Kristin Smart hearing: Police used jail informant to befriend Paul Flores, seek confession
Investigators planted an informant in Santa Barbara County Jail in order to seek a confession from the man accused of murdering Cal Poly student Kristin Smart, a retired San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office detective testified in court Monday.
That confidential informant remained in touch with Paul Flores after their release from custody, with the two going on fishing trips and traveling to Las Vegas together, a defense attorney said during the detective’s cross-examination.
Testimony resumed Monday in San Luis Obispo Superior Court in the preliminary hearing for Paul Flores and his father, Ruben Flores.
Paul Flores, now 44, is the last person known to have seen the 19-year-old freshman alive after walking her back from the party toward the Cal Poly campus residence halls on May 24, 1996.
Smart’s body has never been found but investigators said in court documents that her remains were buried at the Arroyo Grande home of 80-year-old Ruben Flores, and recently moved.
Paul Flores, a San Pedro resident, is charged with one count of murder, while 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 month-long hearing, Superior Court Judge Craig 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.
Here’s what happened in court on Monday.
Retired SLO County Sheriff’s Office detective testifies
Proceedings resumed Monday morning with the testimony of Henry Stewart, who was a Sheriff’s Office detective until his retirement in 2004.
Stewart testified that he and another Sheriff’s Office detective were assigned to the Smart case on June 26, 1996. They interviewed Jana Schrock, who was not a Cal Poly student but was allowed by Smart’s roommate to sleep in Smart’s room in Muir Hall on the night Smart went missing.
Schrock told the investigators that Smart did not return to the dorm room at any point during the evening or early morning hours.
In July 1996, Stewart said he obtained a search warrant to search Ruben Flores’ Arroyo Grande home, specifically in order to search the bedroom of Paul Flores, who lived in the house at the time. Stewart was not asked about what, if anything, was found during the search.
In July 2002, local investigators had Paul Flores arrested for a probation violation in Costa Mesa following a previous arrest for driving under the influence of intoxicants, Stewart said.
Stewart said that he and his partner confronted Flores when Flores arrived at a bar he was known to frequent, which was a supposed violation of his probation.
When Flores saw the investigators, he “took off running,” Stewart said. Instead of chasing him, the detectives instead filed a probation violation report and Flores was taken to Santa Barbara County Jail.
Stewart said that investigators “planted an agent” in the jail in order to befriend Flores and solicit a confession or other relevant information.
In response to a question from defense attorney Robert Sanger, Stewart added that the confidential informant later went fishing with Flores. Later questioning by Harold Mesick, Ruben Flores’ attorney, revealed that Paul Flores accompanied the informant on another fishing trip to Catalina, and the two supposedly traveled together to Las Vegas.
Mesick asked Stewart if it was true that investigators had a $50,000 budget to surveil Flores.
It was not revealed whether that informant was a civilian or undercover law enforcement, or what if anything was gained from the operation.
Stewart also testified that the two detectives attempted to interview Paul Flores in an interrogation room while he was in custody at the Santa Barbara County Jail in 2002 in case he made any “spontaneous statements,” but Flores refused to talk.
Instead, Flores only spoke through the intercom on the wall, saying, “I want to leave. I want a lawyer. They’re not giving me a lawyer.”
Under cross examination by Sanger, Stewart acknowledged that the few statements Flores has ever made about the Smart case remained consistent, and that investigators knew they had a “50/50 chance” of winning a case against Flores at trial given the evidence they had at the time.
Sanger questioned Stewart about an affidavit he submitted in support of his request for the search warrant for Ruben Flores’ home, namely about why Stewart included information from past affidavits submitted by other investigators.
The defense currently has an outstanding motion to suppress evidence gathered from about two dozen searches, wiretaps and other authorized surveillance.
Following Stewart’s testimony, van Rooyen adjourned proceedings until Wednesday morning, when the court is expected to hear from J.T. Camp, the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office’s current lead investigator in the case.
Paul Flores, father charged in Smart disappearance
After a decades-long investigation, Paul and Ruben Flores were arrested in connection with Smart’s disappearance on April 13 in San Pedro and Arroyo Grande, respectively, and the San Luis Obispo District Attorney’s Office announced the criminal charges against the men the following day.
Paul Flores and his father pleaded not guilty at their arraignment on April 19, when van Rooyen ordered Paul Flores be held at San Luis Obispo County without bail.
On Aug. 18, the judge denied the defense team’s request to release Paul Flores from jail custody.
Ruben Flores was released from County Jail on April 22, hours after van Rooyen significantly lowered his bail because he is not a flight risk or a risk to public safety. Ruben Flores remains out of custody.
Paul Flores faces a sentence of 25 years to life if convicted of first-degree murder. Ruben Flores faces a maximum of three years if convicted of the accessory charge, though it is not clear if that sentence would be served in county jail or state prison.
This story was originally published August 23, 2021 at 1:13 PM.
