A California man has been found guilty of murdering Polytechnic State University student Christine Smart, who went missing 26 years ago, but his father was acquitted of involvement in a crime cover-up. have become.
Paul Flores, now 45, was convicted of first-degree murder in a high-profile case that garnered national attention but remained unsolved for decades.
Flores’ father, Ruben Flores, 81, was acquitted by a separate jury for helping his son cover up the murder and burial of Smart’s body.
Paul Flores has long been a suspect in the case, and the last person known to see Smart alive during Memorial Day weekend in 1996 was a 19-year-old Caltech man. It was when a college freshman came home from an alcohol-fueled after-school party.
Prosecutors said he tried to rape her and killed her on the night of May 25, 1996, when they were both freshmen, possibly in his dorm room.
According to court records, when investigators interviewed him, young Flores had dark eyes and said he was playing pick-up basketball.
He said he hit his head while working on his car after a friend threw water on his story about the basketball game, according to court records.
Paul Flores’ attorney Robert Sanger said someone else killed Smart, and during the trial, Scott Peterson also said he was a student at the school at the time of the murder. In another high-profile case, he was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and her unborn baby.
Flores also denounced forensic evidence at the trial, calling it junk science.
“The case went unindicted for years because of the lack of evidence,” Sanger said. “It’s sad that Kristin Smart has gone missing. She may have gone out alone, but who knows?”
Ruben Flores has been accused of burying Smart in Arroyo Grande gardens, just over 10 miles from Calpoli. Investigators found disturbed soil and the presence of blood under Elder Flores’ deck, but could not link it to Smart through DNA testing.
Smart’s mother and sister cried for “a few minutes,” and his father and brother seemed “relieved” after Paul Flores’ sentence was read out in court, KSBY-TV reported.
Neither Paul nor Ruben Flores received any visible reaction as the verdict was read separately, according to the broadcaster.
The trial was held in Salinas because it was requested to be held out of jurisdiction to receive a fair trial based on the high-profile nature of the case. According to KSBY, the proceedings began in July, with dozens of witnesses running for office.
The jury in the murder case held deliberations for two weeks. Paul Flores faces 25 years to live when he was sentenced on December 9.
with post wire
