Man convicted of killing Kristin Sensible will get 25 years to life

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MONTEREY — The person convicted of killing Kristin Sensible, who vanished from a California school campus greater than 25 years in the past, was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in jail.

Paul Flores is “a most cancers to society,” Monterey County Superior Court docket Decide Jennifer O’Keefe stated. Flores additionally should register as a intercourse offender.

Earlier than sentencing, the decide rejected protection motions to toss out Flores’ conviction, acquit him and order a brand new trial.

Sensible, 19, disappeared from California Polytechnic State College in San Luis Obispo on the state’s scenic central coast over Memorial Day weekend in 1996.

Her stays have by no means been discovered, however she was declared legally useless in 2002.

Prosecutors maintained that Flores, now 46, killed Sensible throughout an tried rape on Might 25, 1996, in his dorm room on the college, the place each had been first-year college students. He was the final individual seen with Sensible as he walked her house from an off-campus occasion.

Flores was arrested in 2021 alongside together with his father, who was accused of serving to to cover Sensible’s physique.

The trial was held in Salinas, in Monterey County, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of San Luis Obispo, after the protection argued that the case’s notoriety prevented Flores and his father from receiving a good trial in their very own county.

On the sentencing, prosecutor Chris Peuvrelle requested the decide for the utmost sentence, known as Flores a “true psychopath” and stated he ought to by no means be launched from jail.

Sensible’s father, siblings and different mates and kinfolk spoke on the listening to concerning the influence of her loss of life on the household.

A jury discovered Flores responsible of first-degree homicide in October. A separate jury acquitted Ruben Flores, 81, of being an adjunct.

At Paul Flores’ trial, protection lawyer Robert Sanger tried to pin the killing on another person. Sanger famous that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted at a sensational trial of murdering his pregnant spouse and the fetus she was carrying, was additionally a pupil on the campus about 200 miles (320 kilometers) up the coast from Los Angeles.

Sanger filed motions on Feb. 24 in Monterey County Superior Court docket requesting that costs be dismissed and his shopper acquitted. One movement additionally seeks a brand new trial.

Sanger disputed forensic proof supplied by the prosecution. He contended that Flores’ proper to a good trial was violated due to prosecution errors and “the admission of junk science as proof.”

“There’s a purpose {that a} case towards Paul Flores was not introduced for 25 years,” the movement stated. “There was no proof of a homicide or that Paul Flores dedicated it.”

The San Luis Obispo County District Lawyer’s Workplace requested the court docket to disclaim these requests, arguing “claims of misconduct are baseless and the claims of judicial error are incorrect.”

Flores had lengthy been thought of a suspect within the killing. He had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He instructed them he acquired it enjoying basketball with mates, who denied his account. He later modified his story to say he bumped his head whereas engaged on his automobile, in line with court docket data.

Investigators carried out dozens of fruitless searches for Sensible’s physique over twenty years. Previously two years they turned their consideration to Ruben Flores’ house locally of Arroyo Grande, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of California Polytechnic State.

Behind latticework beneath the deck of his giant home on a useless finish road, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 discovered a soil disturbance concerning the dimension of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors stated. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA pattern.