'Lot of victim shaming': Kristin Smart's parents slam CalPoly police's probe into missing daughter
SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIFORNIA: Parents of Kristin Smart have recalled the gut-wrenching ordeal they had to endure to find justice for their late missing daughter in the 90s. Smart, a CalPoly freshman, mysteriously disappeared while walking home from a college frat party on May 25, 1996. Denise and Stan Smart spent 26 years of their lives seeking justice for their daughter, only to find out she was murdered by CalPoly student Paul Flores.
Smart's parents recounted how the CalPoly University police allegedly victim-shamed their daughter after her disappearance. "The Cal Poly police took me aside and said, 'You know, your daughter was doing some things that would put her at risk,' and that she'd gone to a party, and she had drank alcohol," Stan said in an upcoming episode of 'Dateline' on NBC. "Like that was unusual for college kids to go to a party and drink alcohol, and that she was scantily dressed," the father quipped in the two-hour special titled 'Justice for Kristin' that will air on March 31. "There was a lot of victim shaming. And it's, like, women get what, you know, what they're asking for," echoed Kristin's mother.
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( KCRA News screengrab/YouTube, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office)
What happened between Kristin Smart and Paul Flores?
Smart and Paul were 19-year-old students at California Polytechnic State University college. Smart mysteriously disappeared while walking home from a college frat party and her murder remained unsolved for years until a 2019 podcast 'Your own Backyard' reopened the pandora's box. Police have never found Kristin's remains but believe Paul, who was declared as a "person of interest", raped her in his dorm room and then murdered her.
(FBI/San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office )
After killing Smart, Paul hid her body in his father's backyard and allegedly moved the remains years later in 2020. Investigators claimed his father, Ruben, assisted his son in concealing Smart's body, but he was found not guilty of being an accomplice to the murder. The 19-year-old was officially declared dead in 2002. Paul was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in early March, last year, but to date, he insists on his innocence. At the time, Judge Jennifer O'Keefe told him, "Mr Flores, you have been a cancer to society. For 25 years you have lived free in the community' and continued to drug and assault women," according to San Luis Obispo Tribune.
'Kristin's parents speak about the victim shaming!'
Denise and Stan claimed after their daughter's disappearance, police tried to pick on the circumstances and blame their 19-year-old for her actions that night. "And I listened to all this, and he was portraying to me that our daughter disappeared, and if she was dead, she'd brought it onto herself, which was totally wrong," said Stan. In the interview, reporter Josh Mankiewicz questioned if they believed things would have been different if their daughter had gone missing in a different situation.
"You think they would have worked on it differently if she'd, you know, been coming back from the library and never had any boyfriends, and, you know, was wearing a hazmat suit?" Mankiewicz asked Kristin's parents. "Well, it would've been, definitely would have been different, because it was a different era," Denise said. In response, CalPoly said in a statement, "It is never appropriate to describe a victim as promiscuous, and it runs completely counter to our practices and procedures." Paul was sentenced to 25 years in jail and must also register as a sex offender for life, as he assaulted and killed Smart. He was also ordered to pay a total of $10,000 in restitution to his victims.