Episode 02: The Only Suspect

[SWAMPIE FELLS PARTY] Over the weekend following Swampie Fells party, nobody saw or heard from Kristen Smart. Sunday night came and went, but the smart family never got the phone call they were expecting to hear about the good news Kristen was supposed to share. No one thought much of it since it was a three day weekend. Except Margarita Compos. Kristen's friend and dorm mate, who separated from her a few blocks away from the party. Kristen had tucked Margarita's room key into her shoe before they split up and was supposed to spend the night in Margarita's room. The next morning, I didn't see her, but I figured she was sleeping later on that afternoon. Still not back. I figured she was just like doing her thing, like hanging out with other other people. You know, I figured she had found the party, but then by the end of the day, it was like, wait, now this is weird. You know, now where is she? I figured out early on that small mistakes and news reports have snowballed into gospel truth over the past 23 years. In almost every official retelling of this story, Kristen's roommate, Crystal, is out of town all weekend, which is why Kristen isn't reported missing for several days. It turns out that's not correct. Crystal spent Friday night off campus, but came back Saturday and saw Kristen's belonging spread out all over her bed, like they had been the day before, which probably meant that Kristen hadn't slept there. But that didn't seem strange to her. Not until Kristen didn't spend Saturday night in her room either, and she started to ask around, only to realize that nobody in Mirhal had seen Kristen since Friday night. And we're like, where is she? Like, Kristen, oh my god, why are you why Kristen? Like, what is going on? You know, really where it got bad is when it's like, we have school tomorrow. You know, why is she not back yet? Where is she? On Monday, Crystal and Margarita finally mentioned this to a neighbor across the hall, Jennifer Fips. Several girls from the dorm gathered in Jennifer's room while she called the campus police department to report Kristen missing. Cal Poly police didn't take a report on the incident, since it didn't seem suspicious to them that a student would be away from Memorial Day weekend. Jennifer then called the San Luis Obispo Police Department, who told her that she should take it up with the campus police instead. I mean, we were all in the room in the hallway together talking about it. We were trying to be responsible young adults. We did the right thing. They called the campus police again to report that Kristen hadn't been seen since Friday. Still believing that she simply went away for the holiday, Cal Poly campus police called the smart family's home in Stockton to see if Kristen was visiting them. When Denise Smart told the officer that she hadn't heard from her daughter, they still didn't think it was out of the ordinary for a college student. She might have gone camping with a group of friends and they assured Denise that this was probably the case. Because of this, they didn't take a missing persons report until Tuesday, May 28, four days after Kristen attended the party. This back and forth between the two law enforcement groups and the smart family caused a total stall in search efforts. And whatever happened in those four days has been lost to history. I remember us telling them like she has been gone for 24 hours. Like why are you waiting longer? They just didn't react quick enough. Like they let time go by. All the evidence that was probably really viable is that's where I think things went wrong. Up to this very day, headlines have always called this a quote, "mysterious disappearance." While it has a nice ring to it and is still technically classified that way, I've come to learn that it's really neither of those things. Because if we go back to the last place that Kristen was seen, there's still enough of a shadow left behind for us to trace an outline around. An outline in the shape of a five foot ten boy filled in with a consistent history that's coming back to haunt him. [Music] Kristen's disappearance isn't taken seriously for several days. Cal Poly campus police think she probably ran off with a friend or flew to Hawaii without telling anyone. Even the Cal Poly paper, the Mustang Daily, doesn't report the news until Friday, May 31, a full week after she's last seen, an issue that's mostly dedicated to staff goodbyes. The headline, "Student disappears after party," runs alongside other stories like Susan Konga contemplates the racial significance of cheese nips. Cal Poly police start to ask around and words spread slowly throughout the campus. Trevor Belcher, who I talked to in the last episode, remembers hearing about it from Matt Manzer, the president of Capacai. So I think it was Wednesday. I don't recall it being Tuesday like the day after. It's like no, it was either Wednesday or Thursday. It's when I went to the Capacai house. Some time had passed and Matt Manzer says, "Hey, you want to hear something crazy?" He goes, "Yeah, he goes, you know, vinyl chick?" And I go, "Yeah, Roxy." And he goes, "Missing." And I go, "What do you mean missing?" He's like, "The police were here today." She's missing. Missing where? He's like, "I don't know, but it seems serious." The last time that Kristen was reportedly seen, she was splitting off from Paul Flores to walk to her own dorm, as he walked to his just 120 feet away. Her roommate, Crystal, told the campus police that none of Kristen's personal belongings were missing, including her ID and money. So it doesn't seem likely that she's just left town. By Crystal's account, it doesn't appear that Kristen even made it back to her dorm room. If Kristen never made it back into her room, it's possible that someone intercepted her on the short staircase between the two dorms after Paul Flores looked away. Or as campus police first theorized, she may have been so drunk that she just wandered off into the night. If we rewind back a little further, Cheryl Anderson parted ways with the two of them at the corner of Grand in perimeter, about 300 feet before Paul Flores reportedly entered his dorm at Santa Lucia Hall. And if we rewind just a little more, Tim Data split off from the group at the corner of Via Carta and perimeter, only about a thousand feet before Cheryl left. It's such a frustratingly small amount of space in the scheme of things. Kristen didn't disappear in the wilderness or the middle of the ocean. She disappeared on one of these streets, in the span of a walk that only took me 11 minutes. The last three people to see Kristen all reportedly separated from her, one at a time, until the last one just let her walk to her dorm alone. Even though they all reported that she was too drunk to even stand on her own, just 20 minutes before. Cal Poly Police investigators Ray Barrett and Mike Kennedy interview the three witnesses on May 30th, five days after they walked Kristen back to campus. Tim Davis, who split off first from the group, is a senior at Cal Poly, lives off campus, and is a friend of Ryan Swampy Fells, whose party everyone attended on Crandallway that night. He's a member of the same Capacai fraternity as Swampy Fell, and majoring in international management. Cheryl Anderson is a Cal Poly freshman, a speech communication major who lives in the Sierra Madre towers on campus. She doesn't know Kristen well, but she's seen her around, and knows she lives in the Red Bricks. At six foot one, Kristen is hard to miss. Paul Flores, who caught up to the group late and was the last to walk Kristen back to her dorm, is a freshman majoring in food sciences, who came from a royal Grande, just 15 minutes south of Cal Poly. He's not a particularly strong student, failing English composition and math, with a D in his introductory food sciences class, and a combined grade point average of just 0.6. In fact, the only class he passes in his 1995 to 96 freshman year is a bowling elective. While Cal Poly is something of a distinguished technical college, they're known to give extra consideration and leniency to their applicants who are residents of the central coast. Because Flores is the last person known to have seen Kristen alive, he clearly receives the most scrutiny from investigators. But that's not the only reason. When questioned by the campus police, Cheryl Anderson tells them that she knew of Paul before the night of the party, and she found him kind of creepy. She says that she and her friends called him Chester the Malester, because of his propensity for relentlessly flirting with and groping girls. In fact, a few months earlier, Paul had forcefully tried to kiss Cheryl's room. roommate at another party. Things get even stranger when Tim Davis tells the police in his interview that at one point during Swampy Fells party, he heard a loud noise and looked over to see Kristen and fall into the floor, with Paul Flora's lying on top of her. He's not sure whether Paul knocked her down or they both fell together, but it's the first indication that Kristen and Paul may have interacted before he caught up with the group during the walk home, which Paul didn't tell police about. And remember when Kristen took Trevor Belter into the bathroom at the party? I left part of his story out of the last episode. When he came out of the bathroom, he had a brief and weird exchange, with a guy who he had never met before. So I opened up the door and I shut the door and immediately this guy steps in front of me and he goes, "What I'd like to know is what you did with her in the bathroom." And I was like, "Oh God, this is a boyfriend or something." I'm like, "What did I get into? I have no idea what I'm doing." And I go, "Nothing man." And then this relief washed over his face. It was weird. He started laughing. And I was like, "Oh, you're just some idiot." That was him. It was Paul Flora's. It was totally him. And another girl I talked to, who didn't want to be interviewed on the podcast, had her own bizarre encounter with Paul Flora as at Swampy Fells party that night. While she was asking around for a piece of gum, Paul told her he had some and she followed him into the backyard. Once they were alone on the side of the house, he tried to kiss her and she pushed him away. Later back in the house, he cornered her in the hallway and tried again, but she got away and found one of her friends to hang out with so she wouldn't be alone. Cheryl Anderson says that several times during the walk back to campus, Paul and Kristen stopped walking. And with his arms around Kristen from behind, he told Cheryl that she could go ahead without them. She decided not to separate from them because she thought it seemed weird and also because she still didn't want to walk alone. Cheryl also says that right before she finally turned on to Grand Avenue to head to her dorm, Paul asked her for a good night kiss. She said she declined and then he insisted on just a kiss on the cheek. She declined again and he asked her for a hug instead. This whole time his arm is wrapped around Kristen's bare torso. Cheryl says she declined the hug too, but couldn't recall whether she might have shaken his hand while double checking that he was sure he could get Kristen back to her dorm safely before finally walking away. So with Cheryl's account alone, we have an unsettling picture of Paul, an aggressively flirty guy who she is personally referred to as "chester the molester" in the past, who forcefully tried to kiss her roommate months before and now tries to persuade Cheryl for a kiss and a hug, moments before she leaves him with Kristen, who's too intoxicated to walk by herself. It's hard to imagine that someone so forward would be respectful of a drunk girl once he's left alone with her. I wonder if this is just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Paul's had several documented incidents before this too. In December of 1995, a female Cal Poly student called campus police at 1 a.m. to report that a guy had climbed the trellis of her apartment, peeping on her from her balcony. Officers arrived on the scene to find Paul Flores drunk and told him to leave. In February of 1996, just a few weeks after the peeping incident, he was pulled over for speeding and blew a point 1-3 into the breathalyzer, one and a half times the legal blood alcohol limit in California and had his license suspended. This turned out to be a strange, lucky break, but I'll talk more about that later. In March, three female students filed a police report claiming that they were receiving constant phone calls from an unknown caller. For six weeks by the time of the report, over spring break, they claimed that the caller had filled their entire answering machine tape, back when voicemails were recorded on micro cassettes, with nothing but silent hang-up calls. Diling star 69 would usually recall the last number that called your phone, but they're unable to redial this way, which means it could be a block number or a payphone. So they're not sure who the caller is, but the campus police report notes that the girls believe it to be Paul Flores because it's the same apartment he was apprehended from, after climbing their trellis back in December. Because I'm on the central coast and I've been talking to a lot of people about this case over the past year, I've made a lot of accidental connections with people who know someone, who knew someone, who might have at one time had information. By sheer coincidence, one of my acquaintances happened to go to high school with Paul Flores, and I ask her if she's willing to share anything she remembers about him. In a message online, she tells me, "We always called him "scary Paul." I'm driving to see the woman who sent me this message, but she's not comfortable being identified, so all refer to her as Emily. Paul went to a Roro Grande High School from 1992 to 1995, and Emily was a year younger than him. Another perk of investigating a crime that happened in your own backyard is that you're probably only two or three degrees of separation from someone who can tell you more. We sit down at her dining room table and spend about half an hour catching up before we get to my real reason for visiting. I want to know about Paul Flores from someone who actually knew him. You went to high school and where? I went to a Roro Grande High School. I graduated in 1996. Paul graduated in 1995. That's right. That's right, because I dated somebody that Paul hung with in that crew of guys, and he graduated in 1995. They were classmates. I was a year behind. From what I, just as an observer, we would be at parties together, and he always showed up. I don't know that he was ever technically invited, but who's invited to a party in high school? They just kind of happen. Did you ever talk to him or interrupted him directly? Yes, I definitely would talk to him. I remember that because he was notable enough, speaking with him, he had a far off glazed overlooking his eye. I never was fully sure. It was like his responses to things would not fully line up with the thread of the conversation. It was understood that he was odd. But you have to remember, we were all brought up to be really nice kids. If somebody's odd, you don't call them out on it. You don't harmless. That's the word that I would say for his oddity. He was kind of there. Oh, it's Paul. He's harmless. That kind of thing. I don't think that he necessarily was harmless. I think that social constructs are such that we as civilized people don't want to call somebody out on their weirdness. We want to be inclusive. We want to. And so maybe that was one of the explanations that we made for him for ourselves was he's harmless. Emily graduated from a Royal Grande High School in 1996 and had moved out of state by the time that Paul's name was first released in connection to the disappearance of Kristen Smart. Even though she describes him as seemingly harmless, his involvement made perfect sense in her mind when she first heard the news. I wasn't surprised because he was so weird. I mean, there was, I wasn't surprised, but there's also that shock value of kind of, oh, my God, I knew it. I knew there was something wrong with that guy. Now would I have ever guessed that he was actually going to follow through on homicide? No. But if anybody was going to do it, it kind of fit, you know, not surprising necessarily. I probably shouldn't say it's not surprising. I should probably say more like, yeah, if it was going to be anybody, yeah, I could see that. Do you remember hearing any sort of rumors about him or anything that people had been creeped out by him or anything? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, his nickname was scary, Paul. So, I mean, there was a basis for that, for sure. Yeah. And also, just physically, he was almost, he wasn't actually albino, but he was so fair. And when I knew him, he would, it was very popular. Offspring was a huge band at the time. So he would, a lot of guys were bleaching their hair. And so just that bleach and like these really fair blue eyes, I don't know. or something that was. Yes, spooky. Being creepy certainly isn't a crime, and while occasionally the words homicide or murder come up in my conversations with people, I should stress here that they're referring to the worst case scenario. Paul Flores has never been charged with any crime in connection with the disappearance of Kristen Smart. Something else I should probably mention. Despite his name, Paul Flores is very white. His dad is Mexican, hence the surname, but Paul takes after his mom, blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin. In fact, Emily isn't the first person I've heard refer to him as Albino. Kristen's friend Margarita remembers him the same way. When I found out that Paul Flores was a time suspect, I was immediately, I was like, oh my gosh, that weird Albino guy that works at the grocery store has nothing to do with Kristen's disappearance. I saw Paul Flores a couple times. I saw him working at the campus store. He had this weird glare, had really, really white pale skin and like really white hair and like these eyes that kind of bulged out 'cause you stare. Like when I found it, it was hit, I was not surprised. I was like, that guy is a creeper. I wasn't surprised that he had something to do with it. - Back at Emily's house, we've been discussing the names of some other people who might have interacted with Paul to see who I should reach out to next. - Let me see though if I could find a in your book. Wouldn't that be nice? - That would be great. - She disappears into her garage for less than a minute. - Oh, get out of here, I went right to it. Oh, that is so great. 1995, that's when he graduated, right? - Yeah. - Well then we could look up some of these people, maybe I'd recognize them. Yeah, can I take a picture of them? - Yeah, you can take this, that's okay. And if you just give it back to me, that would be awesome. - Yeah. - We flip through the pages for a few minutes. A blur of new faces, of people who all potentially knew the last person who saw Kristen Smart alive, before one in particular jumps out at Emily. - Oh. - Oh, yeah, I know you should talk, dude. - She puts me in touch with another woman who knew Paul from the same high school parties. And pretty soon, I'm on my way to another part of the central coast to meet her. She's also asked that I not use her real name. So I'll refer to her as Jackie. (dramatic music) Jackie's house might best be described as secluded. It's tempting to go into more detail, but to protect her anonymity, I'll leave it at this. I say wow a lot on the last part of my drive. - The destination is on your right. - Okay. - Just a minute, that's here. Wow. (door creaks) How are you? Really good. Hi. - She just needs a walk. - Okay, you, if you're gonna hang out outside, if we're gonna go in. All right, you're a good girl. Stay. Stay for mommy. Sorry. - You're a little bit prettier than I thought I'd be. - I didn't bring a camera. - Okay, that's right. Welcome, welcome. - Thank you. - Did this work for? - Yeah, absolutely. - Thank you. - Okay. - Perfect. - Do you want coffee or tea or anything? Or order? - I would love some coffee, that would be good. - Coffee, yeah, thank you. - Are you opposed to cup-cow chips or orange peel in it? - No. - Or you can just straight up. - No, that sounds good, yeah. Honestly, I'm really not even sure what I'm looking for here. None of these people know what happened to Kristen's smart. But I guess I'm trying to get a fuller idea of Paul Flores, the same way I learned about Kristen. Jackie's dog, a six-month-old wolf mix, curls up on the couch behind me while we talk. - Wait, this is a new one for me. Yeah, it's fancy. Okay, more pins to be anyways. You know, I wrestled with whether or not to be a part of it, to be honest, for a minute or two, you know, a little while actually. But I really feel like what you're doing with telling that tale in that way is honoring her and it's something that hasn't been done. - Since Jackie also went to high school with Paul, I tell her I'm interested in how he interacted with women, how he communicated and what stood out about him. - You had a stutter. - Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah, I don't know. - What we've, you know, I mean, disfluency now and it's a PC term, but yeah, there was definitely a stutter and it was more, seem to be when you got flustered or embarrassed or around girls. It would come out and it was very, very, like he couldn't get past a word, you know, it would be usually like that first part of it and he would get stuck for a minute or two, you know. And we had another friend that was the same grade as his that was also Paul until we called Paul Flora's Psycho Paul, that was Paul and Psycho Paul. So if you wanted to distinguish between who you saw or who was at the party or what happened, then you would say, Paul or Psycho Paul, so that's why it was a little step up from creepy. - Yeah. - There was a couple of things that happened that we, I knew that he was not cool, that there was, you know, you wouldn't want to be alone in a room with him, you wouldn't let any of your friends be drunk around him, you just, you know, those were kind of unspoken things. - Once Jackie even saw Paul get physically violent with one of her female friends. - It was after a prom party. We're all sitting out at somebody's house, you know, high school kids, no adults. She did something, ash, or did something, or laughed, or I don't know, he picked her up and threw her. Just, I'm like, - Just unprompted. - Unprompted, and then he was like, oh, or did he said some excuse or something or whatever, but a couple guys got on and then, and there were two or three times here where he would come, he would be out in the bush, in the, it was a lot more dense then, but he would be out there. He would be like, dude, we didn't invite him, or we'd be talking about him almost, and then somebody would see him, and he would be there. And he'd be like, what is going on? - While Paul didn't have many close friends, he occasionally hung out with a group of guys, Jackie knew, who lived together in an apartment in Grover Beach, a town that borders a royal grande, on the coastal side. - And they were having a party in Grover there, and it was some big party, and he, I don't know, there was two of us found him in one of the rooms of the bunk bed with a girl passed out, and he was like right next door, and we were like, what the fuck are you doing? What's going on here? We were sober and she was passed out, and he probably drank too. I have no idea, maybe not, I don't know that much. I never saw him drink, really, but he always would be around, and so he said, oh, I was straightening our clothes or something, or she was gonna vomit, or I was gonna do something, and this is in high school, this is, you know, and it's like, you don't have enough, you don't know enough to put all that together. We knew he was off, but to say, who's gonna hurt somebody someday? Or, you know what I mean? It's like, I look back down, I'm like, could I, what should I, what could I have? Could I say anything? You know, could I, I don't know, not that there's guilt, but there's, there's question like, why don't you see it all? Why don't you, especially me now with my brain the way that it works, and I had red roses that were left outside here that were dead, that were left upside down on a fence post, out here, and then somebody had said they had seen him walking away. No, he had a truck, it was a green. He would park the, oh my God. He would park the truck far away, that's why he, oh, that's how, so they had seen the truck, and then they had seen him walking. But because he would never come, like when we would, I would have parties here, it was just me out here, really like there was no, not as populist, it's pretty sparse too, but, I think he would make me ill if I saw him to be honest, like I think I would have a physical reaction. I'm really very 100% a fan, typically of innocent until proven guilty, and all of that that goes with it, and giving people a fair shake, and it's different, when you know him, I guess. And he just did that he wasn't right with girls, he wasn't. Again, since Kristen Smart was never found, we have no way of knowing what happened to her, but no one who knew Paul seems to have a hard time imagining him going too far. - So do you remember when you heard about Kristen Smart disappearing, or that he was attached to it in some way, do you remember? - Mm-hmm, I was still here. Yeah, I remember thinking that could have been me, or anybody, like she looked like all of us, like. - We'd all somehow heard, and it was like, we knew it, like I, you know, it wasn't, it was not that, it was a relief almost that it wasn't, I guess us, but it wasn't that shocking, if that makes sense, it was like, oh, you know, like only a matter of time before something, it was only a matter of time, but, you know, I didn't know all that then, and so I think knowing what I did know about him, I would say that was, he would, he saw an opportunity to take our way to girl home, to his place, and have no parents, and nobody walk in from high school, and no guys to beat him up, if someone went, you know, you gotta kick that a lot, he got asked to leave, but he never got invited, like I never invited him here, you know what I mean? - Yeah. - It wasn't like you had to have an invitation, but you had to act a certain way. I feel like almost anyone in those four years that he was there, or that crossover, has some sort of interaction with him that was like, ah, you know what I mean? At least from my personal group, maybe we could have said something, you know what I mean? Maybe, yeah. If enough of us had icky feelings or creepier, you know, if there's enough of that consensus, like we can't do anything now, but maybe we can say here are the things to look out for. Here's the things that they'll make your hand or stand up, they'll give you the icky feeling that you should really, you know, those gut feelings, you don't want to wash those away, you know, when you get that about someone consecutively then. I'm glad you're doing this, thank you. Thank you so much. Jackie remembers that Paul worked at Garland's in high school, a small hamburger restaurant on Grand Avenue in Grover Beach. I'm able to confirm that he worked there from October 1993 to September 1995, and I reach out to one of his co-workers, Jessica Shutt, to ask her if she ever had any memorable interactions with him. Oh, lots of interactions. Okay, great. I'll just let you tell him. Okay, I didn't know him very, he didn't really, he wasn't very talkative, didn't really have any interaction with him until I worked with him. You know, we'd be cooking and he'd come up behind you and say something that you didn't quite hear and you'd be kind of confused and you'd be like, what'd you say? And he'd kind of laugh at it and he seemed to take joy in making you uncomfortable. He might say something about the sunset and then he might like kind of brush by you just a little too close or he'd kind of follow people around and not doing what he was supposed to do. Do you remember what his position was? He was usually a cashier, but when he wasn't cashiering because you know, we'd have these big waves of people coming in and then it would be kind of slow. He'd be following us around. You know, he just kind of appeared and disappeared, seemed like his parents were really invested in all of us at work trying to be his friend. When I, they showed up with a bunch of food for us while we were working, but they seemed like overly happy to see us, you know, kind of like I hope that he was fitting in with all of us. At one point, Jessica started to notice that Paul was following her home from work regularly, even though she lived at the top of a dead end street, nowhere near his house. One day I was driving to work. I lived way out in the Corbett Canyon on a private road. The only people who lived on that street were people who were family members, which he wasn't. So I was driving down the hill and all of a sudden I noticed that he's driving behind me. And then, you know, which I found a little strange, but I didn't think too much of it because like bigger, you know, maybe got lost and you know, somehow ended up on my road. You could see the street lights. It was a white truck. And then when I went around the coldest sack, I kind of stopped at my driveway and I looked behind and that was, it was him and his truck. He's like, I wanted to know where you live. I was like, you know, you could have just asked me. You know, I would have told you. And then there was other times where he followed me all the way up to my driveway, which it's on Badger Canyon Lane. It's about a good mile up off the road. So there's no reason to be up there unless you live there. You know, I really didn't like that. I told one of my co-workers and the guys that I worked with, they'd take him aside and be like, "Quit being so weird. Don't talk to her. Don't follow her home. You know, just stop it." It would work for a while, but eventually every time he'd be following me too close or standing too close to me or like right over my shoulder, I'd be like, "Hey, you know, cut it out. There's no reason for you to do that." And I would tell them to the guys and they'd tell them to leave me alone. And then sometimes I would go and you know, I'd be out with my friends and downtown Pizmo if he would just show up. And I was like, you know, what are you doing here? He's like, "Oh, I just wanted to see what you're doing." And so my friends were like, "Oh, you know, you have a little admirer. Just like a little stalker." And I'm like, "Yeah, you know, he seems pretty harmless, but he just gave you this really weird feeling." And so I remember one time, I think this was after Christ and he disappeared. I was at my parents' house. They moved away out of the area and I was watching on salt mysteries and there he was. And I'm like, "Oh my god, it had happened." Like without a doubt, it was like he absolutely had something to do with this. He's responsible. You know, anything that they said he did, he probably did it. Jessica's roommate from that time doesn't want her name used, but she remembers Paul the same way. Our house is at the very top of the hill and there's no reason, Rhymerese even go up there. So sometimes I would go and pick her up from work so she just, there would be another person there. And you know, we would be talking amongst ourselves like, you know, as you're getting ready to get off a work and close down the shop, you know, "Hey, you know, do you want to go to San Luis after this or is there anything we want to go do?" You know, we'd just be talking amongst ourselves the way we go somewhere and lo and behold, sometimes Paul would show up. Somebody other things just talking to him just he used to say really different stuff that made you feel really uncomfortable. I tried to say kind of far away from him in high school because I never felt comfortable around him, just strange in nature. Do you remember when you heard that Kristen Smart had disappeared and that Paul might be involved what your first thoughts were? Honestly, my first thoughts was I had no doubt that he probably did something. And I want to be anonymous because I know he's still out there. Paul's manager at Garland's, Lisa Dimack, even tried to be friends with him for a while until he started to creep her out too. He would sit and mess with me all the time, like kind of be young little kids, mess with girls and they like them, like kind of mean belief. Yeah. He would do like obnoxious things from me all the time. I did not like him at first. He would just annoy me constantly. For some reason, I guess we ended up working it out. We became friends somewhat, I guess. I tolerated him. He still locked me out when I go take the trash and stupid things like that. He was just, he had to mess with the girl all the time to a point where it was mean almost to get your attention. I think he tried to shut me in the freezer before like stupid things like that. I didn't really let them get to me, but I don't really remember how we ended up being friends per se, I guess. I know that he used to let me use his truck all the time. I'd actually been to his house. I went there one time. I met his mother. She's very more like a timid, kind of, I think he was kind of rude to her too if I recall. I think his mom was shocked that I was here with him. I just remember one time my parents wrote a town and he came to the house and he knew my parents wrote a town. So he came and he was trying to, he wanted to come in and I said no, I have people upstairs. So I went to shut the door. He actually put his hand on the door like he was going to push. But then I slammed it on the space. But thinking about that later, that was you know definitely something that stuck out to me. So now I was just like what the hell. And I know that one time he, I think his my son, I used to drive the car and it was a truck and it was a stick and I think she had never drove a stick and he said he would take her and I was at the house and I remember coming back and she said that he tried to grab her. Now me and her were both like not gonna put up with it. He got crap. So I don't think she said she was pushed it wherever but she had told me about it. That was weird. His hand on her leg. You know she slapped it off. But I mean he's always kind of childish and you know go out of his way to be a dick I guess two girls. Would you describe him as kind of an unusual person or was he kind of a typical high school boy? You know he was very strange. In what ways? Manurism, like I said he was just different. Like he, he really had to prove himself or something. So he kind of went out of his way to be assertive sometimes that he really wasn't you know kind of kind of put on the show. But he definitely was not nice with females. I mean he would sit behind me and he would literally like slap my head and just do the stuff and like he wouldn't stop. Like he was he thought it was funny but you know he actually you know how to move away. I just really, first he really annoyed me and I really can't remember how we ended up coming to be some sort of thing. A little more aggressive than he should have been with with girls. Yes. I'm asking him about some parties and stuff. He kind of stepped back and watched more. So when you heard about Kristen's disappearance and you heard that Paul was involved somehow. What was your initial thought? I wasn't surprised like that's just because the way he had acted around women and maybe you know someone giving him some attention. You know like at that time when he tried to push his way and maybe touched my head like I think he maybe felt that he had an opportunity to do something. I kind of thought it sounded like his personality. Several of the Garland's workers tell me about another incident with a woman but they can only remember her first name. After several months of searching I get a hold of the right person but she asks not to be recorded. Her story is that Paul used to pick on her the same way he did Lisa only more physically. One time in the Garland's parking lot after work Paul got out of his truck while it was still running. Came up behind her while she was unlocking her car door. Rann is hand up between her legs, groping her crotch and then fled back to his truck, laughing. Months later Paul threw a handful of chopped onions into her eyes during an argument in the kitchen and she started to hit him in front of customers. She was actually fired from Garland's for it. She was interviewed by police after Kristen's disappearance and told them that although she had nothing to prove it, she was absolutely positive that Paul was the right guy, based on the way she saw him interact with women. He would never be someone you could trust to get a drunk girl home safely, and he would never pass up an opportunity to take advantage of a female. How unlucky does Paul Flores have to be, to walk a girl home who ends up disappearing, and to have every woman remember being afraid of you and to immediately think that you were responsible for whatever happened to her. A few months after Paul's DUI arrest in February 1996, he had been pulled over again and this time cited for driving with a suspended license, which violated his probation. After he failed to show up in court, a warrant was issued for his arrest. On May 27, 1996, just two days after Kristen's smart was last seen, a royal grande police knock on his dad's front door. Paul's not home at the time, so his dad says he'll bring him to the station later. Here's where that stroke of luck regarding the DUI comes in. When Ruben Flores brings his son to the royal grande police station later that night, Paul is booked and photographed with something unexpected, a fresh black eye. At the time, the missing person report on Kristen's smart hasn't even been filed yet, so a royal grande police don't know the significance of the mug shot they just took. But if it wasn't for that mug shot, there would be no photographic proof of this black eye, because the Cal Poly campus police never took a picture of it. After talking to Cheryl Anderson and Tim Davis, Cal Poly police did bring Paul back in for questioning, though, and they asked him about his eye then, on May 30. They also noted scratches on the backs of his hands and what looked like rug burn on his knees. He told them that he sustained the injuries that Monday, the day of the mug shot, while playing basketball with his friend Jeremy Moon, at Harlow Elementary School. When the police talked to Jeremy a week later, he tells them that he saw Paul's Sunday before the basketball game, and he already had the black eye, because he says he asked about it too, and that Paul told him he didn't know how he got it. On June 19, Paul is interviewed at the Eroio Grande Police Department by district attorney investigators Bill Hanley and Larry Hobson, and they confront him with this inconsistency. That's when Paul's story suddenly changes. He says he got the black eye Monday morning at about 2 a.m. Note, this is still after Jeremy said he saw the black eye on Sunday. Paul says he's been trying to sell his 1993 Ford Ranger, and while attempting to remove the stereo in the middle of the night, he says he slammed his eye against the steering wheel. This hardly needs to be dissected, but why not? If you try to recreate this in your own car, and you're around 5'10" like Paul was, you'll probably notice that the position you have to get into, to hit your right eye on the steering wheel, requires you to bend your neck downward toward it. And if you're going to give yourself a black eye, you'd have to throw your head down pretty hard, almost intentionally. Also, assuming that this steering wheel is on the left, like most cars in America, hitting his right eye requires him to turn his head away from the stereo before he slams it into the wheel. It seems a lot more unlikely than his story about being elbowed during a basketball game. It's not just the questionable explanation that makes police suspicious. It's the fact that this is now the third explanation Flores has given. He told his friends he didn't know how he got the black eye. He just woke up with it. And he told the campus police that it was from a basketball injury, and now he admits, those were both lies. So why lie about something like this? Paul tells the police it wasn't an important detail, and he was afraid it would make him sound like a clutz. Everything he set up to this point could be consistent with someone who just walked a drunk girl home. But the timing of the black eye is suspicious, and lying about the cause of that black eye is a pretty big red flag. I may be understanding lying to your friends about it, but lying to the police while they're investigating the disappearance of a girl you walked home, so they don't think you're a clutz, seems like a strange priority. But there's still no evidence that Paul did anything to Kristen after they got back to the dorms. However, the investigation hasn't been conducted with much urgency either. Like I mentioned earlier, Cal Poly campus police treated Kristen's disappearance as a runaway case until almost a week after she disappeared. Even after that, it's 11 days after May 25th, when police finally collect things from Kristen's dorm room at Mayor Hall. In newspapers from the time, Denise Smart compares the police response to searching for a lost bicycle, rather than a lost student. Campus police don't finally search Flores' dorm room until June 10th, 16 days after Kristen was last seen, and by this time, students had left for the summer, and Paul had cleared out all of his belongings. But it gets even worse. Janitorial crews also came in and thoroughly cleaned his dorm room. Campus police also take so long to request a record of outgoing phone calls made from Paul Flores' dorm room, that by the time they ask, the university has already purged them. The most insightful piece in all of this is the incident report that Cal Poly campus police took on May 31st. By this time they've already interviewed Tim Davis, Cheryl Anderson, Paul Flores, and a handful of the people from Swampy Fells party. But still the investigating officer writes, quote, "Victim attends party and does not return home afterwards. Does not contact friends or family and skip school." During the course of my investigation, I have spoken with many people who have been associated with Smart. They have all told stories that agreed with each other. The stories have all included the following information. Smart does not have any close friends at Cal Poly. Smart appeared to be under the influence of alcohol on Friday night. Smart was talking with and socializing with several different males at the party. Smart lives her life in her own way, not conforming to typical teenage behavior. These observations are in no way implying that her behavior caused her disappearance. But they provide a picture of her conduct on the night of her disappearance. Her conduct. In the Mustang daily on June 20th, investigator Mike Kennedy tells a student reporter quote, "There is no evidence of any criminal activity. It doesn't look like she was the victim of a crime. So we are pursuing this case as an adult missing under unusual circumstances." This after three and a half weeks of investigation. Cal Poly campus police don't think it looks like Kristen was the victim of a crime. Cal Poly finally passes off the investigation to the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office on June 26th, a month in. It only takes them three days to organize a thorough search of the Cal Poly campus with the help of almost 400 volunteers from the community and the California Rescue Dog Association or CARDA. CARDA specializes in training dogs to alert to the scent of human remains, specifically seeking the presence of 424 unique chemicals that are released from a decomposing human body, beginning just a few seconds after death. On June 29th, dogs are led into each of the dormitories at Cal Poly and walked calmly up and down the hallways. Their handlers aren't given any details about the case. They only know that they're looking for the scent of a missing girl who may be dead. The dog's complete two whole buildings without showing any interest. Inside Santa Lucia Hall, a Labrador retriever named Sierra suddenly alerts to her handler, Wayne Barons, outside of the locked door of room 128. She's led out of the building, and half an hour later, Adela Morris leads her border collie, Challa, through Santa Lucia. Morris isn't told about the previous alert to ensure that she doesn't cue her dog subconsciously, but Challa stops and scratches at the door of room 128 to be let in. Morris then takes Challa outside and brings a second border collie, named Cirque into the hallway, and Cirque stops and barks outside of room 128. One at a time, the dogs are led inside, and all three of them independently alert to the corner of a mattress on the left side of the room. Keep in mind, this is after janitors have removed all of the pillows, blankets, and sheets from the beds three weeks before. Afterwards, the dogs are each walked through the other two floors of the building, and none of them alert to any other room. The mattress and box spring are removed from room 128 and a fourth dog, a boxer named Tori, is walked down the hallway. He also stops at the same room and when he's let inside, he alerts to the exact spot in the room where the mattress used to be. Tori also picks up the scent of human decomposition on a corner of the bed frame, the handset of the telephone and one of the waist baskets. Again to account for every possible bias, the detectives removed the waist basket from the room and line it up in the hallway with several other identical waist baskets from the neighboring dorm rooms. Tori immediately singles out the waist basket from room 128. Police check their records for the residents of 128. The bed on the right side of the room where the dogs didn't alert, most recently belonged to Derek Say, an electrical engineering major. And the bed on the left side? The only bed in any of the dorms that the dogs alerted to? You guessed it. Paul Flores. Flores is now the last person seen with Kristen. He has a black eye which he lies about several times and he's the most recent occupant of a bed that four trained cadaver dogs detected the scent of human decomposition on. The red flags are turning into a red banner. The most important question in all of this is if Kristen is dead, what happened to her body? On July 12, detectives question Derek Say, the other occupant of room 128, and confirmed that he was gone over Memorial Day weekend, meaning that Flores had the room to himself. Say also tells police that Paul told him a different version of the events of May 25. While he told investigators that he stopped at his dorm and Kristen walked to Mir Hall alone, he told Say that he walked with her, all the way to the door of Mir Hall, and then came back to Santa Lucia. It's a small difference, but it's significant. More chilling is that Say says he joked with Paul when he heard that Kristen was missing and asked what Paul had done with her. Flores joked back, she's at my house eating lunch with my mom. At the end of the interview on June 19, the one where Flores told the DA investigators that he'd lied about how he got his black eye. Paula abruptly asks if he can leave. He has somewhere to be. Dave Larry Hobson asks where and Paul says what? Hobson repeats where and Paul replies, "I have to clean up some stuff, some concrete." Hobson asks for a third time where and Paul says, "My mom's house." Next time. You've been listening to your own backyard, episode two, the only suspect. Your own backyard is written, produced and hosted by Chris Lambert. Associate producer is Alexandra Wallace. Special thanks to Dennis Mann, Peter King, Nicholas Winnery, Candace Vanderplace, Derek Payne, Jamie Lewis, Garenson Claire, Sandy Arnold, April Cole Worley, Carrie Quimbee-Zennitch, Alyssa Brigham, Kaelin Pope, Sydney Brant, Olivia Dijonaro, Dallas Bronson, Javanna Cernacola, and Matthew Frank. If you feel that you have information that could help law enforcement with their investigation, you can directly contact San Luis Obispo Sheriff's Detectives at 805-781-4500. Want to reach out to us directly? Send an email to your own backyard podcast at gmail.com or visit our website at your own backyard podcast.com. To keep up with new episodes, subscribe to your own backyard on Apple podcasts and follow us on Facebook or Instagram. Original music is by Chris Lambert. Want to help keep Kristen's memory alive? You can donate to the Kristen Smart Scholarship at christensmart.org. A note from the smart family. The statute of limitations in this case has expired on everything except murder. Anyone who comes forward with information will not be charged with any crime.