For years, Paul Flores was prime suspect in Kristin Smart’s murder. What cracked the case?

Former San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ed Williams told The Tribune in May 1997 that Kristin Smart’s murder would never be solved unless Paul Flores, the sole suspect in the case, admitted to law enforcement that he was responsible.

Flores still maintains his innocence more than 26 years later, but he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life for Smart’s murder.

Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe told Flores during his March sentencing that he is a “cancer to society,” and deserves to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The investigation saw more than two decades of starts, stops and stalls, but did not have the break it needed to pursue any legal action against Flores.

“Because of all the work that had been done, I felt that we just needed that break,” San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Parkinson told The Tribune. “All we need is (to) catch one break. Every time we thought we were getting somewhere, and it fell off.”

But then in 2019, everything changed.

Podcast helped obtain search warrant at Ruben Flores’ Arroyo Grande home, detective says

Clint Cole was working as a correctional officer in the San Luis Obispo County Jail when Smart first disappeared in 1996.

By 2017, he was a cold case detective for the Sheriff’s Office. Smart’s case landed on his desk in 2019.

“To be honest, I was like, ‘Oh, man, what am I going to do?’” Cole said of his reaction when he received the case. “This case is huge.”

Cole said it took him about a year to catch up to speed, but he wanted to approach the case in a way his predecessors hadn’t.

He said he prioritized speaking with witnesses who had only spoken with law enforcement a few times closer to Smart’s disappearance, or were mentioned in reports but not spoken to at all.

Interviewing someone that had already been interviewed 20 times wouldn’t find anything new, Cole said, and the case needed new information to move forward.

Cole had already tracked down a truck linked to the Flores family in Mexico when a new podcast called “Your Own Backyard” brought Smart’s story back into the national spotlight.

Podcast creator Chris Lambert released his first episode in September of 2019. He told The Tribune his goal originally was to simply document Smart’s story in a way that hadn’t before. That goal has since evolved to achieving full justice for Smart, which would be locating her remains, Lambert said.

Lambert’s podcast gained worldwide attention, and soon people were calling in tips about Flores. Lambert said he would always tell those who reached out to him to also reach out to law enforcement.

According to Cole, there were two key witnesses from Lambert’s podcast that helped push the investigation forward: David Stone and Jamilyn Holman.

One of the leading theories law enforcement had was that Smart’s body was buried beneath the deck at the home of Ruben Flores, Paul Flores’ father. But the Sheriff’s Office didn’t yet have probable cause to request a search warrant.

Stone was Ruben Flores’ ex-roommate of 10 years, and Holman was Ruben Flores’ neighbor. Stone told law enforcement Ruben Flores was protective of the area underneath his deck and would never let anyone — even a plumber — go there.

Holman told law enforcement that days after the FBI carried out a search warrant at Ruben Flores’ Arroyo Grande home on Feb. 5, 2020, she saw the Flores family backing a large trailer into the yard at the side of the deck. She also said she saw them yelling at each other outside the home.

Stone’s and Holman’s statements were “two huge components” in getting the probable cause they needed to search underneath the deck, Cole said.

Finding blood under Flores deck was ‘epiphany moment,’ sheriff says

It would be more than a year later before the Sheriff’s Office returned to carry out its two-day search warrant at the Arroyo Grande home on March 15 and 16 of 2021.

Archaeologists and cadaver dogs accompanied sheriff’s deputies on the first day, and after searching the entirety of Flores’ backyard with a ground-penetrating radar, one spot underneath the deck that piqued their interest.

The surface soil looked disturbed — Cole said he could see shovel marks — and cadaver dogs altered their behavior at the disturbance, although they did not fully alert to the scent of human remains.

Then, the ground-penetrating radar found an anomaly that measured 4 feet deep and 6 feet long — the size of a human grave.

That’s when sheriff’s deputies began to dig.

“When we first started seeing those stains, I thought we were going to find her. I was kneeling right there while they were clearing the soil. I really thought we were going to find her,” Cole said. “And then, obviously, we didn’t. So that was a little heartbreaking.”

One of the archaeologists, Cindy Arrington, said the staining was consistent with human decomposition. Sheriff Parkinson told Cole to send samples of the stained soil to the Serological Research Institute, a private forensic testing lab in Richmond, to test it for blood.

“I’ve never heard of blood in soil like this, so I thought I was just getting the day out of the office, driving to Richmond and back,” Cole said.

Angela Butler, a senior forensic DNA analyst for the lab, first did a presumptive test on the blood, which came back positive.

But the test was just presumptive, so not convincing yet, Cole said.

Butler then tested the soil using the HemDirect test, which yields more conclusive results.

The soil tested positive for human blood.

“I told her, ‘You can’t do this to me. You can’t. That’s not blood. You can’t do this to me,’” said Cole, who was so surprised he didn’t believe her at first. “The ups and downs in this case were just traumatic. One day we’re high, one day we’re low. And she says, ‘Clint, that’s blood. I have no other recourse but to call that blood in that soil.’”

“I was shocked — happy — but shocked. I just couldn’t believe it,” Cole said.

Cole then called Sheriff Parkinson on his way home.

“He said, ‘Sheriff, are you sitting down?’” Parkinson recalled. “And I said, yes or no, whatever I was doing. And he said, ‘They just tested the soil samples and it came back positive for human blood.”

“That was kind of an epiphany moment,” Parkinson said.

Flores men arrested before DA formally charged them with crimes, detective says

On April 14, 2021, the Sheriff’s Office had the probable cause it needed to arrest the Flores men, and it did.

But it hadn’t yet confirmed whether the District Attorney’s Office felt the evidence was strong enough to file charges at the time of the arrests, Cole said.

Cole had helped take Paul Flores into custody, he said. The detective rode in the back seat with him, hoping Flores would talk.

He didn’t.

After he dropped Flores off at booking, Cole stopped his car outside the Sheriff’s Office and pulled over.

“I just needed some time,” Cole said. “It was an emotional moment. Then the sheriff called me and said, ‘The DA’s Office is filing charges. Everything’s good.’ And it was just such a relief.”

Parkinson said he specifically asked for former San Luis Obispo County Deputy District Attorney Chris Peuvrelle to be assigned to the case because of his “outstanding reputation.”

“I figured that if we can convince Chris that he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, we can convince the DA,” Parkinson said.

“Chris really went to bat and said, ‘I think this is provable beyond a reasonable doubt,’” Parkinson said.

San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow said the office had been preparing the case against the Flores men for about a year before the arrest actually took place. The case was gaining momentum, and the Sheriff’s Office was regularly being briefing them about new developments in the case.

When it seemed there was enough evidence to file, Dow said Peuvrelle and the investigative team gave a presentation to Dow and other members of the District Attorney’s Office.

“We just painstakingly went through all of the evidence, all of the witnesses, all of the legal theories that we had to get certain evidence submitted,” Dow said.

Dow said he wanted to be “very certain” there was strong legal footing to support the charges. He said he and other prosecutors asked several tough questions about the evidence “to make sure we were really carefully thinking about how we would introduce it at trial.”

Flores could only be brought to trial for Smart’s murder once, Dow said, so he had to make sure the case had legal footing that would strongly and sufficiently support a guilty verdict.

“If you go forward and then you can’t get key pieces of evidence introduced, that could be what brings the case to where it’s not proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” Dow said.

By the end of the meeting, Dow said he felt it was time to charge Paul Flores for Smart’s murder. And he did.

Two months between arrest and preliminary hearing is unusually fast for murder trial, investigator says

Peuvrelle said he had been preparing his opening and closing statements for the case against the Flores men ever since he was first assigned the case in January 2021.

“The first thought that went through my head is I have to get organized and organized fast,” Peuvrelle said of his reaction to being assigned the Smart case.

He said the moment blood was found beneath Ruben Flores’ deck, he got the sense that charges would be filed soon. So he began to prepare his prosecution.

There was about a two-month window between Flores’ arrest and his preliminary hearing, which is extremely short for a murder trial, San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office investigator James “J.T.” Camp told The Tribune.

The district attorney’s team had narrowed the witness list of around 100 people to 50. Camp was one of the people tasked with tracking them down, seeing if they would testify and getting them on the schedule for the preliminary hearing.

It was a “heavy lift,” Peuvrelle said.

Camp said the team had decided to only contact people in person, so they flew around the country.

“We were absolutely committed to seeking justice and doing the work,” Camp said. “That was a way that we figured demonstrated we’re serious about this and we are 100% committed and we will go wherever the work takes us.”

Once San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen ruled there was enough evidence to go to trial, Peuvrelle, Camp and other members of the investigative team had to prepare to put their lives on hold for five months, Peuvrelle said.

Camp said one of the priorities was making sure the members of the investigative team who had to live in Monterey for essentially five months were able to take care of their mental health while being away from family.

“A part of it was putting ourselves in a position where we were forced to take care of ourselves a little bit,” Camp said. “During trial, for me — for us — it was purposeful exercise and the ability to get out and decompress a little bit so that your mind is right and you can go back to work. Otherwise, it can eat you up.”

Prosecutor: ‘No stone left unturned’

Peuvrelle said he was confident he could prosecute the case successfully because of the amount of work and preparation he and his team had put into the case for years.

“From the start we wanted a prosecution the community could be proud of. And really, we focused on process, not outcome,” Peuvrelle said. “We wanted to do everything as perfect as we possibly could. From discovery to preparation, no stone left unturned, because I felt the community was behind us.”

Peuvrelle said Sanger’s multiple accusations of prosecutorial misconduct and his accusations of lying witnesses and fake or faulty evidence showed the defense “didn’t have a case.”

“If he had a case, he wouldn’t have to attack me. He wouldn’t have to attack Kristin,” Peuvrelle said.

Moments in the trial that stuck out for him included the testimony of Denise Smart, Kristin Smart’s mother, the testimonies of the Jane Doe witnesses and Cindy Arrington’s testimony of the human decomposition stain found under Ruben Flores’ deck.

He said they were emotional moments, and he admired the Jane Does’ bravery to testify.

As the juries deliberated, Peuvrelle said he felt “ecstatic” despite not knowing what the outcomes of the verdicts would be.

“I felt that I had done everything I possibly could with what I could control to see that justice was done,” he said. “There’s nothing else I could have done.”

Peuvrelle said a lot of times when he finishes arguing a case, there may be one or two things in hindsight he thinks of that he should have argued for or argued harder for.

“But I’d been writing this closing argument for a year and a half. There was no argument that I wish I made, that I forgot,” he said.

Life ‘flashes before you’ moments before verdict reading, investigator says

Peuvrelle said his heart was “pounding out of his chest” and his mind was “racing a mile a minute” as Paul Flores’ jury walked in to read the verdict.

But he didn’t want to have a visible reaction no matter which way the verdict went.

“I tried to make my mind go blank because I knew that so many eyes were on us. I wanted to have as much of a poker face as possible. So I just started taking notes on nothing on my notepad so that I wouldn’t have any reaction whatsoever. Probably because I was so nervous,” he said.

Camp said he doesn’t have a good way to explain the feeling he had just before the verdict was read. The Smart family, investigators, witnesses and so many more have sacrificed a lot to get to this moment, he said.

“There’s so much at stake,” Camp said. “You’re getting kind of to your life flashing before you very quickly, that so many people have sacrificed so much. So many people have done so much hard work. And it’s all going to come to a head with just a few words and a few seconds.”

Relief was the immediate feeling Peuvrelle said he felt when the verdict of guilty was read.

But when Ruben Flores was acquitted, “I felt sick to my stomach,” Peuvrelle said.

He said he wondered if there was something he could have done better but noted that Ruben Flores’ jury did not see the 1996 videotape of Paul Flores being interviewed with law enforcement.

Peuvrelle said it was the correct legal ruling for Ruben Flores’ jury to be prohibited from viewing the video, but he thinks that may have been the key in the different outcomes.

“I still feel like I did everything I could. And maybe someday I’ll think of something,” he said.

Although Flores was sentenced and is primed to spend potentially the rest of his life in state prison, the case isn’t over, Camp said.

“I don’t think we’ll ever leave this case behind completely,” Camp said. “We still don’t have Kristin’s body. So when does this case actually ever end? And I don’t think it does until you know that that component to this case is satisfied and the Smarts have their daughter back.”