Paul Flores & Kristin Smart with Datable Rebels Farrah

Kristin Smart vanished in 1996 from the Cal Poly College Campus in San Luis Obispo, California.  There was only one suspect: Paul Flores.  25 years later, he was finally arrested on murder charges.  In this episode, the gang sits down with Datable Rebels' Farrah Fisher to discuss what went wrong the night Kristin vanished.

This episode was produced with support from:

Wicked Cat Clothing, eclectic apparel to bring out your inner horror queen.  Use coupon code CRIMEJUICY30 to get 30% off your purchase at www.wickedcatclothing.com, coupon does not expire.

M. Dante and friends' erotic anthology Cin Sado Noir, a time capsule tribute to sadomasochistic, femme fatale, and neo noir romance.

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Transcript

Paul Flores & Kristin Smart - with Datable Rebels’ Farrah

[00:00:00] 

Carrie:  Hey gang. It's Carrie Anne with Datable Rebels, Farrah, and  Becca and Krista  we're going to talk about Paul Flores and Kristin Smart;  this crazy 20 something year old case that just keeps popping up.   

Becca:  Gonna start with an overview of the Kristin smart disappearance that happened in 1996.  Not to be confused with the what was it? The Rebecca Smart disappearance.

Carrie:  Elizabeth Smart. 

Becca:  So many smarts gone vanished.  So this one’s Kristin Smart and it happened off the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo, which has some specific significance to me cause I'm actually from San Luis Obispo, California, and the last place that Kristin and her parentsever ate dinner at with was this place called McClintock’s restaurant, which is my dad's favorite restaurant in San Louis Obispo. So got the feels for that one.  Basically what happened?  19 year old freshmen student Kristin smart.  It's May 25th, 1996. It's about the beginning of Memorial Day weekend and Kristin wants to find a party. She links up with another girl in her dorm who's a friend of hers and they go with some friends to this place that's supposed to be a party, but it turns out to be a dud. It's just a bunch of dudes playing video games so they drink a beer and leave and then they ride around trying to find another party.  And then Kristin and her dorm mate walk around a little bit longer, it's getting late. Kristin's , I want to find a party. The other, her friend who's with her she’s, I'm tired. I want to go home.  They kind of have it out a little bit and then ended up parting ways.  The dorm mate goes home and Kristin goes off on her own to find a party.

She stumbles upon Swampy Phil's birthday party which definitely doesn't sound like trouble at all.  This is a fraternity party.  Allegedly it was made out to be more wild than it actually was. Either way Swampy Phil's birthday party.  Kristen, she's introducing herself as Roxy.  She ends up getting wasted and sloppy flirting and at 2:00 AM she passes out on the neighbor's front lawn.  Two students, Davis and Cheryl who also - Cheryl lives in the dorms. I don't remember if Davis lives in the dorms or not, but they prop her up to walk her home and Paul Flores ends up catching up with them to also walk her home.  She's falling down drunk at this point. So Davis splits off, goes back to his car. It's about a 10 minute walk back to campus.  When they get to campus, Cheryl splits up from them to go to her dorm and she's like, Hey, Paul, will you make sure Kristin gets home safe? And Paul's, yeah. And they're in different dorms.

At this point, Paul says he splits off to go to his dorm at Santa Lucia Hall and watches her walk to her dorm in Mir Hall.  And that's the last time anyone ever saw Kristin Smart. So at this point Kristin's falling and I'm drunk. Cheryl is like, Hey Paul, you got this. And Paul's like, I got this.  Meanwhile Cheryl already knows some weird stuff about Paul because he aggressively tried to kiss one of her friends.  Before splitting off, he aggressively asked her for a good night kiss. She said that they called him Chester the Molester was his nickname. According to his - people that knew him in high school, his nicknames were both Scary Paul and Psycho Paul.  Cheryl leaves the falling down drunk Kristin Smart in the care of Chester, the Molester, Scary Paul, Psycho Paul to make sure she gets home safe.  Kristin is never seen again.  The next day when she doesn't come back to the dorm a bunch of girls get together and report her missing to campus security, but they don't take it seriously.

Oh, it's Memorial Day weekend. She probably took an impromptu vacation. Maybe she's camping. Maybe she just like wandered off in the night.  Just all of these assumptions about, well, she was drunk while she's in college, she's probably doing whatever. She wasn't actually reported missing for several days and the investigation didn't start until much later. And it wasn't actually until after the students moved out of the dorms that summer, and the dorms were cleaned, that they looked for her. Cadaver dogs were brought into the dorms to look for any signs of decomposition.  The only places they alerted to were in Paul Flores’ room. One of the spots was on the edge of where the bed was and the other spot was in his waste basket. The waste baskets of the hall were then lined up outside and all the cadaver dogs specifically alerted to Paul Flores’ waste basket.  Paul gets interviewed to – finally gets interviewed everyone's tight-lipped about it.  Everyone knows that Paul knows what happened to her that night, that he's tight lipped. There was no evidence found, his family was tight lipped. However, the case was never declared cold. The Flores family and the Smart family have had it out a bunch for obvious reasons. 

The Smarts sued the Floreses for wrongful death and then the Flores is sued the Smarts for emotional distress which actually led to discovery in which the process through which the Flores’ backyard was searched with ground penetrating radar, and there were abnormalities detected, but the San Louis Obispo County sheriff, I believe it was they decided, or was the police department, one of those two law enforcement agencies.  But the decision was not to excavate because it would be too expensive to replace the property in case nothing was found.

Then on May 25th, 2002, Kristin Smart was declared legally dead.  The case kind of slowed down for a bit, but it was never declared cold.  In 2019, the podcast, Our Own Back Yard was released which investigated the case.  Witnesses that hadn't been talked to and followed some other leads.  This actually led the Flores family and by the Flores family, we mean Paul's, mom's Susan, Paul's dad Ruben and Paul's sister Melinda to start talking to each other about it. At this point, the police obtained search warrants for all four of their houses, seized their tech.  From that, it was announced on April, nearly 25 years later that Kristin's body had been buried underneath the deck of Ruben Flores’ his home.

When questioned by police back in 1996, Paul had ominously said that he had to go help clean up cement at his dad's house, which was a spooky.  Paul and Rubin Flores were arrested by the Los Angeles police department April 13th, 2021. Paul was charged with murder, which is the only charge that they could file at this point that didn't exceed the statute of limitations.

Ruben, his father was arrested for being an accessory to murder. He was released from custody because he wasn't deemed to be a flight risk.  Paul was living in San Pedro, California, which is right by Long Beach.  The story was actually brought to our attention because my little sister lives in Long Beach and her friend is a bartender at a bar out there.  Right before COVID shut down, she actually kicked Paul Flores out of her bar for being aggressively sexual towards women.  In all of these 25 years, his behavior has not changed one bit.  We're here to talk about what went wrong that night and what the hell's going on.

Carrie:  Becca. Did Paul ever get married?  

Becca: No, I don't think so.  He had a relationship for a couple of years. That was, I forget what her name was, but it was mentioned in the podcast our own backyard.  He was just arrested. 

Krista: His dad just got out. That I got out today, which is May 17th. 

Becca: Yes. As we're recording.

Carrie:  This happens that way with us.

Becca: Always.

Krista:  Nowadays we have all have cell phones and GPS tracking watches to track our heartbeats.  Oh, this was the exact path she walked before she disappeared.

Becca: Right. It's all in Snap Maps or something. 

Farrah:   I mean, don't leave your friend with some fucking creepy dude.

Becca:  Those were the things where the dorm mate split off,  they separated there and she ended up at a party by herself. And then the two  people that were supposed to walk her home safe didn't and left her under the care of someone they knew to be creepy.

Farrah: Yeah. Got to have a buddy sister nowadays.

Krista:  He had to  participate in the deposition the entire time and he just said, you know, say his name and then yeah.   Didn't have enough evidence at that point either to do anything.  They had him once. 

Becca:  Yeah.  The other thing is that he was acting aggressively sexual towards women at that party. And no one confronted him about it. In interviews with  high school people that knew him and old coworkers, it was mentioned that he'd often get kicked out of parties or  confronted by other men at parties over how he was behaving.   None of that happened that night.

Carrie:  The girl found her on the lawn with the Daniels guy, he had to leave because he didn't have a, dorm room on campus. He had to get in his car and drive. 

Krista:  No, he was, they were closer to his car than her dorm room was if he walked her, although if they walked all the way back.  So he split off at that point. I don't know if he knew about Paul Flores. 

Carrie:  That's my question. Did these two people know about this guy? 

Becca: Cheryl did. 

Krista:  Yeah. I don't know if the male did. 

Carrie:  Oh, that's what I thought was really weird, but was Cheryl drunk too? 

Becca: Fucking Swampy Phil's birthday party.

Krista:  Birthday party. Hey!

Carrie:  Cheryl didn’t think that he would kill her right. 

Becca: Yeah, that was what a lot of the people were saying where they're, we knew he was weird.  We thought he was harmless, but we didn't really think he was harmless. Cause,  you know, there's this whole thing that you tell yourself, Oh, they're harmless, they're harmless, they're harmless.  A lot of the times, you know, people can be awkward without being predatory. 

Krista:  We had one in school.   He was that weird, awkward kid. Parties, when girls were drunk.

Becca:  He'd be on it. 

Krista:  He was known to be a creeper about it.

Becca:  Right. It's like the specifically targeting the drunkest girl he can find.

Farrah: For the girls though?

Krista:  Sometimes.   It's nothing to laugh about now.  I said,  Oh yeah, be careful.  Huh, that could have turned into something more then stolen kiss or, you know? 

Becca: Then in 2007 this woman in [00:10:00] Redondo Beach woke up naked in the stranger's bed with no memory of what had happened.  And she went to the hospital to find  Paul Flores’, his DNA showed up. So, you know, and that was in 2007.

Carrie:   What did she wake up in his bed? 

Becca: She said a stranger's bed, not necessarily his bed.  No charges were ever pressed.  One of my questions for later on is what's up with Paul Flores? Is this the only time he's done that? 

Krista:  And probably not. 

Becca: Yeah. I think we're going to find out more cause if that pattern of behavior is still persisted.

Krista:  He might be the new state or night stalker. 

Carrie:  Did anyone talk to any of the neighbors?   

Becca:  They did talk to the people that rented Paul's mom's house after the murder or the disappearance, it wasn't  deemed a murder at that point.  They definitely  mentioned  how locked down the family was. One thing that they thought was interesting is that the women that rented the house said that every morning around 4:20 she'd hear  a watch go off, an alarm watch. And for weeks and weeks and weeks until it stopped.  The interesting thing about that alarm clock is that Kristin Smart was working as a lifeguard, I believe at a pool. And she had to work in the morning.  She would have to wake up around 4:20.  There was the theory that that was her wristwatch alarm clock still on her body, in the backyard.

Yeah, well they, they said her body was under the back deck of Ruben Flores’ house. It's kind of, I'm a little confused about which one's Ruben's house in which one's Susan's house. Cause there were two houses and there was a kind of separation kind of that separation. Her house was rented out for part of it and then she moved back into it. You know.

Krista: The situation kept moving it with them, just.

Becca:  They just take her with.

Krista: Because they, they determined that the body had moved. They haven't released the where, what they can from their new investigation.

Becca:  And speaking of new investigations, so some other things that went wrong was the college handled the disappearance terribly.  They just assumed she'd like wandered off, even though all of her stuff was there and she hadn't told any of her friends she was going anywhere. And then the Sheriff's office and the police handled it similarly, except they kind of took it a step further and focused on, well, what was she wearing that night?  How was she acting?  You know, very focused on  how she was acting versus how the only suspect was acting, which was also released, you know, her. It, it was one of those things where it was, well, how was she asking for it?  And the media and public scrutiny you're really honed in on her behavior at the party.  I mean, there were, by the end of the interviews, there were three different accounts of  what fabric her pants were. 

Carrie: Wow. 

Becca: Yeah. And it was all just well, she was wasted in sloppy flirting with everyone and then she wandered off into the night. 

Krista:  That's stupid. 

Becca: Yeah. 

Carrie: Yeah. And she's hung over the next day is hell if she was passed out on the lawn, how is she going to take off for Aruba? She ain't go nowhere. No, no, no. That was bad.  

Krista:  Unless crazy theory. Unless Paul works for sex trafficking ring and like kidnapped her.

Becca:  I think he's like too awkward to work for a sex trafficking ring.  They need people that would groom you and be, no, come it'll be great. 

Krista:  Not when they’re drunk and it’s a boy who’s like…maybe he was faking it. You never know.  People are insane, we know this this on multiple levels. 

Becca:  It's true. Every time.

Krista:  Like I said, maybe this, like it'll open something something's gonna happen.  

Farrah: So they haven't found the body yet or they have?

Becca:   They haven't disclosed it. They know where her body was.

Farrah: But it was under the house, right? 

Becca: Under the deck.  Yes.

Krista:  They know like a hundred percent sure that her body was under the house.

Carrie:  Dogs tagged it. They got it. 

Krista:  Did they like DNA test and all of those things?

Carrie:  They haven’t released, but they, I think they have DNA

Krista:  Things die under houses.

Becca: Possum or human? possum or human? 

Krista:   I'm not on his side because he sounds like a complete and total choad and deserves some he's. He's probably been some horrible things to the women.  Needs to be addressed for sure.  

Carrie:  If he walked her to the dorm and she somehow got her body got underneath the porch, do you think she came back to the house with him?  I thought it was his parents' house. His parents' house. 

Becca: Yeah. And he was in the dorms, which is where the dogs alerted to the scent of decomposition. 

Carrie:  Oh, he killed her there and then brought her back. Okay. Yeah. 

Krista:  It seems like a lot of work because if he's not that smart, why would he think to do that?  But I guess if he called his dad.

Becca: That's the other strange things that his family really rallied around him and like held the secret for like 25 years.  It was at the point where he was the last person to ever see her alive, but there was no compelling physical evidence.  They were able to keep his secret for so long.  And that all of a sudden they started writing about it.

Krista:  There's something amiss, there's something going on. 

Farrah: I think he did it.

Krista:  Oh yeah. I think he did do it. There's something else there. 

Becca: Do y'all think changing attitudes affected the case ramping back up again?

Krista:  Oh yeah.

Carrie:  Me Too Movement has done a lot for these cases being opened up.  We got to remember that hashtag metoo is still around, even though we don't realize it, it did help. A lot of these cases are now going to start coming to light. I'm working on another one too, where, Holy crap, who knows, you know, if it would have been opened back up.  We've got some stuff that's going to be coming up the pipe, I think because of that. 

Becca: There's this other legislation, the Kristin Smart Campus Security Act, which means public colleges have to like coordinate with local police to make agreements about reporting cases involving missing students and violence against other students.  I didn't look at the nuts and bolts of it, but it sounds really vague.  If something gets reported to the police, then they have to report it as a school stat.  There's a lot of pressure to deal with incidents of violence against students or sexual assault internally rather than report it.  There's still that – Krista’s smiling.

Krista:   A whole other can of worms right there. I can only imagine just a can of worms that they just recently decided to open it up in that sense for the college reporting and things like that. I can only imagine what it was in 1996. It was probably, well, maybe not as, I don't know this one's this new, one's bad.  We'll talk about that another time.  I was still in middle school, no elementary or something like that. 

Farrah: In 1996?  I’d just graduated from high school.  

Becca: We got two millennials and two Gen Xs in the house.

Farrah:  They didn't really have shit for  forensic evidence.  They couldn't really do a lot. Not like they can do now.

Becca:  So, Farrah.  If you were giving advice to someone who maybe met Paul Flores on Tinder and this guy seems a little weird, but I'm going to give it a chance. Maybe I'll go on a date with them. What advice would you give to them?

Farrah:  Don't go. Or when I’ve done is, I mean, cause we can now is I've shared my location with one of my besties.  So then they can see where you're going the whole time. 

Becca: That's so cool. 

Farrah:  Nobody knows, except for you and your friend and you don't show up the next morning or you,  you're not their friends not hearing back from you, then they know where you are.

Krista: If your phone's mysteriously off. 

Farrah:  Yeah. 

Krista: Well, they were here last, right, right.

Becca: Are there any recommendations for, would you  hide your phone somewhere in case they try to  hide your phone somewhere else to obscure where you're at or…

Farrah:  You also tell your friend the person's name, show them a picture,  give them the person's number.  All the information that you have, give it to your friend.

Krista: And if you can try to take a sneaker picture of him when you meet him too.

Becca:  Right. The license plate.

Farrah:  Yeah, man. Everything, everything that you can get, because you never know. I mean, we hear that these things a lot. 

Krista: Well, and I mean, I've heard the stories of, you know, he goes meet somebody and it's not the picture that was there.  Yeah maybe they gained weight, they got a beard now. 

Farrah:  Like whatever it was in high school though, he had a picture. 

Krista: I would do that, but okay. 

Becca:  One other thing I want to bring up about Paul too, is the amount of downplaying of his actions that went into enabling him to, because eventually he was going to end up in a situation where he would be with an extra waste and girl.  There were instances one of his coworkers said he followed her home from work. She lived down a pretty isolated road and she, well why'd you follow me home from work? And he's, well, I wanted to know where you lived. And he'd, do your drive-bys of her house. Then these two women of the Cal Poly campus said that he was [00:20:00] being a Peeping Tom at them and then blew up their phone from a payphone. And there were all these instances of stalking that were either minimized by the victims or minimized by the people that they tried to share it with.

The coworker in particularly her friends, she'd go somewhere after work and he'd  overhear where she was going into conversation and show up.  And her friends were, Oh cute. You have a stalker.  She'd be, yeah….

Farrah: Not cute.

Becca:  It's pressure to be accommodating or to not - I'm having a hard time formulating it, but…

Farrah: Not be okay, nice.

Krista:  It's okay that you made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I'm just going to go away now. 

Farrah: Mace your face and then get the fuck out of here.

Krista:  Maybe he just plays creepy and dumb and this way it's for his opportunity.   

Becca:  That was the other thing that was mentioned too. It was always kind of unclear,   some of the people were saying that he never seemed as drunk as everyone else, but then he got a bunch of DWIs.  I don't know if that's true or not, 

Krista: Or he just had a high enough tolerance,

Becca:  I thought it was cool that my sister's friend kicked him out of the bar.  And I wonder how many times that's happened that's prevented someone from  becoming the next Kristin Smart.

Krista: Hopefully.

Farrah:  Right. I mean, just to see if he's done this to more people, but it just heard them. 

Becca:  Yeah, I got a feeling some other people are going to come out of the woodwork on this doozy. 

Krista: There was a lot of victim shaming going on, like you said, they asked what fabric were her pants?  Why does it matter what fabric my pants are? 

Becca:  And his clothing from that night were never found.  

Krista: There was a lot of victim shaming.  There's still shaming, we all said, it's Me Too and everything, but a lot of people didn’t report things that happened to them or things that were, yeah. Oh yeah. They, they committed suicide. And before they did that, they told me this, you know, things like that, a lot of that is now coming out now because it's okay to share those things.  Hopefully more people come out because who knows he might've victimized men too.

Becca:  Absolutely.

Krista: Usually in situations where you feel you can just take it, it's a control thing.

Becca: Reporting done in the podcast Our Own Backyard that Paul's father was abusive to Paul's mother.  There was that whole dynamic going on in the house.  One of the things that really brought this up is what do you do if your child hurt someone? That just must be like a terrible situation to be put in. Well, to experience, you know? Yeah.

Farrah:  I can see how a parent would want to protect too. It's a shitty position.

Krista:  You know, I would feel there has to be boundaries.  And oh, you got into a fist fight with somebody?  Oh, that sucks. Oh, you know, you crashed your car and don’t want a DWI? I'll come pick you up and maybe won't get caught.  Hey mom, I you know, bashed this girl's head on the side of my bed and now she's dead, help me hide the body.

Carrie:  Let's talk about that.  Krista, you guys, do you think that's what happened? 

Krista:   Very well. Could be if they found… 

Carrie:  Do you think she just fell and hit her head and died? Or do you think he killed her?  And she died?

Becca:   A man was interviewed later by the podcast and then later by the police said that he saw a struggle between a man and a woman that fit both of their descriptions around 2:30 AM when they would have been there.  I think it was her dorm room. You're not her dorm room, I may be incorrect. It may be Santa Lucia, but one of those dorms, there was a struggle between a male and a female student matching that description in the lounge of that dorm that was witnessed by man biking by.

Carrie:  What a sloppy investigation.  We wouldn't have let that slide. We would not have let that slide. You guys there's no way. No way. No, no. 

Becca:   Well, in his mind he was, Oh, what are the chances that it could be them?  And  the chances are pretty high actually. 

Krista:  Yeah.  Because it was a holiday weekend. Yeah.  There's still a lot of kids on campus. A lot of them go away.  They either go home or go on a trip with their friends or whatever those crazy college kids were doing back then, you know? 

Becca:  Go to Morro Bay, go to Pismo Beach. 

Krista:  Yeah. I mean, there was people on campus, but like they said, you know, Swampy Joe's birthday party.  Wasn't hoppin-hoppin. 

Becca:  It was moderate hoppin.  I thought that was an interesting thing too how the media portrayed it as this raging, frat party, you talk to people there and it was probably Grateful Dead and Phish was playing.  There were maybe 20 people there at a time.  Maybe more later. It sucks. Cause you know, in a position where it's, sometimes you just want to find a party. 

Krista:  Maybe it was an accident.  Still there are boundaries that I feel  as a parent, do you know, the might still, maybe not a great boundary, but I might help them hide the car.  That  there's some loose boundaries in this family.  Hypothetically, I decide that, you know, one of my kids  walks home and says, Hey mom, I crashed the car into the median up on the, you know, Boulevard.  The cops aren't there yet. What should we do? Maybe I'll go and help them limp the car back home and shove it in the garage real quick. 

Becca:  Legit.

Krista:  More than likely not what the hell is wrong with you. 

Becca:  There's cameras out on the road now, Krista! 

Krista:  No, you know what I have, I have seen it work on, on a freeway and we were there and we're what the hell? And all of a sudden, boom, there's a kid and his mom and his car and all of the pieces. She went back and picked him up and threw him in her car and then came back and through it in the driveway. So, you know what I mean? That maybe, okay. I don't want my kid to have a DWI and, have that, they're just getting their life started.

Okay. Maybe.  Hiding a body?

Becca:  Right. I feel like if it's things and not people, that's a big difference.

Krista:  And it's like, what else? What other things, what other boundaries have been crossed in that family for that to be an okay thing to me for your child or any, I mean, anybody in general, but  your child, right?

Becca:  I mean, who's the first person you call if you accidentally killed someone, I know…

Carrie:  Who would you call Farrah? Who would you call if you accidentally killed somebody? 

Farrah:  I probably called her, one of my besties. She lives in LA.

Carrie:  But not your mom. Not your mom. 

Farrah:  I would, I would probably tell my mom too. Yeah.

Krista:  I would ask her for advice, but I wouldn't have her help me. 

Becca:  Yeah, no, I would call Krista and I would call Carrie and they would help me take care of it. And then we do a CrimeJuicy episode where we would explore three different, possibilities of what could possibly have happened. And at the end we'll be, well, I guess we'll never know. It's a mystery. And I just totally revealed my alibi to all of you. 

Krista:  We’ll never to have to do episode because you live in the perfect place for it too.

Becca:  It was a bear!

Krista:   Those plants called again?  We don't need them excavating…the rakes, do you call them rakes?  Oh my God. They're so good. They can’t mess them up. 

Becca:  No, they can't mess with my ramps. No, they're really good. They're garlic on the bottom and spicy spinach. 

Krista:   Super amazing.  

Farrah: I'm so hungry right now.

Krista: I don't know what yet, there's gonna be some interesting worms uncanned.

Carrie:  It just got reopened so we're going to hear a lot more. Farrah was mentioning. She, she wants to hear more about  how many other girls he's messed with and  what's going to come out with that. And I am too, quite frankly. 

Farrah:  Yeah, there's gotta be more, there has to be more,  I feel  most of the time, I mean,  you all research that stuff, they usually don't just kill one person, right?

Krista: Sometimes they do.

Carrie: Sometimes, but it's very rarely. And at that age,

Krista: It’s usually an accident. 

Carrie: And it usually starts out as an accident. I suspect more, I suspect more. 

Becca: Because this happened when he was 19 and his behavior hasn't changed.  That shows me he still has a taste for it.

Carrie: He's definitely a Cosby or type of person. I'm sure that would do a pill. One of those type of thing.  We're going to hear something we'll find out something. 

Becca: Maybe part of the reason Kristin was passed out in the neighbor's yard is cause he slipped her something. 

Carrie: Was he at the party?

Becca: He was, he was, he was at the party.

Carrie: Sloppy investigation. 

Krista: He was also known to get drunk before he left his dorm room. So he was already intoxicated.  What way? Like I said, here's my theory again. Maybe he was just pretending to be as drunk as he was, so he would get a little drunk to begin with so that he smelled like alcohol. 

Becca: Oh. So he'd fill up his…pour some of his 40 out on himself and then fill it with apple juice.

Krista: That point where you're, he gets to that point where you're  tipsy,  you're talking to him and kind of more confident, maybe he would get to  that point and then stop and go out and  make it look like he was continuing to drink.  Because at a point once everybody, else's shit faced you can't tell who's drunk and who's not.

Becca: You assume everyone's as drunk as [00:30:00] you are.

Krista: Exactly. So then that's when you’re in his trap, that's how he lays his trap. You know?  Make everybody always believe that you're always drunk so you're always that weird person that's just drunk. So then that's your, your excuse.

Becca:  Right.  I wonder even if that kind of plays into the whole, Oh, he's just always creepy. He's harmless. It's just how he is.  Oh, he's just always drunk. That's just how he is. That whole, it doesn't make being creepy all the time okay, but it makes it normal. So there's some sort of comfort in the  normalcy of it.  If that makes sense. 

Farrah:  He's consistent 

Krista: No, character break.  No break in character.  This is what you're going to get.  

Becca:  He’s living his truth.

Krista: Yeah. He's living his best life.  I don't know what he was doing.  What did he even go to college for?  He didn't even finish, did he?

Becca:   No, he wasn't doing very well.  Oh, what was it? It was some sort of, Cal Poly’s a big agricultural school, but it's also a…it was the first place I ever saw cows.  One of my earliest memories is going to – I thought it was Cow Poly, not Cal Poly because we just went to look at the cows and shit. And it was that whole – oh don’t step on a cow pie. And then I’d, I'd step on a cow pie. And that's what I remember if Cal Poly growing up.

Krista: They used to throw those in competitions in Oklahoma.  Cow pies you throw.  Yeah once they dry out perfect Frisbees. 

Becca:   It's pretty much grass, right? 

Krista: I mean, it is shit, but yeah, it's digested a couple times cause they have three stomachs. 

Becca:   Wouldn’t it get weird if you had an ache in one stomach, but not another one?  I always wondered that about…like stomach one…what if you get four stomach aches at once? Or if they maybe get like one stomachache here and not there?  It'd be terrible.  See, there were plenty of things Paul Flores could have been doing a Cal Poly besides being creepy. He could have been thinking about cows. But no, he only thought about his fucking self.

Krista: Poor cow, heart burn.  Sorry. Maybe that's what he was going to college for, I'm just going to tell myself that he was going to college for it, for the study of heartburn in cows. 

Becca:   But then he got distracted by being a peeping tom. And that's how Bundy escalated. Right, Carrie?  He started looking at windows and then it escalated. 

Carrie:  Yeah. He taught himself to be invisible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Becca:   Paul was very good at being good at being invisible.  It's just Paul out there. Oh, it's just Paul he's harmless. He's like looking at the window and following you home.   

Carrie: Peep in your window. You guys it's so scary. 

Farrah: I had this friend who had this son and one night I caught that motherfucker looking at my window and I was, Oh my God, Justin is in my window.

Carrie: How old was he? 

Farrah: 12, 13, maybe.

Carrie: Oh that’s scary timing. 

Farrah: Creepy.  I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. I don't know. 

Carrie: You better go check him out. We're here for our bonus content. What are you doing at night, dude?

Farrah: It was creepy. 

Carrie: What did she say?  What did the mama say? 

Farrah: She was just like, get out, get out of Farrah's window. You know, they would sit and drink and talk about ghosts and all kinds of weird shit. And I Oh, you're just being weird. Get out Farrah’s window. It wasn't really that big of a deal.

Krista:  I had a really scary incident happened when I was in kindergarten when with a kid who was twelve that lived in our apartment complex.  They ended up being kicked out after what happened, but then we had to help them move. That was really weird.

Becca: Did he like looking at your window or…? 

Krista:  No, more attacked me and like me and tried to rape me.  And I got away.  Yeah. It was really fucked up. But then, we had the, there's just like other things that I remember now. And I'm, huh? Every once in a while I'm, I hope that kid’s in prison somewhere.

Becca: And then you had to help him move?

Krista:  Yeah, because my stepdad was friends with his dad. 

Farrah: That's great. Do you guys remember, do you remember?I remember this was years and years ago when the guy killed his girlfriend and her mother on Valentine's Day?  I grew up with that kid. 

Becca: Oh my gosh.

Farrah: She broke up with him. He killed her and her mother. 

Krista:  Where did it happen?  

Farrah: When? 

Krista:  When and where?

Farrah: In the eighties or something or the nineties? It was a while ago. 

Krista:  What was his last name? I need this sounds interesting. 

Farrah:  It was crazy. My mom told me, she's I saw Dallas on the news.  He killed his girlfriend and her mother.

Krista:  Excuse me. 

Becca: Yeah. That's what, everyone said, when they heard about the Kristin Smart thing and they're, Oh, Paul Flores was involved. Oh, that doesn't surprise me.  

Krista: Like, there's so many situations where we hear that with. Not a surprise.  That if it's not a surprise, why did nothing happen?

Becca: Right. There's people that I can think back where if I heard them located in something that we were talking about, if something happened and it was, Oh, MB was last person to see her alive. It'd be , Oh, Oh no. 

Krista: Damn it.

Carrie:   I should have turned him in. I knew it. 

Becca: Well, the thing with Paul is, you know, it's not no one had ever, it's not that he'd never been arrested.  It's not that no one ever kicked his ass. It's not that no one ever threw him out of the bar. He was just like…

Krista: They just didn't take him seriously. Or believe him, who knows?  If he really was that drunk person, maybe he did the drunk thing. And it was just , Oh yeah, this is what I do when I'm drunk. Yeah. 

Becca: Oops.

Krista: I don't know. To get away with serial rape and murder, you have to be somewhat smart, but it doesn't sound like he was smart. 

Farrah: Maybe he was though. Maybe he just fronted he wasn't. Yeah. 

Becca: Or at least smart enough to change locations enough.  Maybe be somewhere until it happened and then target a different bar, you know, not showing up at the same place after.

Carrie:   It’s important that he kept his mouth shut.

Becca: Right. I mean, that really blew me away how that whole family was, say nothing and then they didn't. No, they really just, you know, to the point where they even, pressed charges against the Smart family for harassing them, which I thought was interesting because that is actually what led to…It almost screwed them over because, part of discovery, both sides have to show all their shit. And that's what led to the ground penetrating search of the backyard, which didn't lead to an excavation because it would've cost too much or whatever. But I thought that was interesting how that backfired, and I do think it's also interesting the role of civil lawsuits out of loss of criminal charges.  So, I don't know what a crazy family feud and just to  be fighting the Smart family knowing that their son killed their daughter the whole time is distressing. You know, it must just have been a hell to live with. 

Carrie:   I hope they get closure. Yeah, I hope they find her. I want her, I want him, I would want to know where she's at. If they knew she was underneath that deck and that was my kid and that kid was gone, I’d feel horrible. Those parents. 

Farrah: I’d dig it up myself.

Carrie:   Yeah. I'd burn the house down just to get to it if I had to. That's fine. Whatever. Yup. Yeah. 

Becca:  Digging for the truth under your deck. 

Krista:  You think that they'll dig everything out to…

Becca:  Do you think there's remains anywhere, it's been 25 years?

Krista:  There'd be clothes. I mean, they might be tattered and whatever, depending on what kind of fabric it is, I mean, what it was the nineties.

Becca:  Which we don't know. It could be…

Krista:  I'm asking for the decomposition of fabric, shoes? What if it was those weird jelly shoes that were unrecyclable.

Becca:  If he killed her in jelly shoes I will cry.  

Krista:  What if she had butterfly clip? I'm not just saying she…

Becca:  If they found her scrunchy? 

Krista:  Yeah.  Those things were around buttons.  Those don't decompose. 

Carrie: Her little watch. 

Krista: Yeah. 

Becca:  The battery ran out. Oh my gosh. 

Farrah:  That's creepy to hear that for however long and then finally it’s gone.

Carrie:  That makes me want to cry, you guys. Yeah.

Krista:  That would be really creepy if that was right. 

Becca:  It's just haunting. And that was the big, the fact that it was just this big secret was just so haunting and I mean, it was so haunting for so long for so many people, because everyone that touched the Flores family became involved in, they brushed up against the secret in some way.

Krista:  Would other family members also be at least charged with accessory?  

Becca:  Right. It makes me wonder why just his father got charges.  It's the statute of limitations thing too, because if  obstruction of - isn't there obstruction of an investigation or a purposefully,  whatever the Daybells were doing.

Carrie:  Levels of obstruction and different States have different levels so they can get them for that, they could get the mom for obstruction of justice.

Becca:  Yes. Yes.  Aren’t we all just looking for justice?  I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is on that, but if they're continuing to obstruct justice, there's some wiggle room or something, or I don't know enough about a lot of talk about this with any level of…

Carrie:  I just know, but they, they can get them for it.  It's not a problem. 

Krista:  The statute of limitation murder never runs out. Correct. Everything else does, all of the other things. That sucks. [00:40:00] 

Farrah:   I think I found it. 

Becca:  You found it?  Who was he?

Farrah:   So it says, I don't know. I think this might be the right, the right one. I put it in state of Minnesota, Dallas Thompson. He shot his former girlfriend and her mother. He claimed that his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure was violated when the police entered friends' apartment.  16 years old. 

Becca:  Wow. That's so much hatred. So early.  Yeah. Yeah. And it is scary cause yeah, Paul had a, two year relationship or something. It'd be really, yeah, just crazy. It's crazy. It's so it's unsettling. 

Krista:  That is terrifying to never know.

Becca:  Well when we talked about this in the last episode that we all did together where it was there's a lot of risks involved in going out and meeting someone from the internet or like going out and meeting someone you don't know.

Farrah:  When I was in Spain, this was  seven years ago or something  I did things and I could've been killed easily.  Can't even believe that I'm mean, you know, when I was on the apps and I went on some dates and yeah.

Krista:  We have the internet and that's scary. There's there's there's trace, trace evidence back in the day. Oh, Hey, I met the person at the bar. Tell me about them. Now it's, Oh, show me a picture. Show me, you know, where do they work? Show me their LinkedIn. Show me this, show me that. And I was Oh, they look like this. They look like that. You could have been, you know, and then all of a sudden, Oh, we find out it's their brother. And it's , Oh, that's so funny. Or you find out it's their boss or their, you know, but they never meet him. They don't have any real reference of what they actually look like. 

Becca:  Yeah. I think it is super interesting too, that this case brings up is like how much circumstantial, circumstantial evidence doesn't matter, it's how important physical evidence is and how yeah, reasonable doubt.  It's a thing. And it's an important thing. And due process is super important and yeah, but it really drilled home to, for me, where it was just some can't something be done and it's no, there's only circumstantial evidence and how compelling circumstantial evidence can be to an outside view into public opinion, but not when it comes to a legal proceeding. There's that whole disconnect between, well, it seems obvious versus a legal lead. There’s a fuck ton of loop holes and nothing's concrete. Right. Cause there's the world of the real world. And then there's the world of litigation, which, you know, it's important. It's important to, it's an important process, but it's also very frustrating and kind of mystifying.

Krista:  Well, maybe after the altercation, she didn't go back to her room and there was somebody else there. They found, but they found decomposition in his room, or maybe he was into like having sex with dead things.  Physical evidence. If there's DNA is really important, they couldn't, they didn't really have that technology back then. So that wasn't really an option.

Becca:   It is interesting how new, how much DNA, evidence and forensics have evolved. Right.

Carrie:  But we're going to be able to get stuff out of dirt pretty quick.  Right now we're doing it, but it's going to get better. 

Krista:  Are they able to tell the difference between human decomposition and like, non. Yeah, I think you're able to tell the difference with that. 

Becca:  And if there was some necrophilia involved in this incident.

Krista:  We may never know.  Oh, why does it always come down to that.  Like even for women like it really, I don't know. 

Becca:  You think it's a slippery slope to murder but actually it’s a slippery slope to necrophilia.  

Krista:  Can't be killed.  He's dead. Why does it always lead back to cold bodies? 

Carrie:  Like men there's men that don't want women to move you guys. They don't, they don't like, it. 

Farrah:  Let's be honest control, full control. 

Krista:  They need to find the right sub because they totally could, there's one out there.

Becca:  There's someone who's, I'm just really into being still like…

Krista:  Ice cube.

Becca:  Yeah. Cryophilia, it’s when you're turned on by being cold or seeing others be cold. So we just need to, find a cryophiliac who likes staying still.  CrimeJuicy dating game where it's…What's it fucking a Mother God and the Love Has Won cult is now offering. Would it's this? It's this cult that we looked into in our last season. They're now offering twin flame arrangements as an incentive to join them.

Krista:  No, thank you.

Carrie:  Not with Mother God. 

Krista:  Oh, we got to check the Reddit to see if there's any new pictures of that heifer. I can't even, I can't even call her a heifer because she's more like a...

Carrie:   She's too skinny. 

Becca:  She looks so bad, y’all.  I haven't seen her on Reddit since we did that episode though, but yeah. Yeah, because there's so much, there's someone for everyone just to ask the Mother God, she's been around for like billions of years.  She should know.

Krista:  They’re in her cult and they've been up for seven days and only eat what rice.

Becca:  It's really terrible, Farrah. 

Farrah:  That sounds really bad. 

Krista:  You can do meth and smoke weed and drink. Cause like it's okay. You know?  Eating part doesn't really matter.

Becca:  I'm not sure what they get to eat, but I know they don't get to sleep very much. Yeah.

Krista:   Paul Flores, what do we think ? 

Becca:  I think we're gonna find out some awful truths coming down the pike and maybe some other families will get some tragic closures as well.

Krista:   No. Yeah. In the grieving.

Farrah:   And ladies going on dates, tell your friends. Share your locations, give all the information that you can, maybe don't fucking drink on the first couple of dates.

Krista:   But they weren't even on a date. 

Becca:  If you go to Swampy Phil’s birthday party make sure you walk the drunk girl all the way home. And don't leave here with Chester the…

Farrah:   Don’t go to Swampy Phil’s…

Becca:  He’s probably pretty nice. It's not Swampy Phil's fault.

Farrah:   I know. He’s pretty cool.  He probably has sloppy joes at his party. 

Becca:  Yes. The buddy system works too. The buddy system is so important. 

Krista:   Even nowadays because cell phones do die.

Becca:  Yes. Yes. 

Farrah:   Even if your friend doesn't want to go and you want to go, or you don't want to go and she wants to go or whatever you go with,  you make a pact. Okay. Let's leave in 20 minutes.  Let's go. Let's leave with 25 minutes. Okay, cool. 

Krista:   Let's go see if it's even worth it. Yeah. 

Becca:  And even if you thinks someone with a pattern of creepiness is harmless, don't leave your friends alone with them, or don’t leave people like that aren't even your friends alone with them.

Krista:   Even if it's , Oh, they're just that weird kid.  They have that weird fricking their personnel. No. 

Becca:  Yeah. Now’s not the night to find out. Now it's not the night to find out if it's a weird quirk or if it's dark.

Farrah:   A killer. Yeah. 

Krista:   A dangerous situation. Yeah. 

Farrah:   Because there's no time for that. I mean it's life or death. 

Krista:   Ain't nobody got time for that.

Becca: Yeah. Not Swampy Phil, not no one.

Krista:   I am interested to see what kind of information comes out, if any, because if they were that type for this long, who really knows, is it will allow and won't allow it to escape their mouths. We'll definitely do some juicy bits on the updates that are definitely going to be coming. 

Becca: Definitely. Thank you so much Farrah for joining us we love you and everyone listening, check out Datable Rebels. It's on YouTube through KFAI which is a lovely radio station in Minneapolis. And Farrah, do you want to quickly tell them the topics that you're working on? 

Farrah:   Thank you. I'm doing a series on  [00:48:00] mental health and disability and dating.  The second one I just did was mental illness about PTSD, ADHD, bipolar one, how people do relationships and make it work also maintaining their own mental health, wellbeing relationships.  That I'm doing right now and yeah, I'm excited.

Carrie:  Did Paul ever get married?

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