The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Wednesday that it has new evidence tied to the 1996 disappearance of Cal Poly student Kristin Smart.

In a news release, the agency said it has taken two trucks into evidence that belonged to members of the family of Paul Flores in 1996.

Flores, who was also a Cal Poly student at the time, was the last person to see Kristin Smart when she went missing from San Luis Obispo on Memorial Day weekend 24 years ago.

Flores now resides in San Pedro, but his parents still live in Arroyo Grande.

Though the case has long remained unsolved, a podcast series hosted by Orcutt resident Chris Lambert has sparked renewed interest in the community.

The seventh episode of the podcast, which dropped on Wednesday, revealed new details that had not yet been released by the SLO County Sheriff’s Office, including its possession of the two trucks.

In a statement Wednesday, the Smart family thanked Lambert for “his outstanding podcast” and attributed progress being made in their daughter’s long-unsolved case to his efforts to raise awareness.

“Thanks to Chris and all the supporters who have made such an amazing difference,” read a statement emailed to The Tribune by Smart family representative John Segale. “’Your Own Backyard’ has been instrumental in renewing interest in Kristin’s investigation and generating many new leads.”

The Sheriff’s Office said it has a team of investigators and forensic specialists that is actively working on the Smart case.

Since 2011, the Sheriff’s Office said it has served 18 search warrants, conducted physical evidence searches at nine locations, submitted 37 evidence items from the early days of the case for modern DNA testing, recovered 140 new items of evidence, conducted 91 in-person interviews and written 364 supplemental reports.

According to the news release, the Sheriff’s Office has spent approximately $62,000 in investigative expenses.

The office says it will not be releasing further information at this time.

Disappearance of Kristin Smart

Kristin Smart was last seen leaving a house party at 135 Crandall Way near the Cal Poly campus about 2 a.m. May 25, 1996, with Paul Flores and friend Cheryl Anderson.

Anderson later told investigators that she left Smart with Flores at the intersection of Perimeter Road and Grand Avenue, and continued to her dorm at Sierra Madre Hall.

Smart was to supposed to walk back to her Muir Hall dorm room, and Paul Flores later told police he and Kristin Smart parted ways near his own room at Santa Lucia Hall.

Two days later, a friend of Smart’s called the Cal Poly University Police Department to report her missing. But due to a jurisdictional fumble between that agency and the San Luis Obispo Police Department, a search didn’t begin until May 30, 1996.

Organized searches were conducted on and around the campus, and Cal Poly police and county District Attorney’s Office investigators interviewed Flores.

But it wasn’t until June 5, 1996, that police searched Kristin Smart’s dorm room and Flores’ room on June 10, 1996.

By then, the academic quarter had ended and Flores had moved all of his belongings out of the room.

In a taped interview, Flores admitted to previously lying to investigators when he told them he received a black eye playing basketball. He reportedly told investigators he received the injury while fixing his truck, then abruptly ended the interview and refused to answer any more questions.

After a month went by and criticism from the Smart family and their supporters grew, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office took over the case.

Over the weekend of June 29, 1996, about 400 volunteers turned out for a large-scale search of the campus. Investigators also searched Flores’ parents’ Arroyo Grande home, which did not yield any clues.

The Smarts filed a $40 million wrongful death lawsuit against Paul Flores in November 1996, alleging that Flores murdered Kristin at Cal Poly. The Smarts would later add Cal Poly to the lawsuit, alleging the university failed to keep their daughter safe.

That lawsuit remains in legal limbo due to the Sheriff’s Office’s ongoing criminal investigation. The Smart family’s attorneys have requested Sheriff’s Office records necessary to prove their civil case, but those records remain confidential.

Former San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ed Williams previously said “there are no other suspects” than Paul Flores in Kristin Smart’s disappearance.

In September 2016, the Sheriff’s Office and the FBI conducted a joint excavation of a hillside on the Cal Poly campus after announcing new information strongly suggested that Smart’s remains could be buried in an area near the Cal Poly “P” that had been searched by about 400 volunteers in June 1996.

Between Sept. 6-10, 2016, the agencies sifted through approximately 20,000 cubic feet of dirt, taking away bones and a possible “item of interest” to a facility out of the county for analysis.

Though the Sheriff’s Office called the dig “beneficial,” it has not said what, if anything, the effort revealed.

Lambert’s podcast, Your Own Backyard, was launched in September 2019 and has brought renewed public interest in the case.

In November 2019, hundreds of people gathered in the Arroyo Grande Village in a candlelight vigil in Kristin Smart’s memory.

Kaytlyn Leslie and Matt Fountain are reporters with the San Luis Obispo Tribune. Contact them at [email protected] or [email protected]