30 years after Kristin Smart vanished, a new search renews hope for answers. Here’s what we know

By Chelsea Bailey, CNN

(CNN) — It’s been 30 years since Kristin Smart’s family last saw her smile light up a room.

The college freshman vanished from California Polytechnic State University’s San Luis Obispo campus over Memorial Day weekend in 1996, sparking a decades-long investigation that led to the trial and conviction in 2022 of Paul Flores for her murder.

But even after years of searching, authorities have never recovered Smart’s body and she was declared dead in 2002.

Smart’s family said they feel Flores continues “to stand in the way of our daughter being returned to us.”

“We continue to pray for the day when we can finally lay her to rest in the presence of those who love her,” the family said in an open letter on their website.

A new search warrant served Wednesday at the Arroyo Grande, California, home of Flores’ mother is the latest sign investigators remain committed to finding answers, even after securing a conviction for Smart’s murder.

San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said his office has been “continually working the case.”

“I said when Paul Flores got convicted that the case wasn’t over, and it’s never going to be over until we return Kristin to her family,” Parkinson said in an interview on the Up + Adam podcast recorded Wednesday.

Parkinson is expected to hold a press conference Friday morning about the latest search, according to the sheriff’s office.

Here’s what we know and how Smart’s case has unfolded over the years.

A new search for answers

Investigators swarmed Flores’ mother’s home on Wednesday and Thursday, scouring the packed garage and examining the deck.

The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office confirmed in a statement the home belonged to Susan Flores. CNN reached out to attorneys who previously represented the family and to Susan Flores but did not immediately hear back. She has not been accused of wrongdoing by prosecutors in the case.

Tim Nelligan, an expert in soil vapor testing, told The Associated Press on Thursday he was on the premises, gathering samples in Susan Flores’ yard as well as a neighbor’s yard.

Nelligan declined to discuss the investigation but said his “team has, in general, ‘come up with a methodology to assess soil vapor’ and its relation to ‘human cadaver decomposition.’”

The search is going to be “extremely thorough” and could take two or three days, Parkinson told podcast host Adam Montiel.

“We’ve proven already that Paul did it. We believe that Kristin, at one time, was on Paul Flores’ father’s property. We know she’s been moved, so where she moved to … we’re hunting that down,” he said.

Flores and his family have been at the center of the search for Smart since the earliest days of the investigation into her disappearance.

Officials have said Flores, who was a 19-year-old freshman at the time, was the last person to see Smart alive after they walked back to their dorms from a party.

But it would take decades for authorities to gather enough proof to charge him with Smart’s murder.

The university’s police initially led the investigation into Smart’s disappearance. Her parents, Stan and Denise, also spent weeks searching for their daughter on their own. Her father posted flyers with a photo of Kirstin, who was tall and blonde, throughout town. He also gathered his own search party to comb nearby hillsides and lakes and even enlisted the help of a psychic to aid in his search, according to local news reports.

Then, two months after Kristin Smart vanished, investigators zeroed in on a man they would later identify as Flores.

Flores’ account of the night Smart disappeared had changed, Cal Poly Police Chief Tom Mitchell told reporters at the time, and when the college student was interviewed by police, he’d had a black eye and scrapes and bruises on his knee.

‘He’s definitely involved,’ Smart’s family says

Shortly after their initial interviews with Flores, the freshman retained a lawyer and stopped cooperating with investigators.

The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office assumed the lead investigative role in the case a month after she disappeared.

During a K-9 search of campus in the weeks following Smart’s disappearance, multiple cadaver dogs alerted in Flores’ dorm room, the sheriff told the San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune in August 1996.

The alerts, coupled with Flores’ shifting narrative and injuries, led authorities to declare Smart’s disappearance a criminal case – and they named Flores as a person of interest.

But they were still missing a key piece of evidence: Kristin Smart’s body.

Flores and his family were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury to get statements on the record. But without physical evidence, investigators did not believe they had enough to charge him with Smart’s murder.

In an interview with CNN three years after their daughter went missing, Stan and Denise Smart said they hoped they’d one day be able to lay their daughter to rest.

And they shared a message for Paul Flores.

“We will have a resolution and he will wish that he’d come forward much sooner,” Denise Smart said.

“We believe he’s definitely involved,” her husband added. “The best outcome would be that we’d be able to find our daughter’s remains and we’d be able to have some justice.”

Decades later, backyard clues lead to an arrest

For decades, Flores remained a person of interest in Smart’s disappearance.

And for decades, billboards with Smart’s smiling face stood like sentinels along Highway 101, silently urging anyone with information to come forward.

Driving past the billboard would serve as a periodic reminder: After decades, authorities still hadn’t found Kristin, Chris Lambert, a podcaster who grew up in the area, said in the first episode of his show, “Your Own Backyard.”

Years later, after reading a Los Angeles Times article on Smart’s disappearance, Lambert said he was stunned to realize he lived near many of the locations in the case. So, he began retracing Smart’s final steps, interviewing her family, and even speaking with investigators who’d worked on her case for years.

With each episode, his podcast gained traction, and Kristin’s name – and the details surrounding her disappearance – drew renewed attention.

Meanwhile, investigators continued to work the case. After decades with few signs of outward progress, authorities had their first public breakthrough in 2020.

The sheriff’s office obtained a warrant to monitor then-43-year-old Paul Flores’s cellphone and messages. In February 2020, detectives served a search warrant at his home, as well as the homes of his sister, mother and father, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.

They also recovered physical evidence from Flores’ home in April that year, the office said.

Then a year later, in March 2021, detectives served a warrant at the Arroyo Grande home of Flores’ father, Ruben. Detectives used ground-penetrating radar and dug the property using hand tools, the sheriff’s office told CNN at the time.

“Additional evidence related to the murder of Kristin Smart is discovered at the site,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement.

Prosecutors would later allege Ruben helped his son hide Smart’s body under the family’s deck before relocating her remains.

On April 13, 2021 – almost exactly 25 years since Kristin Smart disappeared – authorities arrested Paul Flores and charged him with her murder.

Ruben Flores was also arrested and charged with allegedly aiding Flores in hiding Smart’s body – a body investigators had still not recovered.

But they now believed their case was strong enough to bring before a jury.

The trial of Paul and Ruben Flores

Paul and Ruben Flores’ trials began in July 2022 and would last for nearly three months.

Prosecutors argued Paul Flores raped or attempted to rape Smart and killed her in his dorm room before enlisting his father to allegedly help him hide her body under the deck of his home.

“Dozens of women have recounted Paul Flores’ sexual assaults and predatory behavior that document his twenty-five years as a serial rapist,” Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle wrote in documents filed in the case.

Peuvrelle later told jurors during Ruben Flores’ trial that searches of his home turned up soil samples that tested positive for human blood, CNN affiliate KSBY reported.

Throughout the trials the attorneys representing the Flores family vehemently asserted their clients’ innocence, repeatedly citing a lack of eyewitnesses and evidence.

But in October 2022, two separate juries reached their verdicts. Paul Flores was found guilty of first-degree murder and later sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

But his father, Ruben, was acquitted of the charges against him. Outside the courtroom, Ruben Flores told reporters, “It’s too bad the system works that way, on feelings instead of facts.”

He added he felt bad for Smart’s family because they never got a true answer as to what happened to their daughter.

Wednesday’s search of Susan Flores’ home renewed the hope for those answers in the small town of San Luis Obispo, which had been rattled by Smart’s disappearance for decades.

Parkinson said throughout his time as sheriff, he’s repeatedly cautioned the Smart family to manage their expectations and not get their hopes up.

Still, he acknowledged, “There is no closure. There’s justice and there’s some form of peace that they have their daughter back, and … that’s all you can do.”

After decades, Smart’s family and the investigators working to bring her home remain cautiously optimistic.

“For thirty years, we have lived with a pain no family should have to endure, as heartache, frustration, and setbacks have woven themselves into our everyday lives,” her family said in a statement posted on their website.

And, they said, they will continue to be uplifted by the example Kristin Smart set: “She was not one to give up.”

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CNN’s Josh Campbell, Taylor Galgano and Danielle Sills contributed to this report.