One of the last people to have seen Kristin Smart alive is urging her killer to finally confess where he buried the missing student’s remains amid a ‘meritless’ legal bid to have his murder conviction overturned.
Paul Flores, 48, was convicted in October 2022 of the first-degree murder of Smart, a 19-year-old freshman at California Polytechnic State University, who vanished without a trace in May 1996 after leaving an off-campus party in San Luis Obispo.
Prosecutors accused Flores of killing Smart during an attempted rape inside his dorm room and later disposing of her body in an unknown location. He was issued a sentence of 25 years to life after a three-month trial.
However, in October, Flores appealed his conviction, claiming that Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe abused her discretion in several instances during the proceedings, which ultimately deprived him of a fair trial.
In response, the California Attorney General’s Office called for Flores’ appeal to be dismissed last week, citing a multitude of ‘meritless claims.’
While a decision has not yet been made, Trevor Boelter, who was with Smart on the night she vanished, told DailyMail.com that rather than making frivolous attempts to save face, Flores should be taking accountability and providing Smart’s family with the closure they desperately need after 29 painful years.
‘Paul Flores needs to come clean and tell the Smart family where Kristin’s body is located,’ said Boelter.
‘The trial was fair and just, and the conviction is only due to the overwhelming evidence against him.
‘Soon, when his appeals have been exhausted, he will have to grapple with living behind bars for the rest of his natural life – and the best way he can begin to atone is by offering the Smart family closure.’
Kristin Smart, a freshman at California Polytechnic State University, vanished in May 1996 after attending an off-campus party
Paul Flores immediately came under suspicion because he was the last person seen with Smart. His arrest wouldn’t be made for 25 years, however
Kristin Smart was last seen alive on May 25, 1996.
She was found passed out on a lawn outside of an off-campus party in the early hours.
Two students, including one of Smart’s friends, offered to help her get back to her dorm because she was unsteady on her feet.
But Flores insisted on walking Smart back alone.
Over the years, witnesses, including Boelter, have recounted seeing Flores ‘stalking’ and ‘following’ Smart around the party that fateful evening.
Flores was reportedly so renowned for stalking and harassing women that classmates commonly referred to him around campus by the nickname ‘Chester the Molester’.
Tragically, Smart would never make it back to her room.
The following day, after Smart failed to show for a scheduled study session, her friend reported her missing to campus police.
However, because it was the Memorial Day weekend, the campus police presumed Smart had returned home to Stockton, California, without alerting her friends, and didn’t begin investigating her disappearance until three days later.
Flores, then 19, soon became a leading suspect in the case.
San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Office personnel dig in an area in the backyard of the home of Ruben Flores in March 2021, searching for human remains
Trevor Boelter, who was one of the last people to see Kristin Smart alive, called on Flores to reveal her burial spot
When he was hauled in for questioning, he had a black eye and scratches on his knees.
He first told police he had suffered the black eye during a baseball game days prior. However, investigators tracked down one of his teammates, who said he showed up to the game already sporting the injury.
In his first interview with authorities, Flores said he had watched Kristin walk up the path toward her dormitory before he entered his hall.
He said she was walking ‘real slow’ and he hugged her waist as they walked to keep her warm.
Flores’ roommate, Derrick Tse, was away at the time. When he returned, Tse said that Flores joked about murdering Smart, announcing: ‘I killed her and brought her to my mom’s and she’s still there.’
Flores initially agreed to take a polygraph test, but when pressed by investigators, he kept stalling.
In June 1996, investigators with the District Attorney’s Office picked up Flores and told him it was time to take the test.
Reports from the time say Flores turned pale at the suggestion and refused to comply once taken inside a conference room at the Arroyo Grande Police Station.
Instead, Flores agreed to an interview, which lasted 90 minutes and was taped.
During that interview, investigators lied by telling Flores they knew he’d taken a shower the night of Smart’s disappearance before going to bed, contrary to what he’d previously claimed.
Flores reportedly caved, admitting he’d gone into the communal shower at around 5am after becoming sick.
He also admitted to lying about how he sustained his black eye, this time claiming to have struck his face on the steering wheel of his truck as he was trying to repair it.
Flores claimed his reason for lying was that he didn’t want to ‘sound stupid.’
Flores had a black eye and scratches on his knees when he was first questioned by police
A map shows the distance between Smart of Flores’ dorms and the party they attended
During Flores’ trial, Boelter said he believe Smart may have been drugged on the night she was murdered
Investigators then grilled Flores under an intense barrage of questioning.
Just as they believed he was about to crack, Flores called their bluff, telling investigators: ‘If you’re so smart, then tell me where the body is.’
Almost 29 years later, that’s a question investigators are still working to answer.
Paul Flores was first arrested and charged with Kristin’s murder in April 2021.
The month prior, a search warrant was executed at his father Ruben Flores’ home, and cadaver dogs and a ground-penetrating radar were deployed on the property.
Beneath the decking of the home, forensic archaeologists found a soil disturbance around the size of a casket and the presence of human blood in the soil, prosecutors said.
Afterward, the Smart family filed a lawsuit against Ruben Flores, alleging that ‘under the cover of darkness’ the father and unnamed accomplices moved Smart’s body from the home in 2020 to an unknown location.
Ruben Flores was charged as an accessory to murder over allegations he helped move and conceal Smart’s remains, but he was later acquitted at trial.
Two women in Los Angeles came forward to report Flores for rape after his arrest.
The two women, who both claimed they were drugged, raped, and gagged by Flores, would later testify against him.
Trevor Boelter also took the stand to report his first and last meeting with Smart at the fateful house party from where she later vanished.
Smart’s disappearance has continued to haunt San Luis Obispo for almost 29 years
Police are seen swarming the home Arroyo Grande home of the mother of Paul Flores in 2021
Final Moments
Boelter crossed paths with Smart three times that night, with the first coming as he was standing in a hallway inside the home.
Speaking in 2022, Boelter remembered Smart as attractive and flirtatious. The towering blonde confidently walked over to him and introduced herself as ‘Roxy.’
Moments after becoming acquainted, Boelter said Smart kissed him on the lips and pulled him by the hand into the bathroom.
But once inside, Smart’s confident demeanor gave way to one of insecurity.
‘She started doing her make-up in the mirror and she asked, “Do you think I’m ugly?”, and I told her, “No, you’re beautiful.”
‘She then asked me who at the party I thought she should sleep with, and then named two people, one of them being my friend Ross.
‘I told her I think she should choose Ross because he’s a nice guy. She then asked me to leave the bathroom, and I walked out the door to a guy standing directly in my face: It was Paul Flores.’
Aggressively, Flores interrogated Boelter over what he was doing in the bathroom with Smart.
Boelter didn’t know who Flores was at the time. Judging by how incensed he seemed, he presumed he must be Smart’s boyfriend.
When he told him that ‘nothing happened,’ Flores just apparently laughed in his face.
‘It was so weird, it was almost as if he thought he owned this girl or something,’ said Trevor.
‘Then he let out this really dumb and dorky laugh, and then I realized he was just some dumb goofy kid.
‘But all this happened in like 90 seconds, and I said to my friends: “What the heck is going on?”’
Boelter encountered both Smart and Flores during the party. He said Flores appeared to be stalking and harassing Smart
Flores’ latest appeal to have his conviction overturned has been scoffed at by the District Attorney’s Office
Boelter brushed off the interaction, and the next time he saw Smart, she was being accosted by a red-haired teen who was invading her personal space and making her visibly uncomfortable.
Boelter chased off the individual, whom he didn’t recognize, but said was being ‘really creepy towards her.’
His third and final run-in with Smart came just before he left the party, around midnight.
He was standing with friends smoking in the backyard when she walked over to him and tearily asked whether they could go and speak in private.
Dramatically, Smart said she was ‘stupid’ and ‘so dumb’ because she thought she’d blown her chance with Boelter’s friend, Ross.
Boelter attempted to comfort her, insisting everything was fine, but Kristin was still upset.
To distract her, he asked her what her zodiac sign was.
Pisces, she responded, and Boelter told her he was as well.
With that, Smart grabbed the side of his face and pulled him in for a kiss.
‘It seemed to me like an uncomfortable, almost desperate kiss, and I was not into it,’ remembered Boelter.
‘I realized I was done for the night, so I gently pushed her back and told her we don’t have to do that.
‘Of course, by that point, she was now more upset because I’d just rejected her as well.’
Flores is currently serving a sentence of 25 years to life. He was stabbed in prison last April but survived
With that, Smart got up from the ground and staggered back inside via a side door.
That was the last time Boelter would ever see her.
He learned of her disappearance on May 28, calling the news a gut punch.
Reflecting on Smart’s condition that night, Boelter said he believes Smart may have been drugged at the party.
‘Something investigators would ask me years later is, could I smell alcohol on her breath? And I didn’t think I could, but how would I remember that really?’ he said.
‘But at the same time, I never saw her with a drink in her hand. I’m fairly positive I didn’t see her drinking at all, and other people have said the same thing over the years.
‘I spoke with the Smart family’s lawyer in 2012, and I told him I feel like she was roofied that night because there was a problem with drugging at Cal Poly at the time.’
Hunt for Answers
Smart was pronounced legally dead in 2002.
The search to find her remains ongoing.
Before his conviction, Flores tried unsuccessfully to file for mistrial 10 times and put forward a motion for acquittal, asking the judge to overturn his conviction because the evidence presented didn’t prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe refused to issue Flores a new trial.
She called Flores a ‘cancer to society’ and stressed the importance of keeping him imprisoned.
Flores launched yet another legal Hail Mary in October, asking for his conviction to be reduced or overturned.
In the motion, Flores accused O’Keefe of abusing her discretion in multiple instances, including not excusing a juror whom he alleged showed bias, allowing women to testify that Flores raped them, and permitting a photo of a woman wearing a ball-gag to be shown as evidence.
Flores claimed the succession of alleged errors made by O’Keefe denied him the right to a fair trial, and asked for his conviction to be overturned or reduced to second-degree murder.
Various searches for Kristin’s remains have so far come up empty handed. Above is a search of land adjacted to Cal Poly in Sept. 2016
He referenced testimony by Boelter suggesting Smart could have been ‘roofied’, which he said was hearsay and should’ve been struck from the record.
But in a briefing last Monday, the Attorney General’s Office argued that none of the supposed errors posed by Flores occurred, and if they did, they did not impact his right to a fair trial.
Flores is expected to respond to the attorney general’s brief by May 5, according to the court schedule.
Smart’s family has not yet commented.
They filed a lawsuit against Cal Poly Tech in January last year, alleging that its campus police force ignored multiple reports of Flores’ suspicious and concerning behavior before their daughter’s murder.
‘There is no question that Cal Poly failed our daughter, Kristin Smart, in multiple ways before and after her tragic murder by Paul Flores,’ the Smart family said in a statement.
‘Had the university acted properly, conducted a thorough investigation into Flores’ past concerning behavior, and implemented appropriate disciplinary measures, Kristin would likely still be alive today.’
The university declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying it does not discuss ongoing litigation.
