Was Paul Flores ‘only suspect’ in Kristin Smart case? Unsealed motion argues for others
Recently unsealed court records in the Kristin Smart murder case show that law enforcement officials conducted dozens of searches over 22 years — including 48 search warrants involving wiretaps and GPS tracking as well as a warrantless sweep of defendant Paul Flores’ former Cal Poly dorm room.
The validity of those searches are now being contested by Flores’ attorneys.
The records, unsealed in San Luis Obispo Superior Court on Wednesday by Judge Craig van Rooyen, also list several people the defense says should have been investigated further as suspects in Smart’s disappearance.
Flores, now 44, is the last known person to see Smart alive after walking her back from a party toward the Cal Poly campus residence halls on May 24, 1996. He is accused of attempting to rape the 19-year-old freshman in his dorm room before killing her.
Smart’s body has never been found, but investigators believe it was buried at the Arroyo Grande home of Paul Flores’ father, 80-year-old Ruben Flores, and “recently” moved.
A motion by Paul Flores’ attorneys seeks to suppress evidence gathered in searches by investigators over more than two decades.
According to the motion, the defense lists 48 searches based on judge-issued search warrants — including several GPS trackers place on Flores’ car and more than a dozen wiretaps for him and his parents — 13 of which the defense is not challenging at this time.
The defense also contends three searches of Flores or his property were conducted illegally without warrants.
Van Rooyen also unsealed the prosecution’s response to the request, which says the defense motion might not have been filed in a timely manner based on court proceeding deadlines and, even if it was, lacks specificity and merit.
“A search conducted pursuant to a search warrant (signed by a judge) is presumed lawful,” Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle wrote. “Thus, the burden of establishing the invalidity of the search warrant rests upon the defendant.”
In one example of a valid search, Peuvrelle cited, Flores had moved out of his room in Cal Poly’s Santa Lucia Hall by the time it was searched on June 10, 1996, removing the expectation of privacy.
Other arguments between the attorneys in the case relate to potential additional suspects in Smart’s alleged disappearance, which includes Cal Poly graduate and convicted murderer Scott Peterson, but the prosecution says those additional leads that were ruled out.
Defense attorney Robert Sanger said in court Thursday that “arrangements” are being made related to Peterson. Though he did not elaborate, the statement appears to be related to testimony in the Smart case, but it is unclear whether that supposed testimony would be for an ongoing preliminary hearing or in relation to the motion to suppress.
Sanger, however, argues in the defense motion filed July 21 that the alleged evidence — including information gleaned through wiretaps, the dorm room search, and GPS trackers — was based on “speculation and hunches” dating back to 1996 and that Flores has been unfairly targeted, with leads on potential other suspects abandoned.
“Despite the fact that law enforcement had collected substantial evidence that Kristin Smart may have had reason not to return to her dorm room after leaving (fellow party-goers) Cheryl (Manzer) Anderson and Paul Flores and despite the fact that they had collected substantial evidence that there were multiple potential suspects who stalked, harassed or otherwise had conflicts with Kristin Smart, law enforcement made an early choice to change their ‘focus’ to murder and to Paul Flores as the ‘only suspect,’” Sanger wrote.
The attorney added the burden is on the prosecution to prove the validity of the search warrants, which include 30,000 pages of material, adding “it is not possible to determine exactly what was seized or observed as a result of some of the searches including the wiretap searches.”
Sanger and attorney Harold Mesick, who’s representing Paul Flores’ father, Ruben Flores, said in court Wednesday that those documents contain exculpatory evidence beneficial to the defense.
“The various judges to whom search warrants were submitted for approval were not given accurate information, substantial information was omitted leaving an entirely distorted picture of the investigation,” Sanger noted in his motion.
Sanger argued that, because he now intends to refer to affidavits used to secure search warrants in the case, it is no longer necessary to keep the records sealed from the public, due to the media’s presence in the courtroom.
Van Rooyen said he no longer saw a compelling government interest to keep the documents confidential.
What was initially expected to be a 12-day preliminary hearing in the Kristin Smart murder case began Monday. It is now anticipated to continue through August.
At the conclusion, van Rooyen will rule whether prosecutors established probable cause to advance the case toward trial.
Defense raises questions about potential suspects in Kristin Smart case
The defense said Paul Flores has cooperated through multiple interviews and “browbeat and pushed to make some sort of admission,” denying any role in Smart’s disappearance.
“There is no evidence of a murder and no evidence of a rape,” Sanger noted in the 68-page filing. “After over 25 years, there is no evidence that Paul Flores committed the crimes for which there is no evidence.”
Sanger wrote that Smart was a “troubled woman who was involved in a number of relationships and situations that were material to assessing the circumstances of her disappearance and what may have happened to her” and that omissions of information related to the case influenced how the searches were considered by judges, who sign off on them.
The defense’s recounting of the evidence collected as part of the investigation in Smart’s disappearance seeks to cast doubt that Flores could be the only suspect in the case.
Here are the people the defense argues should have been considered as potential suspects.
Sanger wrote that a Cal Poly detective received a single tip that Scott Peterson was at the Crandall Way party with Smart.
Peterson was a Cal Poly student at the time and attended the party with Laci Peterson, the woman he’d later marry and kill, leading to his 2004 conviction in a high-profile case.
Peterson allegedly made a comment to his brother about hoping investigators wouldn’t search his pond for Smart, according to what a Modesto Police detective told the Cal Poly detective.
According to the filing, Ted Munley knocked on Smart’s window at 3 a.m. the morning after she attended the party and stayed in her room that night, let in by a friend of Smart’s roommate who was also staying in Smart’s room.
Munley was described by the roommate’s friend as “angry, defensive and negative,” but she let him in because Smart’s roommate was in Munley’s dorm room with his roommate, the motion says. Munley was not mentioned as being in Smart’s room by those swearing to a search affidavit, the filing says.
Another man, Shahn Whitted, had been dating Smart around the time of her disappearance and after they broke up, he burned her shoes on her doorstep and left a “mean note,” according to the filing.
Whitted admitted his behavior to law enforcement, saying he last saw Smart a couple of days before she disappeared. But Sanger cites a lack of sufficient investigation into him.
Sanger wrote that a man named Sean Farrell dated Smart and, according to Farrell and Smart’s friend Margarita Campos, Smart said that “she had been pregnant and Farrell was the father,” telling Campos she had traveled to Santa Barbara to get the “morning after pill.”
Another male witness, interviewed by police in July 1996, said Smart got into an argument with an unknown man at a concert, and Smart later made several phone calls after becoming visibly upset, saying she was pregnant.
Another witness described a person known as “Yanish” who lived on the second floor of Cal Poly’s Muir Hall, had stalked Smart and stood outside her window. Smart reported this to a resident assistant, Sanger wrote, but there was “no follow-up investigation on Yanish.”
A Cal Poly student assistant to law enforcement, Brian Sawicki, said he saw Smart at a party the night before her disappearance, according to the filing. Sawicki later went on to become a Santa Barbara policeman but was discharged after “being arrested for sex offenses that resulted in convictions for non-sex offenses,” the motion says.
Sanger wrote there’s no police reports that indicate San Luis Obispo County investigators were aware of this and conducted an investigation into Sawicki.
A friend of Smart’s said Smart followed a camp counselor who she had a crush from one Hawaiian island to another, paid for a hotel room and bought him an extensive gold ring — an incident also not mentioned in a search warrant affidavit.
Prosecution responds to defense motion
In response to the defense’s doubt about Flores’ role in Smart’s disappearance, Peuvrelle wrote that law enforcement searched Peterson’s two ponds in 2004 in relation to Peterson’s comment “I hope they don’t find her in my pond” and, after conducting their searches of the ponds, ruled Peterson out as a suspect.
Peuvrelle noted that Munley passed a polygraph test in 2002 regarding questions asked by law enforcement.
“He was a subject of interest to law enforcement because he spent the night of May 24, 1996 in Smart’s room and, as such, would have been in a position to see her if she returned,” the prosecutor wrote. “But, he did not see her return. ...What was important for purposes of the affidavit was that Smart did not return to the room and had left items she would normally keep with her, especially if she planned on spending the night elsewhere.”
Whitted and Smart dated on and off, but after falling out, Whitted said they “worked out their differences” and “made up,” Peuvrelle wrote.
The prosecution wrote that the defense has failed to show how Smart’s “unconfirmed pregnancy” with Farrell and purported taking of a so-called “morning after pill” amount to information that should have been included in an affidavit and it’s unclear if Farrell was the man with whom Smart argued at a concert.
The alleged stalker named Yanish couldn’t be identified, Peuvrelle noted.
In court, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office Det. Clint Coles said that lead was followed up on, but that records show there was no Yanish enrolled at Cal Poly at the time.
Sawicki’s arrest related to a subsequent lewd conduct case wasn’t proven as a material fact in the Smart case, either, the prosecution notes.
The deputy district attorney wrote that theories such as Smart’s alleged disappearance in Hawaii are “speculative” and the prosecution isn’t required to disclose “every imaginable fact, however irrelevant.”
What comes next?
In support of the new effort by the defense to block evidence, Sanger said in court this week that he intends to call various witnesses to the stand to testify about searches in the case, including the many law enforcement officials who submitted affidavits for search warrants.
An affidavit, or a statement of facts that seeks to establish probable cause in support of a search warrant, is signed by an officer, known as an affiant, and submitted to a judge for authorization of a search warrant, many of which included judicial authorization for wiretaps.
Sanger said he intends to call the various affiants from the dozens of affidavits in the case to testify as to why they selected information they did to the various magistrates over the years, and why they omitted other information.
The defense motion does not contain those affidavits, which remain sealed.
It is not clear when the court intends to take up the motion and hear possible testimony. A hearing date for the motion was not yet reflected in court records as of Friday.
This story was originally published August 6, 2021 at 5:13 PM.
