Kristin Smart hearing: Cadaver dog gave ‘the strongest alert’ on Paul Flores’ dorm room
A handler for dogs trained to detect human remains testified that a dog she used to search a Cal Poly residence hall room for any trace of missing student Kristin Smart in 1996 “was absolutely one of the most trained dogs in California.”
That dog “gave me probably the strongest alert I’ve seen her do,” the handler, Adela Morris, said on the stand Wednesday afternoon.
Witness testimony continued Wednesday in the month-long preliminary hearing in the case against Paul Flores and his father, Ruben Flores.
Prosecutors allege Smart was murdered by Paul Flores during a rape attempt in his residence hall room more than 25 years ago.
Paul Flores, 44, is the last person known to have seen the 19-year-old freshman alive after walking her back from a party toward the Cal Poly campus residence halls on May 24, 1996.
Smart’s body has never been found but investigators believe her remains were buried at the Arroyo Grande home of 80-year-old Ruben Flores, and recently moved.
Morris spent Wednesday morning on the stand in San Luis Obispo Superior Court defending her qualifications and those of her former dog, Cholla, which was one of four dogs in total to alert on Paul Flores’ former dorm room in Santa Lucia Hall.
The defense objected to Morris’ testimony, saying that foundation was not established to show what can be concluded from a cadaver dog alert when no forensic evidence was recovered from the site of the hit.
Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen overruled that objection, finding that Morris could testify to what Cholla alerted to in the room.
Wednesday marks the seventh day of testimony in the evidentiary hearing for Paul and Ruben Flores, which van Rooyen said is likely to proceed through August.
Paul Flores, a San Pedro resident, is charged with one count of murder. His father is charged with felony accessory after the fact.
More than a dozen people — including Smart’s parents and former friends and classmates of Smart and Paul Flores, as well as current and retired San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office and Cal Poly campus detectives, Flores’ ex-girlfriend and a cadaver dog expert — have testified since the hearing began Aug. 2.
At the conclusion of the hearing, van Rooyen will rule whether prosecutors established probable cause — a lesser standard of proof than guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — to proceed the case toward trial.
Dog handler talks about search of Paul Flores’ dorm room
In total, four cadaver dogs from three different handlers ultimately alerted on Paul Flores’ dorm room on June 29, 1996, after the room had been cleaned by Cal Poly housing services.
Each dog was brought in separately, and handlers were not informed what the others found prior to their respective searches.
Morris testified Wednesday that she and Cholla, who was certified by the state through a training program, reported to Santa Lucia Hall on the Cal Poly campus at the request of law enforcement.
She said she knew before arriving that her search was related to the missing Smart, but not much else, including why they were searching in Santa Lucia.
Morris was the second handler to bring a dog through the building, she said.
Her first dog, which was trained only to find the location of decomposing human remains, immediately “ran down the hall” of the first floor of Santa Lucia Hall and scratched at Paul Flores’ former room, Room 128, which was closed and locked.
“I just put my dog to work and I stayed by the (front) door,” Morris said, adding that Cholla returned to her to signal the alert and then returned to Room 128 again.
Once let inside, Cholla “alerted multiple times” to the left side of the room — Flores’ side — targeting a bed mattress, a desk and a garbage can.
“Everything on the left side,” Morris said.
Morris said the dog had “no interest” in the right side of the room or any other room in Santa Lucia Hall.
A second dog, which Morris called her back-up dog, was used to gather a second opinion in the Santa Lucia search. That dog, Cirque, had a similar reaction to Flores’ room with “extremely animated strong alerts,” Morris said.
“All he wanted to do was go to that door (to Room 128),” Morris said, adding that Cirque also spent time alerting to the left side of the room. Morris described Cirque’s behavior as “confident, animated and unwilling to stop.”
Under cross-examination, defense attorney Robert Sanger asked Morris about the near-100-degree weather that day; Morris conceded that hot weather “diminishes” the results of a cadaver search.
Sanger also brought up a letter Morris wrote to her mentor in K-9 forensics following the residence hall searches, which was written before Morris submitted her written report on the searches to the Sheriff’s Office.
The letter was written after Morris spoke to another handler about how his dog reacted to Room 128, and Morris said on the stand that by the time she wrote the letter she knew four dogs had alerted to the room.
She was asked by Sanger why she wrote the letter to a peer and included information about the other searches before she had completed her own assignment.
“I just wanted to know if he had a similar case or if he had any thoughts for me,” Morris said, adding that it was highly unusual in her experience to have “a case where dogs are alerting and there is no body.”
She said that the letter she wrote had no impact on her findings with Cholla.
Sanger asked Morris if she was aware there was a mini-fridge at the foot of the dorm room bed that was no longer in the room at the time of the search. She said, “no.”
Asked if the refrigerator could have, toward the end of the school year, contained some “volatile organic compound” such as rotting meat that would have triggered the dogs, Morris replied, “Only if it was human.”
She said human food is treated as a negative during cadaver dogs’ training.
Sanger asked Morris why “particles of scent” remain in a location after a body or bodily fluid is removed.
“There are still a lot of things that are not understood” about the science behind scent, Morris said, adding that she’s not qualified to speak to the science.
“The stronger the scent source, the longer those residuals will stick around,” Morris said.
Former frat member to testify about night of party Thursday
Testimony is scheduled to continue Thursday morning with Tim Davis, a Cal Poly student who walked Smart up toward her dorm following the May 24, 1996, house party on Crandall Way.
Davis took the stand very briefly late Wednesday and testified to the layout of the house at 135 Crandall Way, which he described as a “dirty, dingy college house that three boys lived at.”
He is expected to testify about the night of the party, namely what happened when Paul Flores joined Davis, Smart, and fellow student Cheryl Manzer (then Anderson) on the walk toward the residence halls in which Flores was left alone with Smart.
This story was originally published August 11, 2021 at 3:32 PM.
