Andrea Canning

Wow.

So cadaver dogs detected human decomposition in Paul's dorm room back in the early days, but it wasn't enough to charge him with anything.

However, if we fast forward to 2021, 25 years after Kristen disappeared, he is arrested.

Paul is finally arrested.

What changed?

Why so much time passing by?

You know, it's not like there was some DNA hit, you know, not some telltale piece of fingerprinting.

But it was a sheriff's department that really worked on this hard.

It was a podcast by a guy named Christopher Lambert, who was not a journalist, was not a friend of the Smart family when this began, and had never investigated, I think, any crime.

criminal case before, but who sort of saw this case, saw the billboard about have you seen Kristen Smart on the highway and wanted to get involved.

And that podcast ended up funneling a lot of tips to the sheriff's department, which also in a wonderful development was kind of conducive to receiving information from a non-traditional source like a podcast, because a lot of times law enforcement's not interested in that.

Yeah.

Now, when Paul Flores was arrested, his dad was also arrested and accused of helping him conceal the body, uh,

They excavated below the dad's deck at his house, not the same house they were at this past weekend.

And they found some signs that a body had been buried there.

Paul was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

His dad, Ruben, was acquitted.

How did Kristen's family react to the verdicts?

On the one hand, I think they were elated that the person who was the only suspect, who had always been the only suspect, was finally tried and convicted.

But that did not end this journey for them.