Authorities searching a California home connected to the family of convicted killer Paul Flores said they found scientific evidence suggesting human remains were present at the property, a potentially major break in the nearly three-decade effort to recover the body of missing college student Kristin Smart.
San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson disclosed the findings after investigators executed a search warrant Wednesday at the Arroyo Grande home of Susan Flores, Paul Flores's mother. Forensic specialists in human decomposition and soil analysis collected ground samples from the property, using soil vapor testing and ground-penetrating radar to detect signs of a decomposing body beneath the surface.
Smart vanished more than thirty years ago. She was nineteen. Paul Flores was convicted of her murder in 2022 and is serving a twenty-five-years-to-life sentence. Yet her remains have never been found, a fact that has haunted her family and frustrated investigators across multiple law enforcement administrations. Wednesday's search may finally change that.
Parkinson chose his words carefully at a press briefing. AP News reported the sheriff telling the public that scientific evidence pointed to human remains having been present at the property, but that authorities could not yet confirm the remains belonged to Smart.
"We believe that based on what we're looking at evidence-wise, scientific-wise, that a human's remains were there at one time, or still there. We can't call it Kristin, but there's evidence to support human remains."
That distinction matters. The sheriff stopped short of declaring Smart's body had been located. He said only that the forensic indicators, compounds consistent with human cadaver decomposition detected through soil vapor sampling, pointed to remains having been at the site at some point, or possibly still being there.
Tim Nelligan, an expert in soil vapor testing, told Live5 that his team had developed a methodology to assess soil vapor and that the tests at the property showed evidence of "human cadaver decomposition." Forensic specialists were seen taking samples from the ground throughout the week.
Fox News reported that the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office said it "remains committed to bringing Kristin home to her family." Parkinson indicated the search would continue. Additional warrants may be needed before investigators can excavate or dig through cement at the property.
For years, investigators focused on a different Flores family property, the home of Paul Flores's father, Ruben Flores, located roughly a mile away. Prosecutors alleged Smart's body had been buried beneath the deck of Ruben Flores's home before being moved to an unknown location. A jury heard evidence about a grave at that site during the 2022 trial.
Ruben Flores was arrested alongside his son in 2021. He was charged as an accessory. A jury acquitted him.
Susan Flores's home, by contrast, received far less scrutiny. Chris Lambert, the podcaster behind "Your Own Backyard", a show credited with helping revive cold cases through investigative journalism, was outside the home as authorities carried out their search Wednesday. He spoke to The Tribune about what he saw as a critical gap in the investigation.
"The Flores family owned this house at the time that Kristin went missing, and it was never very thoroughly searched."
Lambert added bluntly that the property had been "definitely overlooked," noting that the 2021 search of Ruben Flores's home was the one that led to the arrests and trials. He suggested investigators were likely scanning the ground for anomalies, disturbed soil, areas that had been dug up and replaced.
He also raised a point that underscores just how incomplete the physical evidence remains in this case, even after a murder conviction.
"The clothing she was wearing that night was never found. The clothing that Paul wore that night was never recovered. And so those things could be here as well."
Lambert's podcast, "Your Own Backyard," first reported the search and has been credited with providing investigators additional witnesses over the years in the effort to locate Smart's body.
Kristin Smart was a student at California Polytechnic State University when she disappeared in 1996. She was last seen with fellow student Paul Flores, who told investigators he had walked her home from an off-campus party and that they parted ways.
A friend reported Smart missing two days later. A search did not begin for several more days due to what has been described as miscommunication between authorities, an early failure that set the tone for decades of frustration.
Four different search dogs led police to Flores's dorm room during the initial investigation. No evidence was found there. Flores initially could not explain a black eye he had at the time of Smart's disappearance. He later changed his story, saying he bumped his head while working on his car, according to court records.
Smart was declared dead in 2002, six years after she vanished. But no body was recovered, and no charges were filed for nearly two more decades. Advances in forensic technology, the kind that have helped crack other long-dormant cases, eventually helped move the investigation forward.
Prosecutors alleged Smart was killed during an attempted rape. Paul Flores and Ruben Flores were both arrested in 2021. Paul Flores was convicted of murder in 2022. His father was acquitted of accessory charges.
In 2024, a judge ruled Paul Flores must pay just over $350,000 to Smart's family for costs they incurred after her death. That same year, Flores's attorney Harold Mesick said the defense did not know where Smart's remains were.
The Daily Mail reported that scientists had found volatile organic compounds in soil in the neighboring backyard approximately three years earlier, according to the LA Times. That earlier finding adds weight to the theory that the area around Susan Flores's home holds physical evidence connected to Smart's case, though no direct forensic link to Smart has been confirmed at this stage.
The soil vapor methodology used in this week's search represents a specialized forensic approach. Nelligan described it as a technique his team developed to detect the chemical signatures left behind when a human body decomposes in or on soil. The method can indicate whether remains were present even if they have since been moved.
That raises a difficult question. If remains were at Susan Flores's property "at one time," as the sheriff's phrasing allows, they may have been relocated, just as prosecutors alleged happened at Ruben Flores's property. The pattern of alleged movement complicates recovery efforts and may explain why DNA matching and advanced forensic identification remain central to resolving the case.
Susan Flores has never faced criminal charges related to Smart's death.
The Smart family has endured more than thirty years without answers about where their daughter's body is. Paul Flores sits in prison. A jury found him guilty. A judge ordered him to pay restitution. But the family still cannot lay Kristin to rest.
The Washington Times reported that additional warrants may be needed before any excavation or digging can occur at the property, meaning the search could stretch on for some time. Sheriff Parkinson told reporters he did not know how long investigators would remain at the site.
The New York Post reported Parkinson saying investigators would continue searching the property and pursuing leads as part of the effort to bring Smart home. That commitment matters, but it also highlights the scope of what went wrong: a property owned by the killer's family at the time of the disappearance, never thoroughly searched until now.
Open questions remain. Were actual remains recovered, or only chemical indicators that remains had once been present? Will forensic testing connect the evidence to Kristin Smart specifically? And why did it take this long to search a home the Flores family owned when Smart disappeared?
Cases like this one, and others where forensic breakthroughs have reopened long-cold investigations, remind us that justice delayed is not always justice delivered. A conviction without a body is accountability without closure.
Kristin Smart's family has waited thirty years. They deserve to bring her home. The least the system owes them now is a thorough search of every property it should have searched a long time ago.