Opening statement start today in the trial of Paul Flores and his father, Ruben Flores, for the 1996 murder of California college student Kristin Smart

Paul Flores and Kristin Smart both 19, were both freshmen at Cal Poly in 1996 when she vanished

Paul Flores, now 45, is accused of killing Smart after ‘he tried to rape her in college dorm before his dad helped him move her body

Flores was the last person seen with Smart on May 25, 1996 as he walked her home from an off-campus party where she got intoxicated

25 years later, police archeologists found soil disturbance the size of a casket and human blood in soil beneath the deck in his father’s backyard

The younger Flores is charged with murder charge along with his father, Ruben Flores, who is charged as an accessory for allegedly helping his son dispose of her body

Opening statement start today in the trial of Paul Flores and his father, Ruben Flores, for the 1996 murder of California college student Kristin Smart

Paul Flores, now 45, was the last person seen with Smart on May 25, 1996, when he helped walk her to her dorm at California Polytechnic State University

Ruben Flores, 81, his father, will be tried as an accessory, for allegedly helping his son conceal and dispose of the 19-year-old’s body 

A 45-year-old California man is finally on trial nearly three decades after he was first questioned over the death of fellow college student who vanished after he walked her back to her dorm from a campus party. 27 years later Paul Flores, faces possible sanction if convicted in the death of California college student Kristin Smart who has not been seen ‘s disappearance
The suspect and his father is standing trial for Smart’s murder.
Smart’s smiling face still looks out from a billboard decades after the college freshman vanished from a campus on California’s picturesque central coast in 1996. In the earlier days of after her disappearance, it once offered a $75,000 reward to help find the college student, but these days the billboard simply says: ‘Justice For Kristin.’
Smart was declared dead in 2002, but her body was never found. 

Paul Flores and Smart were both 19 year-old freshmen when she disappeared.
Smart was the last person to be seen with her at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. 
He will now stand trial more than a year after he was arrested on a murder charge along with his father, Ruben Flores, who is charged as an accessory for allegedly helping his son dispose of her body.
Opening statements are scheduled for Monday in Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas. The men have both pled not guilty. 
The younger Flores, prosecutors say, killed the 19-year-old during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996 in his dorm room at Cal Poly, where both were first-year students.
Ruben Flores, 81, allegedly helped bury the slain student behind his home in the nearby community of Arroyo Grande and later dug up the remains and moved them.

https://videopress.com/v/Rve3cob7?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

Paul Flores had long been considered a suspect in the killing, but prosecutors only arrested him and his father in April 2021, after the cold-case investigation was revived.
San Luis Obispo Sheriff Ian Parkinson acknowledged missteps by detectives over the years.
Parkinson credited a popular podcast about Smart’s disappearance called ‘Your Own Backyard’ for helping unearth new information and inspiring witnesses to speak with investigators.
Smart’s remains have never been found and the mystery of how she vanished will play an important role in the courtroom.

Investigators have conducted dozens of searches over two decades, but turned their attention in the past two years to Ruben Flores’ home about 12 miles south of the Cal Poly campus, in the community of Arroyo Grande.
In March 2021, while investigating the soil behind lattice work beneath the deck of Ruben Flores’ large house on a dead end street off Tally Ho Road, police archaeologists found a soil disturbance about the size of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said.
The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample. While a blood expert said it was human blood, the test used did not rule out the possibility it was from a ferret or ape, though court records said no remains of such an animal were found there.

Attorney James Murphy Jr., who has sued the father and son on behalf of Smart’s parents, scoffed at the idea that it was anything other than human blood.
‘The size of the area in which the blood was found would make it a prehistoric ferret that would be in Jurassic Park,’ Murphy said. ‘When was the last time you drove down Tally Ho Road in Arroyo Grande and saw a primate?’
The lawsuit Murphy filed against Ruben Flores alleged that ‘under cover of darkness,’ the father and unnamed accomplices moved the body four days after investigators searched his house in February 2020. Investigators didn’t conduct their dig beneath the deck until more than a year later.

San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Craig Van Rooyen ordered the pair to trial after a 22-day preliminary hearing in which he found a ‘strong suspicion’ the father and son committed the crimes they were charged with, that a grave existed under Ruben Flores’ deck and it once held Smart’s remains.
Prosecutors, defense lawyers and San Luis Obispo sheriff´s deputies are constrained by a court order prohibiting them from discussing the case.
Attorney Harold Mesick, who represents Ruben Flores, previously said the evidence unearthed was ambiguous. He said that soil under the deck had been dumped there after being excavated to lay a foundation nearby.
‘It was a hot mess because it´s been previously excavated.
‘If we even call it evidence, it is so minimal as to shock the conscience,’ Mesick said.
Paul Flores and Kristin Smart were both freshmen at Cal Poly in 1996 when she vanished. Flores was the last person seen with Smart on May 25, 1996 as he walked her home from an off-campus party where she got intoxicated.
He was staying in Santa Maria Hall and she was in Muir Hall, which are 0.2miles apart – a four minute walk

He downplayed his interactions with her when he first spoke with police three days later, saying she walked to her dorm under her own power, though other witnesses said that she had passed out earlier in the night and Flores helped hold her up as they walked back to campus.
Flores had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He told them he got it playing basketball with friends, who denied his account, according to court records. He later changed his story to say he bumped his head while working on his car.
At a preliminary hearing last year, prosecutors presented evidence that four cadaver dogs stopped at Flores´ room and alerted to the scent of death near his bed.
Van Rooyen prohibited prosecutors from presenting evidence alleging Paul Flores had a history of stalking, inappropriate touching and aggressive sexual behavior toward women, including allegations he drugged and raped four women in the Los Angeles area years after Smart disappeared.
Over the years, women dubbed Flores, ‘Chester the molester’ and ‘psycho Paul,’ according to a court document.

Judge Van Rooyen ruled in favor of a defense application for change of jurisdiction – to move the trial out of San Luis Obispo County – because it was unlikely the Flores’ could receive a fair trial with so much much notoriety in the city of about 47,000 people.
The case was moved 110 miles north to Salinas, a small city in the agricultural region where John Steinbeck set some of his best-known novels.
Defense attorney Robert Sanger maintains that the evidence remains the same as it did in the 1990s when Paul Flores was the prime suspect but never charged with a crime: ‘The evidence then and now is based on speculation and not proof of facts,’ Sanger said in court documents.
In the attempt to create a reasonable doubt defense, Sanger has tried to pin the killing on someone else, noting that Scott Peterson – who was later convicted at a sensational trial of killing his pregnant wife and the fetus she was carrying – was also a Cal Poly student at the time.
Trial Judge Jennifer O´Keefe – who is a year younger than Kristin Smart would be today – however, has barred suggestions of alternate suspects unless Sanger can provide evidence of their direct involvement. Paul was charged with first-degree murder. Ruben was charged with accessory after the fact to the crime of murder after he was accused of burying Smart’s body in his yard before moving it, prosecutors have said.
Both have pled not guilty and will be tried at the same time, but with separate juries for each defendant, who will rotate in and out of the courtroom, Court TV reports.
The trial is expected to last about four months.