SLO County sheriff collects evidence in Kristin Smart disappearance

January 29, 2020

By CCT STAFF

The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it is holding two trucks that belonged to the family of the last person to see Kristin Smart before she disappeared in 1996, according to county officials.

Earlier this month, Kristin Smart’s mother Denise Smart said had recently been contacted by a former FBI agent and told to be ready for new developments in her daughter’s case.  In response to multiple public inquires, the sheriff’s department released additional information on Wednesday.

Since 2011, sheriff’s investigators have been actively working on the Kristin Smart case. There work includes:

• The service of 18 search warrants

• Conducting physical evidence searches at nine separate locations

• A complete re-examination of every item of physical evidence seized by all agencies involved in this case

• Submission of 37 evidence items from the early days of the case for modern DNA testing

• Recovery of 140 new items of evidence

• Conducting 91 person to person interviews

• The writing of 364 supplemental reports

“Additionally, the Sheriff’s Office has invested more than 7,500 employee hours since 2011 when Sheriff Ian Parkinson took office,” the press release says.

The department also confirmed that it “currently holds two trucks in evidence that belonged to Flores family members in 1996.”

Kristin Smart, a native of Stockton, was nearing the end of her freshman year at Cal Poly when she vanished on May 25, 1996 after attending an off-campus party. The 19-year-old was last seen in the company of fellow student Paul Flores who claims he escorted Smart to her dorm, which was relatively empty over the Memorial Day weekend.

Flores was investigated, but never charged. He has since left the area and is believed to be living in Southern California.