Latest / True Crime California / TCC #18 The Murder of Kristin Smart, Part 2

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TCC #18 The Murder of Kristin Smart, Part 2 · True Crime California

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not the loudest stories that keep us up
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at night. It's the quiet ones, the ones that never
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quite made the headlines, the ones that left behind more
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questions than answers. The Final Trace is a true crime
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podcast about the strange, the unresolved, and the stories that
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slipped through the cracks, from disappearances to mysterious debts to
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cases that were technically solved but still don't sit right.
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We dig into the overlooked, the eerie, and the human
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side of every story, because even when a case goes cold,
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there's always something left behind, a clue, a feeling, a
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final trace. Follow the Final Trace wherever you listen to
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podcasts and confined with still lingers in the silence. I'm
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your host Hopper Daily and this is the Final Trace.
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Dark Cast Network come to the Dark Side of indie podcasts.
1:11
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host Cindy,
1:17
and I'm glad you're here. Hey, everybody, I'm back with
1:28
part two of the Murder of Kristin Smart. Thanks everybody
1:33
for tuning in and supporting the podcast. I'm really excited
1:38
to be back and really glad to be back on
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a roll with these episodes and hoping I can get
1:43
one out every week. Sorry again for the super long hiatus,
1:48
but I'm back and ready to rock. So let's just
1:51
jump in. The world is on fire, everything's falling apart,
1:53
everything is crazy. Uh yeah, I'm just gonna leave it there.
1:57
Y'all know how I feel. Anyway, Okay, Part two of
2:01
the Murder of Kristin Smart. The first thing I want
2:04
to do is call out that, for whatever reason, I
2:07
said that Kristen Smart was born in nineteen seventy nine.
2:09
She absolutely was not. She was born in nineteen seventy seven.
2:13
I knew she was, That's what I had in my notes,
2:15
but my brain said nine. So I apologize. She was
2:20
born February twentieth, nineteen seventy seven, which is how she
2:24
was nineteen in nineteen ninety six. The math was not mathing.
2:29
Hopefully none of you noticed. We can all call me
2:32
out together in part two here, because if I had
2:35
noticed something like that, it probably would have ruined my
2:37
whole listening pleasure for the whole episode. It would have
2:41
ruined it, because I'm that kind of petty anyway. All right,
2:44
so let's do a quick recap of what we've talked
2:46
about so. As I just noted, Kristen Smart was a
2:50
nineteen year old freshman at cal Poly College. It was
2:54
the Labor Day weekend of nineteen ninety six, spanning May
2:57
twenty fourth and twenty fifth, when she went missing. She
3:01
went alone to an off campus party after splitting off
3:04
from her friend Margarita, who lived in the same dorm
3:07
where Kristin lived, and while at this party, which she
3:11
attended by herself, she became intoxicated to the point of
3:14
passing out on the ground outside the party. She was
3:19
then walked home by Paul Flores after splitting off from
3:22
two other students who had offered to walk her home,
3:27
and from there she went missing. So the last person
3:31
to see her was Paul Flores. Other notes is that
3:35
she gave people the name Roxy at this party, which
3:39
police used as an excuse to not give a shit
3:41
about her disappearance. As I noted in the first half
3:47
of this Paul Flores had a long history of problematic behavior,
3:51
which was excused by both parents, including his father, Reuben,
3:55
who was also abusive and problematic. Like I said, he
3:59
was the last person to see Kristin alive, and he
4:02
said that he left her outside her dorm to walk
4:04
the rest of the way. The problem with that is
4:06
that she was hardly able to walk on her own,
4:09
per the other two students who were walking with them
4:11
to that point. She also never made it to her
4:15
room because there were people in her room that night
4:18
and nobody saw or heard her come in. It took
4:21
three days for Kristin to be officially considered missing thanks
4:24
to the shitty campus police, and it took the same
4:26
amount of time for those police to interview Paul, which
4:29
they didn't even do in any official capacity until a
4:32
few days after that. Even his dorm room was not
4:36
searched until mid June after he had all already moved
4:40
out and the room had been cleaned, and his cars
4:43
were never searched at least for the first twenty years.
4:48
But that being said, once cadaverdogs were allowed on campus,
4:52
four of them independently alerted to Paul's dorm room and
4:56
Paul's dorm room only. Even though they had access to
5:00
all the dorms on campus and pretty much anywhere they
5:03
wanted to go on campus, the only place they alerted
5:07
was his room and specifically his bed, so that pretty
5:11
much catches us up high level. If you want more details,
5:14
you can definitely go back to part one of my
5:17
version of this story and listen to what I had
5:19
to say about it. But that's just a brief recap
5:21
before we get into the second half. And I do
5:24
want to say it's really hard to know how to
5:27
present this information, so I'm going to do my best,
5:29
but there's just so much and it's not that I
5:32
don't want to present all of the information, but there
5:35
are podcasts out there dedicated to this case, specifically Your
5:39
Own Backyard, which is far and away the best podcast
5:42
about this case that will ever exist, and there's no
5:46
point in me trying to compete with that podcast, and
5:49
so I'd rather keep it shorter and kind of honor
5:51
the format that I've chosen. So if you notice that
5:54
I'm not covering something about the case that you know,
5:57
please know that it's not lack of research. It's more
5:59
just me choose the things that I think are most
6:01
important to touch on within the format of my podcast,
6:05
So I hope that makes sense for everyone. I do
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also want to note that while a lot happens in
6:11
this case, most of it is in the year immediately
6:14
following Kristen's disappearance, So you know, I'm going to cover
6:18
mostly what happens in that year and then jump ahead
6:21
a lot, which is again really frustrating because there's about
6:25
twenty twenty five years of basically nothing going on with
6:28
this case. So anyway, after Paul's dorm is searched, the
6:32
campus police finally passed the case to the city police,
6:35
who begin working with the FBI. And I know it's
6:37
kind of confusing talking about like campus police versus city police.
6:41
I do believe that both were involved for a time,
6:43
but there was an official handoff around some time in
6:47
either like June or July, and at that time the
6:50
San Luis Obispo City Police agree to work with the FBI,
6:55
so they're starting to actually take this case seriously. But meanwhile,
7:00
while they're getting their shit together, Kristen's parents and a
7:02
bunch of volunteers are launching huge searches on campus and
7:05
in the surrounding areas, trying to get tips from people
7:08
and succeeding, and most of these tips are about Paul Flores.
7:12
They're also putting out flyers and just doing whatever they
7:14
can to get her story out. Now, there are local
7:18
businesses who help with this, and they actually pay to
7:20
put billboards up with her picture on them, and at
7:23
some point I believe it's the Smart family. They actually
7:26
pay to put a billboard up just outside of Susan's
7:29
home because she happened to be near where there was one,
7:32
so she would have to look at it every day,
7:34
and I kind of fucking love that. So once the
7:37
city police officially take over, they bring Paul Flores in
7:40
for yet another interview, and yet again he lies about
7:44
how he got the black eye. Now, this is the
7:46
point at which he lied about it by saying he
7:48
hit it on his steering wheel, But prior to that
7:51
he'd been interviewed twice. The first time he said, oh,
7:54
I don't know how I got this black eye or
7:56
these scratches or the rugburn on my knee. The second
7:59
time he said, oh, oh, I got the black eye
8:01
in a basketball game. They probably didn't ask about the
8:04
rugburn or the scratches because it had been enough time
8:07
that they had healed, but his black eye was still there. Now.
8:10
The third time, when the city police bring him in,
8:13
he said, oh, I was fixing or removing my car
8:16
stereo and I hit my eye, so he's clearly just
8:19
changing his story however he wants, and nobody's really calling
8:23
that out, which is a little interesting to me. Now,
8:26
the other thing he apparently said during this interview, which
8:29
was in late June, was after police told him, you know,
8:32
we know that you know where Kristen is, and he
8:35
says to them, if you're so smart, where's her body?
8:42
And it's like, dude, who said anything about a body?
8:45
Like what are you even talking about? Like that's an
8:47
admission of guilt to me, Like that's a major slip up.
8:51
At another point, he accidentally says, quote, we went back
8:54
to my dorm instead of I went back to my dorm.
8:57
So he's making a lot of mistakes in this interview
9:01
and it seems super obvious what's going on. But don't
9:05
get excited. I'll remind you this case spanned over twenty
9:08
five years, so this unfortunately led to nothing. But it's
9:12
very interesting that he essentially admitted to knowing she was
9:17
dead in this moment and that he took her back
9:19
to his dorm and he still did not get arrested.
9:23
So also at this interview, he asks to leave so
9:27
he can go to his mom's house and clean up
9:29
concrete in her yard. And it's interesting because it's like,
9:33
why does his mom's yard have concrete in it? And
9:36
the reason is because he and his dad put down
9:38
a bunch of six foot by three foot concrete planters
9:42
in Susan's backyard just a week or two after Kristen
9:46
went missing. And that is a very suspicious thing to
9:49
do at this time, And that is a very suspicious
9:52
size to make those planters, considering that it would fit
9:56
Kristin's body. So it's like, if you aren't hiding some thing,
10:00
then you're just the dumbest people alive to choose to
10:03
do this concrete project right after you become a suspect
10:08
in a girl's disappearance. I mean, come the fuck on now. Interestingly,
10:12
in July, police get a search warrant for Ruben's house,
10:16
not Susan's. Now. This is in part due to them
10:19
learning through an interview with Susan that on the night
10:22
that Kristin went missing, Ruben received a phone call in
10:25
the middle of the night and got up and left. Now,
10:29
I assume Susan, who seemingly had no problem lying about
10:32
her son, admitted this, assuming the police had their phone
10:35
records or somehow already knew this. But shockingly, another police
10:40
fuck up, they never pulled the phone records, so they
10:43
had to take Susan's word on this, and later on
10:46
they couldn't prove this ever happened, which is bad enough
10:49
like that they have to take her word for it,
10:51
and it's like, why were the records not pulled? It's
10:54
just so bad. So anyway, when police go to Reuben's house,
10:57
they do a visual inspection and they find three articles
11:01
about Kristen's disappearance, including one under Ruben's mattress, another one
11:07
under Paul's mattress, and a third one I believe in
11:11
their kitchen. So like, this is just red flag after
11:14
red flag after red flag. But despite all of this
11:18
very suspicious shit, police choose not to dig up Ruben's yard,
11:22
which they had the right to do per that search warrant,
11:26
because it would have been too costly. Now this is
11:30
straight up shocking, and as we'll learn, this is one
11:34
of the biggest mistakes they ever made during this case.
11:38
So shortly after this search, Ruben and Susan get back
11:41
together and Susan decides to list her Branch Street home
11:45
for rent. A young couple with a new baby move
11:48
in and at first everything's cool. But pretty quickly this couple,
11:52
the Lasseters, start to notice some really weird shit going on. Now,
11:56
first they're getting a ton of mail from Susan or
11:59
for Susan, I'm from people begging her to tell police
12:02
what she knows. And to be clear, the Lasstters had
12:05
no idea whose home they were moving into or what
12:08
the case was. They were totally in the dark about
12:11
all of this. Now they start to realize what's going
12:14
on because people are sending postcards, so they're not like
12:17
opening her mail, but they're learning about the case. And
12:20
that's pretty shocking to think that people think that there's
12:24
a body buried in the yard where you live. You know,
12:26
it's a little weird. So obviously they know who Kristen
12:29
is now and things start to kind of come together
12:32
with the weirdnesses. Now, one of the things that happened
12:36
before they moved in is the family told them, you
12:39
guys can move into this house, but we have a
12:41
metal trash can. It's in the back corner. Please do
12:44
not touch it, Please do not use it now. By itself,
12:47
that's not actually that weird of a thing, like I
12:49
own a house in Oregon, and I have a shed
12:51
that I have all my stuff in, and I've asked
12:54
the renters not to touch it. They can't use it. It's
12:57
locked up. It's only for me. Do I have clues
12:59
about it, murder in there, potentially a body. No, I
13:02
do not. But I'm just kind of saying, like, just
13:05
asking them to stay away from a trash can is
13:08
really not that out of the ordinary or anything that
13:10
would set off a red flag for me unless I
13:13
knew all this other stuff. That being said, the Lassiters decided,
13:17
you know, we're gonna listen, We're not gonna mess with it.
13:19
Why do we care. It's just in the back of
13:20
the yard. And eventually, around late September nineteen ninety six,
13:25
Ruben came and he got the trash can and they
13:27
never see it again. However, a few days later, on
13:30
October first, Mary Lassiter, the wife living at the house
13:34
with the new baby, finds an earring on the ground
13:37
right in the path where Reuben had dragged the trash can.
13:40
Now knowing the case at this point, Mary called police
13:43
to report the earring and said that a large, scary
13:46
bald detective came to the house and basically threatened them
13:50
if they didn't turn it over, which like she's calling
13:53
you to turn it in, you don't need to threaten her.
13:57
So weird the way that these cops acted in literally
14:01
every situation. It's never correct. It's never correct. Anyway, Mary
14:06
turned the earring over, and believe it or not, she
14:10
was never contacted again. And unfortunately she didn't take a
14:14
photo of the earring, but she remembers what it looked
14:16
like to this day. And I'll just tell you now
14:19
that the police never opted to tell Kristen's family about
14:23
the earring, and when their family, her family did find
14:26
out about it and demanded to see it, the police
14:28
kept putting them off and putting them off, and finally,
14:31
when they couldn't put them off anymore, they admitted to
14:34
having not only lost the earring, but to have never
14:38
had entered it in to evidence. They admitted to never
14:42
having done that, So they lost the ear ring. They
14:45
didn't put into evidence, No photos were taken of it,
14:47
no mention of how it got turned in, where, when
14:50
or why, and when. The family was like one on
14:54
earth happened? They said, well, we looked at the earring
14:57
and there's no way it belonged to a young woman.
14:59
It was definitely the earring of a young child, which
15:03
is complete fucking bullshit. This earring, as described by Mary,
15:10
had a turquoise dot in the middle of a sort
15:12
of teardrop silver plate, which is absolutely something like I
15:17
would wear that. A lot of adults would wear that,
15:19
and especially in the nineties, that's very much like a
15:23
teen a teen's earring. That's something anybody would wear. And
15:26
what's almost funny, if it wasn't so ridiculous, is that
15:31
there are literally photos of Kristen wearing a necklace that
15:35
matches the earring, and these photos, some of them are
15:39
used on her missing person's flyers. So it's like, this
15:43
is the biggest like just fuck up of all the
15:49
fuck I mean, it's not the biggest, there's so many,
15:51
but it's just another like blatant misstep by the police
15:54
where they like tried to get this wrong. It's like, oh,
15:58
it's it's a kid's earring. Bunch of men in a
16:01
police department decided that, like you guys didn't even bother.
16:06
And the worst part of this is that Mary said
16:09
when she turned it in, she noticed there was a
16:12
brown fingerprint on the back brown, likely as in dried blood.
16:19
So just a very important piece of evidence missing and
16:23
gone forever now. Also, there's one more thing even crazier
16:29
than the earring, that took place while the Lasseters lived
16:31
at the Branch Street home, and this involved Mary's mother,
16:35
who would come over to stay the night to help
16:38
care for the newborn whenever Mary's husband would be gone
16:41
at work, either out of town or overnight, just kind
16:43
of working long hours. And I mention her mom because
16:46
I believe she was the first person to notice this.
16:49
And what she noticed was that every morning at four
16:51
twenty am, a loud beeping noise would start and it
16:56
would go for a few minutes at a time and
16:58
then finally stop. She and Mary described it as sounding
17:03
like a watch alarm and said that after some days
17:06
they decided to go outside and track down the noise
17:10
because it was coming from the yard. They got to
17:14
where they were hearing it. They were out there at
17:15
like four thirty am listening for this beeping and they
17:18
noticed that it was coming from the ground underneath one
17:22
of the planter boxes. The two women tried to dig
17:25
it up, but they couldn't get to it, and they
17:28
were like, this is fucking weird. So they called police
17:31
and told them, and you all can guess what happened next.
17:35
Absolutely nothing. Now, if we want to go, oh, that
17:40
could have been anything, blah blah blah blah blah. First
17:42
of all, yes, Kristen was wearing a watch, and second, yes,
17:46
her alarm would be set for four twenty am. And
17:49
the reason for this is that she had just recently
17:51
got a job as a lifeguard, and because she was
17:53
one of the newest employees, she was taking on whatever
17:55
shifts she could, which typically included very early morning shifts.
18:00
Nobody else wanted to work, so she would have to
18:03
set the alarm so that she could get to work
18:05
at five am or sometimes six am. So four twenty
18:09
makes a lot of sense. And in fact, if we're like, oh,
18:12
how do we know this, she had mentioned this to
18:14
her mother before she went missing, that she had to
18:17
get up super early and had to go to work,
18:20
And I think that could have been part of it.
18:22
Might've just been a normal conversation, or it might have
18:24
been part of her saying she wanted to come home,
18:26
But in any case, we know that she was getting
18:29
up early, that her watch was her alarm, and that
18:31
she was wearing it and the police did nothing. Now,
18:36
from here, Paul decides to enlist in the Navy, and
18:39
the Smart family becomes scared that he'll leave the country
18:41
and never be seen again. So to stop him from
18:44
being able to leave, they file a civil lawsuit over
18:46
Kristen's disappearance, and as a result, many witnesses and the
18:51
Flora's family are all deposed. Now that's when the police
18:54
sort of interview them to see if there's like a
18:57
case or to get information. Right, So this is when
18:59
the Smart family actually learn about the earring, which had
19:02
to be super frustrating because the earring was turned in
19:05
in early October nineteen ninety six and we're now at
19:08
the end of January nineteen ninety seven when they just
19:11
happened to find out about it. So, I mean, this
19:14
would have never even come up if they hadn't sued,
19:16
and if they hadn't been consistently involved with and pushing
19:19
the case, dragging the detectives along with them. Now, in
19:23
March nineteen ninety seven, Susan evicted the Lassiter family from
19:27
her home, likely after finding out they were cooperating with police,
19:31
and as a result, before the move. Mary Lassiter allows
19:34
police to search the home, which is technically hers while
19:37
she's renting it, so they didn't have to get a
19:39
search warrant to do this because the occupant of the
19:41
home was like, yeah, come search it, like fuck this lady.
19:44
Nothing is found, but they do bring cadaver dogs for
19:47
this search, and they alert to the area where the
19:49
metal trash can had previously been. Again, you can imagine
19:54
what the police do with this other circumstantial important I
19:58
don't even know what you would call. This doesn't matter
20:00
because they don't do anything. Now we're going to fast
20:02
forward to November nineteen ninety seven, and finally, because of
20:05
this lawsuit, Paul Flores is deposed. Now you can go
20:09
to YouTube and watch this video if you want to
20:11
get really, really frustrated and really understand just even in
20:16
his just the way he speaks, this man is just
20:18
the worst. So what he does is they ask him
20:22
probably fifty questions, and every single question he answers exactly
20:26
the same way. On the advice of my attorney, I
20:29
plead the fifth. He said something longer than that, like
20:31
the stud of California, blah blah blah blah, some bullshit
20:34
you'd think I'd have it memorized because I've watched it,
20:36
but like I'm trying to forget. But anyway, if you
20:39
want to watch this deposition of Paul, you can go
20:42
on YouTube. Now. From here, a lot of little things happen.
20:46
So his parents are both deposed at this time, and
20:48
a lot more infortiation comes out, but it's stuff that
20:51
I'm going to kind of leave out because again there's
20:53
a bunch of rabbit holes, and for the purpose of
20:54
this podcast, I just want to stay on, you know,
20:57
the high level. So after this step is they don't
21:01
really charge Paul. I don't think much comes of it,
21:03
but Susan does move out again and moves back to
21:07
the Branch Street house and also gets herself a boyfriend
21:09
named Mike McConville. Now, I don't know what the relationship
21:14
is between Mike and Susan and Ruben at this point,
21:18
but I feel like they're the three Musketeers. And it's
21:20
really really strange because Susan and Ruben are still seemingly
21:24
very close, and then Mike is kind of cool with
21:27
this and also close with them, and it's my opinion
21:31
that they're all involved in this and It's just very
21:33
very strange that a man who was not there when
21:36
this happened would choose to get into a relationship with
21:39
somebody who's a part of this crime and make himself
21:42
a part of it. So very very strange to me. Anyway.
21:46
In addition to getting herself a new boyfriend and moving
21:48
back to Branch Street, she also builds an entire garage
21:52
on top of the area where the dog's alerted. Is
21:55
this a coincidence? I don't think so, But again, nothing's done.
22:00
Now we're in the year two thousand and police get
22:02
yet another search warrant and are able to search Susan's
22:05
yard using ground penetrating radar. In the warrant, they straight
22:09
up say that Paul killed Kristen, not that they believe
22:13
it that it happened, and that they have reason to
22:16
believe her body is in Susan's yard. Now they do
22:19
this ground penetrating radar and they don't find anything, and
22:23
they choose not to dig up the planters where the
22:26
beeping watch had been reported. I don't know why. I
22:31
don't know why. I think what it was is I
22:34
want to explain. So the radar is supposed to find
22:37
large anomalies in the dirt, which in this case means
22:41
disturbances like if the ground had been dug up because
22:45
the body was in there, so shy of finding that,
22:48
they didn't see the use in digging up the yard,
22:51
but like, what if it was just her clothing buried
22:54
there and her body was somewhere else, which spoiler alert,
22:58
that's probably the case. But I mean, knowing an earring
23:01
was found, knowing the watch was beeping from underground, which,
23:05
by the way, the battery eventually died and it stopped beeping.
23:08
But you know, having all this information should have been
23:11
enough for them to use that warrant to do the
23:13
fucking work. But again, all of this is par for
23:16
the course with these people, so of course they don't
23:19
dig up anything, and that's kind of it. So now
23:22
we're going to jump forward again to May two thousand
23:25
and two. Paul is sentenced to eight months in jail
23:27
for violating his probation for multiple DUIs by drinking in
23:32
a bar. So he's not allowed to drink as part
23:35
of his probation. But a lot of people who know
23:37
him has said it was very well known that he
23:40
was an alcoholic, and so he couldn't stop himself from drinking.
23:44
And I think also, as we'll find out later, he
23:47
had another reason. He was going to bars all the time,
23:49
but he got himself into little trouble and ended up
23:52
in jail for eight months. This same month, in May,
23:55
and exactly on May twenty fifth, Kristen Smart's family have
24:00
her declared legally dead, six years to the day that
24:04
she went missing. Now we're gonna scoot forward again another
24:08
three years to two thousand and five, when the Flora's family,
24:11
and specifically Susan, but both Susan and Rubin, sue the
24:16
Smart family for harassment. And now they do this because
24:19
there's a man who's not actually associated with the Smart
24:21
family really who's decided to come to town. And he's
24:25
not a detective or anything. He's just like a citizen.
24:28
But he wants to crack this case. So he sits
24:31
outside of Susan's house, takes photos of her, takes photos
24:34
of Mike, takes photos of Paul, takes photos of her house.
24:37
He makes a website about it. His first one is
24:39
called Son of Susan. The next one, I think is
24:42
called Dig Up the Backyard. And the Flora's family blames
24:46
the Smart family for his actions and basically the harassment
24:50
and the trauma and whatever. So this is silly and baseless,
24:54
but it does open up her home for yet another
24:57
search to prove this man's actions are unfound, which would
25:01
make the lawsuit legitimate. Now police again go in with radar,
25:05
but this time they're not permitted to search the area
25:07
with the planter boxes, which is wild that they would
25:10
even agree to that, because like, what's the point. Now,
25:13
they do note that the garage built after the fact
25:15
did make it difficult to get a good reading of
25:17
Susan's yard, and again this is so frustrating. They opt
25:22
to not search Ruben's yard as they don't want to
25:25
clear the brush on the property because that would be
25:28
hard work. So even though once again they have the
25:33
opportunity to use ground penetrating radar in Ruben's yard to
25:39
dig it up, they choose not to and they find nothing. Now,
25:45
I wasn't totally sure where to add this note, so
25:47
I'll just put it here. In the beginning of this case,
25:50
very early on, the Flora's family had offered to have
25:53
Paul show police where Kristen's body was if in return,
25:59
he could do I believe manslaughter. Now, this never came
26:03
to fruition, as I think they withdrew the offer before
26:05
the Smart family could respond. But I just wanted to
26:08
put that out there because of all this is like,
26:11
I don't know how to better express that. This is
26:13
just a formality that this man got to be free
26:17
for so many years before going to prison for something
26:19
everybody knew he did. So I just wanted to call
26:22
that out because that is a fact of this case,
26:25
is that that conversation took place between the attorneys. But unfortunately,
26:29
before the family could decide if they were okay with that,
26:33
it got taken off the table. Now, jumping forward to
26:36
twenty sixteen, a new sheriff is in town literally and
26:40
his name is Ian Parkinson, and as a result, there
26:42
was a renewed interest in the case. Now this time police,
26:46
you know, they come out and they're like, we're gonna
26:48
we're gonna solve this. We're gonna make this happen, we
26:51
promised the family, and the family seems really happy with
26:54
this guy and his administration, which they were not happy
26:57
with anybody else prior to this, which is total, totally fair. Now,
27:01
for whatever reason, the Sheriff's office. They dig up an
27:05
area on campus and they are looking for Kristen's body there,
27:11
and I remember listening to your own backyard and being like,
27:15
why would they do that? And he kind of wondered
27:18
the same thing. And all they could think of was like,
27:20
they must have had good information to do this, because
27:22
that's really random. So maybe they thought that her body
27:25
never actually left campus, which is a little strange to
27:28
me because no kad averdog's ever alerted anywhere but Paul's room,
27:33
So I don't know, but in any case, that was
27:36
kind of their first big thing that they did. They
27:39
still did not dig up Paul's yard, and they still
27:41
had not dug up Susan's yard. But here we are
27:43
digging up the campus. After this, you know, maybe they're
27:47
working it, but there's nothing really coming out publicly. So
27:49
we're going to fast forward again to twenty nineteen, when
27:52
things really start to get serious again regarding this case.
27:56
And this is because finally someone who gives a shit,
27:59
pod caster and journalist Chris Lambert releases an extremely well
28:04
researched podcast about the case, which uncovers new evidence and
28:09
shines a light on the absolutely dismal job all police
28:12
departments did on this case. At the time this comes out,
28:16
Paul Flores is living in the South Bay, but his
28:19
parents are both still in their Arroyo Grande homes. It's
28:23
later found out that Paul's parents are paying his bills
28:27
and likely paid for his house, because this guy is,
28:30
above all else a complete fuck up. Anyway, after immense
28:35
public pressure to finally do their fucking goddamn jobs, the
28:38
police recover Paul Floras his truck and his father's old
28:41
truck as well. And I didn't really get into all
28:43
of that about the trucks, but basically they were likely
28:46
used to transport Kristen's body, and Reuben told a bunch
28:49
of lies about the trucks, and then the family quote
28:52
unquote like the either sold or were quote unquote stolen
28:56
before police could could search them, which, to be clear,
28:59
police said ample time to do so before the family
29:01
disappeared them in these various ways. But nearly twenty five
29:05
years later, it comes out that they have found the
29:07
vehicles and they are searching them. Now. I don't know
29:10
if anything came of this, but I do know that
29:13
on top of searching the cars, police also get search
29:16
warrants for all three of the Flora's homes, including Paul's
29:20
down in the South Bay, and in his home they
29:23
find some very serious shit. And this part is what
29:28
makes me so extra angry, because if the police had
29:32
done their jobs in the first place, Paul would not
29:36
have had twenty five plus years to do all of
29:40
these horrible things. What he liked to do in his
29:43
spare time, and what that was was to drug and
29:46
rape women that he met at various bars. And we
29:51
know he did this for a fact, not only because
29:55
several came forward with stories about his doing this to them,
29:58
but because he had multiple, multiple video recordings of himself
30:03
raping these women in his home while they were either
30:06
completely passed out or clearly so out of it they
30:09
couldn't advocate for themselves or fight him off. These rapes
30:13
often included a ballgag, which multiple women reported experiencing because
30:19
many of them that came forward were awake enough to
30:23
sort of remember pieces. These rapes also included sodomy, and
30:29
one woman said that even though she agreed to come
30:34
home with him and spend the night with him willingly,
30:37
he still drugged her by giving her a glass of
30:40
water once they got to his house. So this was
30:42
something that he wanted to do. He wanted to have
30:46
these women incapacitated. He wanted to have this control over them.
30:51
He did not want consensual sex. He wanted to hurt women,
30:56
and this is what he did for twenty five years.
30:59
And I also note this is really important to the
31:01
narrative of what likely went down the night that Kristin died,
31:05
because after this all came out, excuse me, women from
31:10
before Kristin's disappearance came forward with similar stories of either
31:14
being drugged by him or seeing other women being drugged
31:18
by him at parties. So this was a pattern that
31:21
likely started before Kristin and continued even after she was murdered,
31:26
because he doesn't fucking care. He didn't get caught for
31:29
her murder, so he's going to keep risking women's lives
31:32
to do these horrible things to him because there's something
31:34
deeply fucking wrong with him. And remember in part one
31:38
when I said she was presumably drunk at the party
31:40
and that's why she was passed out. Things change a
31:43
bit when you realize that Paul was essentially stalking her
31:46
the entire night, and that she was so out of it.
31:49
She could barely walk, and as a reminder, her friend
31:53
said that she had had one drink prior to attending
31:56
the party and she'd only been at the party for
31:58
about two hours. Unless she had been doing back to
32:01
back shots, which nobody reported seeing her do, It's very
32:05
likely that Paul drugged her so that he could rape her.
32:09
It's also very likely that something happened during the rape
32:13
that led to him killing her. My thought is that
32:16
she was able to fight back, unlike the other women,
32:19
because she's larger than a lot of the other women.
32:23
She's over six feet tall, so he probably didn't give
32:25
her enough drugs to fully put her out, and so
32:29
she was able to fight him back, hence the scratches,
32:32
hence the black eye. I mean, that's just my thought.
32:35
And clearly Paul is a very violent person with no
32:39
qualms about hurting women in any way. So if I
32:42
had to guess, I would say he probably strangled her
32:44
to death in a fit of rage, then called his
32:47
father to help him dispose of her body. And on
32:50
the topic of burying Kristen's body with Reuben's help, one
32:55
other very important thing to note is that in February
32:57
of twenty twenty, after your own backyard came out and
33:01
when the heat really turns up on the Flora's family,
33:05
neighbors reported hearing three people in Rubin's yard arguing and
33:11
digging in the middle of the night, underneath his deck.
33:17
Chris Lambert reported this and got everyone's attention. And this
33:21
is extremely frustrating because really the focus was always on
33:24
Susan's yard because of the earring and the watch. But
33:27
like I said earlier, maybe they buried Kristen's clothing and
33:31
maybe Paul's two at Susan's house and put Kristen's body
33:36
in Ruben's house in his yard. Well never know for
33:39
sure because the police are trash. But in twenty twenty one,
33:42
about a year after this incident, police got another warrant
33:45
to search Ruben's yard and found a large disturbance more
33:49
than six feet long and four feet wide and four
33:53
feet deep in the far corner under his deck. They
33:58
tested the soil there and found evidence of human remains
34:01
through staining on the dirt. Kristin had been there the
34:05
entire time, and police gave the family every chance to
34:10
move her before they were found out, and the family
34:12
took that opportunity. Her body has still never been found. Finally,
34:22
in April twenty twenty one, after this digging, after they
34:26
go to Reuben's yard, Paul Flores was finally arrested for
34:31
the murder of Kristin Smart, with Reuben Flores arrested as
34:35
an accessory after the fact. The trial took place in
34:39
the summer and fall of twenty twenty two, spanning multiple weeks,
34:43
and luckily Chris Lambert was able to report on the trial,
34:45
despite the defense attorney attempting to make him a witness,
34:48
which would have made him unable to be present for
34:50
the trial. Because of your witness you can't watch the
34:53
trial because it can affect your testimony. Anyway, The trial
34:57
is crazy, and I'll just say the defense attorney has
34:59
no soul and no morals or shame in my opinion.
35:03
In my opinion, But luckily, after I believe eleven weeks
35:06
or so, Paul Flores was in fact found guilty of
35:10
Kristen's murder and subsequently sentenced to twenty five years to
35:15
life in prison. If you want trial coverage again, your
35:18
own Backyard Podcast is a fantastic resource for this. Now,
35:22
these trials were held concurrently but with two different juries,
35:27
and while Paul Flores's jury found him guilty, Ruben somehow
35:32
was found not guilty, which haunts me, but I take
35:36
solace in knowing that he and Susan's lives have been
35:39
strayed up ruined by this case, and they deserve it now. Unfortunately,
35:45
I don't believe that Kristen Smart's body will ever be found.
35:49
The police gave Reuben twenty plus years to research the
35:53
best way to dispose of her body should he ever
35:55
need to move her, and I'm sure that he took
35:58
plenty of notes and did it in a way that
36:02
is permanent, and that's really really upsetting. I will also
36:06
note that Paul is appealing his case and has a
36:08
host of silly reasons, but it is going to court
36:11
next month, October twenty twenty five, so we'll see how
36:14
that goes. For now, he has not been charged with
36:17
the rape of any of his victims from the videos,
36:20
but I have a strong feeling that if the state
36:22
believed he would be released, they would go after him there.
36:25
I find it interesting that La County never did to
36:27
begin with, but they do have that back pocket, so
36:31
I feel good that he will remain behind bars, hopefully forever.
36:35
I did also want to note that he's been stabbed
36:38
in prison, we'll say shanked a couple of times. And
36:41
if you guys remember when I did Roger Kibbi, his
36:44
death was actually at the hands of another inmate. That
36:47
same inmate stabbed Paul Flores in prison. I don't really
36:53
feel bad about that, you know, I can't say that
36:57
I care, but I did want to note that because again,
37:00
it's another way that the cases kind of tie together.
37:02
I guess the prison community is smaller than we think.
37:06
Paul's sister, by the way, I know I mentioned her
37:08
a couple of times. She bailed out. She went to
37:10
Washington to get away from all of this, and I
37:12
don't blame her. That being said, she is a cagy
37:15
jerk about the whole thing. I have a feeling she
37:18
knows more than she's letting on. She refuses to talk
37:20
to anybody about it, and you know, being born into
37:24
that family, raised by that family, I can't expect she's
37:26
a very happy person. But anyway, as for Kristen's legacy,
37:32
it continues on through her amazing family and friends who
37:35
have helped pass legislation to protect students on campuses nationwide,
37:39
have set up scholarships in her name, and have celebrations
37:43
of life for her yearly. I would like to think
37:47
that her memory inspires people to travel, to learn to
37:54
be kind to others, and also on a more practical level,
37:59
don't leave of your friends at parties. I know I've
38:02
done it. I've done it more than once. It's so easy,
38:04
it's so innocent. Nothing's going to happen, right, and if
38:08
it does, I want to reiterate it's not your fault,
38:10
but the best way to keep it from happening is
38:13
to stick together, even if it seems like everything's going
38:16
to be okay. So anyway, that's the case of the
38:20
murder of Kristen Smart. If there are any big case updates,
38:23
I will definitely let you guys know. My hope is
38:27
that this appeal is going to get thrown in the
38:29
trash and that'll kind of be the end of that.
38:31
Ruben is I think eighty two years old at this point,
38:33
so hopefully he dies soon. And I really hope that
38:36
they do eventually dig up Susan's yard underneath those fucking
38:40
planter boxes, because I think they would find some stuff
38:42
down there that they could use as leverage to find
38:45
out what happened to Kristen's body. So anyway, that's all
38:49
for this week. Thanks everybody for tuning in, liking, rating, reviewing,
38:54
sharing with your friends and family. I'd really love to
38:56
see this little podcast grow. Shout out to Dark Network
39:00
for being the best little network in the world. When
39:03
I was out for a few months, they were more
39:05
understanding than I could have ever imagined and welcomed me
39:08
back with open arms. If you are a podcaster and
39:12
you need to join a network, get you one like that,
39:14
because they're the best. So that's all. Thanks again everybody,
39:18
and until next week, stay safe.