Was Kristin Smart’s body buried at Susan Flores’ Arroyo Grande home?

June 30, 2023

By KAREN VELIE

Cutting-edge technology has led three experts in forensics to assert that at some point Kristin Smart’s body was buried in the backyard of Susan Flores’ home in Arroyo Grande.

Paul Flores, Susan Flores’ son, murdered Smart during an attempted rape in 1996 following a Cal Poly frat party. After the party, Flores helped escort Smart, who was found passed out on a lawn outside the party, back to her dorm room. She was never seen again.

Paul Flores was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in March. He has since appealed his conviction.

In April, environmental engineer Timothy Nelligan, retired FBI forensic scientist Brian Eckenrode and environmental scientist Steve Hoyt extracted soil from a home next to Susan Flores’ yard, to perform soil vapor sampling. Their testing detected human remains had been buried behind the home.

Even so, their technology is experimental and has never been used in criminal court.

During Paul Flores’ trial, prosecutors provided evidence a body had been buried under Ruben Flores’ home (Paul Flores’ father), and later moved. Law enforcement has voiced concerns that attempts to obtain a subpoena to dig in Susan Flores’ yard could be used to challenge the murder conviction.

During a 2020 raid of Paul Flores’ San Pedro home, deputies discovered multiple rape videos with titles including, “Drugged and raped while passed out” and “Blonde high school girl in skirt gets raped.” Investigators also found two bottles of date rape drugs in the home, prosecutors said.

In a file labeled “practice,” Paul Flores stored homemade rape videos of himself having sex and sodomizing women.

Prosecutors claimed in bail documents that Paul Flores was believed to be a serial rapist.

“Dozens of women have recounted Paul Flores’ sexual assaults and predatory behavior that document his twenty-five years as a serial rapist,” Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle wrote in the document.

In 2020 and 2021, CalCoastNews reporters conducted multiple interviews with Paul Flores’ neighbors in San Pedro.

Neighbors, who asked not to be identified in news articles, were suspicious when Paul Flores, who had left his backyard overgrown with weeds for years, began removing the brush in 2019 or 2020.

He dug a large hole in a rear corner of his backyard after that, his neighbors said.

Shortly before midnight several weeks later, one of the neighbors saw Paul Flores take something wrapped in a black blanket from the trunk of his car. The neighbor watched as he carried the object to his backyard and put it in the hole. He covered the hole with plywood.

The next day, the neighbor asked Paul Flores what he had put in the hole. He said it was his dead dog, the neighbor recalled. But the neighbors said he did not have a dog.

After that, Paul Flores built a roughly 10-by-15-foot wood frame around the hole and placed rebar, metal reinforcing bars, inside.

He rented a concrete truck and filled the frame. Once the concrete set, Paul Flores laid red bricks over the concrete. He was working to add a second layer of bricks when he was arrested on April 13, 2021.

“It was weird to me,” a neighbor who asked not to be identified, said. “You don’t put bricks over bricks.”

Shortly after Paul Flores buried the object in his back yard, he acquired two mixed pit bulls, a female named Lucy and her pup which later died. Flores then brought home another dog, a pit bull, which neighbors described as vicious.

SLO County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said he will continue to pursue the case until Smart’s body is recovered and returned to her parents.

 

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