Investigators in California said they did not locate the remains of Kristin Smart \u2014 a 19-year-old who went missing in 1996 \u2014 at a property where earlier soil testing suggested the presence of human remains.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not recover Kristin Smart,\u201d the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff\u2019s Office said in a statement<\/a> on Saturday afternoon. \u201cDetectives will be evaluating any evidence we have recovered to aid in the investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Smart was a student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, who vanished after an off-campus party during Memorial Day weekend in 1996. The case has spanned nearly 30 years. <\/p>\n It took more than two decades for Paul Flores, who was also a student at the time, to be arrested in 2021 and ultimately convicted of her murder the following year. <\/p>\n Even after successfully prosecuting her murder, officials vowed to find Ms. Smart\u2019s remains. <\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a finale for us,\u201d Ian Parkinson, the sheriff of San Luis Obispo County, said at a news conference on Friday about Mr. Flores\u2019s conviction. \u201cThe case was not over. The reality was that Kristin is still missing.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the sheriff\u2019s office began searching a property owned by Mr. Flores\u2019s mother in Arroyo Grande, Calif., just south of San Luis Obispo. <\/p>\n The property had been searched multiple times before, Mr. Parkinson said, but a new lead \u2014 and advancements in ground penetrating radar and soil testing technology \u2014 led them back to the home. <\/p>\n Early testing of the soil outside the home proved promising. The results indicated that human remains had once been there<\/a> \u2014 or could still be there, Mr. Parkinson said. <\/p>\n Investigators continued searching the property into the weekend, and Mr. Parkinson said they would not stop until they found Ms. Smart\u2019s remains or conclude that she was not there. <\/p>\n The case has long haunted California. Mr. Parkinson led the renewed efforts when he was elected sheriff in 2011, promising the Smart family to aggressively pursue the case.<\/p>\n Mr. Flores told investigators at the time of Ms. Smart\u2019s disappearance that he accompanied her back to campus after the party on May 25, 1996. Mr. Flores, who was also a student, was a person of interest early in the investigation. He was not criminally charged at the time. <\/p>\n Extensive searches of the San Luis Obispo campus and surrounding areas involved helicopters, horseback search parties and excavators but yielded little. Billboards and missing posters offering rewards went up all around the area. <\/p>\n The Smart family sued Mr. Flores in 1997 in a wrongful-death lawsuit, but he refused to testify in a deposition, citing the Fifth Amendment. <\/p>\n The investigation into Mr. Flores, now 49, gained momentum in 2020, when four locations<\/a> tied to him were searched by the police, including his home in Los Angeles. It culminated with his arrest and murder charge in April 2021. Prosecutors said he killed Ms. Smart<\/a> during an attempted rape. <\/p>\n His father, Ruben Flores, was also arrested and accused of helping his son hide Ms. Smart\u2019s body. The elder Flores was ultimately acquitted, but his son was convicted of the murder in Oct. 2022. <\/p>\n