Kristin Smart’s remains have not been recovered, and investigators ended their search of Susan Flores’s home, the mother of convicted killer Paul Flores. Investigators said they will still be evaluating the evidence they collected as they continue to search for Smart’s remains.
“We believe that based on what we’re looking at evidence-wise, scientific evidence, that a human remains were there at one time or still there,” San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said in a press conference held on Friday.
On Wednesday, investigators received a warrant to search Susan Flores’s home in Arroyo Grande. Parkinson later confirmed that soil tests at the home were consistent with human decay, however, no conclusions about Smart’s remains were made until now.
Parkinson also noted that the warrant didn’t allow Susan Flores to return to her home until the investigation was over. Susan Flores remains a person of interest to the San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s office as of the Friday press conference.
In 2022, Paul Flores was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after he was found guilty for sexually assaulting and killing Smart when she was a freshman at Cal Poly in 1996.
Paul Flores was also a freshman student at the time. His dorm was cleaned before it could be investigated, which is a reason Parkinson cites for struggles regarding finding evidence of Smart’s remains.
Every day since the warrant was served, scientists have been analyzing their results to find further evidence of human DNA which could point to human decay being in the soil currently or in the past.
The front and back of the home and neighboring property have been searched for evidence of human decay. An official search warrant was issued for Susan Flores’s home 30 years ago. At the time, ground-penetrating radar technology, which searches for anything unusual in the ground, was used to search the home.
Parkinson added that the same technology is being used in the current investigation but the tool has advanced from when it was first used.
“Even if we search [a location] once we might have missed an area 10 feet away from it,” Parkinson said.
Parkinson believes Smart’s body has been moved multiple times, and thus doesn’t plan to rule any previously searched places out, according to his Friday press conference. He noted that past witnesses who have been interviewed or locations that have been searched could always be investigated again.
Ruben Flores, Paul Flores’s father, was initially arrested for being accused of helping Paul Flores move Smart’s body. However, Ruben Flores was found not guilty of being an accessory to murder at the same time Paul Flores was found guilty.
“It’s a methodical step each time,” Parkinson said. “We get something, we go in another direction. We plan to be there until we can walk away either finding Kristin or all the evidence we can find and moving to the next step.”
