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“Cold box” in CaliforniaStudent killer found guilty 26 years later
The murderer of an American student whose disappearance haunted California for years was found guilty on Tuesday, more than 26 years following the fact.
Paul Flores now faces life imprisonment. His sentence, which remains to be determined, is due on December 9.
AFP
After a 12-week trial, Paul Flores, a 45-year-old Californian, was unanimously found guilty by the jury, a spokeswoman for the Monterey court told AFP.
He was accused of killing Kristin Smart, a 19-year-old student whose disappearance from the University of San Luis Obispo campus in 1996 traumatized this region of central California, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francis. His body has never been found and his face has long been plastered in public space. A podcast was even dedicated to the mystery surrounding this “cold case”.
At the time of the disappearance, Paul Flores was also a student at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. He was the last person to see Kristin Smart and explained that he had walked her home ten minutes following a party on the way to her dorm.
According to the prosecution, the murderer raped or attempted to rape the young woman, before hiding her body under the terrace of her father’s house, before transferring it elsewhere. The latter, suspected of having helped hide the body, was found not guilty on Tuesday, said the spokesperson.
Witness
During the trial, prosecutors explained that Paul Flores had followed his victim closely for months. According to them, he may have slipped drugs in his drink at the student party the night of the murder.
After more than two decades without result, the investigation had rebounded in 2019 when a witness had assured that Paul Flores had confided to him to have committed the murder.
The man now faces life imprisonment. His sentence, which remains to be determined, is due on December 9. Contacted by AFP, his lawyer Robert Sanger was not immediately reachable. Judgment “is still pending,” he told the San Luis Obispo Tribune, declining to comment further.
(AFP)