That's a Bad Sign

Bruce Pardo the Santa Claus Shooter and the disappearance of Kristin Smart

April 22, 2021 Emily Winchurch & Liz Mahoney Season 1 Episode 33
That's a Bad Sign
Bruce Pardo the Santa Claus Shooter and the disappearance of Kristin Smart
Show Notes Transcript

The Covina massacre occurred on Christmas Eve in Covina, a city in the suburbs of LA. Bruce Pardo, dressed as Santa Clause then killed nine people, including his ex-wife. Then we cover  the disappearance of Kristin Smart. She is presumed to have been abducted, raped and killed at the end of her freshman year of college in 1996. The case went cold, but with new info released just this week... it might be time to shut this cold case for good.

Sources:
https://www.sinisterisles.com/post/bruce-pardo-santa-massacre
https://icantbelieveitsnonfiction.com/2018/12/04/bruce-pardo/
https://medium.com/california-dreaming/bruce-pardo-the-santa-claus-shooter-a3225f4baac2
https://www.foxnews.com/us/kristin-smart-case-paul-and-ruben-flores-plead-not-guilty-in-students-1996-disappearance
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/us/kristin-smart-case-timeline.html
48 Hours Season Season 33 Episode 16 – Nov 28th, 2020

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Emily: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. This is, that's a bad sign. 
Liz: [00:00:03] I'm Liz and I'm Emily. And today's been a day. Let us just tell you. 
Emily: [00:00:08] Oh yeah, we're skipping recommendation corner and we're going to 
Liz: [00:00:12] news corner having a quick newsroom. 
Emily: [00:00:15] Um, all right, so let's start off with the shooting on long Island. 
Liz: [00:00:19] Yeah. So as you guys know, if you've been listening to us at all, we're from long Island.
Uh, we currently live in the city, but our families are still there. This morning, we got a news alert that there was a shooting at a grocery store on long Island. When I clicked on it, thinking long, Island's a pretty big Island, you know, two counties. It happened to be, I don't know, five minutes from where we live from 
Emily: [00:00:42] my house to the grocery store.
It's about five minutes yours. Oh my God. Probably three. 
Liz: [00:00:47] Very very close. Uh, so that was really scary. And we had to reach out to our families and make sure everyone was okay, which thank God they are. But what is with this world? 
Emily: [00:00:56] Also, when I called my mom, my mom told me that her plan for the day was to go to the doctor.
And then after the doctor, she was going to go right to that grocery store and. My aunt coincidentally called my mom and asked her if she could come over because she needed to use my mom's wifi because her wifi was down. I don't really know. Um, but instead after my mom's doctor's appointment, she went home instead of the grocery store, which thank God, because if she went to the grocery store, she would have been there during the 
Liz: [00:01:25] shoot.
Um, that is just the universe working in weird ways that she wasn't there and that your aunt just happened to not have wifi. All right. Now the most 
important 
Emily: [00:01:33] thing that happened today, 
Liz: [00:01:35] you guys, Derek Shelvin. Guilty. It 
Emily: [00:01:39] just happened about 10 minutes ago. We're recording early. 
Liz: [00:01:42] So thank God, God. I was on the edge of my seat as I'm sure all of America was and the world.
And I'm just so relieved. I mean, the situation obviously is horrific, but at least his family gets some justice. Yeah. 
Emily: [00:01:57] And if you haven't watched the video of him with his knee on George Floyd's neck, I honestly like go try to watch it because. Anybody who thinks it wasn't murder just needs to watch 
Liz: [00:02:08] that video.
I couldn't even get through probably two minutes of it, so terrible. All right. So that's the, that's the updates for today? So now let's get into some stories. Cheers.
All right. 
Emily: [00:02:28] So today I'm doing a story of Bruce Pardot who was known as the Santa Claus shooter. My references include sinister Isles Senate. I don't know if I pronounced that right. I can't believe it's nonfiction and 
Liz: [00:02:43] medium Emily's new favorite website is I can't believe it's not fiction. Wow. I should pay them for the amount of stuff I read.
They should sponsor us. All 
Emily: [00:02:53] right. So Bruce Pardot, let me start off by saying he's not the best guy. Back in 1989, he had gotten engaged to a coworker and the two had planned a large wedding and expensive honeymoon and Tahiti at the time he didn't have a lot of money and he was living with his mother.
So all of this really came from his fiance's side of the family. Then on their wedding day, Bruce never showed up. Instead he depleted all the funds from their joint bank account and used it to fund a trip to Palm Springs, Florida. Oh 
Liz: [00:03:24] my 
Emily: [00:03:24] God. So I think that gives you a pretty good idea of who this guy 
Liz: [00:03:27] is.
Yeah. 
Emily: [00:03:29] But wait, there's more then when he was in his mid thirties, about five years later, he fathered a child with his then girlfriend, Elena Lugano. When their son was just over a year old, Elena left, hit Bruce alone to watch over the sun while she went grocery shopping. When Bruce wasn't paying attention, the toddler made his way outside into the backyard and fell into the pool.
By the time Bruce found him, his son was unresponsive. They raced him to the hospital and despite receiving the best care possible, he suffered severe brain damage and would be in a wheelchair. The rest of his life. Now the wife never suspected Bruce of Amy wrongdoing. I think it was truly an accident.
However, she did ask him for money because even now they weren't married, it was his son and she needed $350,000 because she was in medical debt from everything that happened with their son and Bruce refused to help. So she ended up suing him for his homeowner insurance and the settlement money covered less than a third of what her bills that she had to pay.
And to make matters worse. He completely stepped out and left the two of them. So he walked out on his child, the moment his son became disabled and he refused to help with 
Liz: [00:04:43] a and the medical costs. Yeah. This guy is the worst and 
Emily: [00:04:48] he never paid her anything in child support, obviously. But then he continued to illegally declare the boy as a dependent on his taxes, 
Liz: [00:04:57] which is tax fraud.
Yeah. That is messed up. Just throw it on 
Emily: [00:05:00] top of everything that's going on. Now enter Sylvia or Tayga the two started dating and got married in January, 2006. And Bruce seemed like a pretty great catch. Yes, he had some Xs, but Sylvia didn't know about his past whatsoever. Also he volunteered to usher at the Holy Redeemer Catholic church.
And all of his friends from church said that Bruce was the nicest guy. So not knowing his past and seeing this guy at church. She thought she was ending up with a really great Christian. So the two get married around one year into the marriage. Things start taking a toll on the relationship when it comes to their finances.
He didn't really have that mindset of what's. Mine is yours. So he made a ton of money. He had some lucrative job as an engineer and she was a florist. So. He refused to give her any money ever. But the thing is she had three kids from a previous marriage, so he kind of told her, Oh, you have to pay for their clothes and their schooling.
They're your kids, not mine, which is awkward because they're married and living 
Liz: [00:06:06] together. Yeah. I feel like that's why you got to have these conversations before you get married. Yes. 
Emily: [00:06:13] And on top of the money travel, he no longer was this fun, nice, warm man that she married within a year. He became very cold and distant.
Then Sylvia learned of his handicap son from the previous relationship. And that was the last straw because she was so upset with the way he was acting and all the money troubles. But now that she found out that he was hiding such a horrible secret, she just wanted didn't 
want 
Liz: [00:06:39] anything to do with him.
That's crazy. She had no idea 
Emily: [00:06:42] exactly. She had no idea and this not lying cause he left it out. But just to know that your husband could do that to a young boy, she. Realize he wasn't the man that she thought. So the two start sleeping in separate bedrooms and they talked about getting separated. Then she went to go out of town with her children for the weekend to visit her family members.
And when she came back, all of her things and her children's things were on the driveway. So 
Liz: [00:07:11] he kicked her out of the house guy. 
Emily: [00:07:13] So she decided if you're going to kick me out of the house, I want to get divorced. And she filed for divorce. The divorce one has planned, but they were fighting over money and alimony, but eventually in June, 2008, Bruce was ordered to pay her more than $1,700 a month in alimony.
However, his first check bounds. And then by check number two, he stopped sending money altogether. Cool. Now, besides the divorce things, aren't really going well for Bruce. He's fired from his job. Apparently he had been fraudulently billing clients for hours. He did not work. He also racked up $30,000 in credit card debt and he just started buying shit ton of guns.
Liz: [00:07:54] All right. If there wasn't a time in this story already, when you should call tabs, it is now  
Emily: [00:08:01] now Sylvia. On the other hand, she is sad, but she's happily living her post-divorce life with her parents. So I want to fast forward to Christmas Eve in 2008. So this is two years after their marriage. So very quick marriage and divorce.
So Sylvia's parents who she's living with Joseph, who is 80 and Alice, who is 70. They were hosting their annual Christmas Eve party at their Covina California home, which is about a half hour East of Los Angeles. There were 25 people in attendance, including Joseph analysis, five grown children and their spouses and their children.
So a very large family gathering, but Bruce decides to show up uninvited at 11:30 PM. Dressing a Santa Claus. He goes to the front door and immediately eight year old Katrina sees Santa coming up to the door. So she says San is here and she runs to open the door. And the moment she opens the door, Bruce shoots her in the 
Liz: [00:09:03] face.
No, 
Emily: [00:09:06] he then rushed into the house, a gun in each hand, shooting everybody. He could see, he then opened up one of the fake presence that he brought and inside was a homemade flame thrower. And he started torching the house. However, he did not realize that there had already been open flames in the home because there was two active fireplaces.
So he actually ended up completely saying the house on fire, which wasn't his original plan because he didn't want to set it on fire, why he was in it. So he badly burned himself along with killing. I'll get to this later, but around 13:00 PM. 
Liz: [00:09:43] Oh my God. At a family party. 
Emily: [00:09:46] So now Bruce who has murdered the family is now badly burned to the point that his Santa suit melted onto him.
He then got in his car and drove to his brother's house. When his brother arrived home, about three hours after the initial attack took place, he had found Bruce dead. So Bruce's plan was that he wanted to kill the family and then escape to Mexico. He had stopped his car with food and cash. And after the shooting, he was ready to go.
But because he was so badly burned, he knew that he wasn't going to be able to last long without going to a hospital and then he'd get arrested. So 
he 
Liz: [00:10:25] shot himself. That's definitely a plan B 
Emily: [00:10:29] also when police, you know, put this together very quickly because there were some survivors and I'll get to that later, they then start going through his computer and all of his on a personal belongings.
And they found out that Bruce also was intending on killing his own mother because he was mad that his mom sided with Sylvia in the divorce. But because the explosion at the Ortega's home, he never made it that far. Now I just want to quickly go through the deceased. And it was Sylvia Ortega, who was Bruce's wife.
She was 43, Alicia Ortega and Joseph Ortega, who? Her parents, Charles Ortega, her brother and cherry, his wife, James, her other brother and Teresa, his wife, then Alicia, who was her sister and Michael, who was Alicia son. Now, the little girl who opened the door and was shot Katrina. She actually lives.
Thankfully she escapes and she went on to become an, a gun control activist. And in 2018, she helped organize a school walkout in solidarity with the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas students. 
Liz: [00:11:41] Oh my God. That's amazing now. 
Emily: [00:11:44] The, the one thing I want to bring up the last thing. And I don't know if this is true, because I only found it in one article and I couldn't find it anywhere else, but apparently some so-called men's rights groups.
Essentially called Bruce Pardot. They like held him as a, a hero because they said, this is what happens when someone's provoked and overwhelmed by the injustice of divorce court. And it's not his fault that he had this rampage 
Liz: [00:12:14] get the fuck out of here with that. Mind you, he didn't want the children. I know he 
Emily: [00:12:21] had one son who he gave away and then three adopted kids or stepchildren that he absolutely did one at the first 
Liz: [00:12:27] place.
So I'm sorry, we don't need a men's rights group at, at all. Absolutely not. Well, so that is the 
Emily: [00:12:38] story of what the Santa Claus 
Liz: [00:12:40] shooter that is really bizarre, but I guess that's what you get for. Doing your research on? I can't believe it's non-fiction. Um, it's also a serious tragedy though. That's a lot of people that he murdered.
Uh, I'm sorry, how many was it? I think you said 13. I 
Emily: [00:12:56] know, I think I misspoke three, six, seven, eight, nine, nine. 
Liz: [00:13:00] I mean still that's horrible. Wow. I mean, I have no words. I feel so awful. 
Emily: [00:13:08] And in two cases it was two sets of parents. So you're leaving kids orphan. It's so sad 
Liz: [00:13:15] and don't dress up as Santa, but little girl opening the door.
No. So sad. 
Emily: [00:13:20] Um, all right. I don't think we should cheers to that. I think we should just take our break 
Liz: [00:13:25] and then we'll pass it over to you. I'm gonna take a deep breath and then we'll move on.
all right. I'm excited to tell you this story. Yay. It's very relevant because there's been some breaking updates recently. So I am going to tell you guys the story of Kristin Smart's disappearance. We've gone a lot of requests for this. Yes, because it was literally like two weeks ago that there was breaking news in this case.
Yeah. My sources include an episode of 48 hours season 33, episode 16, which by the way, can we just take a moment that there's been 33 seasons of 48 hours? Longest running show that's good TV and also a New York times article. All right. Kristen smart was born on February 20th, 1977 in Bavaria, West Germany, which I didn't know her parents were Stan and Denise smart.
And they were both teachers. Kristen had two siblings, a brother named Matt and a sister named Lindsey. She had a happy childhood. At some point while she was growing up, she and her family relocated to the United States and settled in Stockton, California, where she went to high school and she graduated in 1995.
After that Kristen went on to attend Cal poly in San Louis Obispo, California. She had a kind of tough freshman year because classes were tough. She missed her family and she was just trying to fit in, in college. I mean, I get it. I. Had some moments freshman year of college, right? Questioned it. Yeah, for sure.
But her family encouraged her to stick it out because they said it was a great college and she'll be happy. And, you know, she ended up actually really loving it. So in may of 1996, Kristen was finishing up her freshman year. And it was Memorial day weekend. So a lot of students had already left campus, but Kristin was still there on the Saturday of that weekend.
Kristen and her friend margarita went to a party, but it ended up being pretty lame when they showed up. It was just a couple of roommates hanging out and drinking. Yeah. So the two girls are like, there must be something more fun than this going on. So they decided to venture off campus a little bit to where the fraternity and sorority houses were.
So margarita ultimately decided she wanted to go back home. She really wasn't much of a partier, but Christian was so from hearing her friends and family describe her. She was such an in the moment person. Uh, I want to live my life. We got to capitalize on this kind of thing. It'll be so fun. So she was pretty adamant about staying out at the party.
So she headed into one of these parties by herself. Which her friend has actually interviewed in the 48 hours episode. And she says, of course, you know, I do, I feel guilty about that a little bit, but you have to understand that Kristen was a very strong and independent person. So there was no convincing her, um, enter your CA or it's your college.
You feel safe? Yeah, nothing, nothing bad has happened to anyone. You know, the next day when margarita went to Kristen's room to see how her night ended up, she realized that Kristen had never come home. So she immediately called the campus police. Smart. The cannabis police did not take this seriously at all.
They thought, you know what? If she just went off on her own, she's out having fun somewhere, but margarita just did not think that that's what happened. So that same day Kristen's mom, Denise was expecting a phone call from her, but it never came. And to me, I was thinking, why not text her or whatever, but this is 1996.
So why not text her? Yeah, not the same. The next day on Monday, the Cal-Poly campus police called Denise and told her that Kristen hadn't come home to her dorm. And that nobody knew where she was. That's terrifying. Literally the last phone call any mother ever wants to get. So Kristen's parents immediately tried to file a missing persons report, but the local police department told them that it was too early to do that.
Like I'm so sick of this. It's ridiculous in so many of the stories that we talk about, especially when this, this girl is 19. Yeah. So by the time any sort of real investigation began and Kristin had already been missing for four days. No, that's horrible. And it's because the local police department said, Oh no, this is the campus.
Police's jurisdiction. Sorry, 
Emily: [00:17:57] you're going to leave a missing girl up to the campus police. 
Liz: [00:18:00] I know that was my thoughts. Exactly. All right. So finally they decided they needed to fully investigate this and investigators figure out which party she had been at on the night she went missing, they learned that she had become extremely intoxicated.
It's unclear if she had been drugged or if she had just like drank a lot in a really short period of time, either way she was incoherent. She ended up passed out on the lawn next door. So another student named Cheryl Anderson began helping her to get back to campus. She like lifted her up and was helping her walk back.
And I don't even think these two people were friends. It was just this girl doing something nice. Well, you got it. If you see another girl passed out. Exactly girl code. So Cheryl's helping Kristin back to campus and they were soon joined by another student named Paul Flores. And the way it's described is that he sort of appeared out of nowhere and he put his arm around Kristen's torso and her arm around his neck, like helping her walk that way.
Okay. But apparently he kept stopping and saying to Cheryl, I've got her. She's fine. You can leave. Oh no. And Cheryl says, um, no, I'll continue walking with you. She also says at one point that Paul tried to kiss and hug her. Cheryl. That's weird. Yeah. She finally leaves Paul and Kristin, when they're all really close, all of their dorm rooms were really close together.
I'm talking like next door or like across the way. Yeah. Yeah. So she leaves them. And Paul says that he left Kristen to walk up a short walkway into her dorm building and that he went and went into his own dorm building. Not buying it. I'm Kristen has never seen again. So let's talk about how the police fucked this up.
So campus police didn't take the situation seriously. So they lost the first few days after she went missing, which is, as we all know as true crime people, extremely critical. Yeah. They also waited six days to even interview Paul Flores, who was the last person who saw her 
Emily: [00:20:08] plenty of time to get his 
Liz: [00:20:09] story straight.
And then they didn't search his dorm room until 16 days later. And the best part about that is it was the end of the year. So he had moved out by that point and it had been fully cleaned and sanitized by the university. I'm so angry. It, this is extremely frustrating to listen to. I'm just wording you then in the reports that were filed about the situation by the Cal poly campus police.
There's very much a lot of victim blaming going on. No, they say things like smart does not have any close friends at Cal poly and smart appeared to be under the influence of alcohol on Friday night. And then another comment about how she had been talking to guys that whole, are you kidding me? It's so infuriating.
So while the police were dicking around doing this Kristen's parents were. Doing the most I possibly could try and find their daughter. Her father was going on hikes in remote areas of this place. He was looking in tunnels and under bridges because he just was trying anything to find his daughter, a formal, large search didn't take place until a month after she went missing.
When the campus police finally handed the case over to the San Louis Obispo police department. Wait, how long 
Emily: [00:21:28] was that a month? No. Would 
Liz: [00:21:30] know like what qualifies the campus police to be conducting that investigation? I'm thinking about my 
Emily: [00:21:37] campus beliefs. 
Liz: [00:21:38] Same, the biggest joke. The only thing my campus police was good for was breathalyzing you and getting you in trouble.
So the search takes place, nothing is found. And then four months after the search, Paul Flores was brought in front of a grand jury. And no one knows why, because the proceedings were kept secret, but no charges were ever filed. So whatever happened in that courtroom, there clearly wasn't enough evidence for anything.
He goes free. So Christian's parents contacted a civil lawyer and they said they felt that their daughter had been the victim of foul play and they wanted to pursue action against the guy that they thought was responsible. So this lawyer, James Murphy took on this case pro bono and he filed a wrongful death suit against Paul Flores in civil court.
I can't tell you how much I love this guy. They interview him and his wife because his wife is his office manager and the two of them are so cute and they have a poster, not even a poster. It's bigger than that. A missing persons, giant sign of Christine's face on their front lawn. And they have, since the nineties.
I'm going to cry because this guy is near tears and he's saying, you know, that's, it's just a horrible phone call to get from someone's parents saying this happened to my child and I just, I need to know what happened. So they just seem like great people. I love it. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to follow through with the civil case because there's still an open criminal investigation going on.
That's stupid. I know. I agree. Um, but that doesn't mean that they have. Given up on it, they've spent a lot of time gathering evidence and following leads probably more so than the police have. So they have they're fully ready to take this to court one day. Now, like I said, the lawyer has gathered all this information and he says, there's not a doubt in my mind that Paul Flores is the one who murdered Kristin smart.
And here's why for one thing, the day after Kristen disappeared, Paul Flores had a black eye and he had scratches on him. And the 
Emily: [00:23:45] other girl who walked home with them, 
Liz: [00:23:47] did she see that? No, she and the fight, not that this is funny, but tells you about a little bit about this guy's character. The reason we have proof that he had a black guy is because there was a mugshot taken of him at two days after Kristen's disappearance for an unrelated incident, because he was a warrant was out for his arrest for a DUI.
All right. When the police initially questioned Paul, he said he got the black guy playing basketball with his friends, bullshit. His friends later said that he already had the black guy when he met up with them. And he told them that he had just woken up with a black guy. 
Emily: [00:24:26] We lived, it hasn't 
happened 
Liz: [00:24:27] to you.
I mean, I woke up with this bruise on my bed. He later changes his story again to the police and says he hit his head on something. Cause he was like moving around his room in the middle of the night. S  then one cadaver dogs were brought through the dorms. They had no reaction until they reached Paul Flores his room.
And these are dogs who are trained to sniff out human remains the dog bee-lined to Paul Flores his bed. When they opened the door, even after the room had been emptied and cleaned, like I told you. They wanted to test out and see if this was, you know, just a fluke or what. So they brought in three more dogs and they all did the same thing.
No can be 
Emily: [00:25:11] used as evidence. I feel 
Liz: [00:25:13] like, yes. Oh 
Emily: [00:25:15] my God. That's so 
Liz: [00:25:18] sad. And then there was Paul Flores, his reputation. So people on campus thought of him as a creep and he was always hitting on girls and groping them. What, 
Emily: [00:25:32] how is that your reputation? 
Liz: [00:25:34] I don't know, hitting 
Emily: [00:25:35] on girls, one thing, but just like, Oh, that's the guy that gropes everybody.
Liz: [00:25:39] Yeah. So five months prior to Kristen's disappearance, the St. Louis, I can't pronounce this town. St Louis Obispo. Yeah, sure. This police department received a phone call from a girl living off campus who said a guy was climbing her balcony demanding to get inside. And he was really drunk and that person was Paul Flores.
And in interviews with other Cal poly students, they told investigators that his nickname was scary, Paul, and it was sort of an unwritten rule that you would never let your friends be drunk around him. I can't believe this. I know then this is another police fuck up in may of 1997. The sheriff at the time said to the media, something along the lines of, we need Paul Flores to tell us what happened to Christian smart or else we will never solve this case.
So he basically just said out loud, if Paul Flores just keeps his mouth shut, he'll get away with this. That just seems like 
Emily: [00:26:42] an 
Liz: [00:26:42] untrained. Detective. I know it is mind boggling. Shortly after Kristen went missing. Paul Flores, his parents were in the middle of getting a divorce and his mother was renting out her house in a Royal Grande day.
So his mother had a house and his father had a house separately. Okay. So when she was renting it, a young couple moved into it with their kid and the wife saw something shiny on the driveway. One day. You know, like something catches your eye and you just go pick it up. It was a single earring. No. And she says that she turns it around and there's half of a fingerprint in something like maroon colored, dried blood.
If you're not following along with me, she ends up turning this over to, she must have known about the family's involvement with this whole thing, because the earring does get turned over to the police and then it gets. Misplaced, no misplaced before the smarts can even look at it or identify it or they can 
Emily: [00:27:44] test the blood or the fingerprint.
Yep. 
Liz: [00:27:47] So this small piece of evidence could have connected Kristin to the Flores house. Like when the body was being moved, the police never searched the Flores family vehicles. And Paul didn't have a car on campus. So if he was going to move a body, he would have had to have help. I was going to ask, 
Emily: [00:28:08] why didn't they search any car?
Obviously he needed to use a car. 
Liz: [00:28:13] Very little that went right with this investigation. Let's just put it that way. And the two months following Kristen's disappearance, one of their cars was traded in and the other one was reported stolen. This, this gets. It's a kicker. So right after Kristen disappearance, the Flores dug up planter boxes in the backyard.
So they had to take out big chunks of concrete and fill it with soil for their plants. So the same woman who found the earring, she said that when she moved into the house, she used to hear this beeping noise at four 20 in the morning, every day. And it drove her crazy. And she said it came from one of the planter boxes.
And she even says that she tried to go outside a few times and figure out exactly where it was coming from. Like she would poke the ground with a stick and she could never find it. But then a few months later, the beeping just stopped. Now you might be like, what could this possibly be? Turns out Kristen was a lifeguard.
And she used to use her watch as an alarm to wake up every morning at just about that time. I'm so sad. Isn't that? So disturbing. 
Emily: [00:29:32] Why has an Awan dug 
Liz: [00:29:34] up that area? So the house was finally searched in March, 1997, nine months after the disappearance, but nothing was found because presumably by that point you've moved her.
Then on June 19th, 2000, it's searched again by the FBI. And this warrant that they got allowed them to dig fully dig up the backyard, but they did some testing and they decided not to excavate. Why not? Her mom talks about this and says it was so disappointing. Then in 2007, the Smart's legal team searched the backyard again, and they, they didn't find anything while this is all happening because now it's been over 10 years, Paul Flores has moved to Southern California.
He bounces around from job to job, but don't worry his reputation with women. Seems to be the same, 
Emily: [00:30:21] no matter where he goes, everyone calls him the 
Liz: [00:30:23] groper. Yeah. And there's even one story of, I think it maybe was some sort of girlfriend he had, she says that he tried, he had a butter knife to her neck once and she was screaming and her roommate burst in and diffuse the whole situation.
I don't necessarily know why none of these, no one ever press charges on him. But yes, he has a bad record. 
Emily: [00:30:47] I can just picture him gaslighting that girl saying, why are you freaking out? I was just kidding. It's just a butter knife. 
Liz: [00:30:53] Oh, totally. So in 2011, a new sheriff sheriff Parkinson came to town and he promised the smarts that he would solve their daughter's case.
And over the last nine years, they did an additional 96 interviews related to the case. And they acquired new evidence, including the Flores as two cars, they were able to find them. Okay. And the interviewer asks, he asks the sheriff, was there any evidence found in the cars? And he says, yes, there was, I can't comment on what it is because we're still going through it with state-of-the-art technology.
But yes. So the police are still gathering more evidence. The family hasn't given up, but now it's been over 20 years and that is where the 48 hours episode ends and it aired. November 28th of 2020. Tell me what just happened this year. Okay. So in March, 2021, just a few weeks ago, Paul Flores was arrested and charged with murder and his father Ruben Flores was arrested and charged with being an accessory after the fact no than yesterday, but yesterday they both pleaded not guilty.
The San Louis Obispo County da announced that Paul Flores had caused the death of Kristin smart quote while in the commission of, or attempted rape. And that his father helped dispose of the remains. The smart family released a statement that said, we now put our faith in the justice system and move forward.
Comforted in the knowledge that Christen has been held in the hearts of so many and that she has not been forgotten. So their trial is scheduled to begin in July of this year. And I'm very, very curious to see what happens. 
Emily: [00:32:43] Why hasn't he left the country? 
Liz: [00:32:46] He had years. I don't know. I mean, it's been 20, it's been over 20 years now, so he probably thought he would never get caught.
But originally in the early days, I don't know, I probably would have fled. 
Emily: [00:32:56] Also, I was thinking this isn't a case of, he woke up next to her and she was dead because you know, alcohol poisoning. So he panicked because he had a bruise on or cause he had, yeah, 
Liz: [00:33:07] clearly there was an altercation. Yeah. 
Emily: [00:33:10] This makes me so angry.
I know, 
Liz: [00:33:13] but it's been crazy too because there's so much evidence against him and everyone who follows this case knows that he's the one that's guilty, but it's been so long and nothing has been done about it. So, thank God. You know, they've been able to put some new evidence together and I just want to end with something that I thought was very important.
The Kristin smart campus safety act became California law in 1998. And it requires campus and local police to have a joint plan, to handle investigations of violent crimes that happen on a college campus. 
Emily: [00:33:48] The fact that that wasn't a thing 
Liz: [00:33:49] beforehand. I know. And then I got worried cause I was thinking it was just in California.
Every state should have this law. 
Emily: [00:33:56] I cannot wait for the trial. I really hope that he's found guilty. 
Liz: [00:34:02] Me too, but we'll just have to keep you guys updated. 
Emily: [00:34:06] So I think we're ending here. And should we just give our regular spiel? 
Liz: [00:34:10] Yes. If we haven't asked you enough, we would really, really appreciate if you guys could go on Apple podcast and give us a rating.

Emily: [00:34:18] know some of you say, I don't know how to do that. If you have an iPhone, you probably have the podcast app, just go in it type of that's a bad sign with the apostrophe and then write us a review. 
Liz: [00:34:31] Yes. And give us five stars. Verbal review is best. Also go follow us on Instagram. We're an AB bye guys. .