Kristin Smart Disappearance; Trail to begin Monday 18th July

Kristin Smart was declared dead on May 25th, 2002 after it was presumed that she was kidnapped, raped, and murdered.

Smart went to a friend’s birthday celebration on May 25, 1996. She was discovered unconscious on a neighbor’s lawn at around 2 a.m.

Two students assisted her in getting to her dorm room. Paul Flores, a third student, joined the group because of the close proximity of his room to Smart’s.

Kristin Smart Disappearance

Flores assured the other two students that he would safely transport Kristin home. 

She was never seen again.

Though Smart is still missing, the guy who was last seen with her in 1996 at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo is now in court more than a year after he and his father were arrested on suspicion of killing Smart and concealing her body, respectively.

Kristin Smart Disappearance

In Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas, the trial of Paul Flores and his father, Ruben Flores, who is accused of being an accessory, is set to begin on Monday. Each man has entered a not-guilty plea.

Since Smart’s body has never been found, the trial is likely to be about the unsolved mystery of how she disappeared from the campus set against a lush mountain range on the coast.

After conducting dozens of searches over the past two years, investigators have focused on Ruben Flores’ home in Arroyo Grande, a hamlet 12 miles south of Cal Poly.