Paul Flores pleads not guilty to the murder and attempted rape of Smart. “Today, we make the first move toward bringing justice to Kristin, her family, and the people of San Luis Obispo County.” “These charges mark a major milestone,” Dow says in a statement. The elder Flores is charged with accessory after the fact to the crime of murder for allegedly helping Paul conceal Smart’s body. Paul Flores is charged with first-degree murder and is accused of killing Smart while attempting to rape her. San Luis Obispo District Attorney Dan Dow announces charges against Paul Flores and his father Ruben in connection with what he calls the 1996 “homicide” of Cal Poly student Kristin Smart. They seized digital devices during the search and, in April 2020, executed another search on Paul Flores’ property in San Pedro.īelow, Rolling Stone outlines where the Smart case is now: Prior to the arrests, in February 2020, Flores’ home, his parents’ home, and his sister’s home were searched by police. “It encouraged the previously reluctant to come forward.… This obviously gave law enforcement new leads to follow and connect with what they already were holding close.” “We feel like the stars aligned when the podcast aired,” she told Rolling Stone. … It did produce some information that I believe was valuable,” he said.ĭenise Smart, Kristin’s mother, has also praised the show. “What Chris did was take a local story and turn it into an international story. How are we not all talking about this every day until she’s found?”Īfter Paul and Ruben’s arrests, Sheriff Ian Parkinson revealed that Lambert’s podcast helped move the investigation forward.
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“But it was a local story and the thing that stood out to me is that nobody was talking about it anymore. “ True crime podcasting is not something that particularly captivated me,” Lambert told Rolling Stone last year. The case recently reentered the public eye with the 2019 launch of the popular true-crime podcast, Your Own Backyard, hosted by musician Chris Lambert, who has spent his life haunted by a missing person’s billboard featuring Smart’s face. Paul invoked the Fifth Amendment when the DA’s office subpoenaed him to testify before a grand jury in 1996 and after the Smarts filed a $40 million wrongful-death lawsuit against him during a 1997 deposition, he again pleaded the Fifth.
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The county sheriff’s office searched his room once more during the weekend of June 29th, when a team of cadaver dogs signaled the smell of human decay.įlores and his parents have always maintained that he had nothing to do with Smart’s disappearance. By then, the semester was over and the room had been cleaned out. Flores was first interviewed by Cal Poly police investigators near the end of May 1996, according to The San Luis Obispo Tribune, and the Cal Poly police didn’t search his room until June 10th.