Shy Podcaster Helped Police Crack California Cold Case

[Nevilledog]

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Courthouse News
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A billboard on the side of the road led Chris Lambert on a detour three years ago from his career. He created a podcast about the 1996 disappearance of college freshman Kristin Smart and it’s taken over his life.

Shy Podcaster Helped Police Crack California Cold Case
A billboard on the side of the road on California’s Central Coast led Chris Lambert on a detour three years ago from his career as a singer-songwriter and recording engineer. He created a pod…
courthousenews.com
6:20 PM · Apr 15, 2021

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Chris Lambert would like to get back to making music but he can’t seem to stop chasing a ghost that has haunted him for nearly 25 years.

A billboard on the side of the road on California’s Central Coast led him on a detour three years ago from his career as a singer-songwriter and recording engineer. He created a podcast about the 1996 disappearance of college freshman Kristin Smart and it’s taken over his life.

“I can’t step away from it for more than a few days,” Lambert said. “I just get sucked right back in because I want to be resolving things.”

It was an unlikely turn for someone who refers to himself as a shy, “random boy with a beard” and it has produced results he never imagined.

On Tuesday, as San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson announced arrests, he credited Lambert with helping draw worldwide attention to the case and bringing forward several key witnesses.

The longtime suspect, Paul Flores, and Smart were fellow freshmen at the California Polytechnic State University campus in San Luis Obispo. Now 44, Flores was charged with murder in the killing of the 19-year-old while trying to rape her in his dorm room, prosecutors said.

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[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Adding a link:

True Crime

College student Kristin Smart was killed in rape attempt, officials say after breakthrough in cold case

By Meryl Kornfield and Brittany Shammas
April 15, 2021 at 10:19 p.m. EDT

For almost 25 years after college student Kristin Smart disappeared, little was publicly known about what happened to the 19-year-old after she was last seen that early Saturday morning walking home from an off-campus party.

Tight-lipped investigators shared scant details about the purported evidence they collected from properties connected to Paul Flores, a fellow California Polytechnic State University freshman who had walked Smart to her dormitory. Her body has remained missing, despite massive search efforts spanning decades. But days after Flores was arrested and charged with her killing, the prosecutor pursuing the case has revealed new details about what detectives suspect happened to Smart.

Dan Dow, the San Luis Obispo County, Calif., district attorney, announced Wednesday that he believes there is enough evidence to prove Flores, now 44, either raped Smart or attempted to at the time of her death, and that his father, Ruben Flores, 80, helped him hide her body. The crime scene, Dow said, was Flores’s dorm room, located near Smart’s on the San Luis Obispo campus. ... “Today we mark the very first move to bring justice to Kristin Smart, her family and the entire community of San Luis Obispo County,” Dow said at a news conference.

College student Kristin Smart vanished nearly 25 years ago. A classmate was just arrested. ... Still, Dow, citing sealed search warrants, declined to share what “very important information” was uncovered in the past month that led the San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s office to charge Paul Flores with murder and Ruben Flores with being an accessory after the fact Tuesday. On Thursday, the same day the father and son appeared in court, a judge signed an order preventing those involved in the case from speaking publicly about it. The Floreses’ attorneys requested and were granted an extension to enter a plea Monday.

{snip}

Meryl Kornfield
Meryl Kornfield is a staff writer on the general assignment desk of The Washington Post. Follow https://twitter.com/merylkornfield

Brittany Shammas
Brittany Shammas is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. She previously worked for the Miami New Times and the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Follow https://twitter.com/britsham

[Hekate]

2. I remember her disappearance, & it really shook the campus & SLO. Good for this guy...

The Los Angeles Times had an extensive article about the arrests yesterday. There have been other complaints, as well, against Flores since Kristen’s disappearance.

I truly hope she can be found soon and her bones laid to rest for her family’s sake.