Ruben Flores jury out for deliberation in Kristin Smart murder trial

The fate of Paul and Ruben Flores now rests in the hands of their separate juries, following the final round of closing arguments in the Kristin Smart murder trial on Wednesday.

After Paul Flores’ jury began deliberating in the Kristin Smart murder trial on Tuesday, closing arguments concluded in his father’s case on Wednesday, with San Luis Obispo County Deputy District Attorney Chris Peuvrelle highlighting what he believes to be Ruben Flores’ role in the cover-up of Smart’s murder.

Paul Flores, is on trial for allegedly killing Smart in 1996 after an off-campus Cal Poly party. Ruben Flores is alleged to have helped his son conceal the crime for the past 26 years.

The two have been on trial for more than three months.

“One thing you’ll have to find is in order for someone to be an accessory to a crime, there needs to be a crime,” Peuvrelle told the jury on Wednesday, before highlighting evidence that he believes shows Paul Flores’ guilt.

Harold Mesick, Ruben Flores’ defense attorney, said there is “no evidence” tying his client or Paul Flores to Smart’s murder, and asked jurors to look at the evidence critically.

Ruben Flores’ jury is expected to begin deliberations after some instructions at 1:30 p.m.

‘Ruben Flores would do anything to help his son,’ prosecutor says

Peuvrelle’s closing arguments for Ruben Flores were similar to the arguments he gave for Paul Flores, because in order to prove Ruben Flores helped conceal a crime, Ruben Flores’ jury first has to determine a crime occurred.

“It’s been 1,370 Sundays since Paul Flores called his dad for help, because Paul Flores knew his dad would help him no matter what,” Peuvrelle told jurors. “It’s also been 1,370 Sundays since Stan and Denise Smart were waiting for the phone call that would never come.”

Phone records Peuvrelle presented to the jury show Paul Flores called his father twice the week Smart went missing — once on the morning of May 26, 1996 — the morning Smart’s roommate first realized she never came home — and again on May 28, 1996, after San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office Det. Mike Kennedy interviewed Paul Flores in his dorm room.

Peuvrelle noted that Kennedy testified Paul Flores was nervous, with his “heart pounding underneath his T-shirt,” according to his report, despite being “cool as a cucumber” when interviewed earlier that same day by a Cal Poly Police Department officer at his work.

“What’s the difference? Kennedy interviewed Paul Flores in his dorm room, right next to Paul Flores’ bed where days earlier Kristin’s lifeless body was,” Peuvrelle said.

The prosecutor said the only logical reason for Paul Flores to call his father immediately after being interviewed by Kennedy is to warn him that investigators were onto them, “which tells you Ruben Flores would do anything to help his son, and tells you, the jury, that Ruben Flores has been helping him for 26 years.”

Peuvrelle also noted Paul Flores did not call 911, because, “the help he needed was not from when 911 would arrive — the help he needed was to get away with murder, which is why he called Ruben Flores.”

Prosecutor: Ruben Flores had ‘dig the yard’ on his to-do list

A search warrant carried out at Ruben Flores home found a “smorgasbord of items” relating to Smart, Peuvrelle said.

The items were found in his bedroom — and were not hate mail, like the defense claims, the prosecutor said. Items included Smart’s missing posters, an essay contest to honor Smart’s memory and a copy of The Tribune newspaper from 2014, with a headline that the case was “back on the county’s radar.”

Also found in Ruben Flores bedroom was what resembled a to-do list, with the phrase “dig the yard” at the top, Peuvrelle showed the jury.

“The fact that that’s on top shows you that was their number one priority,” Peuvrelle told Ruben Flores’ jury.

The prosecutor went on to say that underneath Ruben Flores’ deck is “the perfect hiding spot,” adding that the soil anomaly found there was the only one with a surface disturbance.

That anomaly “just happened to be 6 feet tall — Kristin’s height — just happened to be 4 feet wide — consistent with the width of a human body — and happened to be 4 feet deep — consistent with a clandestine grave,” Peuvrelle said.

The anomaly also had staining consistent with a decomposing human body, and soil samples taken from that staining tested positive for human blood, Peuvrelle said.

The samples that tested positive also had fibers that matched what Smart was wearing the nigh she disappeared — a gray top, black shorts and red shoes.

But there wasn’t anything to compare the fibers to “because Ruben Flores is still hiding the body,” Peuvrelle said, turning to point at Ruben Flores. “Maybe someday we’ll get a comparison.”

Peuvrelle claimed Ruben Flores also guarded the deck closely — ushering away Angela Carrizel from the deck quickly, keeping four golden retrievers underneath and not allowing a plumber to go underneath the deck.

He also said when Stan Smart, Smart’s father, arrived at Ruben Flores’ home to talk father-to-father following his daughter’s disappearance, Ruben Flores ran to the middle of the street to keep Stan Smart away from the deck, and told him he “better leave or someone might get shot.”

And the final piece of evidence against Ruben Flores? He admitted to committing a felony himself, Peuvrelle said.

San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office Detective Clint Cole and San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office Investigator James “J.T.” Camp carried out a search warrant on May 19, 2021, to collect DNA samples from Ruben Flores, Susan Flores (Ruben Flores’ ex-wife and Paul Flores’ mother), and Mike McConville, Susan Flores’ boyfriend.

In response to seeing the names of his ex-wife and her boyfriend on the warrant, Flores said: “They haven’t committed no felonies,” after a pause adding “only me,” jurors heard in an audio recording of the exchange.

Ruben Flores then quickly corrected himself, saying he is the only one who had been arrested.

“It is obvious Paul Flores killed Kristin Smart, and it is obvious Ruben Flores helped him bury the body,” Peuvrelle said.

Peuvrelle told jurors the only truthful verdict is one finding Ruben Flores guilty of helping his son conceal a murder.

Paul Flores was doing a ‘good deed,’ walking Kristin Smart home, defense says

Mesick began the defense’s closing argument by asking the jury if they got all the answers they needed, or if they had more questions than answers.

“That wouldn’t be surprising,” Mesick said. “Kristin Smart is still missing and we don’t have answers.”

He said trial by jury is the “spinal cord of democracy,” and that jurors are “the finders of fact.”

He said Ruben Flores is a generous and kind mind despite how he was portrayed by the prosecution.

Mesick said another thing he loves about the trial by jury system is the presumption of innocence — yet the state has been “demonizing” Paul Flores and his client.

“These men are not evil, my client especially,” the defense attorney said.

Mesick said if you take away the perspective that Paul Flores is guilty and look at the events of the May 25, 1996 party from the perspective that he is innocent, Paul Flores actually did some good deeds.

Paul Flores helped Smart up after she fell at the party, and he helped her walk home late at night, Mesick said. He helped keep her warm on their walk home, and when he got Smart so close to her dorm she could see it, the two parted ways.

“He was doing a good deed,” Mesick said. “He wasn’t hunting her, he was helping her.”

He said there was no evidence Paul Flores raped or killed Smart, and that Ruben Flores and Paul Flores being wrongfully convicted for her murder would not bring her justice, because no one would know what happened to Smart 26 years ago.

When it came to Paul Flores’ phone records on Memorial Day weekend 1996, Mesick said he called his father to get dinner and work on removing his car stereo so he could sell it.

There wasn’t a 911 call because there was no reason for one, Mesick said. “He went home, threw up and slept off his hangover.”

“Don’t start your analysis from perspective that he’s evil — start it from the perspective he is innocent,” Mesick said.

Defense: Smart being alive is reasonable, but not likely

Mesick said there’s evidence to support the “reasonable inference” that Kristin Smart may still be alive: She wasn’t happy at Cal Poly, didn’t want to go to University of California Santa Barbara, she wanted to travel and be a model and she only had one real friend at Cal Poly, Margarita Campos.

He also said she lied “all the time,” and told jurors to read the “buckle-up, buttercup” letter Denise Smart, Smart’s mother, wrote her daughter weeks before she disappeared.

“Without a body, there’s no evidence that Kristin Smart is actually dead,” Mesick said.” I know that’s the most likely situation, but there’s still a chance she’s alive and missing.”

Mesick said jurors would be forced to use their “imagination” for the prosecution’s theory to make sense, and it’s a theory that has been changing and building for 26 years.

“Don’t do the state’s work for them,” Mesick told jurors, adding that they shouldn’t have to fill in the blanks themselves because it’s the prosecution’s job is to present evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

He said Ruben Flores was never guarding his deck at any point. When he directed Carrizel away from the deck, it was to avoid her stepping in dog poop, and his roommate was allowed under the deck, just not under the house.

And if golden retrievers were kept under the deck and the grave site was allegedly only four-feet deep, wouldn’t the dogs have dug up the body, Mesick asked.

“I know mine would,” he said.

Defense casts doubts on forensic evidence

Mesick said the physical evidence in this case was nonexistent, and the forensics shown to jurors throughout the case prove no different.

He noted that David Carter, a human decomposition expert called by the defense, said the staining could be lamellae, a soil pattern common on the Central Coast in sand with high iron.

If Smart’s body had really been in that hole underneath his client’s deck for 25 years, Mesick said, there would have been about nine gallons of bodily fluid expressed, meaning “much greater staining and overwhelming evidence.”

“We have zero evidence in this case, let alone overwhelming (evidence),” Mesick said

He noted that Angela Butler, the forensic DNA analyst who tested soil samples from underneath Ruben Flores’ deck, could not find DNA or a blood type in the samples that tested positive for human blood.

“I don’t know if it’s ferret blood, higher primate blood or human blood,” Mesick said. “But it was not Kristin Smart’s blood.”

He said the tests were “specifically invalid” for blood in soil for a long period of time, which did misstate what forensic DNA consultant Elizabeth Johnson testified.

Johnson said there were not any validation studies that could speak to the test’s accuracy on blood in soil for a long period of time.

Mesick said cadaver dog alerts are meant to help find evidence and that dog alerts alone were not evidence. They should not be used to place Smart inside Paul Flores’ dorm room, he said.

There were also several excavations, many because of dog alerts, that came up with no evidence, Mesick said, including a 60-feet-by-40-feet excavation in Huasna that occurred because of three alerts.

“That’s not how we convict people in America,” he said.

He added that no physical human remains had ever been found — only animal bones on two occasions.

What the prosecution says was Ruben Flores’ admission to felonies was actually a “slip of the tongue” — something prosecutors rely on when they are “desperate and have no physical evidence,” Mesick said.

“There’s no real restraints on how you view this evidence, but don’t get pushed into connecting the dots that don’t even exist,” Mesick told jurors.

Prosecutor: ‘No chivalry in sexual violence’

In his response to Mesick’s arguments, Peuvrelle said there was no way Ruben Flores’ supposed admission could be a “slip of the tongue” — Ruben Flores knew investigators were coming to swab DNA, so it wasn’t a surprise.

“There’s no chivalry in sexual violence,” Peuvrelle said. “You think Rhonda Doe thought Paul Flores did a good deed? Did Sarah Does think Paul Flores did a good deed?”

He also said the argument that the prosecution’s case was “imagination” was “absurd.”

“Were all 50 witnesses using imagination? Were the dogs using imagination?” he asked. “It is so absurd to say you need to use imagination. They clearly did not sit through the same three-month trial we all did.”

He said the expert witnesses called by the prosecution were “the best in their fields,” while the defense expert witnesses were unreliable.

Johnson hasn’t worked in a lab for 29 years and has never used the blood test used by Butler in an accredited lab, Peuvrelle said. He added that a validation study for what occurred in the case would be impossible because they would have to have a body buried for 25 years, remove it and then test the soil 14 months later.

He added that Carter was not an expert in archaeology, and could not visually confirm humans remains were there, “which is actually obvious because in order to confirm human remains you need to see a body.”

Carter also only learned of lamellae when asked to work on this case, and had only read about it, Peuvrelle said. He added that Carter agreed the person best positioned to qualify the grave site was someone who saw it in person — which the prosecution had.

He added that if the yard really had had lamellae, and its high iron content is what the blood test was reacting to, Ruben Flores’ yard “would look like a bloodbath.”

But the control samples tested negative for human blood, Peuvrelle said.

“Your standard is above a reasonable doubt,” he said. “I ask you for a truthful verdict that Ruben Flores is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”