Investigators continue to search the San Luis Obispo County home and backyard of Susan Flores, the mother of Paul Flores, who was convicted of killing fellow Cal Poly student Kristin Smart in 1996. And some gruesome evidence has been found.

On Wednesday morning, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Department served a search warrant at the Arroyo Grande home of Susan Flores, the mother of Paul Flores, who was convicted in 2022 of the murder of Kristin Smart. Smart's body has never been found, and investigators have long believed that Flores's parents likely helped their then-19-year-old son dispose of or hide the body.

Ruben Flores, the father of Paul Flores, was tried alongside his son for being an accessory to Smart's murder, however a jury acquitted him due to lack of evidence. Evidence was presented at the trial from a 2021 search of the backyard at Ruben Flores's home, in which investigators found traces of degraded human blood in the soil around what appeared to be a recently filled-in, six-foot-by-four-foot void underneath a back deck.

On Friday morning, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson gave a press conference offering an update from the ongoing search at Susan Flores's property.

"We believe that ... human remains were there at one time or [are] still there," Parkinson said. He explained that the investigative team was using the same ground-penetrating radar that had been used in the search at Ruben Flores's property, and soil testing was being conducted as well.

"I’m not going to go into the details, other than just to say with soil tests, it’s about the compounds in the soil that are related to a human, decomposing body," Parkinson said.

"I think it’s safe to say that we have not recovered Kristin yet," he said. "But our search goes on, and I don’t know how long we’re going to be there."

Parkinson spoke about law enforcement's frustrations with this case over the decades.

"I remember speaking to our investigative team at one point, saying 'We don't seem to ever get a break,'" Parkinson said. "Every time we think we have something, it collapses."

Parkinson also said that Susan Flores would not be permitted back into her home until they had concluded searching the property, and he was not sure when that would be.

"We plan to be there until we can walk away, either finding Kristin or all the evidence we can find, and moving to the next step," Parkinson said.

Smart went missing over Memorial Day Weekend in 1996 from the Cal Poly campus, about 16 miles from Arroyo Grande. Paul Flores was the last person seen with her, walking her back to her dorm after she left an off-campus party with friends seeming very intoxicated. Investigators have long believed that Flores assaulted or attempted to assault Smart in his dorm room, and killed her there, and then called his father for help getting rid of the body in the middle of the night.

It is not clear what new evidence in the case allowed detectives to obtain a new search warrant at Susan Flores's property, which had not been searched in over 20 years. The implication from both this and the search at Ruben Flores's property five years ago is that Smart's body may have been buried and moved multiple times since her murder.

One witness testified at trial to hearing Paul Flores bragging about killing Smart and burying her under his skate ramp at a different home in Huasna, a town due east of Arroyo Grande, where the Flores family had been living in the mid-90s.

Susan Flores has never been charged with a crime in connection with Kristin Smart's murder, but Parkinson confirmed that she has always been a person of interest in the case.

Previously: New Search Warrant Served In Kristin Smart Murder Case as Hunt For Remains Continues