Man convicted of killing missing California college student Kristin Smart 25 years ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The last man seen with Kristin Smart was convicted Tuesday of killing the college freshman, who vanished from a California campus 25 years ago.
Jurors unanimously found Paul Flores guilty of first-degree murder, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported. A jury in a separate trial found his father, Ruben Flores, not guilty of charges of being accessory to murder after the fact for allegedly helping to conceal the crime.
The conflicting verdicts were read moments apart in the same courtroom.
Smart disappeared from California Polytechnic State University over Memorial Day weekend in 1996. Her remains were never found.
Prosecutors maintain the younger Flores, now 45, killed the 19-year-old during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room at Cal Poly, where both were first-year students. He was the last person seen with Smart as he walked her home from an off-campus party where she became intoxicated.
His father, now 81, allegedly helped bury the slain student behind his home in the nearby community of Arroyo Grande and later dug up the remains and moved them.
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