LOS ANGELES (AP) — The final man seen with Kristin Sensible was convicted Tuesday of killing the faculty freshman, who vanished from a California campus 25 years in the past.
Jurors unanimously discovered Paul Flores responsible of first-degree homicide, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported. A jury in a separate trial discovered his father, Ruben Flores, not responsible of prices of being accent to homicide after the actual fact for allegedly serving to to hide the crime.
The conflicting verdicts had been learn moments aside in the identical courtroom.
Sensible disappeared from California Polytechnic State College over Memorial Day weekend in 1996. Her stays had been by no means discovered.
Prosecutors preserve the youthful Flores, now 45, killed the 19-year-old throughout an tried rape on Could 25, 1996, in his dorm room at Cal Poly, the place each had been first-year college students. He was the final particular person seen with Sensible as he walked her house from an off-campus celebration the place she grew to become intoxicated.
His father, now 81, allegedly helped bury the slain pupil behind his house within the close by group of Arroyo Grande and later dug up the stays and moved them.
Monterey County Superior Courtroom Decide Jennifer O’Keefe thanked the jurors for his or her service after the responsible verdict within the homicide case was introduced.
“I want to specific to you the appreciation and that of the events in your service on this case,” she mentioned. “It’s a nice private sacrifice to function a juror. … You’ve been very attentive and conscientious all through this case.”
The son’s protection lawyer, Robert Sanger, had tried to pin the killing on another person — noting that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted at a sensational trial of killing his pregnant spouse and the fetus she was carrying — was additionally a Cal Poly pupil on the time.
Daniel Dreifuss / Monterey County Weekly through AP, Pool
Throughout his closing arguments, Sanger advised jurors that no tried rape occurred and he solid doubt on testimony from witnesses, together with a pupil who was in Sensible’s dorm who testified to seeing Flores in Sensible’s room.
He additionally referred to forensic proof provided by the prosecution as “junk science.”
“This case was not prosecuted for all these years as a result of there’s no proof,” Sanger mentioned. “It’s unhappy Kristin Sensible disappeared, and he or she might have gone out on her personal, however who is aware of?”
Paul Flores had lengthy been thought-about a suspect within the killing. He had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He advised them he obtained it taking part in basketball with associates, who denied his account, based on courtroom information. He later modified his story to say he bumped his head whereas engaged on his automotive.
Nonetheless, the daddy and son had been solely arrested in 2021 after the case was revived.
Investigators carried out dozens of fruitless searches for Sensible’s physique over twenty years however prior to now two years they turned their consideration to Ruben Flores’ house about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Cal Poly locally of Arroyo Grande.
Behind latticework beneath the deck of his massive home on a lifeless finish road, 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 mentioned. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA pattern.
The trial was held in Salinas, 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of San Luis Obispo, after a choose granted a protection request to maneuver it. The protection argued that it was unlikely the Flores’ might obtain a good trial with a lot a lot notoriety within the metropolis of about 47,000 individuals.