30 years after Kristin Smart vanished, a new search renews hope for answers. Here’s what we know

By CNN Newsource

Published May 8, 2026 3:00 AM

By Chelsea Bailey, CNN

(CNN) — It’s been 30 years since Kristin Smart’s family last saw her smile light up a room.

The college freshman vanished from California Polytechnic State University’s San Luis Obispo campus over Memorial Day weekend in 1996, sparking a decadeslong investigation that led to the trial and conviction in 2022 of Paul Flores for her murder.

But even after years of searching, authorities have never recovered Smart’s body and she was declared dead in 2002.

Now, authorities say new soil testing at the home of Flores’ mother has returned some signs of human remains – though they can’t say if the remains are still there or whether they belong to Smart.

“We believe that based on what we’re looking at evidence-wise … that human remains were there at one time or still there,” San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said at a news conference on Friday.

“We can’t call it Kristin, but you know, we think there’s evidence to support human remains.”

The new search at Susan Flores’ home is the latest sign investigators remain committed to finding answers in the Smart case.

“Until we have Kristin, everything is still wide open,” Parkinson said.

Susan Flores’ Arroyo Grande home has been searched multiple times during the 30-year investigation, but Parkinson said there have since been advances in the soil science and the ground-penetrating radar investigators are now using to scour the property.

Parkinson said Flores is a person of interest in the case and “always has been,” but his office has no lawful reason to detain her. She has not been accused of wrongdoing by prosecutors in the case.

Smart’s family has said they feel as if Paul Flores continues “to stand in the way of our daughter being returned to us.”

“We continue to pray for the day when we can finally lay her to rest in the presence of those who love her,” the family said in an open letter on their website.

Here’s what we know and how Smart’s case has unfolded over the years.

A new search for answers

Investigators swarmed Flores’ mother’s home this week, combing through the packed garage and examining the deck.

They had a search warrant permitting them to return to the home based on “investigative leads and evidence,” the sheriff said, as well as “information that was derived from what we have to deem as a witness.”

Parkinson said this was the first time investigators had been back to the backyard during his tenure.

“It’s a very small area back there to search, but also, as you can see, it’s quite crowded with stuff,” complicating their efforts, he said.

Tim Nelligan, an expert in soil vapor testing, told The Associated Press on Thursday he was on the premises, gathering samples in Susan Flores’ yard as well as a neighbor’s yard.

Nelligan declined to discuss the investigation but said his “team has, in general, ‘come up with a methodology to assess soil vapor’ and its relation to ‘human cadaver decomposition.’”

On Friday, Parkinson said they had a search warrant for the exterior of the neighbor’s home so investigators could access the other side of Flores’ fence and the soil. Authorities said they anticipate returning to the site Saturday to continue the investigation.

‘Kristin has been moved’

Paul Flores and his family have been at the center of the search for Smart since the earliest days of the investigation into her disappearance.

The search at Susan Flores’ house is going to be “extremely thorough” and could take days, Parkinson told podcast host Adam Montiel on his show Up + Adam this week.

“We’ve proven already that Paul did it. We believe that Kristin, at one time, was on Paul Flores’ father’s property. We know she’s been moved, so where she moved to … we’re hunting that down,” he said.

At Friday’s news conference the sheriff expanded on what he told Montiel.

“Kristin has been moved, and we don’t know how many times she’s been moved and to where she’s moved, and so just because somebody’s house was searched doesn’t mean that we’re not going back there, because she could have been moved back there thinking that it’s a safe place,” he said.

CNN reached out to attorneys who previously represented the family and to Susan Flores but did not hear back.

Officials have said Paul Flores, who was a 19-year-old freshman at the time Smart disappeared, was the last person to see her alive after they walked back to their dorms from a party.

But it would take decades for authorities to gather enough proof to charge him with Smart’s murder.

The university’s police initially led the investigation into Smart’s disappearance. Her parents, Stan and Denise, also spent weeks searching for their daughter on their own. Her father posted flyers with a photo of Kristin, who was tall and blonde, throughout town. He also gathered his own search party to comb nearby hillsides and lakes and even enlisted the help of a psychic to aid in his search, according to local news reports.

Then, two months after Kristin Smart vanished, investigators zeroed in on a man they would later identify as Flores.

Flores’ account of the night Smart disappeared had changed, Cal Poly Police Chief Tom Mitchell told reporters at the time, and when the college student was interviewed by police, he’d had a black eye and scrapes and bruises on his knee.

‘He’s definitely involved,’ Smart’s family says

Shortly after their initial interviews with Flores, the freshman retained a lawyer and stopped cooperating with investigators.

The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office assumed the lead investigative role in the case a month after she disappeared.

During a K-9 search of campus in the weeks following Smart’s disappearance, multiple cadaver dogs alerted in Flores’ dorm room, the sheriff told the San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune in August 1996.

The alerts, coupled with Flores’ shifting narrative and injuries, led authorities to declare Smart’s disappearance a criminal case – and they named Flores as a person of interest.

But they were still missing a key piece of evidence: Kristin Smart’s body.

Flores and his family were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury to get statements on the record. But without physical evidence, investigators did not believe they had enough to charge him with Smart’s murder.

In an interview with CNN three years after their daughter went missing, Stan and Denise Smart said they hoped they’d one day be able to lay their daughter to rest.

And they shared a message for Paul Flores.

“We will have a resolution and he will wish that he’d come forward much sooner,” Denise Smart said.

“We believe he’s definitely involved,” her husband added. “The best outcome would be that we’d be able to find our daughter’s remains and we’d be able to have some justice.”

Decades later, backyard clues lead to an arrest

For decades, Flores remained a person of interest in Smart’s disappearance.

And for decades, billboards with Smart’s smiling face stood like sentinels along Highway 101, silently urging anyone with information to come forward.

Driving past the billboard would serve as a periodic reminder: After decades, authorities still hadn’t found Kristin, Chris Lambert, a podcaster who grew up in the area, said in the first episode of his show, “Your Own Backyard.”

Years later, after reading a Los Angeles Times article on Smart’s disappearance, Lambert said he was stunned to realize he lived near many of the locations in the case. So, he began retracing Smart’s final steps, interviewing her family, and even speaking with investigators who’d worked on her case for years.

With each episode, his podcast gained traction, and Kristin’s name – and the details surrounding her disappearance – drew renewed attention.

Meanwhile, investigators continued to work the case. After decades with few signs of outward progress, authorities had their first public breakthrough in 2020.

The sheriff’s office obtained a warrant to monitor then-43-year-old Paul Flores’s cellphone and messages. In February 2020, detectives served a search warrant at his home, as well as the homes of his sister, mother and father, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.

They also recovered physical evidence from Flores’ home in April that year, the office said.

Then a year later, in March 2021, detectives served a warrant at the Arroyo Grande home of Flores’ father, Ruben. Detectives used ground-penetrating radar and dug the property using hand tools, the sheriff’s office told CNN at the time.

“Additional evidence related to the murder of Kristin Smart is discovered at the site,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement.

Prosecutors would later allege Ruben helped his son hide Smart’s body under the family’s deck before relocating her remains.

On April 13, 2021 – almost exactly 25 years since Kristin Smart disappeared – authorities arrested Paul Flores and charged him with her murder.

Ruben Flores was also arrested and charged with allegedly aiding Flores in hiding Smart’s body – a body investigators had still not recovered.

But they now believed their case was strong enough to bring before a jury.

The trial of Paul and Ruben Flores

Paul and Ruben Flores’ trials began in July 2022 and would last for nearly three months.

Prosecutors argued Paul Flores raped or attempted to rape Smart and killed her in his dorm room before enlisting his father to allegedly help him hide her body under the deck of his home.

“Dozens of women have recounted Paul Flores’ sexual assaults and predatory behavior that document his twenty-five years as a serial rapist,” Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle wrote in documents filed in the case.

Peuvrelle later told jurors during Ruben Flores’ trial that searches of his home turned up soil samples that tested positive for human blood, CNN affiliate KSBY reported.

Throughout the trials the attorneys representing the Flores family vehemently asserted their clients’ innocence, repeatedly citing a lack of eyewitnesses and evidence.

But in October 2022, two separate juries reached their verdicts. Paul Flores was found guilty of first-degree murder and later sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

But his father, Ruben, was acquitted of the charges against him. Outside the courtroom, Ruben Flores told reporters, “It’s too bad the system works that way, on feelings instead of facts.”

He added he felt bad for Smart’s family because they never got a true answer as to what happened to their daughter.

Wednesday’s search of Susan Flores’ home renewed the hope for those answers in the small town of San Luis Obispo, which had been rattled by Smart’s disappearance for decades.

Parkinson said throughout his time as sheriff, he’s repeatedly cautioned the Smart family to manage their expectations and not get their hopes up.

Still, he acknowledged, “There is no closure. There’s justice and there’s some form of peace that they have their daughter back, and … that’s all you can do.”

After decades, Smart’s family and the investigators working to bring her home remain cautiously optimistic.

“For thirty years, we have lived with a pain no family should have to endure, as heartache, frustration, and setbacks have woven themselves into our everyday lives,” her family said in a statement posted on their website.

And, they said, they will continue to be uplifted by the example Kristin Smart set: “She was not one to give up.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Josh Campbell, Taylor Galgano and Danielle Sills contributed to this report.

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