#Argonauts agency missing daughter trial#

#Argonauts agency missing daughter trial#

Van Rooyen ruled in favor of a defense request to move the trial out of San Luis Obispo County because it was unlikely the Flores’ could receive a fair trial with so much much notoriety in the city of about 47,000 people. He also said handlers are volunteers, not scientists, such as the witness he plans to call.Īt a preliminary hearing last year, prosecutors presented evidence that four cadaver dogs stopped at Flores’ room and alerted to the scent of death near his bed. He said handlers certify each other, and there is not a government agency that oversees them. The Tribune reported that Sanger used his remarks to begin to discredit the forensic evidence Peuvrelle had laid out, particularly the claims by the archaeologist who is expected to testify that the stain underneath Ruben Flores’ deck is the result of a body.Ĭadaver dogs used in the search are unreliable, Sanger said, and the profession itself is not regulated. (David Middlecamp/The Tribune (of San Luis Obispo) via AP, Pool) Ruben Flores, left, talks to his attorney Harold Mesick after a ruling in a San Luis Obispo, Calif. San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Craig Van Rooyen ordered the pair to trial after a 22-day preliminary hearing in which he found a “strong suspicion” the father and son committed the crimes they were charged with, that a grave existed under Ruben Flores’ deck and it once held Smart’s remains. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample. Investigators have conducted dozens of searches over two decades, but turned their attention in the past two years to Ruben Flores’ home about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Cal Poly in the community of Arroyo Grande.īehind lattice work beneath the deck of his large house on a dead end street off Tally Ho Road, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 found a soil disturbance about the size of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said. San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson acknowledged missteps by detectives over the years and he credited a popular podcast about Smart’s disappearance called “Your Own Backyard” for helping unearth new information and inspiring witnesses to speak with investigators. Paul Flores had long been considered a suspect in the killing, but prosecutors only arrested him and his father in 2021 after the investigation was revived. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Smart’s remains have never been found and the mystery of how she vanished from the scenic campus tucked against a verdant coastal mountain range is likely to be central to the trial.

(David Middlecamp/The Tribune of San Luis Obispo via AP) 3, 2021, at a preliminary hearing in San Luis Obispo, Calif. That weekend, the call never came, Peuvrelle told jurors. “During her freshman year they looked forward every Sunday to a phone call from her - it was their ritual.” “In 1995, Stan and Denise Smart sent their oldest daughter Kristin to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo,” Peuvrelle said in his opening remarks. Both men have pleaded not guilty.ĭeputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle described how Smart disappeared from California Polytechnic State University over Memorial Day weekend in 1996, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported. Opening statements began Monday in Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas in the case against Paul Flores and his father, Ruben Flores, who is charged as an accessory. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.And his niece was missing along with it! Without wasting a single moment, the Argonauts Agency was already on the case of this most peculiar occurance. As it turns out, he was an ancient artifact collector, and just this morning discovered that the Golden Fleece had been stolen from his storeroom. Once he finally calmed down, the stranger explained what happened the previous night in his mansion. He was so feverously agitated that it wasn’t apparent at first what the man was even saying.

One clear sunny morning as Jason, the head of the Argonauts Agency, was sitting in his office, a disheveled and flustered man unexpecetdly flew through the front door.