Paul Flores won’t face charges for rape, child porn in Los Angeles, DA decides
Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of sexual assault.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office will not prosecute Paul Flores for crimes he is alleged to have committed in its county, including rape and child pornography, the office told The Tribune in an email on Friday.
A Monterey County jury convicted Flores of the 1996 murder of Cal Poly freshman Kristin Smart on Oct. 18 after hearing three-months of evidence at trial.
Flores is scheduled to be sentenced March 10, but his legal team is planning to file a motion for a new trial before the sentencing.
According to Ruben Flores’ arrest warrant, which was made public after the San Luis Obispo Tribune led an effort to fight unjust sealing of court records, “numerous homemade pornographic videos” depicting Flores “digitally penetrating, sodomizing and having sexual intercourse with unconscious females” were found on Flores’ computer when San Luis Obispo sheriff’s detectives carried out a search warrant in February 2020.
The warrant also said child pornography was found on Flores’ computer, including “images of teenaged boys and girls performing sex acts with adults.”
In early December, The Tribune asked the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office about whether it would pursue charges regarding the evidence found at Flores home, including the child pornography, and the alleged rapes of the two women who testified in the trial.
“The District Attorney’s Office reviewed the allegations involving Mr. Flores in January of last year and consulted with the Los Angeles Police Department. We do not intend to take further action at this time with regards to these allegations,” the office responded in an email Thursday.
The office added that it investigated a 2007 rape in Redondo Beach in which Paul Flores’ DNA was found to be a match, but declined to pursue charges in 2013 because the evidence was “insufficient.”
Paul Flores DNA matches 2007 rape kit
According to the charge evaluation worksheet obtained by The Tribune, a woman reported being raped after meeting friends at a Redondo Beach bar in 2007.
The woman met friends at the bar on Jan. 16, 2007. The last thing she remembers was going to sit on a bar stool, before she woke up in the bed of a stranger — now known to be Flores — the next day, naked and wrapped in a blanket, records say. She got up, went to the bathroom, and asked Flores how to get to Artesia Boulevard from his house. She still felt drunk as she walked home, the document said.
“Something happened last night, and I don’t want to come to work, rather I can’t,” the woman texted her friend the next morning.
Her friend took her to the hospital, and the woman had tenderness in her vaginal and anal areas. Even though she woke up in Flores’ bed, she had no recollection of meeting him or having intercourse with him.
A rape kit showed injuries, but “no obvious indication of force or assaultive behavior,” records say. The woman’s blood alcohol content was .12/.15 at the time the hospital examined her and there was no evidence of date rape drugs in her urine.
Paul Flores’ DNA matched the rape kit in 2011, the arrest warrant said. After the DNA match, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office contacted the woman, who was now 30, but she declined to be interviewed at that time. She said she had had several alcoholic blackouts as a result of drinking too much since she reported the rape.
When Flores was questioned about the incident, he told the office it was possible he had had sex with the woman since “he has had sex with many girls,” but did not remember her specifically.
The office interviewed a bartender at the Redondo Beach bar, who told them the San Luis Obispo Police Department had also contacted him about Flores regarding the 1996 murder of Kristin Smart. The bartender’s only information for SLOPD was that Flores sometimes was a customer.
The bartender did not remember seeing Flores leave with the woman, but when the Redondo Beach Police Department contacted the bartender in 2012, the bartender said another woman had reported a similar incident with Flores, but never reported it to police and still did not want to at that time.
The bartender learned of the similar incident through a third party and declined to give law enforcement names.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office ultimately found there was insufficient evidence to charge Flores with the rape in 2013.
“Although it appears the suspect may have taken advantage of victim’s drunken state, we cannot prove that victim did not willingly go to suspect’s apartment and have sex,” the charge evaluation sheet said. “The DNA hit only proves that there was some type of sexual contact, but not what the nature of that contact was. We cannot prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Two key witnesses in the trial against Flores for Smart’s murder testified Flores raped them — one alleged the assault occurred in Redondo Beach in 2008 and the other’s alleged assault occurred in San Pedro in 2011.
The prosecution used their testimonies to establish a pattern of behavior by Flores, with former San Luis Obispo County Deputy District Attorney calling Flores a “serial rapist,” alleging that Flores killed Smart in the course of a rape or attempted rape.
This 2007 rape was mentioned in Ruben Flores’ arrest warrant but was not included in the murder trial. It is unclear at this time if this was the third alleged rape victim who was expected to testify but didn’t after a motion from Flores’ defense.
Smart has never been found, and the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office said it will continue to look for her body in order to bring closure to Smart’s family.
This story was originally published January 6, 2023 at 4:04 PM.
