LOS ANGELES (AP) — The final man seen with Kristin Smart was convicted Tuesday of killing the school freshman, who vanished from a California campus 25 years in the past.
Jurors unanimously discovered Paul Flores responsible of first-degree homicide, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported. A jury in a separate trial discovered his father, Ruben Flores, not responsible of fees of being accent to homicide after the very fact for allegedly serving to to hide the crime.
The conflicting verdicts have been learn moments aside in the identical courtroom.
Smart disappeared from California Polytechnic State University over Memorial Day weekend in 1996. Her remains were never found.
Prosecutors preserve the youthful Flores, now 45, killed the 19-year-old throughout an tried rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room at Cal Poly, the place each have been first-year college students. He was the final particular person seen with Smart as he walked her house from an off-campus social gathering the place she grew to become intoxicated.
His father, now 81, allegedly helped bury the slain pupil behind his house within the close by neighborhood of Arroyo Grande and later dug up the stays and moved them.
Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe thanked the jurors for his or her service after the responsible verdict within the homicide case was introduced.
“I wish to express to you the appreciation and that of the parties for your service in this case,” she stated. “It is a great personal sacrifice to serve as a juror. … You have been very attentive and conscientious throughout this case.”
The son’s protection lawyer, Robert Sanger, had tried to pin the killing on another person — noting that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted at a sensational trial of killing his pregnant spouse and the fetus she was carrying — was additionally a Cal Poly pupil on the time.
Daniel Dreifuss / Monterey County Weekly through AP, Pool
During his closing arguments, Sanger advised jurors that no tried rape occurred and he forged doubt on testimony from witnesses, together with a pupil who was in Smart’s dorm who testified to seeing Flores in Smart’s room.
He additionally referred to forensic proof provided by the prosecution as “junk science.”
“This case was not prosecuted for all these years because there’s no evidence,” Sanger stated. “It’s sad Kristin Smart disappeared, and she may have gone out on her own, but who knows?”
Paul Flores had lengthy been thought-about a suspect within the killing. He had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He advised them he received it enjoying basketball with buddies, who denied his account, in line with courtroom data. He later modified his story to say he bumped his head whereas engaged on his automotive.
However, the daddy and son have been solely arrested in 2021 after the case was revived.
Investigators carried out dozens of fruitless searches for Smart’s physique over twenty years however up to now two years they turned their consideration to Ruben Flores’ house about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Cal Poly in the neighborhood of Arroyo Grande.
Behind latticework beneath the deck of his massive home on a useless finish avenue, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 discovered a soil disturbance concerning the measurement of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors stated. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA pattern.
The trial was held in Salinas, 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of San Luis Obispo, after a choose granted a protection request to maneuver it. The protection argued that it was unlikely the Flores’ may obtain a good trial with a lot a lot notoriety within the metropolis of about 47,000 individuals.