After jury members delivered a guilty verdict for Paul Flores, Kristin Smart’s father, Stan, spoke to the public, saying (per NBC News), “Without Kristin, there is no joy or happiness in this verdict.” Stan Smart wasn’t merely speaking about Kristin’s death and subsequent absence in the world, but a lack of her physical remains. Kristin was never found and was declared dead in absentia in 2002. And yet, jurors arrived at a guilty verdict in part because of evidence implicating Paul Flores’ father, Ruben, who himself was found not guilty. To understand how, we can look to the very name of the podcast that aided in the trial: “Your Own Backyard.”
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For the entire 25-year span following Kristin Smart’s disappearance until Paul Flores was arrested in 2021, police never searched Ruben’s property. Ruben’s house sits at the end of a dead-end street, Tally Ho Road, about 12 miles south of Kristin’s college, California Polytechnic State University (per NBC News). There, under his deck, investigators found a roughly casket-sized “soil disturbance” that contained degraded blood. While a DNA sample couldn’t be obtained from the blood, an expert witness said the blood was human, adding that it could also belong to a ferret or ape. To this, attorney James Murphy said that the ferret in question would have to be “in Jurassic Park” to be so big, per NBC News. The prosecution argued that Ruben moved Kristin’s remains after his property had been searched in 2020, before investigators examined his yard.
