A man convicted of killing California college student Christine Smart in 1996 has been sentenced to 25 years to life.

A man convicted of killing Christine Smart, a California college student who disappeared in 1996 and whose body has never been found, was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in a state prison.

The sentencing of Paul Flores marks the culmination of a case that has attracted worldwide attention for more than a quarter of a century. Flores, long considered the prime suspect in Smart’s death, was arrested in 2021 and found guilty of first-degree murder last October.

Smart was 19 years old when she disappeared, returning to her dorm at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Flores also went to school.

Smart’s remains were never found, but she was officially declared dead in 2002.

Prosecutors alleged that Flores, now 46, killed Smart during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, in his university dorm room, where both were freshmen. He was the last person seen with Smart as he escorted her home from an off-campus party.

Flores was arrested in 2021 along with his father, who was accused of facilitating the cover-up of Smart’s body.

The trial took place in Salinas, Monterey County, about 110 miles north of San Luis Obispo, after the defense argued that the notoriety of the case prevented Flores and his father from getting a fair trial in their own county.

In October, a jury found Flores guilty of first-degree murder. A separate jury acquitted 81-year-old Ruben Flores of complicity.

Paul Flores listens during a murder trial in Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas, Calif., Monday, July 18, 2022 Daniel Dreyfuss/AP

At Paul Flores’ trial, defense attorney Robert Sanger tried to blame the murder on someone else. Sanger noted that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted in a sensational trial for the murder of his pregnant wife and the fetus she was carrying, was also a student on a campus about 200 miles up the coast from Los Angeles.

On February 24, Sanger filed a motion with the Monterey County Superior Court to drop the charges and acquit his client.

Sanger disputed the forensic evidence presented by the prosecution. He argued that Flores’s right to a fair trial was violated due to the errors of the prosecution and the “admission of pseudoscience as evidence”.

“There is a reason why the case against Paul Flores has not been initiated for 25 years,” the petition says. “There was no evidence of murder or that Paul Flores committed it.”

Paul Flores has long been considered a suspect in the murder. When investigators questioned him, he had a black eye. He told them he got it while playing basketball with friends who denied his account. He later changed his story to say he hit his head while working on his car, according to court records.

Investigators have conducted dozens of fruitless searches for Smart’s body over two decades. In the past two years, they’ve turned their attention to Ruben Flores’ home in the Arroyo Grande neighborhood, about 12 miles south of California Polytechnic State.

Behind a grate under the decking of his large dead-end street home, prosecutors said, archaeologists working for police discovered a coffin-sized soil breach and the presence of human blood in March 2021, prosecutors said. The blood was too decomposed to extract a DNA sample.

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