Paul Flores, 45, was convicted of first-degree murder in the high-profile case that garnered national attention but went unsolved for decades.Paul Flores Wikipedia is not available currently.
Who is Paul Flores?
Paul Flores is a longtime suspect in the case and was the last known person to see Smart alive on Memorial Day weekend in 1996, when he picked up the 19-year-old from Cal Poly during a off-campus party. home with food and alcohol.Prosecutors said he attempted to rape and kill her, possibly in her dorm, on the night of May 25, 1996, when they were both freshmen.
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Paul Flores Age
Paul Flores is 45 years old as of 2022.
Kristin Smart Murder
On May 25, 1996, Kristin Smart attended a fellow Cal Poly University student’s off-campus party. At approximately 2 a.m., she was found passed out on a neighbor’s lawn, and two students began to help her walk to her dorm room.
A third student named Paul Flores joined the group, and due to the proximity of his dorm to Smart’s, Flores told the other two students he would get Kristin home safely. Smart was never seen again, and searches conducted since her disappearance have yielded no trace of her.
Smart’s disappearance resulted in state legislation, including the Kristin Smart Campus Security Act. This bill requires all public colleges and publicly funded educational institutions in California to have their security services make agreements with local police departments regarding cases involving or possibly involving violence against students, including missing students. The bill was passed unanimously by the California State Legislature and was signed into law by Governor Pete Wilson.
Paul Flores Case and Investigation
Younger Flores had a black eye when investigators questioned him and said he was playing basketball, according to court records.He later said he hit his head while working on his car after his friends threw water on his basketball game history, according to court documents.
Paul Flores’ attorney Robert Sanger said someone else killed Smart and discovered during the trial that Scott Peterson was also a schoolboy at the time of the murder. Peterson was later found guilty of murdering his pregnant wife and unborn child in another case that drew national attention.
Flores also blasted the forensic evidence at the trial, calling it junk science.“This case hasn’t been prosecuted for years because there’s no evidence,” Sanger said. “It’s sad that Kristin Smart is missing and maybe went out on her own, but who knows?”
Reuben Flores was accused of burying Smart in his backyard, Arroyo Grande, just over 10 miles from Cal Poly. Investigators found disturbed ground under the elder Flores’ bridge and the presence of blood, but were unable to link it to Smart through DNA testing.Smart’s mother and sister cried for “a few minutes” as his father and brother seemed “relieved” after Paul Flores’ verdict was read in court, KSBY-TV reported.
Neither Paul nor Reuben Flores showed any visible reaction when their sentences were read separately, the broadcaster said.The trial took place in Salinas because he had asked to be kept out of court in order to have a fair trial given the great media coverage of the case. According to KSBY, the trial began in July, with dozens of witnesses taking sides.The jury in the murder case had deliberated for two weeks. Paul Flores risks 25 years of his life when he is sentenced on December 9.
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Paul Flores Found Guilty
Flores was found guilty of first-degree murder as prosecutors claim he killed a 19-year-old during an attempted rape.The last man seen with Kristin Smart was convicted on Tuesday of killing the college freshman who vanished from a California campus 25 years ago.Jurors unanimously found Paul Flores guilty of first-degree murder, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported. Flores was one of Smart’s college classmates at the time.
His father, Ruben Flores, was charged as an accessory in a separate trial for allegedly helping to conceal the crime but was found not guilty by an independent jury, the Tribune reported.“This has been an agonizingly long journey with more downs than ups,” Stan Smart, Kristin’s father, said at a press conference after the verdict was announced. “Without Kristin, there is no joy or happiness in this verdict.”
Prosecutors now maintain Paul Flores, now 45, killed the 19-year-old during an attempted rape on 25 May 1996, in his dorm room at Cal Poly, where both were first-year students. He was the last person seen with Smart as he walked her home from an off-campus party where she became intoxicated.
His father, now 81, was accused of helping bury Smart behind his home in the nearby community of Arroyo Grande and later digging up the remains and moving them. A jury acquitted him of these charges. The conflicting verdicts were read moments apart in the same courtroom.
The trial was held in Salinas, 110 miles north of San Luis Obispo after a judge granted a defense request to move it. The defense argued that it was unlikely the Flores men could receive a fair trial with so much notoriety in the city of about 47,000 people.
