Disappearance of Kristin Smart

Kristin Denise Smart was born February 20, 1977, in Augsburg, Germany, to Stan and Denise Smart, both teachers.[2] She had one brother and one sister.[2] Smart's family relocated to the United States during her childhood, where she was raised in Stockton, California.[2]

Smart was enrolled at California Polytechnic State University, or Cal Poly, in San Luis Obispo, California. On the night she disappeared, which fell on Memorial Day weekend, Smart attended a birthday party for a fellow student. At approximately 2:00 a.m. on May 25, 1996, she was found passed out on a neighbor's lawn by two fellow students, Cheryl Anderson and Tim Davis, who both had just left the party.[4] They helped Smart to her feet and decided to walk her back to her nearby dormitory. Another student from the party, Paul Flores, joined their group and offered to help the two return Smart to her dorm room safely.

Davis departed the group first since he lived off campus and had driven to the party. Anderson was the second to depart the group, heading to Sierra Madre Hall, after she told Flores that he could walk Smart back to her dorm, since he lived closer.[5] Flores stated to police that he walked Smart as far as his dormitory, Santa Lucia Hall, and then allowed her to walk back to her Muir Hall dorm by herself.[6] This was the last known sighting of her. She did not have any money or credit cards at the time she went missing.[7]

The University Police Department[8] originally suspected that Smart had gone on an unannounced vacation, as was common among students over the holidays, and as a result were slow in reporting her as a missing person to local law enforcement.

During the Laci Peterson murder investigation, there were unfounded rumors in the media that Laci's husband Scott Peterson had something to do with Smart's disappearance due to their simultaneous attendance at the Cal Poly campus.[9] There was a brief initial inquiry into whether Peterson was tied to the disappearance, with Peterson denying any involvement, and he was eventually ruled out as a suspect by police.[10]

Smart's disappearance remains an unsolved case, although compelling evidence was discovered that points to Paul Flores knowing what happened to her. Although her body was never discovered, Smart’s bloody earring was found by a tenant at the former residence of Paul Flores’s mother. This earring has since been lost by the police. Between 1996 and 2007, various searches for her remains and other evidence were conducted, some using police dogs trained to detect the scent of human remains, including searches of properties owned by the Flores family. No useful leads were found for nearly two decades.[11]

On September 6, 2016, officials from the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office announced they were investigating a new lead in the case.[12] Cadaver dogs from the FBI were brought in and investigators were preparing to spend approximately four days excavating an area on the Cal Poly campus.[12] After three days, items were found at all three dig sites located on the same hillside near Smart's dorm. A spokesman for the sheriff's office said, "The items are being analyzed to see whether they are connected to the case, which could take days, weeks or months".[13] The items uncovered are still being investigated as of 2020.[14]

Smart's disappearance and slow response by the campus police resulted in the Kristin Smart Campus Security Act being written and sponsored by State Senator Mike Thompson, passed 61–0 by the California State Legislature, and signed into effect by then-Governor Pete Wilson on August 19, 1998. The law took effect on January 1, 1999, and requires all public colleges and publicly funded educational institutions to have their security services make agreements with local police departments about reporting cases involving or possibly involving violence against students, including missing students.

Smart was declared legally dead on May 25, 2002, the sixth anniversary of her disappearance.[15] Her parents, Denise and Stan Smart, took a civil case of wrongful death against Flores, one of the three students who walked Smart to her dorm, in 2005. Flores has denied any involvement in the disappearance. The Flores family had also filed a lawsuit against the Smart family for emotional distress.[11]

The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office still reviews the case regularly, having spent thousands of hours and dollars in the last five years (2011–2016).[16] The FBI have her on file as a high priority missing person investigation, with a reward of $75,000 for information leading to finding her or resolving her case.[17] Terry Black, a Delta-area man, offered a $100,000 reward for Smart's body.[18]

Beginning September 30, 2019, Chris Lambert released a series of eight podcast episodes.[19] The podcast recounts, in detail, Kristin's probable abduction and subsequent death at the hands of another student on the campus of California Polytechnic State University over 23 years ago. The podcast has been downloaded over five million times. Renewed public interest led to a new billboard being put up in Arroyo Grande in January 2020 to replace the original, which had been up since 1997.[20]

On January 18, 2020, the Stockton Record reported that the FBI informed Smart's family that additional news about her disappearance would be coming and that the family "might want to get away for a while" but did not provide any specific information. However, on January 22, 2020, The Record issued a correction: the FBI did not contact the Smart family; rather, a retired FBI agent who had been in contact with the family for years was the source of the advice.[21][22] On January 29, the San Luis Obispo police department confirmed that two trucks owned by Flores had been taken in as evidence.[23] On February 5, 2020, search warrants were served for "specific items of evidence" at four different locations – two in San Luis Obispo, one in Washington state, and at a home in Los Angeles County.[24] Flores was briefly detained during the search.[25][26][27]

On April 22, 2020, the Los Angeles Times reported that a search warrant was served at the home of Paul Flores in San Pedro, California. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department assisted detectives from San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Department in the search.[28] It was reported that numerous "items of interest" were successfully found during the search.[29] The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Department is now continuing the investigation but no further public information is available at this time. Those items of interest included computer towers, cell phones, and electronics decades old.

• Disappearance of Lauren Spierer
• Disappearance of Tara Grinstead
• Disappeared (TV series)
• Holly Bobo murder case
• List of people who disappeared
• List of kidnappings

• Mitchell, Corey (2003). Dead and Buried: A Shocking Account of Rape, Torture, and Murder on the California Coast. New York City, New York: Pinnacle Books. ISBN 978-0-786-01517-7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• FBI Missing Person Report on Kristin Smart
• San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Department Report on Kristin's Disappearance (Archived January 14, 2008, at the Wayback Machine)
• North American Missing Persons Network Report on Kristin's Case
• Article about the investigation into Scott Peterson's possible connection with Kristin Smart's disappearance. (Archived November 15, 2004, at the Wayback Machine)
• The Charley Project: Kristin Smart
• Reader's Room Article on Kristin's disappearance (Archived October 5, 2011, at the Wayback Machine)
• findkristinsmart.org
• The text of Kristin Smart Campus Security Act 1998 from the California State Legislature Senate website.
• KSBY Investigates: Kristin Smart disappearance
• Kristin Smart at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
• kristinsmart.org website