Episode 07: The Iceberg

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. This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. A November 17, 1977. 30-year-old Jane Morton Antones was supposed to be on her way to visit her best friend in a Tascadero, California, but she never showed up. The following afternoon, her brother founder 1972 Dotson parked off of Santa Barbara Road, a quarter mile from Highway 101. Jane's body was in the back seat. She was partially nude with her hands tied behind her back. She had been raped and her throat had been slit. Two months later, 28-year-old Patricia Dwyer was found dead in her Tascadero home. She was also partially nude with her hands tied behind her back and a single stab wound in her chest. San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Detectives quickly determined that, based on the similarities and the proximity, both murders were likely the work of one person. But without any suspects and an incomplete 1970s understanding of DNA, the murders remained unsolved and were eventually declared cold. In 2016, after several years of requests, Sheriff Ian Parkinson was finally allotted a budget to hire a cold case detective whose job would be to re-examine unsolved crimes, starting from page 1. In January 2017, Detective Clint Cole was promoted to the position and moved to an annex of the Sheriff's Department, lined with shelves full of Azure Blue boxes which contained the case files of 43 unsolved homicides in San Luis Obispo County. With the antennas and Dwyer cases, he had a good place to start. In 2005, DNA from the two crime scenes had been sent to a lab and determined to have come from the same person, but the profile didn't match any existing records. With a sample still on file, Detective Cole sent it in for a familial DNA search, a fairly new forensic science in the state of California, which found a match, a family member of the killer. Cross-checking records of that match's relatives pulled up a welder from Tascadero, who had died in prison in 2014 while serving as sentence for robbery and rape. Detective Cole finally had a suspect, Arthur Rudy Martinez. But without a direct sample of Martinez's DNA, the investigation hit a wall again. Until Cole tracked down an ex-girlfriend of Martinez, who, unbelievably, had saved one of his old razors and a toothbrush in her bathroom medicine cabinet, swabs of these items were sent in to be tested, and the profile extracted was a perfect match for DNA left at both the antennas and Dwyer crime scenes. After 41 years, two central coast murders were solved using a toothbrush and a razor. And just recently, I was able to meet the detective who solved them. Hello, my name is Clint Cole. I've worked for the Sheriff's Office for over 29 years, been a detective for about eight of those years, and I'm the lead investigator in the Kristen Smart investigation. When you first start looking at an older case, we kind of refer to it in law enforcement as another set of eyes or fresh eyes. Different investigators may focus on different things, and so that's the first step in a new case is to read all the reports starting in this case, you know, all the Cal Poly reports, the FBI reports, the DA reports, all of our reports, and there's hundreds and hundreds of them. And then you go through, we have a case file where there's more information. In this case, it's a very large case with that type of information, and so there's probably nine or ten boxes in this case, and then we have a computer system that has pretty much all of that. I mean, if you stacked it with paper, I couldn't even tell you how high it would possibly go. There's a lot of information on this case. This case has never been cold. It's always been active, especially since Sheriff Parkinson got elected in 2011. Someone's always been working on the case. And just because nothing's been public doesn't mean nothing's being done. I mean, I can tell you for sure that this case has worked on every day from the sheriff all the way down to my level as the investigator. It's a top priority, and, you know, we're never going to stop. We're never going to give up until we can bring Kristen home. With a winning streak in solving decades old cases with brand new technology, detective Cole could be the person that the Kristen Smart investigation has been waiting for. But in Kristen's case, one of the most frustrating parts has always been the overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence paired with a seeming deficit of physical evidence. But more than ever before, I have a really good feeling about the prospect of new physical evidence in this case. When I put out the last episode of your own backyard in November, I intended to take a break for a while. But one thing that I hadn't been able to do was talk with the San Luis Obispo Sheriff's Department or get them to comment on the case or the podcast. I reached out to the sheriff in the middle of production with a request to speak with him on or off the record about the Kristen Smart case and received a cordial reply less than an hour later that he would discuss it with his staff the next morning. I didn't hear back until all six episodes were finished. When I received an email from Commander Nathan Paul, who's asked me to call him Nate, and he not only agreed to speak with me, but also invited me to record the entire thing. Nate Paul was the lead investigator on the Kristen Smart case from 2014 to 2017. And even though the case has since been taken over by Detective Clint Cole, Nate is still the go-to guy for information about the investigation because of the amount of time he spent working on it. The Sheriff's Department's policy is not to comment on an ongoing and active case, but they're making an exception today. Because they declined to comment publicly about the podcast before, I thought I'd open with that. So I'd kind of like to start with your feelings on the podcast. So the podcast, first of all, like I said earlier, it was so well done, just in terms of the production quality and clearly you're an excellent researcher. So I found it a lack of a better way to put it, it was neat to listen to because somebody had off you had obviously done your homework. Officially, I think the greatest benefit of the podcast is the renewed interest that it's cultivated in the case, and you can't ask for anything else, especially for a case that is older to have a vehicle that drives renewed interest because you never know when that interest can lead to additional information that maybe blows something wide open. So I think your podcast is extremely positive and beneficial for the case because any public help that comes in, especially something that, as yet unreported, is something we'd love to get, you know, information wise. Yeah, and I was curious about that because I feel like I haven't heard an update about this since the excavation up at the P, and it just kind of went quiet, and so I wasn't sure how you guys feel about suddenly this wave of public interest back in the case. If that's a good thing or a bad thing for you guys. Public interest that could potentially drive information coming forward, it's nothing but a good thing. It's great. You know, we are always looking for more information or new information or that one additional tip. If your podcast or anything else for that matter generates public interest or causes that key witness who has never come forward to come forward or in some way breaks loose additional information, we're glad to have it. You know, that's, that would, that's great. Totally great. God, you hear that, that's very, that's a relief for me. The subject also came up on its own when I interviewed Detective Cole. And in terms of the 43 unsolved cases that you inherited when you moved into this position How is the Kristen Smart Case unique? It stands out one because of its popularity and you've really increased that. Is that a good or bad thing? It's a good thing. Yeah. No. There's nothing, nothing negative about what you're doing. It's helped us. Your podcast has helped us generate some leads for us that we have followed up on and are continuing to follow up on. It's difficult for us because we live in the secret world and so we're balancing what the benefits of what you're doing are with the benefits of us not being able to tell people anything. And so that's the only difficulty about it but it's certainly beneficial to the case. Like I said, we've acted on tips from the podcast. I've also had one question that I've been eager to get an answer to for almost two years now. When you came in and started looking at these and I'm sure Parkinson's 2 started looking at the files, did you feel like the previous two administrations had done as good of a job as they could on this case? Are there parts of this case that frustrate me significantly? Yeah, absolutely. Is it safe to say that mistakes were made? I don't think you can argue that. Things wise, is that frustrating as an investigator? Absolutely. If I had a crystal ball or a way back machine, I know where I'd go. You know, I'd teleport myself back to May of 1996 and do things differently but I don't. So it's about setting that frustration aside and figuring out where to from here. And what can we do with the puzzle pieces we have and where can we plug in other puzzle pieces to move forward? But it is frustrating. No doubt. To look back and see some of the mistakes that were made absolutely. Are there any specific things that you can comment on that specifically frustrated you when you got involved? That's it. There are many. There are many. I wish many things were done different and I guess I can leave it at that because what good is it to go point by point through all the previously identified things? Things that are in the public record that outrage the public upset me as well and upset many people here. But what good does it do to dwell on those because that's not going to that doesn't help us move the case forward. It doesn't help find Kristen, it doesn't help bring those responsible for what happened to her to justice. It's you know you can spin your wheels but in the end I want to move the case forward. So there's quite a few things that are frustrating to many and we're not alone. So again it's kind of like no excuses for that and I can't control that because I didn't work here in 1996. My first exposure to the smart case personally was reading about it in the local newspaper and seeing it on local TV because I was a resident here at the time where I'm going with that is since Sheriff Parkinson took office. Nobody assigned to this case today was part of the case back then. So we inherited the situation that it is now. I can't and will not make excuses for the shortcomings and the oversights that took place earlier in the case at the hands of the sheriff's office or other investigating agencies. I inherited the situation that I'm working through now. Again because I was a local if you will when this happened and not in law enforcement at all the concept that like when I was the lead investigator in this case that I would bring some sort of bias or agenda or cover up is frankly absurd because again the first knowledge I had of the case was reading it in the paper or seeing it on TV. So you mentioned us being you know quiet if you will or not not talking a lot. I'm going in active is an awfully buzz wordy type way to refer to the case and yet it's true and the promise I can make to the smarts is that I will do my best to move this case to closure. I've been a member of the the fine Kristen Smart Facebook group for years I read it every day at lunchtime so I'm totally aware of the dialogue that goes on there and I think it's important for people to know that even those people that maybe don't like me or don't like the sheriff's office because they do think there's some cover up or conspiracy or that we are truly just the most incompetent law enforcement entity on the face of the planet. The emotion and the heartfelt desire that people want to bring Kristen home you can't be argued with. So even if we don't agree or they think that I am truly just incompetent I respect the fact that ultimately we all want the same thing. So I would offer to those people that we're not incompetent and we're on it if Mrs. Smart is happy that probably says something and you know we're going to do our thing and move forward but I didn't come into this with an agenda and my number one objective is to find Kristen and that's what we're doing. Another question that I want to clear up while I have the chance is the reason that Susan Flores's backyard wasn't excavated in 2000 while the search warrant was active. Dennis Mann says that under sheriff Steve Bolts told him that a vote was taken that day on whether or not a dig was worth the cost and that the majority voted against it. But publicly Bolts claimed that Dennis got it wrong and that the warrant didn't even authorize a dig that day. So what's the truth? I do not know specifically why they did not dig as far as was it actually a vote? I don't know. I mean I wasn't there. When you receive a search warrant generally the search warrant authorizes a search of a property for the listed evidence as bound in one of the boundaries is reasonableness. In a case like this could it be argued that an excavation is reasonable? I believe you could absolutely make that argument. As to why they didn't excavate that day I don't know. And as I expected there's plenty of questions that he knows the answer to but can't share for strategic reasons and case integrity such as whether Susan Flores's backyard has been ruled out entirely as the location of Kristen's body. That's the sort of thing that I can't tell you because it is an ongoing and active investigation. There's another facet and that's the civil case because there was the discovery order that you referenced that was ultimately stayed in the court of appeals. So every year we go back to civil court and file a sealed document, annual declaration with the court that explains specifically what we've done in the last year to move the case forward. So if there's a narrative that exists in the public that says that nobody is holding us accountable that we could just be doodling or whatever cover up all this stuff, actually every year we go to court and the judge reveals a sealed declaration where we specifically state in detail things that I can't tell you today and we can't tell the public what we've done in the last year. Based on that annual declaration, the stay in the discovery order has been renewed every year. I've been told along the way that you guys have refused help from the FBI, you haven't wanted to turn the case over to the FBI. Where does that sit now in terms of what you're doing and why you won't involve the FBI? So that's a really good question. In summary, the FBI is involved. We work with them regularly on this case, they've assisted us greatly with resources and assistance in the field. We readily share information back and forth between our agencies. So the bottom line is the FBI is involved day in and day out with this case. So what the public knows about this case is obviously only a fraction of what's going on behind the scenes. But it takes a certain amount of blind faith in the Sheriff's Department to be content with that. And after more than 23 years without a resolution in this case, the public's faith isn't strong. So I ask Nate to get as specific as he can without jeopardizing the integrity of the investigation. And eventually, he agrees to share some numbers with me. Take search warrants for example. The public has been speculating for years about why the Sheriff's Department hasn't gotten another search warrant for the two Flores family homes. In my previous episodes, I talked about the two of them that I could find information on. One executed on July 22nd, 1996 at Ruben Flores' house. And one on June 19th, 2000 at Susan Flores' house. But it turns out that's only the tip of the iceberg. And below the surface. Since Sheriff Parkinson has taken office, we've written and executed 18 search warrants at 9.00. separate locations and included within those physical searches, we utilized canines, trained to detect human remains in three of those searches. 18 search warrants, not since 1996, but just since 2011. So what else has happened that the public doesn't already know about? While the details of the entire 23-year investigation might be nearly impossible to calculate at this point, Nate is able to access information about the current era of the Kristen Smart investigation. From 2011 through today, what we'll call the Parkinson era. During the Parkinson era, 91 new person-to-person interviews have been conducted. Each time detectives interview a new witness or collect a new piece of evidence. They add what's called the supplemental report to the existing case file. Since Parkinson took office, they've written 364 new supplemental reports. In that same period of time, and not counting the cost of over 7,500 labor hours, roughly $62,000 has been spent on the hard costs of investigating the Kristen Smart case. That means investigative supplies and expenses like cadaver dogs, excavation of potential burial sites, and most importantly, evidence testing. In 2011, we did a complete reexamination of all the physical evidence in this case. Forensic specialists from our agency, the FBI, and CalDOJ, reviewed every single physical evidence item currently held under alternate light sources, using magnification, using chemical reagents that indicate the presence of certain chemicals, and at the conclusion of that reexamination, they repackaged every evidence item to be potentially presented in court. We ended up sending 37 items out to various outside labs for further DNA testing. Can you give me a vague idea of what we're talking about when we say items? It could be clothing. Keep in mind, a lot of this evidence was seized in 1996. It could be clothing, it could be other personal effects. People ask a lot of questions through the podcast about things like the dorm room mattress, things like that. Do they still have those things in evidence? I'm sure you can't confirm specifically what you do have, but in terms of those sorts of things, you still have everything that you always had, right? We do, and in fact, we have all the physical evidence in the case now held in one central location, and all the physical evidence when it was centralized was then subject to the reexamination. It has there been any new evidence recovered since that initial 1996 investigation? There has. Since 2011, we've actually recovered 140 items of new evidence. New evidence. That's precisely why this case hasn't been declared cold. But how do I know that all of this isn't just talk? How can we know that they're not just saying they're doing things while privately they're just sitting on their hands? I know because people are sending me tips, too. And sometimes, those tips are about things that the Sheriff's Department is doing. In Episode 5 of this podcast, I discuss the issues of the Flores family's pickup trucks. To recap, Paul Flores drove a green 1993 Ford Ranger in high school, but brand new from a dealership in a Royal Grande. On February 3, 1996, he was pulled over at a gas station in San Luis Obispo, blew a.13 into the breathalyzer, and was arrested for driving under the influence. On March 13, Paul was convicted in San Luis Obispo Superior Court, and his driver's license was suspended. Subsequently, the Ford Ranger was impounded in April and held in a tow yard in Grover Beach. When Kristen went missing on May 25, 1996, Paul apparently didn't have a vehicle on campus at the time. According to Ruben's deposition, no one had access to the Ford Ranger in the month of May because it was still an impound. Yet, when asked how Paul got home from Cal Poly that Memorial Day weekend, Then, according to Ruben, Susan and Paul, the black guy he had that weekend was sustained, while changing the stereo in his ranger, while it was parked in Ruben's garage. So to say that Paul didn't have access to that truck at the time of Kristen's disappearance is absurd. By all accounts, the whole family had access to the ranger around May 25. And then by Ruben's deposition in November 1997, the ranger has been sold to a dealership. Paul's four-year-old vehicle bought brand new, which he posed proudly with in the Arroyo Grande High School yearbook. A quick tangent. One thing that stood out to me in Susan's 1997 deposition, which I haven't mentioned yet, is in regards to Paul's black eye. According to Susan, when she first saw Paul on Monday, May 27, she asked, "What the hell happened to you?" Paul's response was, "Don't worry about it. It's nothing." James Murphy then asks her, "Did he tell you how he received the discoloration below his eye?" And Susan's response is "No, I think Ruben chimed in and then they both were talking and I didn't pay much attention to it." Something about he was working on his car, and he said, "Yeah, he was. He was under the steering wheel and messing around with his stereo equipment." It seems interesting that Susan would have such a strong reaction to seeing Paul's black eye. If she already knew how he got it, which makes me think that Susan was still in the dark on Monday about what had happened over the weekend. And when she asks Paul how he got it, he doesn't tell her that it was from playing basketball. He doesn't even tell her that he hit it on his steering wheel. Ruben does. Even interrupting Paul, talking over him so much that Susan just tunes them both out. This brief exchange, I think, might say a lot about what was happening over that weekend, and who was involved. Susan doesn't seem to know what happened to Paul. Paul doesn't want his mom to know what happened either. Why is Ruben so quick to volunteer and answer for him? I think it's important to consider. Back though, to the trucks. Another vehicle that Paul had access to was Ruben's white 1985 Nissan pickup. Ruben says in his deposition that Paul never drove that truck. But when James Murphy asks where that vehicle is now, Ruben says it was recently stolen in San Diego. After Paul left it there. And he reveals that it was registered in Paul's name. He doesn't know what his son was doing down in San Diego, and he's unaware of any friends that Paul has in that area. When I spoke to a woman who was working with Paul, at an outback steakhouse in Irvine at the time that the truck was stolen, she told me that she never once saw Paul driving a car. Because his license was suspended, and he rode a bike to work. But I don't remember him ever having a truck, you know, so I don't know if that's interesting. As I mentioned previously, both trucks were gone by 1997, and for some reason, law enforcement never searched them for evidence. I'm assuming this has to be one of the, quote, many frustrating parts of this investigation that Nate was referring to. I'm bringing all of this up again, because I have an update. I've received hundreds of tips now, some of them incredibly helpful, and some just interesting. I try to be very careful about the ones I follow up on, so I can find a way to verify the claims. This usually involves checking property records or newspaper archives to see if the info holds up to scrutiny. Several times, I've reached back out to people I've previously interviewed to see if they can confirm parts of a new tip. When I receive an email through the contact form on my website, I get a text-only message, with spaces for name, email, subject, and message. A few times, I've gotten messages from people asking me to contact them, but they forgot to leave a name, phone number, or email, so I'm stuck unless they write back. There's no IP address attached to these messages, since they're plain text-only, so I can't track them down. Sometimes, the tips are just drops an interesting piece of information, with no contact details, because they want to remain completely anonymous. Towards the end of this past October, I received one of those emails, no name, no contact info, subject line, truck. The message was quick and to the point, quote, "Great job on the podcast. You may be interested to know that one of the Flores family's missing trucks was located today." This isn't the first mysterious tip I've gotten like this. And honestly, my first instinct was to ignore it. It seemed pretty unlikely that anyone would have this information. Without a way to reply to the sender, there wasn't much I could do with the tip anyway. But I thought about it for the rest of the day. When I checked my email the next morning, there was a new message, subject line, truck. Message, Chris. I learned about this truck in a roundabout way, and after listening to your podcast, I thought you would find that interesting. The sheriff's office is traveling out of state to collect it now. Keep up the good work. Now they had my attention. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to refer to this anonymous source by the letter J. I still didn't have a way to reply or to verify the information. But I refreshed my email every two minutes for the next several hours. Before one more message from J popped up. I'm not going to read this one. But this time, the sender included a little more information about their role, a location of where the truck was being taken to, and a rough time when it should be arriving. Cautious and suspicious. I looked up the address and confirmed from an aerial view that it was an open enough space that I could scope it out from a safe vantage point without putting myself at risk. [MUSIC PLAYING] I parked in a parking space not far from the location, and I waited. I saw several vehicles filtering in and out of the spot. But after a while, the area was quiet for a long time. [MUSIC PLAYING] Behind a cyclone fence, about 10 feet away from me, was the shape of a truck covered loosely by a gray tarp flapping in the wind. For now, I don't want to say too much more about it. But while I stood there, it took me several minutes to register that the vehicle right next to this truck, which had a tarp balled up over its bed like it had been completely blown off by the wind, was a 1980s Nissan pickup. I held on to this piece of info for several months. But when I had the opportunity to sit down with Commander Paul, it seemed like a good time to ask about it. In the time that we spoke, I was struck by his careful and direct responses. To the extent that occasionally, I wondered if he had rehearsed them before I came in. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you're going to make an official comment about an active investigation, especially on tape, you should probably brush up on the details. But what I mean is that he was clearly prepared for this interview. Even questions about the department's missteps and charges of corruption or conspiracy didn't seem to shake him. But when I asked about the trucks, if I received a tip that told me that you guys had recently recovered one of the Flores family's vehicles, would that be inaccurate? I can't say specifically if we have a item like that. But that's an interesting theory. So if I were to say in the episode, for instance, that I believed you might know something more than you're able to confirm, that's not going to harm what you're working on. The last thing I would seek to do would be to muzzle somebody who's out conveying information that's generating interest in this case to the public. Because all in all, your podcast is beneficial and important because it's educating people. So based on that, this case is solvable, and we're pushing on, and the last thing I would do is tell you not to report on something like that. Your information came from somewhere. Even without any sort of formal training and interview techniques, Commander Paul's body language seemed like a dead giveaway to me. The source was not speculating. J was present when the truck was found. It took a few minutes before Nate seemed to relax again, but the look on his face was like he was trying to see through me. I imagined him racking his brain for who could have tipped me off, because it wasn't anyone in the Sheriff's Department. The issue of the trucks was really only a small part of our conversation that day. But no other topic seemed to get that kind of response. I'm not sure whether the Sheriff's Department will confirm or deny this information once I release this episode, or if they'll just give it a good old fashioned no comment. But what I do know is that what the public has been told about this investigation isn't all there is to it, because below the surface is the rest of the iceberg. My final question to Commander Nate Paul was a very basic one, but one that gave me another opportunity to read into his response to decide how I felt about the current trajectory of this investigation. Do you feel good about where it's at right now? If it is it, or is it just frustrating? Do I feel good? It's an interesting way to put it. I don't feel frustrated. A detective never really feels good until the case is cleared. I feel-- I don't lose sleep over what we're not doing. Put it that way. So yeah, I feel good. And I'm starting to feel better, too, because between everything I've discovered on my own and everything new I've learned in the past few months, I think you can put the pieces together. Detective Clint Cole is the first official who's been put exclusively in charge of reexamining cold and unsolved cases in San Luis Obispo County. He's just been put in charge of the Kristen Smart investigation, which is much warmer than a cold case. 140 new pieces of evidence since 2011. 91 new person-to-person interviews. 364 supplemental reports. And as of just three months ago, another one of the Flores family's trucks has now been recovered. DNA has advanced to the point that toothbrushes and razors can connect a suspect to a victim or vice versa. If any part of Kristen Smart ever even touched one of those vehicles, and a pin-sized spot of her DNA remains there, tick-tock. (gentle music) You've been listening to your own backyard, episode seven, The Iceberg. 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, Candice Vanderplace, Derek Payne, Jamie Lewis, Garen Sinclair, Sandy Arnold, April Cole Worley, Carrie Quimby-Zinnich, Alyssa Brigham, Kaelin Pope, Sydney Brant, Olivia Dijonaro, Dallas Bronson, Giovanna Sarnacola, and Matthew Frank. (gentle music) 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. Wanna reach out to us directly? Send an email to your own backyard podcast at gmail.com or visit our website at yourownvacyardbodcast.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. Wanna help keep Kristen's memory alive? You can donate to the Kristen Smart Scholarship at christensmart.org. A statute of limitations in this case has expired on everything except murder. (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]