Guilty or not guilty? Attorneys lay out cases in Day 1 of Kristin Smart murder trial

As the Kristin Smart murder trial kicked off Monday in Salinas, the prosecution started by introducing jurors to the missing Cal Poly student and laying out the timeline of her disappearance more than 26 years ago.

During opening statements in Monterey County Superior Court, San Luis Obispo County Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle described how Smart vanished during Memorial Day weekend in 1996.

“In 1995, Stan and Denise Smart sent their oldest daughter Kristin to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo,” Peuvrelle said during his remarks Monday morning. “During her freshman year they looked forward every Sunday to a phone call from her — it was their ritual.”

“But on May 26, 1996, at 9:47 a.m., (as the) Smart family was waiting for Kristin’s call, Paul (Flores) was calling his dad for help.”

It has taken more than two decades for the Smart case to reach trial. The Smart family and law enforcement officials credit the popular podcast, “Your Own Backyard,” which launched in 2019, with helping interest in the case.

Paul Flores, 45, is accused of murdering Smart after he walked her home from an off-campus party that weekend, while his father, 81-year-old Ruben Flores, is accused of helping his son hide her body.

Paul and Ruben Flores were arrested in April 2021 in connection with the crime. A month-long preliminary hearing that August laid out much of the evidence against the men, uncovered over decades of investigation.

The trial against Paul and Ruben Flores moved to Salinas after San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen ruled the two men may not likely receive a fair trial in San Luis Obispo County because of pretrial publicity.

As a result, Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe is presiding over the case.

There will be two juries deciding two verdicts: One for Paul Flores and one for Ruben Flores. The jurors have been instructed under oath to avoid outside information abut the case.

Both Paul and Ruben Flores were present in the court room on Monday. Susan Flores, who is Paul Flores’ mother and Ruben Flores’ ex-wife, was seen sitting in the gallery with the public.

The Smart family was also in attendance, as well as San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow and Assistant District Attorney Eric Dobroth.

Approximately 10 members of the public and 20 members of the news media are also in attendance.

Prosecution describes Kristin Smart’s disappearance

Much of the prosecution’s opening statements on Monday focused on humanizing Smart and laying out the broad strokes of the case against Paul Flores.

“The evidence will show Kristin was murdered by Paul Flores and that Paul Flores and Ruben Flores buried her under Ruben Flores’ deck,” Peuvrelle said. “And while the entire community banded together to search for Kristin desperately, Paul and Ruben Flores did not join in. You will hear (that) Ruben Flores would tear down missing posters of Kristin — tore down her smiling beautiful face —called her a ‘dirty slut,’ all while her corpse was decomposing underneath his deck.”

Peuvrelle spoke about the Smarts and described their final contact with their beloved daughter and sister — noting that just before Kristin Smart vanished, she had called and left a voicemail for her mother, “ecstatic with some news.”

“They’ll never know what that good news was,” Peuvrelle said.

The prosecution also laid out Smart’s last known step as she attended a party where witnesses said they saw Paul Flores interacting with Smart numerous times.

According to Peuvrelle, Flores joined Smart and her friend Cheryl Anderson — who is expected to testify during the trial — as they walked back to their dorms.

As they parted ways, Anderson saw Smart walk off with Paul Flores, Peuvrelle said.

“(Anderson) made a decision she’s regretted ever since,” the prosecutor said.

Smart was not seen again.

Peuvrelle then described the investigation into Smart’s disappearance after she was reported missing. The prosecutor said that Flores allegedly had a light bruise underneath his eye during his first interview with police.

Peuvrelle described each law enforcement interview with Flores, noting that Flores’ story changed both about what happened that night and how he got the bruise underneath his eye.

In a video Peuvrelle played for the court, which was shot at an Arroyo Grande High School graduation party days after Smart went missing, someone asks Flores if he is going to graduate from Cal Poly. Flores replies “no way” while laughing.

In the video, the person then asks what happened to the “missing girl” and asks Paul Flores what he did with her. Flores is silent.

“(He) hung his head in shame,” Peuvrelle said.

A video of a June 1996 law enforcement interview with Flores was also shown to the jury.

“If anybody lies as much as you have about something as serious as this is, what are you going to think?” the investigator asks Paul Flores.

Flores replies in the video: “It’s not really lies, it’s a fib. I guess you could call it little white lies. I have no idea about any lies.”

Deputy DA: Evidence will lead to guilty verdict

Peuvrelle ended his opening statements by laying out how the investigation into Smart’s disappearance led to the arrest of the Flores men in 2021, including testimonies from three women who are expected to testify that Paul Flores drugged and raped them.

The prosecutor also laid out the evidence found with the various search warrants in recent years, including the soil analysis of what was found underneath Ruben Flores’ deck, a blood stain that was found by investigators and a recorded conversation in which Susan Flores tells her son he needed to tell her where they can “punch holes” in the “Your Own Backyard” podcast because “only you can.”

“At the end of this case, I’m going to ask you to review all the evidence to come to a truthful verdict,” Peuvrelle told the jurors. “I expect you to find Paul Flores guilty for murdering Kristin Smart and Ruben Flores guilty for being an accessory.”

At that point, Paul Flores’ defense attorney, Robert Sanger, objected to the mention of Ruben Flores because he said it misstated this jury’s job, since this portion of opening statements only pertained to Paul.

Kristin Smart engaged in ‘at-risk’ behavior, defense claims

During his statements, Sanger told the jury he wanted to talk to them now rather than waiting til the beginning of the defense’s arguments because that could be months from now.

“This obviously is a tragic situation in one sense or another,” Sanger said. “Kristin Smart has never returned home, she is believed now to be deceased, but there is no evidence of what happened to her.”

In regards to the three women who are expected to testify alleging Paul Flores raped them, Sanger reminded the jury the behavior is alleged and also that Flores’ behavior in recent years does not supply actual facts about what happened to Kristin Smart.

“You’re gonna hear evidence about Kristin Smart,” he said. “It’s not nice to talk about somebody that’s not here to defend herself.”

While Peuvrelle painted a picture of Smart being close to her family and that family life was “wonderful,” Sanger said that picture is not true.

He said Smart’s parents were at their “wits’ end” because she quit her job and was flunking out of school. Smart regularly engaged in “at-risk behavior,” he said.

Sanger claimed evidence will show that Smart was known to lie about being a model and having a job, also had a history of “going off with men, sometimes older men.”.

Peuvrelle objected and asked for a sidebar, and after a few minutes everyone returned to the courtroom.

Sanger said the Flores family were subjects of a “concerted media campaign” by both traditional media and nontraditional media and advocacy groups calling for justice for Kristin Smart.

He said the Flores family was regularly harassed in and outside their home, and a wanted poster for Paul Flores with his face and Ruben Flores’ address began circling.

“There’s been quite a lot of pressure on this family for 25 years,” he said.

He said the phone conversation between Paul Flores and his mother, Susan Flores, that was cited in the prosecution’s opening statements was taken out of context, and that what Susan Flores said to her son was normal given the circumstances.

“What would any mother say to their son who’s been under suspicion for 25 years?” he said.

Sanger said the phone call was the result of a wiretap warrant, and that San Luis Obispo police Det. Clint Cole had leaked information to Lambert, “who has nothing to with this case except made his life work making a podcast about Kristin Smart’s disappearance and why Paul Flores was guilty in his eyes.”

He asked the jury to look at the video from the Arroyo Grande High School party, and to decide for themselves what they see. While Peuvrelle said Paul Flores “hung his head in shame” in response to being asked about Kristin Smart, that isn’t what Sanger sees, he said.

On May 25, 1996, Paul Flores was going to walk to his sister’s house and ended up passing a party on his way there and decided to check it out, as any 19-year-old college student would, Sanger said.

He said Paul Flores and Smart did not interact, and that if they did, it was brief.

Sanger also began to discredit the forensic evidence Peuvrelle had laid out, particularly the archaeologist who is expected to testify that the stain underneath Ruben Flores’ deck is the result of a body in a “semi-permeable” wrapping. He said she has no experience with semi-permeable wrapping in relation to decomposition and mostly works with remains that are thousands of years old.

Cadaver dogs are unreliable, Sanger said, and the profession itself is not regulated. He said handlers certify each other, and there is not a government agency that oversees them.

He also said handlers are volunteers, not scientists, such as the witness he plans to call.

“I don’t want to demean these volunteers, they are very helpful,” Sanger said. “They specialize in disaster, finding bodies — that’s what they’re good at and bless their hearts they’re out there helping people, but from a forensic science standpoint, you’ll hear that it’s nothing other than a clue.”

He said an alert is not evidence, adding that evidence is what the alert leads to an investigator finding, if anything is found at all.

The witnesses, most specifically Jennifer Hudson’s testimony, are unreliable, Sanger said. Jennifer Hudson allegedly told someone Paul Flores confessed to the crime and buried Smart’s body in Huasna in 2002, but didn’t come forward to law enforcement with it until 2019.

But Hudson only went to law enforcement after she and a friend drove around Huasna “to get their story straight” and spoke with a podcaster, he said.

He said for the prosecution’s evidence to make sense, Smarts body would have been moved from Huasna to underneath Ruben’s deck and then to a third location.

Sanger added that the neighbor who reported to law enforcement that there was a trailer at Ruben Flores’ home near the deck after a search warrant was carried out was disgruntled and upset about the attention Ruben Flores brought to her quiet street.

He said there was no conclusive evidence found on the trailer that a body was moved, and that the only DNA found belonged to Susan Flores’ boyfriend, who owned the trailer.

“I ask that you find Paul Flores not guilty,” Sanger said in closing.

Prosecution: ‘Some fathers will do anything for their sons’

Peuvrelle’s opening statements for Ruben Flores were nearly identical to those for Paul Flores.

He emphasized the only call Paul Flores made the weekend Smart disappeared was to his father. Paul Flores’ roommate was out of town, so Paul Flores knew he had privacy.

He said Ruben Flores had been overheard calling Kristin Smart a “dirty slut” and told Smart’s father “you better get out of here or somebody might get shot,” when he visited Ruben Flores’ home looking for his daughter.

“Some fathers will do anything for their sons,” Peuvrelle said.

Peuvrelle reiterated that five days after investigators served a search warrant at Ruben Flores’ home and found Kristin Smart items in his house, such as her missing poster, a neighbor saw a trailer appear at the house with a fence taken down near the deck.

Paul, Ruben and Susan Flores were all allegedly present with the trailer, as well as Susan Flores’ boyfriend.

The prosecutions opening statements for Ruben Flores’ charges concluded Monday evening. The defense’s opening statements and evidence are expected to be presented starting at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The trial is expected to last until October.

This story was originally published July 18, 2022 at 12:16 PM.

Chloe Jones

The Tribune

Chloe Jones is a former journalist for The Tribune