Early one Saturday morning nearly 25 years ago, Kristin Smart left a college party near the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus and never returned to her dormitory.
Investigators’ suspicions centered on Paul Flores, a classmate who was the last person seen with Smart. But for decades, despite multiple rounds of interrogations and searches using radar and cadaver dogs, Smart’s body was never found. Without sufficient evidence to implicate him in Smart’s disappearance and presumed death, authorities would only describe Flores as a suspect.
But on Tuesday, San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s detectives arrested Flores, 44, on suspicion of murder and booked him into the county Jail, according to law enforcement sources and jail records. Also arrested Tuesday was Flores’ father, Ruben Ricardo Flores, 80, on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact, according to booking records.
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