Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / New search warrant in Kristin Smart case, decades after 19-year-old disappeared

Transcript

New search warrant in Kristin Smart case, decades after 19-year-old disappeared · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: You know, when you look at a typical neighborhood street,
0:03
there's this like comforting assumption of permanence. Right. You see
0:06
the manicured lawns, the driveways, maybe a garage that just
0:10
hasn't changed much in decades.
0:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, it all feels very solid, very.
0:14
Speaker 1: Ordinary, exactly. But just yesterday, literally yesterday May sixth, twenty
0:21
twenty six, that illusion of the ordinary was completely shattered
0:25
on this modest block in a Royo Grande, California.
0:29
Speaker 2: Right, investigators descended on a home there, and they weren't
0:31
just you know, looking around, no.
0:33
Speaker 1: Not at all. They were armed with ground penetrating radar.
0:36
They had like soil scientists with them. They were quite
0:40
literally looking beneath the surface of that quiet neighborhood.
0:43
Speaker 2: Which is such a striking visual when you think about it.
0:45
Speaker 1: It really is because they are looking for a ghost,
0:48
a ghost that has haunted the state of California for
0:51
thirty years. So today we're doing a deep dive into
0:54
the nineteen ninety six disappearance of nineteen year old cal
0:57
Poly student Kristen Smart.
0:59
Speaker 2: And going back to that visual from yesterday, you have
1:01
this contrast between an everyday suburban setting and the deployment
1:07
of this highly advanced, almost science fiction level forensic technology.
1:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wild, and they're probing the earth for something
1:14
very specific exactly.
1:16
Speaker 2: They are attempting to resolve this incredibly complex legal and
1:20
scientific anomaly, which is a murder conviction that was actually
1:26
secured without a body.
1:27
Speaker 1: I keep thinking about this case like a massive thirty
1:29
year old jigsaw puzzle. You know, for decades you've had
1:32
people staring at it trying to figure out what the
1:34
picture is.
1:35
Speaker 2: Right, and they eventually get enough pieces put together to say, okay,
1:38
we see the picture, we know who did this.
1:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, they get a conviction, But the final most important piece,
1:43
which is Kristin herself, is still missing from the center
1:47
of the board. And now science is finally handing investigators
1:51
of black light to find that one last piece hidden
1:54
in the dark.
1:55
Speaker 2: It's fascinating. The justice system has rendered its verdict, sure,
1:59
but the physical reality the situation remains completely unresolved. The
2:03
puzzle is legally solved, but physically incomplete.
2:06
Speaker 1: That's a great way to put it. So to really
2:08
grasp what was lost here to understand the stakes of
2:11
those scientists driving probes into the soil, right now, we
2:14
need to know who Kristin was?
2:16
Speaker 2: We do before that Memorial Day weekend in nineteen ninety six.
2:20
Speaker 1: Right, you can't understand the magnitude of this search without
2:23
understanding the life that was interrupted. So paint a picture
2:26
for us. Who was Kristin before she arrived at cal Poly.
2:30
Speaker 2: Well, she was this deeply vibrant, really forceful personality. She
2:34
was born in February of nineteen seventy seven in West Germany.
2:38
Speaker 1: Oh, Wow, Germany.
2:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. Her parents, Stan and Denise were American teachers working
2:42
with the military over there, but the family eventually settled
2:45
down in Stockton, California.
2:46
Speaker 1: Got it? And what was she like growing up?
2:49
Speaker 2: By all accounts, Kristin was outgoing, athletic, fiercely independent. I
2:54
mean she was six feet tall, striking, often wore her
2:57
blonde hair braided.
2:58
Speaker 1: And she was known for this colorful bucket hat.
3:00
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, she loved that bucket hat. She worked as
3:03
a lifeguard, She spent a summer as a camp counselor
3:06
in Hawaii. She wasn't someone who blended into the background.
3:10
Speaker 1: She had these big dreams too. Graduating high school in
3:13
nineteen ninety five, she was looking toward environmental science. Maybe
3:15
studying abroad. She was like the glue for her family.
3:19
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So she heads off to cal Poly San Luis
3:22
Bispo in the fall of nineteen eighty five and she
3:24
moves into Mere Hall, which is one of the red
3:26
brick dorms on campus.
3:27
Speaker 1: She's settling in, finding her way, and that brings us
3:30
to Friday night, May twenty fourth, nineteen ninety six. It's
3:33
Memorial Day weekend, summer break is right there.
3:36
Speaker 2: Right, and at about eight thirty PM, Christen and three
3:39
friends head out to an unofficial fraternity party.
3:42
Speaker 1: Off campus, and she's wearing a white T shirt with
3:44
a colorful emblem, shorts and sandals. From the timeline in
3:48
our sources, this is where things start to blur into
3:51
the early morning hours.
3:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, things get very chaotic as we move into the
3:56
early hours of May twenty fifth. Around two am, the
3:59
party is winding down and Kristin is highly intoxicated.
4:02
Speaker 1: Like beyond just having a few drinks right exactly.
4:05
Speaker 2: In fact, she has found passed out on a neighbor's lawn.
4:08
So she is alive, but she is incredibly vulnerable. Two
4:12
other students, Cheryl Anderson and Tim Davis, find her and help.
4:15
Speaker 1: Her up Okay, so they're trying to get our home, right.
4:18
Speaker 2: And then another freshman enters the picture, Paul Flores. He
4:22
lived in Santa Lucilla Hall, which is another dorm nearby.
4:26
He volunteers to help walk Kristen back to her dorm,
4:29
claiming he knows the way.
4:30
Speaker 1: So you have these four people walking through the dark campus.
4:34
But they don't all stay together, do they?
4:36
Speaker 2: No, they don't. According to the testimony later given by
4:39
Anderson and Davis, they walked with Flores and Smart for
4:43
a portion of the way, but eventually their paths diverged.
4:46
Speaker 1: It just peeled off to their own destinations.
4:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So then it is just Paul Flores and
4:52
Kristin Smart. Flores tells police that he escorted her as
4:55
far as his own dormitory, San Lucia Hall, and then
4:58
just let her walk the rest of the way to
4:59
a mere hall alone alone.
5:01
Speaker 1: How far did she have left to go?
5:03
Speaker 2: He claimed she had about one hundred yards left to go.
5:05
Speaker 1: One hundred yards. I mean that's essentially a football field.
5:08
And she has never seen again. No one at your
5:10
hall sees her return, never seen again. And this is
5:12
where the story shifts from a tragic disappearance into what
5:16
feels like just an infuriating institutional failure. Her roommate realizes
5:21
she's gone and reports are missing on Monday, May twenty.
5:24
Speaker 2: Seventh, and the cal Paul University police completely brush it off.
5:28
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. They assume it's a voluntary absence. They characterize
5:32
it as, you know, a young woman on a holiday
5:35
weekend just taking off on an adventure.
5:37
Speaker 2: It is a textbook catastrophic investigative failure in those crucial
5:41
early hours. What happens here is what we can call
5:45
a snowball effect of initial apathy.
5:48
Speaker 1: Unpack that concept for us, what exactly is happening inside
5:51
that investigative vacuum while the police are assuming she's just
5:54
at the beach.
5:55
Speaker 2: Well, inside that vacuum, the truth is literally evaporating. Forensic standpoint,
6:01
physical evidence degrades by the hour.
6:03
Speaker 1: So if it was a struggle, right, if.
6:04
Speaker 2: There was a struggle on that one hundred yard walk,
6:06
the elements wind, do foot traffic, they're erasing it. But
6:10
even more critically, it destroys psychological evidence.
6:13
Speaker 1: Human memory exactly.
6:15
Speaker 2: Human memory is incredibly malleable. Within the first twenty four
6:17
to forty eight hours, witnesses talk to each other, their
6:20
memories cross contaminate.
6:21
Speaker 1: They conflate things they saw with things they heard someone
6:24
else say.
6:25
Speaker 2: Precisely when there is no immediate sense of urgency, witnesses
6:29
aren't separated and interviewed while their recollections are pure, So
6:33
the window to capture the event accurately just slam shut.
6:37
Speaker 1: I have to push back here on behalf of anyone listening,
6:39
who is just screaming at their device right now.
6:41
Speaker 2: I completely understand why.
6:43
Speaker 1: If she was heavily intoxicated, so much so that she
6:46
had been passed out on a lawn and the campus
6:49
police knew Paul Flores was the last person seen with her,
6:53
why wasn't that enough to trigger an immediate, intense interrogation.
6:57
Speaker 2: It's a great question, I mean, why.
6:59
Speaker 1: Wasn't his dorm room tossed that very day?
7:01
Speaker 2: It really highlights a tragic flaw in the operational psychology
7:05
of campus police forces. Particularly back in the nineteen nineties,
7:09
there was a systemic tendency to view student behavior through
7:12
a lens of parental leniency rather than strict criminal suspicion.
7:16
Speaker 1: They thought they were just being kids, right.
7:18
Speaker 2: They operated under the assumption that students sleep off hangovers
7:21
in other people's rooms. Because there was no immediate, glaring
7:24
evidence of foul play, no scream reported, no blood found
7:27
on the sidewalk, they defaulted to the least sinister explanation. Wow.
7:32
To immediately assume a student has done something horrific to
7:35
a classmate requires a proactive, highly skeptical mindset that they
7:40
simply did not possess at that time.
7:43
Speaker 1: Put yourself in the shoes of stanandinise smart while this
7:45
is happening, imagine the sheer terror of being a parent
7:49
making frantic calls to a university and the authorities are
7:53
essentially telling you to calm down.
7:56
Speaker 2: Oh, it's an unimaginable kind of helplessness.
7:58
Speaker 1: You know your daughter, You know she wouldn't just vanish
8:01
without telling anyone. You know in your gut that something
8:04
is deeply structurally wrong. But your calls are unheeded for days.
8:09
Speaker 2: And by the time the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's
8:11
Office finally took the lead on the investigation, the trail
8:15
was entirely cold. That initial delay didn't just cost them
8:18
a few days, It costs some decades. It did it
8:21
created a legal and investigative stalemate that froze this case
8:25
in time for a quarter of a century.
8:27
Speaker 1: So you have this impenetrable wall. Traditional policing has failed
8:30
right out of the gate. The Sheriff's office is playing
8:32
catch up, and Paul Flores becomes a person of interest
8:35
almost immediately, but the early missteps just continue to compound,
8:39
they really do. Let's talk about the earring, because this
8:41
detail perfectly encapsulates the nightmare of this investigation.
8:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, the earring. Shortly after Kristen's disappearance, an earring is
8:50
found in the driveway of Susan Flores's home in Arroyo Grande.
8:54
And that is Paul Flores's mother.
8:56
Speaker 1: Okay, so right at the family home exactly.
8:59
Speaker 2: And it was an an earring that possibly matched one
9:01
Kristen was seen wearing in photographs.
9:03
Speaker 1: And what happens to it? Tell me they tested it.
9:06
Speaker 2: The police lost it. They literally misplaced it before it
9:09
could even be subjected to laboratory testing.
9:11
Speaker 1: I can't even fathom the frustration of that. But it's
9:14
not just a lost piece of jewelry, is it. It's
9:16
the loss of an entire narrative exactly.
9:18
Speaker 2: That lost earring represents the terrifying fragility of evidence in
9:24
a case where you have no body, Every microscopic fiber,
9:27
every drop of blood, every piece of jewelry takes on
9:29
this monumental, outsized importance.
9:32
Speaker 1: Right because you need something to anchor the story.
9:35
Speaker 2: When you lose a physical link like that, you are
9:37
losing a potential thread that could tie a suspect directly
9:41
to a specific location. You really have to wonder if
9:45
that single piece of metal had been preserved, documented and tested,
9:50
would it have provided the probable cause needed for a
9:53
wider immediate search of that property.
9:55
Speaker 1: Would it have spared the Smart family twenty five years
9:58
of waiting. It's heartbreaking, it really is. And the dead
10:00
ends just kept coming. Between nineteen ninety six and two
10:03
thousand and seven, cadaver dogs alerted on Flora's family properties
10:07
in a Royo Grande multiple times. And I want to
10:10
pause here because you know, we hear cadaver dogs all
10:12
the time in these deep dives into true crime. But
10:14
how does a dog actually detect a body that might
10:16
be buried deep underground.
10:18
Speaker 2: Or even one that was moves years priory?
10:20
Speaker 1: Exactly? How does that work?
10:21
Speaker 2: It comes down to incredible biology and specific biochemistry. Cadaver
10:25
dogs are trained to detect very specific volatile organic compounds
10:30
or VOCs that are solely produced by decomposing human tissue.
10:34
Speaker 1: Compounds with names like putresine and cadaverreine.
10:36
Speaker 2: Right, yes, exactly. A dog's old factory system is thousands
10:40
of times more sensitive than the humans. When a body
10:43
decomposes in soil, those compounds seep into the dirt. Even
10:47
if the body is later moved, the soil retains a
10:50
chemical memory of those compounds.
10:52
Speaker 1: Wow, a chemical memory.
10:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, the dogs can detect that residual chemical signature rising
10:58
through the soil pores even years later.
11:00
Speaker 1: But despite the dog's alerting, nothing conclusive was ever excavated
11:04
during those early years. They even did searches on the
11:07
cow Poly campus in twenty sixteen using ground penetrating radar,
11:11
but again, nothing broke the case open.
11:13
Speaker 2: Nothing they could push it forward legally.
11:14
Speaker 1: No, And this brings us to the core legal hurdle
11:17
that defined this case for decades, the nobody dilemma. Let's
11:21
dig into that.
11:22
Speaker 2: Sure, from a legal standpoint, prosecuting a murder without a
11:25
body is an immense, almost insurmountable hurdle. The justice system,
11:29
by design requires a very high burden of proof beyond
11:33
a reasonable doubt. Historically, the law relies on a concept
11:36
called corpus delecti, which literally means the body of the crime.
11:40
Means you have to prove that a crime actually occurred
11:44
before you can convict someone of committing.
11:45
Speaker 1: It, because without a body, how do you mathematically prove
11:48
she didn't just walk away?
11:50
Speaker 2: Precisely without the victim's remains, Defense attorneys are handed a
11:54
vast landscape to exploit reasonable doubt. They can look a
11:57
jury in the eye and argue she walked away to
12:00
start a new life, or she was the victim of
12:02
a random transient, or even she fell on a hike
12:06
and succumbed to the elements, because.
12:08
Speaker 1: There's nothing to contradict those theories definitively right.
12:10
Speaker 2: The physical body tells the story of the crime. It
12:13
provides the cause of death, the time of death, defensive wounds,
12:17
and often the primary crime scene location.
12:19
Speaker 1: Without it, the prosecution is basically trying to build a
12:22
massive structure without a foundation.
12:24
Speaker 2: Exactly convincing twelve jurors to take away a person's freedom
12:28
for life. When you cannot definitively prove the victim is dead,
12:32
is incredibly difficult.
12:33
Speaker 1: So the criminal justice system is gridlocked. The Smart family,
12:38
desperate for any movement, tries another route. In two thousand
12:41
and five, they sue Paul Flores for wrongful death in civil.
12:44
Speaker 2: Court, a very common tactic when criminal charges stall.
12:47
Speaker 1: Right, But during his deposition for that suit, Paul Flores
12:51
pleads the Fifth Amendment more than one hundred times, he
12:54
refuses to answer anything. The suit is eventually dropped due
12:58
to a lack of evidence, and remark arkably, the Flora's
13:01
family countersuits the Smarts for emotional distress.
13:03
Speaker 2: Which is just an added layer of agony for the family,
13:06
it really is.
13:07
Speaker 1: But let me challenge the civil suit strategy for a second.
13:10
If you're the family and you know the criminal system
13:12
is stalled, aren't civil suits just like an expensive game
13:15
of legal chess where both sides are totally out of moves?
13:18
How do you mean, like neither side can checkmate the other.
13:20
He's just going to plead the fifth anyway. What is
13:22
the actual utility of putting yourself through this?
13:25
Speaker 2: Well, it is a war of attrition, yes, but the
13:28
utility isn't necessarily about winning a financial judgment. When the
13:32
criminal apparatus stalls. A civil suit is one of the
13:36
only tools a family has to compel testimony under.
13:39
Speaker 1: Oath, even if he doesn't say anything, even.
13:41
Speaker 2: If flora Is pleads the fifth, forcing him into a
13:44
deposition room keeps the pressure on. Furthermore, it serves a
13:48
vital public function. It keeps the case in the news. Ah,
13:52
it prevents the disappearance from fading into obscurity. The civil
13:55
suits both fizzle out ultimately, but they maintained a baseline
14:00
of public awareness.
14:01
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Paul Flores moves to Los Angeles, He lives quietly,
14:06
He continuously denies any involvement. His father, Reuben Flores, steadfastly
14:10
maintains his son's innocence.
14:12
Speaker 2: And the case just settles into that tragic rhythm of
14:15
a cold case.
14:16
Speaker 1: And it's easy to think of cold cases as just
14:18
dusty files in a police basement, you know. But for
14:21
Stan and Denise Smart, this was a twenty five year
14:24
living nightmare. They were engaging in daily advocacy. They put
14:28
up billboards, they hired private investigators. Even after Kristen was
14:32
legally declared dead in two thousand and two, they refused
14:34
to let the vacuum consume her memory.
14:37
Speaker 2: But traditional law enforcement had run out of tools, the
14:39
early mistakes, the lack of physical evidence, that high legal
14:42
burden of a nobody case. It created a brick wall.
14:45
Speaker 1: To break that wall down, it was going to require
14:47
an entirely non traditional force.
14:49
Speaker 2: And I wasn't going to be a badge or a
14:51
gun that finally broke this case open.
14:53
Speaker 1: No, it was going to be a microphone. In September
14:55
twenty nineteen, an independent journalist named Chris Lambert launches a
14:59
podcast series called Your Own Backyard. And he didn't just
15:03
like read Wikipedia articles. He did a staggering amount of
15:08
original investigative work. He interviewed witnesses, He unearthed new leads,
15:13
He methodically highlighted the inconsistencies in Paul Flores's story.
15:18
Speaker 2: The impact of that series cannot be overstated. I mean,
15:20
it generated over thirty million downloads.
15:22
Speaker 1: That's massive, huge, But beyond.
15:24
Speaker 2: The metrics, it generated fresh actionable tips. It brought forward
15:28
new witnesses who describe suspicious behavior by Flores in the
15:32
years following nineteen ninety six.
15:33
Speaker 1: This is the part that fascinates me. Why do witnesses
15:36
suddenly come forward to talk to a podcaster? In twenty nineteen,
15:39
when they wouldn't talk to a detective wearing a badge
15:41
twenty years earlier, like what shifts in their psychology.
15:44
Speaker 2: It's a deep psychological shift tied to both the passage
15:48
of time and the nature of memory. First, consider the
15:51
demographic Someone who was an intimidated nineteen year old in
15:55
nineteen ninety six is now a mature adult in their forties.
15:59
Speaker 1: Oh, that makes sense.
16:00
Speaker 2: They might have children of their own now, which completely
16:02
alters their empathetic perspective on the tragedy. Second, the approach
16:07
is different. A detective is looking for a formal statement.
16:10
It feels interrogational in high stakes.
16:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's scary exactly.
16:15
Speaker 2: A podcaster approaches them conversationally, often in a much lower
16:18
pressure environment.
16:20
Speaker 1: But there's also something about the medium itself, right, the
16:23
way a podcast structures information over multiple hours.
16:26
Speaker 2: Yes, and this is where it connects to what intelligence
16:28
analysts call the mosaic theory.
16:30
Speaker 1: Ooh, tell me about that.
16:32
Speaker 2: Well. In intelligence, you have all these tiny, seemingly innocuous
16:36
pieces of information that mean nothing on their own right,
16:39
But when you arrange them correctly, a classified picture emerges, like.
16:43
Speaker 1: Putting the puzzle pieces together.
16:44
Speaker 2: Exactly. For decades, these witnesses held onto tiny, fragmented memories.
16:50
A weird interaction at a party, an offhand comment, a
16:52
strange behavior. To them, it wasn't evidence, it was just
16:55
a weird memory.
16:56
Speaker 1: But then they listen to this series, right when.
16:58
Speaker 2: A podcaster like Lambert lays out the entire narrative timeline
17:02
so clearly, listeners suddenly realize, wait, my weird memory actually
17:06
fits perfectly into this gap in the timeline. The podcaster
17:10
provides the framework that transforms a fragmented memory into critical intelligence.
17:15
Speaker 1: That is a brilliant way to understand it. The podcaster
17:18
essentially crowdsource the mosaic theory, and it literally changed the
17:22
physical landscape of San Luis Obispo County.
17:24
Speaker 2: New billboards went up, community awareness skyrocketed.
17:27
Speaker 1: But how does public pressure actually force a sheriff's department
17:30
to act like?
17:32
Speaker 2: Legally speaking, law enforcement agencies are composed of human beings,
17:36
but they are also political entities constrained by budgets and bureaucracy.
17:40
When an investigator wants to allocate massive resources, say renting
17:44
ground penetrating radar, pulling deputies off other cases, going to
17:47
a judge for a risky warrant, they need justification they
17:50
need a mandate precisely when thirty million people are listening
17:54
to a breakdown of a cold case. It provides the
17:57
political capital and the public mandate required to push past
18:01
those bureaucratic bottlenecks. The sheriff essentially gets the green light
18:05
from the community to spend the money and take the risk.
18:08
Speaker 1: So the momentum generated by your own backyard gave investigators
18:12
the leverage they desperately needed. They finally had the justification
18:16
to kick down doors again.
18:17
Speaker 2: And this leads directly to a trove of horrific new evidence,
18:21
shifting us into the actual pursuit of circumstantial justice. By
18:25
early twenty twenty, law enforcement is moving fast.
18:27
Speaker 1: What do they do? First?
18:29
Speaker 2: They serve search warrants at multiple locations tied to the
18:31
Flora's family. This includes Paul Flores's home down in San
18:34
Pedro in the Los Angeles area. What they find there
18:38
fundamentally alters the scope of the case.
18:39
Speaker 1: What did they find?
18:41
Speaker 2: They seize trucks, electronics, and critically, they discover date rape drugs,
18:45
and homemade videos that show Floras engaging in non consensual
18:48
acts with women.
18:49
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, so that establishes a terrifying pattern, and the
18:53
following year, in March of twenty twenty one, they go
18:56
back to a royal grande. They execute a search at
18:59
the home of Roumin Flores, Paul's father.
19:01
Speaker 2: Right they bring the cadaver dogs again. They used the
19:04
ground penetrating radar and this.
19:06
Speaker 1: Time prosecutors claimed they found something massive beneath the deck
19:10
of the house. They alleged they found evidence of a
19:12
clandestine grave.
19:14
Speaker 2: Specifically, they claimed to have found human blood and fibers
19:18
in the soil that matched the colors of the clothing
19:20
Kristen Smart was wearing the night she disappeared.
19:23
Speaker 1: That white shirt, the colorful emblem, the shorts exactly.
19:28
Speaker 2: The soil staining and the chemical anomaly suggested that a
19:30
body had been buried there and later excavated and moved.
19:33
Speaker 1: It is just a chilling thought, the idea that she
19:36
could have been right there under the deck for years
19:38
while the family searched. But the dominoes finally fall they do.
19:42
On April thirteenth, twenty twenty one, arrest are made. Paul
19:45
Flores is charged with first degree felony murder, with the
19:48
allegation that he killed Christin during an attempted rape.
19:51
Speaker 2: Now, the statute limitations had actually expired on the sexual
19:55
assault charge itself, but murder has no expiration date, right.
19:59
Speaker 1: And Reuben Flores is charged as an accessory after the
20:02
fact for allegedly helping conceal the body.
20:05
Speaker 2: The scale of the resulting trial was enormous because of
20:09
the massive pre trial publicity, fueled in large part by
20:12
the public interests. The trial was moved out of San
20:14
Luis Obispo and relocated to Monterey County.
20:17
Speaker 1: They issued over fifteen hundred summonses just to find an
20:20
impartial jury.
20:21
Speaker 2: Pool, didn't they They did, and uniquely, the trial, which
20:24
began in June twenty twenty two in the lasted three months,
20:27
utilized two separate juries, one for Paul one for Reuben,
20:31
hearing the cases simultaneously in the same courtroom.
20:34
Speaker 1: Wait, really, why do they do that? Why use two
20:36
juries instead of just having one jury judge both men.
20:39
That sounds incredibly chaotic.
20:41
Speaker 2: It can be, but it often comes down to protecting
20:43
the constitutional rights at the defendants, particularly regarding statements they
20:47
might have made, like confessions or even just passing remarks.
20:50
If Paul made a statement that implicates Ruben, but Paul
20:53
chooses not to testify, Ruben's defense cannot cross examine him.
20:58
This violates a legal precedent known as the Bruton rule.
21:01
Speaker 1: Oh, because he has the right to face his accuser.
21:04
Speaker 2: Exactly to solve this, you use two juries. When evidence
21:08
is presented that is only legally admissible against Paul, Reuben's
21:11
jury is escorted out of the room and vice versa.
21:14
It ensures that each man is judged strictly on the
21:16
evidence legally applicable to him.
21:18
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense, but the prosecution's central problem still remains.
21:23
They do not have a body. They have to build
21:24
a purely circumstantial case.
21:26
Speaker 2: Which requires weaving a very tight, compelling narrative. In a
21:30
circumstantial case, you lack a smoking gun or a video recording.
21:33
The prosecution has to present a series of facts that,
21:36
when viewed in totality, lead a reasonable person to only
21:39
one logical conclusion.
21:41
Speaker 1: We talked earlier about circumstantial evidence being like pointalism. Right,
21:44
that style of painting made entirely of tiny dots.
21:47
Speaker 2: Yes, perfect analogy.
21:48
Speaker 1: Up close, all you see are isolated dots. One dot
21:51
is a dog alert in nineteen ninety six. Another dot
21:54
is the soil anomaly under the deck. Another dot is
21:57
Paul's shifting statements to police. Another dot is the date
22:01
rate drugs found in San Pedro. None of these dots
22:04
alone is a murder weapon, right. But if I'm a
22:07
defense attorney, I'm not just going to point at one
22:09
single dot, say the dog alert, and say that dot
22:12
could be anything. It could be an animal. It's junk science.
22:15
How does a prosecutor force a jury to step back
22:18
and look at the.
22:18
Speaker 2: Whole painting that is the exact tension of a circumstantial trial.
22:23
The defense attacks the dots individually, trying to create reasonable
22:27
doubt around each one in isolation. The prosecutor's job is
22:31
to continually force the jury's perspective outward.
22:34
Speaker 1: How do they do that practically?
22:36
Speaker 2: You do this by showing how the dots interact. A
22:38
dog alert alone might be questionable. But a dog alert
22:41
located exactly where ground penetrating radar shows disturbed earth, located
22:45
exactly at the home of the last person seen with
22:48
the victim who repeatedly lied about his actions that night,
22:51
the mathematical probability of all those dots aligning purely by
22:54
coincidence becomes vanishingly.
22:56
Speaker 1: Small, and crucially they brought in two women identify in
23:00
court only as Ronda Doe and Sarah Doo to provide
23:04
some of the darkest dots on that canvas.
23:06
Speaker 2: Yes, these women testified that Paul Flores had drug and
23:09
sexually assaulted them in the years after Kristen's disappearance.
23:13
Speaker 1: Now, generally, in criminal law you cannot introduce prior bad
23:18
acts just to argue that the defendant has a bad character.
23:21
Speaker 2: Generally no. However, there are specific legal exceptions to show
23:25
a clear pattern of predatory behavior, a common scheme, or
23:29
a signature modus operandi.
23:30
Speaker 1: So the prosecution argued that what Flores did to Ronda
23:33
and Sarah was the exact blueprint of what he attempted
23:36
to do to Christen's smart.
23:38
Speaker 2: Exactly, and the graphic images found on his computer, including
23:40
an image of a woman bound with a red ball gag,
23:43
corroborated the grim, violent details of their accounts. It provided
23:47
the jury with a clear, terrifying understanding of his capabilities
23:50
and methods.
23:51
Speaker 1: Put yourself in the jury box in Monterey County listening
23:54
to this for three months. You have to weigh this
23:56
massive mosaic of circumstantial evidence against the incredibly high standard
24:00
of reasonable doubt knowing you were deciding the fate of
24:03
two men without ever seeing the victim's remains. It's a
24:07
heavy burden, and the two juries actually came to different
24:09
conclusion we did.
24:11
Speaker 2: On October eighteenth, twenty twenty two, Paul Flores's jury returned
24:15
a unanimous verdict guilty of first degree murder, but Reuben
24:20
Flora's a jury acquitted him of the accessory charge.
24:23
Speaker 1: The split verdict is fascinating to me. What does that
24:25
tell us about the limits of circumstantial evidence.
24:28
Speaker 2: It demonstrates exactly how precise jurors can be when properly instructed.
24:33
Paul's jury found the pattern of predatory behavior, the timeline,
24:37
and his actions compelling enough to convict him of the
24:39
primary act of murder.
24:40
Speaker 1: But for Reuben they needed more.
24:42
Speaker 2: Right for Reuben, the jury had to look at a
24:44
different set of dots. Proving beyond a reasonable doubt that
24:47
he actively knowingly participated in concealing a body without a confession,
24:53
with out eyewitnesses to the burial, and without the body
24:55
itself proved to be a bridge too far for his
24:58
specific jury.
25:00
Speaker 1: I may have suspected he helped, but suspicion isn't enough exactly.
25:03
Speaker 2: Suspicion is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
25:06
Speaker 1: Well Paul was sentenced to twenty five years to life
25:10
at Corcoran State Prison. He was also ordered to pay
25:12
about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in restitution. He
25:16
appealed the conviction, claiming procedural errors, but in October twenty
25:20
twenty five, an appellate court affirmed the conviction.
25:23
Speaker 2: And just early this year, in January twenty twenty six,
25:26
the California Supreme Court denied his petition for review.
25:29
Speaker 1: He is in prison until at least twenty forty seven.
25:32
The justice system function. The legal puzzle is solved, but
25:35
the physical reality, the void where Kristen should be, is
25:38
still there. The family still cannot bury her.
25:40
Speaker 2: Which is why the investigation never truly closed, and that
25:43
brings the timeline crashing right into the events of yesterday.
25:46
Speaker 1: Right May sixth, twenty twenty six, deputies execute a new
25:51
warrant at Susan Flores's home the five hundred block of
25:54
East Branch Street in a royal grande. This property is
25:57
adjacent to the areas they've scrutinized before.
26:00
Speaker 2: And the reason they are there is because of a
26:02
technology called soil vapor testing that was conducted in twenty
26:05
twenty three. We touched on cadaverdogs earlier, but this is
26:09
a whole different level of science.
26:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the absolute frontier of forensic science. Tell
26:14
us about the twenty twenty three testing.
26:17
Speaker 2: So in twenty twenty three, three scientists Timothy Nelligan, Steve Hoyt,
26:20
and Brian Eckenrode were given access to a yard neighboring
26:23
the flora's property. The inserted specialized probes deep into the earth.
26:27
They weren't looking for bones. They were collecting and analyzing
26:30
subterranean gases, gases.
26:32
Speaker 1: That have been sitting in the dirt for thirty years.
26:34
How does that even work? How do gases not just
26:36
blow away or dissipate into the atmosphere after three decades.
26:39
Speaker 2: It requires understanding the soil matrix. Soil isn't solid, It's
26:43
highly porous. It acts like a massive sponge holding air
26:46
and moisture. When human remains decomposed, the breakdown of proteins, lipids,
26:52
and carbohydrates creates a highly complex, highly specific cocktail of
26:56
voltile organic compounds.
26:58
Speaker 1: The VOCs again, right.
27:00
Speaker 2: We're talking about specific ratios of sulfur containing compounds, nitrogenen
27:04
based compounds, and others. These VOCs don't just shoot straight
27:07
up into the air. They slowly diffuse through the pores
27:11
in the soil oh I see. They migrate outward and
27:13
upward based on vapor pressure, temperature, and soil density. Over time.
27:18
This creates what scientists call a decomposition plume underground, so.
27:22
Speaker 1: It's essentially a subterranean weather map of chemical vapors. And
27:25
they map this plume in the neighbour's yard, analyzing the
27:28
concentration of these VOCs at various points, and the map
27:31
essentially draws an arrow pointing right back to Susan Flores's
27:34
property exactly.
27:35
Speaker 2: They are using analytical chemistry to smell a history that
27:39
is completely invisible to the eye. The science is allowing
27:42
them to trace the origin point of those specific decomposition gases.
27:45
Speaker 1: The human element of this scientific team is incredible. To
27:49
one of the scientists, Timothy Nelligan, actually met Kristen Smart
27:52
briefly when they were both in college.
27:54
Speaker 2: Wow.
27:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, decades later, he is the one driving these chemical
27:58
probes into the earth to find her. It's a profound
28:01
full circle moment. But let me play devil's advocate regarding
28:04
the science for a second, go ahead, This technique is
28:07
highly experimental in this specific context. It is essentially unproven
28:12
in a court of law. Isn't there a massive risk
28:15
of false hope here? Like what if these volatile organic
28:18
compounds are from a dead animal buried in the nineties.
28:21
What if it's just run off from some old agricultural
28:24
chemical that mimics the signature.
28:25
Speaker 2: It is a very real, very significant risk, and it
28:29
is exactly the argument Susan Flora's defense attorney is making.
28:33
She has long denied any knowledge, calling the accusations ludicrous,
28:37
and her lawyer correctly notes that previous searches tore up
28:40
the yard, caused thousands in damage, and yielded nobody.
28:43
Speaker 1: Right, so there's precedent for them coming up empty handed.
28:46
Speaker 2: However, scientists account for that the chemical signature of a
28:50
decomposing human is distinctly different from a decomposing dog or deer,
28:55
primarily due to our specific diet and the unique ratio
28:59
of compound we produce. That is fascinating the sheriff's office,
29:03
the district attorney, and the FBI, who have actually been
29:06
consulted on this they know the sakes. Every time they
29:09
bring heavy machinery onto these properties, they risk accusations of
29:12
harassment if they find nothing.
29:14
Speaker 1: But they still went ahead with it.
29:16
Speaker 2: But the presence, the specific concentration, and the trajectory of
29:20
these VOCs were compelling enough to convince the superior court
29:24
judge that the legal threshold for a new warrant had
29:27
been met.
29:27
Speaker 1: And so that brings us right up to the exact
29:29
present moment. As you and I are analyzing this ground
29:33
penetrating radar technicians and soil scientists are physically probing that
29:37
yard and garage. Soil samples from Royal Grande are sitting
29:40
in a lab right now, holding potential answers. We are
29:43
caught up to the absolute edge of the timeline.
29:45
Speaker 2: The results are pending. The Sheriff's office is tight lipped,
29:48
adhering to standard protocol for an active sealed warrant. But
29:51
the neighbors are watching.
29:52
Speaker 1: Everyone is watching.
29:54
Speaker 2: The community that watched a young woman Vanish thirty years
29:57
ago is still watching. The flashing lights and the race
30:00
our equipment.
30:00
Speaker 1: When you pull all the threads of this together, the
30:03
Christ and Smart case is a towering testament to the
30:05
fact that justice in the modern era isn't just about
30:09
police work. It is a massive, intricate collaboration.
30:13
Speaker 2: It takes a village, truly.
30:14
Speaker 1: You have determined families like the Smarts, who absolutely refuse
30:18
to be silenced or ignored. You have independent media and
30:21
citizen journalists crowdsourcing the investigation, utilizing the mosaic theory to
30:26
turn fragmented memories into actionable intelligence. You have shifting legal
30:30
strategies figuring out how to successfully prosecute a ghost using
30:34
pointillism and circumstantial evidence. And you have this bleeding edge
30:38
chemistry trying to pull invisible secrets out of the dirt.
30:42
Speaker 2: The broader implications of this case ripple outward across the
30:45
entire country. Cold cases everywhere are being revitalized by these
30:48
exact forces. Podcasts applying public pressure, new forensic tech, pushing boundaries,
30:53
data driven analysis of old case files.
30:56
Speaker 1: It's changing the landscape of criminal justice.
30:58
Speaker 2: It is simultaneously. This saga highlights the systemic failures we
31:04
most rigorously guard against. The devastating compounding impact of initial
31:09
investigated delays, the tragedy of lost physical evidence, and the
31:13
profound emotional devastation that occurs when a family is forced
31:17
to fight for twenty five years just to secure and.
31:20
Speaker 1: Arrest Denise Smart said it best, and it's a plea
31:22
that breaks your heart every time you hear it. We
31:25
just want to bring her home and lay her to rest.
31:27
Paul Flores is sitting in a cell and Corkoran State Prison,
31:31
but the system's job isn't done until Stanton Denise have
31:34
their daughter back.
31:35
Speaker 2: The conviction was a significant legal milestone, but it was
31:38
never the final destination.
31:39
Speaker 1: And so we want to leave you the listener with
31:42
a thought to moll Over. We talked at the beginning
31:44
about this case being a puzzle with the central peace
31:47
still missing. In true crime, we so often talk about
31:50
closure as this neat, tidy ending the moment a judge
31:53
bangs a gavel, a verdict is read, and a cell
31:56
door locks, But this case forces us to ask a
31:58
much harder and much deeper Can a family ever truly
32:02
experience closure? When the justice system has delivered a conviction
32:06
but the physical earth still refuses to give.
32:08
Speaker 2: Up its secrets is a haunting thought.
32:10
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into
32:12
the sources. Stay curious, keep seeking the bigger picture, and
32:16
we will catch you next time,