Paul Flores listens throughout his homicide trial in Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas, Calif., on July 18, 2022.

Daniel Dreifuss/AP

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Daniel Dreifuss/AP

Paul Flores listens throughout his homicide trial in Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas, Calif., on July 18, 2022.

Daniel Dreifuss/AP

MONTEREY, Calif. — The man convicted of killing Kristin Smart, who vanished from a California school campus greater than 25 years in the past, was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in jail.

Paul Flores is “a cancer to society,” Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe stated. Flores additionally should register as a intercourse offender.

Before sentencing, the choose rejected protection motions to toss out Flores’ conviction, acquit him and order a brand new trial.

Smart, 19, disappeared from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo on the state’s scenic central coast over Memorial Day weekend in 1996.

Her stays have by no means been discovered, however she was declared legally useless in 2002.

Prosecutors maintained that Flores, now 46, killed Smart throughout an tried rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room on the college, the place each have been first-year college students. He was the final particular person seen with Smart as he walked her dwelling from an off-campus celebration.

Flores was arrested in 2021 alongside together with his father, who was accused of serving to to cover Smart’s physique.

The trial was held in Salinas, in Monterey County, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of San Luis Obispo, after the protection argued that the case’s notoriety prevented Flores and his father from receiving a good trial in their very own county.

At the sentencing, prosecutor Chris Peuvrelle requested the choose for the utmost sentence, known as Flores a “true psychopath” and stated he ought to by no means be launched from jail.

Smart’s father, siblings and different associates and kinfolk spoke on the listening to in regards to the affect of her dying on the household.

A jury discovered Flores responsible of first-degree homicide in October. A separate jury acquitted Ruben Flores, 81, of being an adjunct.

Chris Lambert, documentary podcaster, sits in entrance of a poster of Kristin Smart with relations close by hours after a jury discovered Paul Flores responsible of the 1996 homicide of Cal Poly scholar Kristin Smart on Oct. 18, 2022 in Salinas, Calif.

Laura Dickinson/AP

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Laura Dickinson/AP

Chris Lambert, documentary podcaster, sits in entrance of a poster of Kristin Smart with relations close by hours after a jury discovered Paul Flores responsible of the 1996 homicide of Cal Poly scholar Kristin Smart on Oct. 18, 2022 in Salinas, Calif.

Laura Dickinson/AP

At Paul Flores’ trial, protection lawyer Robert Sanger tried to pin the killing on another person. Sanger famous that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted at a sensational trial of murdering his pregnant spouse and the fetus she was carrying, was additionally a scholar on the campus about 200 miles (320 kilometers) up the coast from Los Angeles.

Sanger filed motions on Feb. 24 in Monterey County Superior Court requesting that prices be dismissed and his shopper acquitted. One movement additionally seeks a brand new trial.

Sanger disputed forensic proof supplied by the prosecution. He contended that Flores’ proper to a good trial was violated due to prosecution errors and “the admission of junk science as evidence.”

“There is a reason that a case against Paul Flores was not brought for 25 years,” the movement stated. “There was no evidence of a murder or that Paul Flores committed it.”

The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office requested the court docket to disclaim these requests, arguing “claims of misconduct are baseless and the claims of judicial error are incorrect.”

Flores had lengthy been thought-about a suspect within the killing. He had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He advised them he received it enjoying basketball with associates, who denied his account. He later modified his story to say he bumped his head whereas engaged on his automobile, in accordance with court docket information.

Investigators performed dozens of fruitless searches for Smart’s physique over 20 years. In the previous two years they turned their consideration to Ruben Flores’ dwelling in the neighborhood of Arroyo Grande, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of California Polytechnic State.

Behind latticework beneath the deck of his massive home on a useless finish avenue, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 discovered a soil disturbance in regards to the measurement of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors stated. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA pattern.