With no body, case against Kristin Smart murder suspects opens Monday in California
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Kristin Smart was an adventurous and ambitious college student who dreamed of traveling the world before she disappeared without a trace while walking back to her dorm room one chilly night in 1996.
Now 26 years later, a trial is set to begin Monday for one of Kristin's fellow students and his father. Paul Flores is accused of killing Kristin during a rape or attempted rape in his dorm room. His father, Ruben Flores, is charged with helping his son get rid of her body. They have pleaded not guilty.
The trial will begin with jury selection, a process expected to take weeks.
Their arrest came in April 2021 after a hit podcast, "Your Own Backyard," renewed attention on the case and generated new leads and witnesses for police.
"Though Kristin will always live on in our hearts, missing her hugs, laughs and smiles is a heartache that never abates," her parents and two siblings said in a statement after the arrests. "We will now put our faith in the justice system, and move forward, comforted in the knowledge that Kristin has been held in the hearts of so many and that she has not been forgotten."
Will jurors hear other allegations against suspect in Smart's death?
On May 25, 1996, witnesses say, Kristin got drunk at a party about a 10-minute walk from her dorm room at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Two fellow students decided to walk her back to her dorm, and Paul Flores offered to join them.
When the other two students broke off from the group, Paul Flores told police he walked with her the rest of the way and never saw her again.
Prosecutors have charged Flores with murder, which they say he committed while raping or trying to rape Kristin in his dorm room. They are expected to ask the judge's permission to show jurors a video they say Paul Flores recorded of himself raping a drunken woman in Southern California.
Four women have told police that Flores drugged and raped them, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle said in court last year. Flores hasn't been charged with a crime stemming from those allegations.
“Paul Flores is a defendant who likes to rape and drug intoxicated women. That’s who he is,” Peuvrelle said.
Flores’ attorney, Robert Sanger, who also represented Michael Jackson in his 2005 molestation trial, said the government’s evidence against Flores amounts to a pile of innuendo. “There’s a lot more to this story.”
Whether the judge allows jurors to hear those allegations will be a major factor in the trial, said Jeffrey Stein, a longtime criminal defense attorney who has handled murder cases in San Luis Obispo and has been closely watching the Kristin Smart case.
"I'm sure that’s going to be a hot issue that will be fought over and becomes a real pivotal piece on both sides," he said.
If allowed, "it'll be probably some of the strongest evidence against the defendant," said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and a criminal law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
"It goes a long way toward characterizing his behavior and filling the gaps in the prosecution's case," she said. .
Physical evidence lacking 26 years after disappearance
One of the prosecution's other challenges is the fact that Kristin's body has never been found.
"Given the evidence as we know it now, it’s a tough case,” Levenson said. “Most cases are proved with circumstantial evidence, but jurors rely heavily on physical evidence. It’s a little tougher when you’re just asking the juror to make many inferences.”
Prosecutors also lack physical evidence from Paul Flores' dorm room because campus police didn't report her disappearance to the local sheriff's office until a month after the fact, theorizing that maybe she went camping over Memorial Day weekend.
By the time police did search his dorm, it had been cleaned out for the summer, though four separate cadaver dogs alerted to his room and no one else's in the building, Peuvrelle said in court.
Other evidence includes a photo that showed Flores with a black eye the week of Kristin's disappearance. Flores had conflicting stories about how he got it.
Additionally, prosecutors said traces of human blood were found under a deck behind Ruben Flores' home. That's where they believe her body was buried before being moved to another location.
When Kristin disappeared, it rocked the California communities where she grew up and went to college.
Judge's gag order could mute coverage in anxious community
Despite intense community interest, video cameras aren't being allowed in court, and the only way to watch is in person. Reporters are prohibited from audio recordings, so they will have to take incomplete notes of the proceedings by hand.
On top of that, a sweeping gag order has been in place on the case since April 2021. San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Craig Van Rooyen issued the order without explanation, barring attorneys, investigators, witnesses and judicial employees from speaking publicly about the case.
"I am truly stunned about the breadth and scope of this order," David Loy, an attorney with the First Amendment Coalition, said while reading the gag order for the first time. "It's an outrage."
In nearly 30 years of practicing law, Loy said, he hasn't seen such a stringent gag order.
"It basically says, 'Anyone who has anything to do with this case can't say anything about it,'" he said. "This is grotesquely overbroad and I think a clear violation of the First Amendment."
Loy said the order is clearly meant to protect the right to a fair trial for Paul and Ruben Flores, but that has to be balanced with the First Amendment.
"One need not be sacrificed for the other," he said. "It's obviously a high-profile case. but there are multiple other ways and means to protect the right to a fair trial."
That includes a change in venue, which was done in this case when it was moved 125 miles away to Salinas in Monterey County. Another major way is careful jury selection and clear directions to jurors to avoid media about the case.
Besides, gag orders aren't usually that effective, Levenson said.
"The media will always find a source," she said. "It might tone down some of the publications but it's not going to eliminate it, and it often leads to just more speculation."
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kristin Smart case opens in Salinas with father, son on trial in death
