Man sentenced for killing student who vanished more than 25 years ago

Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe rejected defence motions to toss out Paul Flores’ first-degree murder conviction, acquit him and order a new trial.

She said Flores had been “a cancer to society” and in addition to his prison term must register as a sex offender for life.

“You deserve to spend every day you have left behind bars,” Ms O’Keefe said, noting that Flores had “lived free in the community” for more than two decades and for his adult life had engaged in “predatory behaviour” against women.

Miss Smart, 19, disappeared from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo on the state’s scenic central coast over Memorial Day weekend in 1996.

Her remains have never been found, but she was declared legally dead in 2002.

Prosecutors maintained that Flores, now 46, killed Miss Smart during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room at the university, where both were first year students.

He was the last person seen with Miss Smart as he walked her home from an off-campus party.

Flores was arrested in 2021 along with his father, who was accused of helping to hide Miss Smart’s body.

The trial was held in Salinas, in Monterey County, about 110 miles north of San Luis Obispo, after the defence argued that the case’s notoriety prevented Flores and his father from receiving a fair trial in their own county.

At the sentencing on Friday, prosecutor Chris Peuvrelle asked the judge for the maximum sentence, called Flores a “true psychopath” and said he should never be released from prison.

Miss Smart’s father, siblings and other friends and relatives spoke at the hearing about the impact of her death on the family. Her brother, Matthew Smart, asked that Flores spend life in prison.

“Paul chose to take a life, my sister Kristin’s life, a beautiful life,” he said. “And now he must pay.”

San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow said in a statement after the hearing that justice had been finally served.

“After nearly 27 years of unspeakable anguish, the Smart family has finally seen their daughter’s killer sentenced,” the statement said. “Their strength and determination serve as an inspiration to us all.”

A jury found Flores guilty in October. A separate jury acquitted Ruben Flores, 81, of being an accessory.

Flores had long been considered a suspect in the killing. He had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He told them he got it playing basketball with friends, who denied his account.

He later changed his story to say he bumped his head while working on his car, according to court records.

Investigators conducted dozens of fruitless searches for Miss Smart’s body over two decades.

In the past two years they turned their attention to Ruben Flores’ home in the community of Arroyo Grande, about 12 miles south of California Polytechnic State.

Behind latticework beneath the deck of his large house on a dead end street, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 found a soil disturbance about the size of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample.