Convicted of murder, Paul Flores seeks to reduce his sentence

August 11, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

Editor’s Note: This the fourth in a four-part series on three civil lawsuits and an appeal related to the investigation, trial and incarceration of Paul Flores. Read part one, “Will Paul Flores return to San Luis Obispo County to testify at trial?”

Paul Flores, the man convicted of murdering Kristin Smart, is attempting to shorten or end his sentence for murder through the appeal process. He continues to claim the court violated his constitutional rights.

A jury in 2022 found that Flores murdered Smart during an attempted rape following a 1996 frat party held near the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus.

Smart had passed out on a lawn outside the party and Flores then helped escort her back to her dormroom. She was never seen again and her body was not found.

The primary suspect in the case, Flores, was sporting a black eye when interviewed by law enforcement who determined he lied repeatedly. Even so, it would be years before Flores faced charges.

After the jury found Flores guilty of murdering Smart, Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe sentenced Flores to 25 years to life in prison.

In his appeal filed in Oct. 2024, Flores accuses the judge of violating his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by repeatedly declining to remove a juror “who had lost her ability to remain neutral and abide by her oath.”

The appeal also argues the judge should not have allowed two women who said Flores raped them to testify because there was no evidence Flores raped or attempted to rape Smart.

“As the prosecutor made no threshold showing that appellant committed a sexual offense against Smart, the trial court abused its discretion by admitting the uncharged offense evidence,” according to the appeal. “By admitting this irrelevant and extraordinarily prejudicial testimony, the trial court abused its discretion and committed reversible error.”

During a 2020 raid of 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 Flores’ home.

In a file labeled “practice,” Flores stored homemade rape videos of himself having sex and sodomizing women. Los Angeles Police Department investigators tracked down two women who said Flores drugged and then raped them. No charges were ever filed.

The appeal also accuses the judge of giving the jury two “erroneous instructions” on attempted rape of an intoxicated person.

On April 14, state prosecutors responded to Flores’ allegations with a brief that calls Flores’ appeal meritless.

In its brief, the California Attorney General’s Office listed its evidence:

• Flores showed that he was romantically interested in Smart, but she had no interest in him.
• On the night Smart disappeared, Flores continued to show interest in her, and he was the last person seen with her prior to her disappearance.
• Flores was seen with a black eye shortly after Smart went missing, and he acted strangely when asked by others about his eye or Smart’s disappearance.
• Upon being interviewed by the police, Flores lied about his romantic interest in Smart, the amount of contact he had with her at the party, and the cause of his black eye.
• During the summer of 1996, Flores called Smart a “dick tease,” and he admitted to having buried her underground.
• Four dogs, which had been trained and certified in locating human remains, separately searched the Santa Lucia dorm and passed numerous rooms before alerting the dog handlers that someone had died in Flores’ room.
• Flores and his father kept people away from the deck at the father’s home on White Court.
• Flores failed to respond when his mother suggested that he might not be able to “punch holes” in a podcaster’s accusation that he was responsible for Smart’s disappearance.
• In 2021, two dogs, which had been certified in finding human remains, detected the presence of remains under the deck of Flores’ father’s home home.
• Ground penetrating radar showed that an area under the Flores’ father’s deck had been dug by hand with dimensions that were consistent with a human grave.
• Under the deck, at a depth of about four feet, the soil contained some blood as well as some fibers, both cotton and synthetic.
• A few months after the search of the ground under the deck, Flores’ father admitted having committed a felony.
• There are uncharged crimes – appellant allegedly raped two women after giving them a roofie or another drug to render them unconscious.

In July, Flores filed a brief in response to the state prosecutors’ brief, which repeats the claims he made in his initial appeal. The appellate court has not yet set a hearing for oral arguments.

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