{"id":1683,"date":"2026-05-12T22:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T22:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegorelocationnews.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/12\/kristin-smart-search-reveals-very-strong-evidence-of-human-remains-whats-next-2\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T22:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T22:33:10","slug":"kristin-smart-search-reveals-very-strong-evidence-of-human-remains-whats-next-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegorelocationnews.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/12\/kristin-smart-search-reveals-very-strong-evidence-of-human-remains-whats-next-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Kristin Smart search reveals \u2018very strong\u2019 evidence of human remains. What\u2019s next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists who spent last week taking soil samples from an Arroyo Grande yard as part of the ongoing Kristin Smart investigation said results indicating evidence of decomposing human remains were \u201cvery strong\u201d in one specific area of the property.<\/p>

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San Luis Obispo County was thrown into a frenzy last week when the Sheriff\u2019s Office served a search warrant for the home of Susan Flores on Wednesday morning, 30 years after her son, Paul Flores, murdered Kristin Smart.<\/p>

Paul Flores was convicted in 2022 of killing Smart when she was a first-year student at Cal Poly. She went missing on Memorial Day weekend of 1996, but her body was never found.<\/p>

For days, community members and reporters stood outside the home as sheriff\u2019s deputies, investigators and a team of soil scientists swarmed the property with ground-penetrating radar and testing probes in search of Smart\u2019s body, or evidence that she was once buried there.<\/p>

Then, as suddenly as it started, investigators cleared the site Saturday as the Sheriff\u2019s Office announced the search was over.<\/p>

\u201cWe did not recover Kristin Smart,\u201d the agency said in a news release that afternoon.<\/p>

Sheriff Ian Parkinson had previously said investigators found evidence of human remains during a press conference Friday.<\/p>

However, that evidence was not as conclusive as bones or body parts. Rather, it was a specific array of gas compounds found in the soil that are consistent with the process of human decomposition.<\/p>

Environmental chemist Steve Hoyt is part of a team of scientists who conduct \u201cvapor intrusion testing,\u201d a relatively new method that tests for gas molecules in soil known as \u201cvolatile organic compounds\u201d that are emitted from the natural decomposition process of living organisms \u2014 including human bodies.<\/p>

This week\u2019s search was not the first time the team \u2014 also including environmental engineer Timothy Nelligan, his son Jacob Nelligan, former FBI chemist Brian Eckenrode and George Mason University postdoctoral forensic science research fellow Edward Bentil \u2014 has tested the area. They previously tested the soil in the neighboring property near the fence with Susan Flores\u2019 house in December 2020, August 2021 and March 2023, which at the time showed positive but inconclusive results for evidence of human remains.<\/p>

However, the science has only gotten better since then, Hoyt said.<\/p>

Now, the scientists can show with a greater accuracy that the gas compounds they are looking at are \u2014 or were \u2014 from a human body instead of a dead animal or another decomposition process.<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019re finding organic compounds that are characteristic of decomposing bodies, not any specific body,\u201d Hoyt told The Tribune on Monday. \u201cWe\u2019ve narrowed it down enough that we believe that there\u2019s a very, very high probability we\u2019re looking at the decomposition of human bodies.\u201d<\/p>

Hoyt said the team has a forthcoming study currently under peer-review that demonstrates the improved accuracy of the testing.<\/p>

This time, their testing showed \u201cvery strong\u201d evidence of human remains compounds in the soil in a narrow walkway on the west side of Flores\u2019 house, between the two properties, he said.<\/p>

The new results allow the team to extend the plume they previously mapped from the neighboring yard across the walkway to underneath Susan Flores\u2019 home, he said. On Saturday, a forensic investigator in a head-to-toe suit, surgical gloves and a headlamp was working in the crawlspace under the house with a gardening trowel, apparently collecting evidence in buckets.<\/p>

The walkway is an area of the property that has been of high interest among those who have followed case over the years, largely due to early reports from a previous tenant of Susan Flores\u2019, Mary Lassiter, who said she could hear what sounded like a beeping watch every morning at 4:20 a.m. outside her bedroom window when she rented the house in October 1996 until she moved out in March 1997.<\/p>

The area also had not previously been looked at, let alone excavated, according to Chris Lambert, the host of the \u201cYour Own Backyard\u201d podcast about the Smart case.<\/p>

\u201cThis side yard, to my knowledge, was not able to be searched with ground-penetrating radar in previous searches because it was too narrow for the machines,\u201d he told The Tribune on Monday.<\/p>

Lambert had originally connected Lassiter\u2019s observation about the watch alarm to the fact that Kristin woke up every morning around 4:30 a.m. for her 5 a.m. lifeguard shift.<\/p>

\u201cIt was coming out of the master bedroom window, is where she was sleeping and heard it, and so that would have been the back west corner of the backyard,\u201d Lambert said.<\/p>

Lassiter had also found an earring in Flores\u2019 driveway on Jan. 23, 1997, that looked to have a red mark that resembled blood on it, Lambert said, but the evidence was misplaced by the Sheriff\u2019s Office at the time.<\/p>

Calls to dig up the yard also came after a neighbor said during a Jan. 24, 1997, deposition that she observed Paul Flores and his father, Ruben Flores, doing construction work in the backyard, including \u201cnewly constructed concrete planter boxes cut into the existing cement,\u201d according to a 2000 Sheriff\u2019s Office search warrant.<\/p>

During an interview with SLO County District Attorney\u2019s Office investigators on June 19, 1996, Paul Flores said he had to leave \u201cto clean up some stuff, some concrete\u201d at \u201cmy mom\u2019s house,\u201d the warrant said.<\/p>

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The same 2000 search warrant notes observations from Gary Mann, a ground-penetrating radar operator who used the technology to search Susan Flores\u2019 house at the time. He noted what he initially felt was a \u201cman-made excavation\u201d site \u201cabout 6 feet long and 5-1\/2 feet deep\u201d on the east side of the house.<\/p>

He later revised his findings because he did not have the ideal equipment to search for a grave site, but he also found \u201canomalies\u201d on the west side of the backyard, \u201cbroken pieces of concrete,\u201d \u201cstains\u201d on the west side of the home that showed dirt had once been piled there and \u201csplatters of dirt\u201d on the fence, according to the warrant.<\/p>

Traces of human blood were also found at Ruben Flores\u2019 house in 2021 in what investigators thought to be a crude grave, leading to his arrest and prosecution for accessory to murder.<\/p>

Ruben was acquitted, but Paul Flores was convicted on the theory that Kristin\u2019s body was moved from Ruben\u2019s house at some point.<\/p>

\u201cI think the timeline of when she was moved is very fluid,\u201d Lambert said. \u201cThere\u2019s so many possibilities.\u201d<\/p>

Susan Flores has never been charged with a crime associated with Smart\u2019s murder.<\/p>