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Paul Flores has been sentenced to 25 years to life in jail with out parole for the 1996 homicide of California scholar Kristin Sensible.
Monterey County Superior Courtroom Decide Jennifer O’Keefe imposed the utmost doable sentence after listening to emotional witness statements from Sensible’s members of the family.
Previous to Friday’s sentencing, Decide O’Keefe dismissed motions by the defence for a brand new trial and to overturn Flores’ responsible verdict.
Sensible, a scholar at California Polytechnic State College in San Luis Obispo, vanished in Might 1996 whereas strolling residence from a celebration.
Her physique has by no means been discovered, and he or she was declared lifeless in 2002. Regardless of witness and forensic proof linking Flores to the homicide, it remained unsolved for 25 years till prosecutors charged him with Sensible’s homicide in April 2021.
Flores was convicted after a 3 and a half month jury trial in October 2022. The trial was shifted to Monterey, after defence attorneys argued it will be not possible for him to obtain a good trial in San Luis Obispo, given the notoriety of the case.
His father Ruben Flores was tried alongside his son on a cost of being an adjunct to the homicide, however was acquitted.
Mr Flores and spouse Susan attended Friday’s sentencing.
On 24 Might 1996, Sensible, 19, attended an off-campus celebration together with her roommate Margarita Campos and fellow college students at California Polytechnic State College, referred to as Cal Poly.
The pair separated as Ms Campos needed to return to their dorm room early, whereas Sensible stayed out.
In line with prosecutors, Paul Flores murdered Sensible whereas making an attempt to rape her at his dorm room.
They maintained he was the final particular person to see Sensible alive and walked residence together with her after she grew to become intoxicated.
Paul Flores had lengthy been a suspect in Sensible’s disappearance, and was the topic of a wrongful loss of life swimsuit introduced by her household within the Nineties.
When investigators got here to interview him he had a black eye, which he blamed on a basketball sport with mates.
They denied his account, and he later modified his story to say he bumped his head on a automobile.
It was solely after renewed consideration on the case after the discharge of Chris Lambert’s podcast Your Personal Yard in 2019 that the investigation ramped up once more.
When the Floreses had been arrested in 2021, authorities credited the podcast with bringing “useful” new data ahead.
Dozens of searches had been performed of Sensible’s stays over time.
Prosecutors advised the jury that his father helped bury the first-year scholar behind his residence in close by Arroyo Grande, and later dug up the stays and moved them.
Over time investigators performed dozens of searches within the San Luis Obispo space for Sensible’s physique.
In March 2021, archaeologists discovered a soil disturbance concerning the dimension of a coffin and the presence of human blood at Ruben Flores’ Arroyo Grande residence.
The blood didn’t yield a constructive DNA pattern, however prosecutors had been capable of persuade a jury utilizing circumstantial proof and Paul Flores’ shifting statements over time.
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