02-08-2025
Kristin Smart's final steps: The chilling map of missed clues that haunted a campus and her family
When Kristin Smart left an off-campus frat party on Memorial Day Weekend in 1996, it should've taken her less than 10 minutes to get back to her dorm - but the 19-year-old never made it.
The last person seen with her was Paul Flores, a fellow freshman at California Polytechnic University, who was a serial loner with a long and disturbing history of leering, stalking and groping women.
Law enforcement's theory was that Flores murdered Smart during an attempted rape on the night of the party, then buried her body somewhere nearby. But a series of crucial mistakes made early in the investigation saw the case falter.
For years, Kristin's trail went cold. Then, in 2022, Flores was finally charged and later convicted of her murder.
But for Kristin's family, justice has only been half-served, for her body has still not been found almost 30 years on.
In the latest episode of Daily Mail's Murder Maps series, Senior Reporter Luke Kenton forensically examines Kristin's case and sets out the damning trail of missed opportunities, overlooked evidence, and red flags ignored for decades.
From Flores' shifting alibis and a black eye he couldn't explain, to cadaver dogs alerting on his mattress and suspicious activity beneath his father's deck - the clues were there all along.
So how did it take more than two decades to bring Kristin's suspected killer to justice?
And with Paul Flores now behind bars, will her family ever get the answers - and the closure - they've waited so long for?
In this new episode, now streaming on YouTube, Kenton maps out Kristin's tragic story from her birth in Germany to her puzzling disappearance that left the vibrant college town of San Luis Obispo shaken - and a family forever fractured.
He also explores the long shadow the case continues to cast today, and the unanswered questions that still hang over one of California's most haunting unsolved mysteries.
