family, have said over the years that campus police were slow to investigate the missing young woman’s disappearance, assuming that she had gone off on her own for the holiday weekend.
It was not until two days after Smart vanished that officers called her parents to ask if they had seen their daughter.
Campus authorities waited nearly a week to speak to Paul Flores, who told investigators that he’d walked Smart as far as his dorm, San Lucia Hall.
In addition, Flores was booked two days after Smart’s disappearance for an outstanding DUI warrant in Arroyo Grande.
He refused to answer questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination more than two dozen times.
When he took office in 2011, he had cold case detectives conduct a complete review of all the physical evidence in the cold case.
Flores, 44, and his father, Ruben Flores, 80, of Arroyo Grande, were arrested Tuesday, April 13, 2021, and charged in the May 25, 1996, disappearance and murder of Kristin Smart.
Flores, 80, and his son, Paul Flores, 44, of San Pedro, were arrested Tuesday, April 13 and charged in the May 25, 1996, disappearance and murder of Kristin Smart.
A total of 37 items seized as evidence in the early days of the case have been submitted for modern DNA testing, and more than 190 new items of physical evidence have been gathered, Parkinson said.
Lambert and one of those witnesses, Mary Lassiter, told 48 Hours a chilling story about a home she rented in Arroyo Grande in the fall of 1996, just a few months after Smart’s disappearance.
Kristin Smart case: A 2006 missing persons billboard shows Kristin Smart, 19, of Stockton, who vanished in May 1996 from the campus of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, where she was a freshman.
To Lassiter, it sounded like the alarm on a digital watch.
Kristin Smart case: Family photos show Kristin Smart, who vanished in May 1996 from the campus of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.
In 2016, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office officials excavated part of the Cal Poly campus, looking for possible remains and other evidence in the case.
Parkinson said the new witnesses and new evidence allowed detectives to secure a court order authorizing the “interception and monitoring” of Paul Flores’ cellphone and text messages.