Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives (38 page)

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Polly Klaas, whom he had kidnapped from her Petaluma, California,

home in 1993.

Their handler, Adela Morris, was told nothing about Sierra’s

reaction in Santa Lucia Hall, but was simply asked to search the

building. She took the dogs in one at a time. Cholla twice came

back to room 128, sniffing and scratching at the carpet outside

Flores’s door. Morris took Cholla inside to search the room, which

was empty except for the furniture and fixtures belonging to the

university. Cholla alerted on one of the two mattresses in the room,

showing no interest in the other.

Morris then worked Cirque through the hall. Cirque also stopped

at Flores’s room, pawed the door, and barked. When Morris took

Cirque inside the room, he alerted on the same mattress, pawing at

it and even grabbing at the mattress with his teeth. A detective had

the dogs walk through all three floors of the building to see if they

reacted with such interest to any other rooms, but they did not.

The mattress and box spring cover were removed as evidence.

Then a fourth dog was brought in to search the hall. Just as all the

others had, Torrey, a boxer, stopped at Flores’s room. Handler Gail

LaRogue took Torrey inside, where he alerted in the corner of the

room where the mattress had been. He also reacted to the end of

the bed frame, the telephone, and one of two wastebaskets in the

room.

The handler suggested testing Torrey on the wastebasket by placing

it down the hallway with identical trashcans taken from other rooms.

The dog went directly to the waste container from room 128.

The detectives were stunned. Four different dogs had picked up

the scent of death in Paul Flores’s dorm room. They were now

convinced that Kristin was dead, that she had died in that very room,

and that Paul Flores, at the very least, knew what happened to her.

What they didn’t know—and felt they needed to know to bring

charges against Flores—was how Kristin died. Was she murdered,

or could she have died accidentally, perhaps from passing out and

vomiting, as some claimed that Paul told a friend? And where was

she now? Without a body, without blood or a weapon or some other

hard evidence, the Sheriff’s Department did not believe they could

prove that Paul killed Kristin.

Cal Poly police insist that they did not have grounds to search

Flores’s dorm room before he moved out. But by the time of the

cadaver dog search, a full thirty-five days had passed since Kristin

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disappeared—plenty of time to get rid of evidence and hide a body

somewhere it might never be found.

‘‘Much of the evidence was more than likely gone by Saturday

or Sunday’’ of Memorial Day weekend, said Lt. Steve Bolts of the

San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Department. And Flores was no longer

cooperating. He had answered questions on three occasions during

the first three weeks that Kristin was missing. He now had a lawyer

and was refusing to speak to police at all or take a lie detector test. He

has not spoken to anyone from law enforcement since and has never

spoken publicly about the case.

The dog evidence enabled the Sheriff’s Department to obtain a

search warrant for Paul’s parents’ house in Arroyo Grande. (Paul had

told police that his father picked him up on the Sunday after Kristin

disappeared and drove him home for the rest of the Memorial Day

weekend. Soon thereafter Paul moved back home.)

Searchers found nothing that would tie Paul directly to Kristin’s

disappearance or demise, such as the clothing she wore the night

she disappeared, her room key, or her blood on some article of his

clothing. However, they did find a collection of newspaper clippings

about Kristin’s disappearance.

In frustration, authorities tried to force a break in the case by

convening a grand jury that October. They did not ask for an

indictment. Rather they used the grand jury’s subpoena power as

an added tool for investigating the case. But Paul cited his Fifth

Amendment right against self-incrimination and left the grand jury

room within five minutes of arriving.

The Smarts were appalled. The person they believe killed their

daughter and committed her to some unmarked grave could refuse

ever to tell them where she is, and the law would protect his right to

do so. Yet their daughter had not even the minimal status afforded the

dead. She could neither testify against her killer nor offer her corpse

as proof against him. Her family could not even get victim-assistance

funds to pay for grief counseling because, legally speaking, no crime

had occurred.

Once again the investigation foundered. A year after Kristin went

missing, Ed Williams, the sheriff at that time, seemed to throw up

his hands, telling a reporter for the local newspaper, ‘‘We need Paul

Flores to tell us what happened to Kristin Smart. The fact of the

matter is we have very qualified detectives who have conducted well

over a hundred interviews and everything leads to Mr. Flores. There

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are no other suspects. So absent something from Mr. Flores, I don’t

see us completing this case.’’

In other words, the burden of responsibility for bringing this case

to justice was not on the police but on the suspect, from whom they

wanted a confession.

A year later, a sheriff’s representative reiterated that pessimistic

sentiment on national television during an interview on the ABC

newsmagazine
20/20
. When asked why Flores had not been charged,

Sgt. Bill Wammock said that the evidence they had been able to

gather was circumstantial.

‘‘We need more. It’s unfortunate, but there are times that there’s

nothing there.’’ Wammock concluded by making the same astonish-ing assertion Sheriff Williams had: ‘‘Short of Paul Flores telling us

[what happened] or giving us reason not to focus on him, which is

within his constitutional right, there is nothing else to look at.’’

‘‘Who would ever say that about any case?’’ an incredulous Denise

Smart asks. ‘‘Can you imagine standing up and saying ‘Until someone

admits he’s the Unabomber that case will never be solved?’ ‘Until

Scott Peterson tells us that he killed Laci that case will never be

solved?’ ’’

Q

Paul Flores has never admitted to any knowledge of or involvement

in Kristin’s death or disappearance. However, according to the Smarts

and their attorney, on several occasions during the past ten years a

lawyer representing Paul has broached the possibility of a plea bargain

in exchange for Flores leading them to Kristin’s body. The first time,

about a year after Kristin disappeared, the district attorney offered to

let Paul plead to voluntary manslaughter—a killing without malice,

committed in the heat of passion—and serve just six years in prison.

‘‘You know what that means?’’ an FBI agent told Denise. ‘‘That’s

your confirmation that she is no longer alive, if he is willing to lead

you to her.’’

It was a devastating realization, and Kristin’s parents were deeply

divided over what to do. After much painful reflection, Denise

decided that nothing was more important to her than to get Kristin

back, to be able to give her daughter a Christian burial and lay her to

rest in a place of beauty and serenity. Stan had a harder time accepting

what he viewed as little more than a slap on the wrist. He believed

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that wherever his daughter is, she is already at peace, and he wanted

her killer punished for all the devastation his family has endured.

‘‘I want my daughter back, but I want justice as well,’’ he says.

‘‘I don’t think we should excuse him for what he did.’’ Ultimately,

though, both parents agreed to support such a deal. However,

Paul’s attorney, Melvin de la Motte, didn’t think Paul should have

to serve any time. He would agree to nothing greater than an

infraction—roughly the equivalent of a parking ticket.

At least three times since then, according to the Smarts’ attorney,

Paul’s counsel has brought up the subject of a plea but has never

followed through with any serious offer. The Smarts believe that

comments by the Sheriff’s Department like the ones in the local

paper and on
20/20
killed any chance of Flores admitting culpability.

As long as he kept his mouth shut, they seemed to be telling him,

there was nothing the authorities could do to him.

Ironically, if Paul had accepted any one of the plea offers discussed,

he would have finished his prison sentence long ago.

Q

The investigation has continued, in fits and starts. But much of

the activity has come about only at the initiative of the Smart family.

Patrick Hedges, the current sheriff, maintains that his department

is still actively investigating Kristin’s disappearance. Experts from

other law enforcement agencies, including psychological profilers,

have been consulted. One investigator is assigned full-time to the

case, working tips that still continue to come in regularly, and Hedges

says he remains optimistic that it will one day be resolved.

The Smarts want to believe that, but it is hard for them to put

much faith in the system anymore. For a decade they have been stuck

on an endless, sickening roller coaster ride, their hopes raised with

each new lead, then dashed by each dead end. At times, according

to Denise, an entire year has gone by without anyone from law

enforcement calling them or returning their calls.

In desperation, the Smarts have waged their own campaign to

keep pressure on Paul Flores, to let him know he will never be truly

free—free of them— until he tells them what they need to know. Yet

they still have been thwarted at every turn.

They filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Paul, not in hope of

any monetary settlement, but to force him to answer their questions.

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Instead, when deposed under oath, Paul refused to tell them anything

other than his name and Social Security number.

‘‘On the advice of my attorney, I refuse to answer that question,

based on the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution,’’

he responded to every other query, reading carefully from a scrap of

paper placed in front of him by his lawyer.

In a Catch-22 from which they seemingly cannot escape, the Smarts

can’t proceed to trial on the civil suit without access to the evidence

uncovered by the Sheriff’s Department. But the sheriff has refused to

turn over the records, contending that to do so would compromise

the criminal case. Every few months a local judge privately reviews

what progress has been made in the criminal investigation. As long as

he is satisfied that the sheriff is actively pursuing the case, the records

will remain confidential and the civil suit stayed.

When Paul was still living in San Luis Obispo, Stan and Denise

attempted to speak to him at the gas station where he was working,

but he retreated into the restroom and refused to come out. They

have kept tabs on him and cost him several jobs by sending news

clippings about the case to his employers.

When deposed in the Smarts’ civil case, both of Paul’s parents

denied that they have any knowledge of their son killing Kristin or

that they aided him in any way after the fact. They said he told them

the same thing he told police, that he left Kristin outside her dorm

and never saw her again. Recently, Paul’s mother and her boyfriend

(the Floreses are now divorced) have filed suit against the Smarts

accusing them of a campaign of harassment and seeking damages for

intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Q

For years after Stan Smart went back to his job as a school

administrator, he spent every weekend looking for his daughter,

pursuing any possible sighting, employing all manner of psychics.

It was a ghastly, demoralizing quest. In desperation he followed the

leads psychics would suggest, all amounting to nothing. The places

his own instincts took him were equally grim. He searched lakes,

dumpsters, even the agriculture school’s slaughterhouse for ‘‘bones,

sinew, hair,’’ or any other trace of a human corpse. He became

familiar with the smell of death from all the animal carcasses he

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discovered in the rugged canyons around San Luis Obispo, but found

no sign of his daughter.

When he found out that a new performing arts center was under

construction at the time Kristin disappeared, right across the street

from where Cheryl Anderson left Kristin and Paul on their walk back

to the dorms, he was sickened by the thought that she could have

been interred in one of the trenches underneath the complex, sealed

away for ever.

One of the most painful facts Stan learned was that the dumpster

closest to Paul’s dorm was emptied just hours after he got back to

campus from the party. Authorities searched the landfill where refuse

is taken, digging down through eighteen feet of garbage until they

reached dated material from the day of her disappearance. Even that

is not a foolproof method, however. Garbage does not remain in

one place, ready to be exposed like an archaeological dig, but gets

pushed to and fro as new trucks come in and add more refuse to the

pile. Some of the investigators and the landfill manager think it is

possible that Kristin’s body was overlooked. That’s certainly possible,

considering that it took Salt Lake City authorities three solid months

of concerted digging with the assistance of cadaver dogs to find the

remains of Lori Hacking.

After several years of devoting every weekend to searching for his

daughter, Stan Smart had to pull back a little, ‘‘to get on with life

here. Otherwise, it just eats you alive.’’

Kristin’s parents both say that the only way they have managed to

keep going is out of concern for their two other children. Two weeks

after Kristin disappeared, someone Denise didn’t even know said to

her, ‘‘You have to recognize that you have lost one child, and you

don’t want to lose all three.’’

At the time, those words felt monumentally presumptuous, ‘‘like

a slap in the face,’’ but Denise now realizes that they were something

she needed to hear. The Smarts have worked hard to balance their

efforts to find Kristin with the needs of their other children. Every

birthday, holiday, or personal accomplishment makes them wonder

‘‘what if Kristin were here.’’ But they make a point of honoring those

occasions.

In 2005 Denise accompanied daughter Lindsey to Italy to celebrate

her graduation from UCLA. They speak with pride of seeing their

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