American Paul Flores was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 1996 murder of student Christine Smart. reported Fox News channel. Formerly CBS News writing that the author of the podcasts helped solve this case and find evidence for the investigation.
Christine Smart, 19, a student at California Polytechnic State University, disappeared in 1996 in the small town of San Luis Obispo. According to Fox News, her body was never found and in 2002 she was officially declared dead.
Even then, Paul Flores was the main suspect in this case: he was the last person seen with Smart before disappearing, but the investigation failed to find the evidence necessary for the accusation. Flores wasn’t arrested until April 2021, according to CBS News, “after nearly 25 years of suspicion.” Sheriff Ian Parkinson, whose words were quoted by the channel, compared this process to a puzzle that had to be put together for a long time. According to him, Chris Lambert’s podcast “Your own Backyard” (“In your backyard” – approx. ed.) helped draw attention to some of the pieces of this puzzle.
In an interview with CBS News, Lambert revealed that at the time of Smart’s disappearance, he was only 8 years old. He became interested in the case again in 2019, as he could not find any new information on the results of the investigation. Lambert quit his job to conduct his own investigation and record a podcast about him, which the network noted ultimately racked up millions of coins and sparked a new wave of attention about a student’s murder. .
According to Fox News, California prosecutors have also charged the suspect’s father, Ruben Flores, as an accomplice in the case. Investigators say he helped his son bury Smart’s body behind their home in 1996, then dug up the remains twenty years later when law enforcement took over the investigation. However, at trial, the jury found Ruben Flores not guilty of being an accessory to the crime due to lack of evidence.
