Episode 01: A Face On A Billboard

It's a cold and cloudy winter afternoon in San Luis Obispo. and I'm retracing missing Cal Poly student Kristen Smart's last known steps in May of 1996 from a house just off campus to the entrance of her red brick dorm building. On Perimeter Road, seagulls are screaming overhead as I pass a huge, modern-looking rec center, with students on the second story looking down at me through floor-to-ceiling glass windows while they run on treadmills.

Other students walk by me having loud conversations on their cell phones. Maybe I'm just self-conscious, but it feels like some of them are looking at me suspiciously. I'm dressed pretty modestly and wearing a hat and a backpack, so I'm not sure what exactly they're picking up on, but maybe I'm giving off some sort of vibration that says, I don't belong here. At one point, two girls pass me, and I clearly hear one say to the other, that guy did not look our age. So much for self-esteem.

I cross a bright green crosswalk, and on my right are a series of red buildings with California-themed names in brass on their sides. Sequoia. Santa Lucia. Fremont. The full walk only takes me about 11 minutes, and by the end of it, I'm surprised to see that the distance between the last place she was seen alive and the door to her dorm building at Muir Hall is just about 40 yards.

It's in these 40 yards that Kristen Smart disappeared over 23 years ago, and the case is still unsolved. There are currently more than a half million people missing in the United States. A staggering 50,000 are added to the list every month, but the vast majority of them are quickly found and removed. teenage runaways angry with their parents or people who just wanted to be left alone for a while. Still, 650,000 have never been found, dead or alive.

It's a heartbreaking statistic, but one that most of us are not really equipped to do much with. The majority of these cases I'll never even hear about. A few of them I'll probably become aware of from the news or a headline I scroll by. But since I'm not an investigator there's really not much help I can provide. It's a little different if you have access to some of the people and places involved. It's different. When someone goes missing in your own backyard.

Growing up on the California Central Coast is probably pretty much like growing up anywhere else. People who aren't from here see it as a picturesque seaside paradise, and the people who were born here can't wait to get out. To move to a... real city, where there are things to do. These days, I find myself somewhere in the middle. I was born in 1988 in Santa Maria, 60 miles north of Santa Barbara.

and 30 miles south of San Luis Obispo. I grew up in Orkut, a small town which is pretty much just Santa Maria, and everything but name and population. In May of 1996, I was in second grade when a 19-year-old Cal Poly student named Kristen Smart went missing. As an 8-year-old... I really didn't know how to process that information except to be a little more afraid of kidnappers when I was playing in my front yard. I was still trying to master tying my shoes.

With the OJ Simpson trial barely in the rearview mirror, and a few months to go until the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the Kristen Smart disappearance took center stage on our TV that summer. especially because it happened in our own community. Then, over the next few years, it kind of just stopped. Besides the occasional comparison to later missing persons cases, I didn't hear her name for a long time. In Arroyo Grande, about 18 miles north of me,

there's a small strip of businesses on Branch Street that locals call The Village. Just across the street from a historic swinging bridge that spans the Arroyo Grande Creek is a billboard. faded from years of sunlight, and recently set back between a couple of trees. It used to be more prominent, but it's easy to miss now unless you're really looking for it. Missing Cal Poly student.

Kristen D. Smart. $75,000 reward. It wasn't something I thought of often, but driving past that billboard was a periodic reminder that, oh yeah. they still haven't found that girl. It's been 23 years now. For the last four years, Kristen has been a missing person for longer than she was alive.

As many times as I'd heard Kristen's name, I couldn't tell you a single thing about her. And when I started asking around last summer, I found that almost everyone I talked to remembered her name and her face from the billboard. but that was as much as they could tell me about her. Several of them had her confused with Elizabeth Smart, a girl from Sandy, Utah, who was abducted from her bedroom in 2002 when she was just 14 years old.

but was subsequently rescued a year later. And, for various reasons, which I'll get into in later episodes, quite a few people I asked thought that Kristen's body had already been found. There are people still living locally, though, who have to know more. I'm just not sure how to find them. I googled Kristen Smart's name every few years.

and I was never able to find much. There's a Wikipedia page, but it's short, rarely more than a few paragraphs, and I never got a strong sense of the timeline of events in her disappearance. But then... I happened upon a 5,000-word article that ran in the Los Angeles Times on June 18, 2006. Incidentally, 12 days after I had graduated from high school. An article I had somehow missed.

up until last summer. Written by Peter H. King, it was the first in a series of true crime stories that he was commissioned to write for the paper. So I sat down to read it, and spent two days poring over details that I had never heard before. Events that took place in locations I've driven by a thousand times. And I was suddenly hooked, and needed to know more.

So, I looked for a documentary about the case, but there wasn't one. A couple of half-hour spots on shows like Vanished or Unsolved Mysteries, but no full-length deep dive into the whole story. I found a few podcasts that did their own episode about it, but they mostly revolved around reading from the Wikipedia page while making mixed drinks, which really isn't what I was looking for. Here come our martinis.

So how did I get here, making a documentary about this case myself? I don't know. I just checked and I'm a musician and a recording engineer, according to my LinkedIn profile. At least once a day I ask myself, what are you doing? And my answer, on a good day, when I'm not pulling my hair out, is pretty simple. I'm going to try to learn everything I can about Kristen Smart and what happened to her, in the only way that I know how. By talking to people. First on my list, Peter King.

the LA Times writer who's since gone freelance. Hello. Hi, is this Peter? Yes, it is. Is this Chris? It is. Good. Okay. So... What can I do for you? I want to find out what made him interested in Kristen Smart's case to begin with and how it affected him to dig so deeply into it. I'm upfront with him that I am not a professional, and I know he is, so I want to get a sense of where he came from and whether he feels like he was able to accomplish what he set out to do.

How long had you been at the L.A. Times, and was this like your typical sort of assignment? I had started there in the early 80s. Wandered away to the McClatchy Papers, came back. And at some point, they decided they wanted me to do long form true crime stories. I think it lasted two years. And the first one I did was Kristen Smart.

I had attended Cal Poly in the 70s. I had stayed attached to the university through advisory boards and whatnot. And you would drive down over the hill, quest to grade, and you'd see that big billboard. I had a sense of place about Cal Poly as a part of my life. And this seemed to be a wound that Cal Poly had suffered. And I wanted to explore it, kick it around and see what, to me, the mystery was that they couldn't.

resolve the case. At a public university in the middle of California, it just seemed interesting to me that they had not been able to put it together. And when I started, I was sort of like you, Chris. I didn't know anything about it, really, which was a good way to start because then I just started peeling away layers after layers and trying to leverage information to get more information.

and finding the right people that could actually lead you to a document or a description and whatnot. So I spent some time on it. I ended up going down to the place and the times let me go pretty deep on trying to get as far to the bottom as I could. While we talk about it, we both agree that what really pulled us into this case was Kristen's parents, Stan and Denise Smart. In news clips like this one from last year.

I'm moved by the Smart family's grace and composure two decades into the tragedy of what happened to their daughter. We won't give up. And so is Peter. To a parent, 99.9% sure. is a long, long way away from 100% sure. But they're never going to give up until they get to that 100%. who wants to be the parent when the wayward child returns, you know, one in a million. So, well, we look for a while, but then we just figured you were gone. I mean, that would be.

That would have to haunt them. It's trite, but they're the real victims. Kristen is the primary victim, but what they've lived through is harsher than a penitentiary term. You know, you can be a prisoner in your own mind. Do you have kids? I don't. Okay, I've got two. And you just, Denise is never going to stop. She's never going to say, oh, you're right.

You know, let's move on. She's never going to move on. She might do other things and they've got other children and they get their love and all that. But they're really prisoners of this. It's just. So frustrating that it can't get resolved. But I don't think that they would find closure. They would just know in their hearts that their daughter was gone for sure. What I remember is sort of a discomfort.

about myself trying to, even though they wanted a story in the Los Angeles Times, but I still, I'm kind of different that way. I was still trying to thread that needle. letting them know I'm not here to exploit. If you want me to go away, I will go away. But if you work with me, I'll work real hard to get an accurate story.

So I was trying to forge a relationship a little more than just an interview. And they were helpful. If memory serves, I think I spent a couple months reporting, and it wrote fairly quickly. Once I had all the material, probably a couple of weeks. I'm not a stonecutter, but I'm also not the world's fastest rider. So it took some time.

What was sort of the legacy of that piece once you put it out? What kind of response did you get and how do you feel about it this much later? Response to articles is sort of a funny thing. You get conspiracy theorists. You get Mau Mauers who just want to agitate you. You get fans. It comes in in all capital letters. I don't open up the email or read the letter. It didn't solve the case.

You always go in looking for a homer, but oftentimes you've got to be content on second base with the double. This is probably a double. I think it got a lot of eyes opened, you know, like your own. Maybe your documentary is the legacy of that article.

No pressure, right? I don't even know if I'm capable of putting something like this together. And even if I am capable, do I have the right? The more I thought about it, the more I decided that I only needed the approval. of two people. I am driving northbound on the 101 to Stockton to see Stan and Denise Smart. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night, which is really rare for me. Just a lot of anticipation and nerves. When I first reach out to the Smart family...

I'm not sure how receptive they'll be to sitting down for another interview. In the late 90s, they did the usual talk show circuit. Maury Povich, Lisa, Sally Jesse Raphael, and more serious shows like 2020 and Unsolved Mysteries. But a few years ago, Stan Smart made a judgment call. No more TV shows. No more allowing the story of their daughter's disappearance to be exploited for ratings. So when I show them what I've been working on for the past year...

They're cautious, but receptive. Like Peter King, it's important to me to let them know that I'll go away if they want me to. But I'll later learn that they can see early on, that my heart is really in this. That I want to find their daughter almost as badly as they do. Almost. So they invite me to their house in Stockton. The house they moved into when Kristen was nine years old.

And after four hours on the freeway, I pull up to the curb in front of the staircase that leads to their front door, which I recognize from Kristen's high school graduation videos. I take a minute to collect myself before I get out of the car. So have you been to Stockton anymore? No, never.

So my wife's telling me that you have a podcast with our details all over the house. See, we might have solved the case a long time ago if we took that attitude. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I take a seat on their sofa in front of a coffee table, on top of which sits a box of family photos. Denise sits next to me, nursing a wasp sting that she got on her arm the day before, and Stan pulls up a chair across from us.

as I start to go through the box. You know, it's kind of crazy when you look at these pictures. It's just a regular, normal family. It's just like, how do these crazy things happen to just... And everyone assumes it happens to other people. One of the pictures shows the three smart children dressed in Nutcracker costumes with blush on their cheeks, and Matt, Kristen's younger brother, looks a little less than enthused.

first moved here so we moved into some apartments we were going to have a house built down the street and that fell through so we bought this house but to keep them busy because you know normally you move to And when you're in town, kids are signed up for different sports or to do things, but you can't do it late. So I just signed them up to be in the Nutcracker. None of them have ever been dancers.

After talking for an hour or so, and doing my best to explain what my goals for this story are, Stan offers to drive me around Stockton, to show me some of the places where Kristen liked to hang out. Over the years, Denise has become the de facto spokesperson for the Smart family. Stan has gotten quieter, and has a hard time coming back to the San Luis Obispo area now, associating it with painful memories of searching for his daughter's body in forests, tunnels, and riverbeds.

I expect him to be guarded, but he doesn't seem to have any trouble opening up to me. My son and I went camping, playing around in the river there with wetsuits looking for gold in the cracks. Last year we had gone, it's a good father and son time, we had gone up there and spent about four days. We got a quarter ounce of really nice chunky gold.

which was exciting. Because normally you don't find hardly any, like this time, next to none. So when you do find some, it's exciting. And the water is just beautiful, crystal clear. So it makes for a good time. So, I could take you by for elementary school. This is Mabel Barron across the intersection on the left. So it's a K-6. And then Lincoln High School is over here about a mile to the right. And it's a 9-12.

And next door is the junior high, middle school. But this is Mabel Barron. Stan pauses, looking serious for a minute. My insight's always 20-20 and share. she was real interested in athletics i mean she was a good swimmer and i she wasn't competitive at the level of our other two children afterwards but a good swimmer and she liked volleyball And she did things with the volleyball kids. Let's see if we can find a spot here or we'll have to park back here. It's filled up.

She liked water skiing and swimming all through her kids and snow skiing.

Denise has arranged a lunch on the marina with a group of family friends, who all knew Kristen growing up, to share some of their favorite memories with me while I'm in town. Kristen babysat for many families in her neighborhood and was everyone's first choice because of how much she engaged with the kids, showing them how to make tie-dye shirts and rehearsing skits for them to perform for their parents.

Once, when a mother came home after being out for the evening, she found Kristen standing in her doorway with a panicked look on her face. Fearing that something had happened to one of her kids, she asked what was wrong. and Kristen profusely apologized for spilling a little bit of nail polish in her living room. Amongst her friends, Kristen was warm and a little quiet. The last one to start a fight, and the first one to invite them on vacations with her family, order her house for a sleepover.

There are five different conversations going on around the table, and it's hard to keep up with all of them. Everyone laughs when they recount the time Kristen applied to be a counselor at summer camp in Hawaii. even though she wasn't old enough yet and was accepted anyway. And everyone cries when one of the songs from Kristen's memorial service comes on the radio while we're talking about her.

I go back to my hotel later with a plan to meet the smarts the next day before I leave. And for the first time that night, I feel a tremendous sense of loss, in a way that before now had only been empathy. Now I feel like I've lost a friend. Early the next morning, I meet with Stan and Denise again. There he is. Thank you. Yeah. Getting wired up. Yeah. Talking into a microphone is an uncomfortable process for everyone. She's ready to talk.

You going to talk to him? Get your voice on there and you can go play. You're being taped right now. All right, what would you like, sir? You guys want to talk at the same time? You want me to do you first? It doesn't matter to me. Go in the other room and talk to him first. Sure. Yep.

I sit down with Stan in the family room, and later Denise in the kitchen, and ask to hear Kristen's story from the beginning. February 20th. 1977 Kristen was born overseas in Germany, Augsburg, Germany. We were so thrilled to have a child because we hadn't been able to conceive. We thought we were going to have to adopt a little German baby boy.

After a long two-day labor, Kristen was born. Stan went to breakfast with our good friends and said the answer to world population is that men should have the children and there would only be one per family. Betty didn't share that with you. No. And then we decided to return back to the U.S. after we had been there just about three years overseas.

Wonderful experience. And we had a little girl that we brought home. Seemed like she would almost fit in a shoe box. We had what everybody expects when you go to Germany. You come back with a Volkswagen, a cuckoo clock. And a child. So there we go. We had all three. We came back and he got a job just outside of Yuba City at a high school as a counselor.

I guess the first priority of business was just kind of getting settled, and Kristen, she cried a lot. And as it turned out, she was allergic to milk. Fortunately, in about nine months, we figured it out. And she turned into a kid that you really wanted to keep. And she was much happier.

As she got older, sort of feeling a sense of invincibility and she could do anything she wanted to do. She walked very early. She talked very early. She was like on a mission, really. She knew what she wanted to do. And a lot of kids are that way, but... That big zest for life, like, holy moly, I can do anything, you know, kind of like that. In October 1979, the smart second child, Matthew, was born.

Initially, if you're the only child, you're sort of the center of the universe. And then when the second child comes along, you need to have a doll or something to play with since you're no longer the center of the universe. And she so embraced having a brother. I remember her in the hospital, it's like where are his shoes?

And I said, well, he doesn't need any shoes. He doesn't walk yet. When is he going to walk? And I said, well, it's going to be a while. And I've seen other families where a new child comes in when that child is two and they want nothing to do with that child. And she was... Well, you had to stop her from smothering the boy because she was just on him. Just on him. So that started very early. Finally, in January 1982, Lindsay, the last of the three smart children, was born.

And then, you know, the third child, so then we were a complete family having three children, you know, two girls and a boy. And then, of course, Lindsay was...

and a brother at that point can really be a pain. So it's like, well, good, I've got someone who'll do what I tell them to do. Being the eldest child, I think she was an overachiever, meaning she did things to please her mom and dad. In school, she worked hard to have good grades, and I think you find that true. In most families, when there's more than one child, the eldest one, parents really sort of focus on that child initially.

getting in school and working and so on forth. So she met that. And she was always the organizer. It's like I said before. She'd periodically think she was a teacher and line them all up and make them sit, and she'd tell them what to do, and sometimes they'd do it, sometimes they wouldn't do it. And then she'd set up her little church service and make them sit.

pray and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't work. In home videos, you can see an active and engaged big sister playing with her siblings in the snow and on beaches. running lemonade stands, and singing Christmas carols. As she grew up, Kristen participated in school plays, soccer games, and swim tournaments.

She learned to make omelets the way the ship's cooks did, and back at home started a routine of making them for her family on Sunday mornings, even though she mostly avoided eating egg yolks. She spent time in London with friends. and Venezuela, where she was a foreign exchange student for a summer. When she smiles at the camera, her dark eyes narrow with genuine warmth. She was close with both of her parents.

She joined me in doing things, although I think her interests are more in line with her mother. My interests are quite a bit outdoors and doing things outside and camping and going places. So she always enjoyed going when we go to Yosemite or if we go to the beach. So she liked water and she liked travel, things that we did that way. And I think that was part of her makeup. Loved to travel extensively. You know, the globe is their playground. So I think she had those values.

I think she was always kind of finding her sense, and I think this is important for a lot of parents to understand, is that continuity in a child's life is really important. So we moved from Yuba City as she came here in fourth grade. Fourth grade, you know, they think they're pretty hot stuff, fourth graders. And you have to break into the group. So she...

you know, did the standard birthday thing. So she was embraced by her friends and pulled into it. And then they kind of changed the boundaries on the school. So that kind of upset the apple cart. So you have to find new friends then. And then they went back to Mabel Barron, and she reconnected with the friends that she had made earlier. So I would say she wasn't the leader of the group, she wasn't the leader of the pack, but she was certainly not quiet. She was just part of the group.

I meet one of Kristen's closest friends, Anne Marie, for breakfast while I'm in Stockton. Afterwards, we sit in my car, facing the Stockton marina, while she flips through a photo album to show me pictures, And I asked her to tell me about her friend. Okay. Is it on? It is, yeah. Just, I remember Kristen as a dear childhood friend. We got to know each other.

from elementary school and we're really good friends in fifth sixth grade and on seventh and eighth grade and stayed in touch through high school even though we we went to different high schools for a while my most Memorable memories of her and I was young kid stuff playing at each other's house on weekends and she loved to swim. So a lot of our activities involved around swimming in the summertime.

I remember being at her house a lot, you know, first, you know, you'd sleep over at your friend's house and, you know, baking cookies and making popcorn and watching movies. And, um, I just loved her parents and her sister and her brother.

our families knew each other and we were just for, you know, these really good childhood friends. And we, we went through sixth grade graduation and eighth grade promotion graduation together. And I, she, had a lot of vibrancy you can see from photos she has this wonderful smile and a laughter she appreciated humor um a lot of uh you know memories come back when I look at pictures of us pictures of us and

sixth grade just being goofy at the pool or at the this thing called the beach club where kids would go and there was a pool and like a little beach and you just go and hang out like sixth grade kids like what we were like 12.

years old probably and I remember her love of drawing um especially like architecture and homes and she'd have graph paper and I remember she would show me we're being I have this memory of being over her house when we went swimming and she was showing me some of her new drawings some of her new architecture the houses that she would like lay out and map them out and there was so much attention to detail and she had such a gift i remember that's why she

In my memory, that's why she went and chose Cal Poly to go to because they had such a good architecture program. And that was her dream, you know, that and to travel the world. She had a great smile, a great laugh. She, you know, I just remember lots of laughter and having a good time, you know, and just doing your normal everyday kid things, never getting into trouble. I mean, we...

We were pretty innocent. We were in Girl Scouts together. She was a wonderful friend. I would still imagine that we would be friends today. I have no doubt we would. I'm still friends with her family. were she here? I could imagine our, our kids playing together, you know, um, which should be back living close to where we are. I don't, I don't know, but, um, it's, it's just not fair. She should, she should be here. And, uh, She's an amazing person, and I've struggled with it for so long.

Stan worked as the principal of Vintage High School in Napa, and because of the long commutes, wasn't able to spend much time at home in Stockton. So in her junior year, Kristen decided to switch schools, leaving her friends behind. to spend more time with her dad. I think that was a difficult year for her because, you know, I reflected on when I went to high school, I remember the principal's son was a student.

during the time that I was going to high school. And I thought about, you know, I think it was very, very hard for her to, you know, meet. or dad's standards for his high school and Napa, Vintage High School. We didn't have a home that we were living in. We moved around and through Rotary, a lot of the Rotarians and I had been a Rotarian. provided us with places to stay when they were traveling. We stayed in some beautiful homes, house-sitting.

Also, I rented some places. We might be in one location for a week or a few days, and I think that was difficult for her. We didn't always have a bed to sleep in. Sometimes we slept in sleeping bags. And so we had a lot of time in the morning, and then we went to school. And then we'd afterwards go out to dinner somewhere. I really didn't have the... facility to cook there later i did but um i think it was difficult for her to socialize and that she didn't have a place to meet friends or

communicate very well other than at school at the time. So she stuck that out for a year, which was a bit trying on her, maybe on me a little bit.

And then she came back home to mom and completed over here at Lincoln High School in Stockton. In her last year of high school, Kristen reconnected with her old friends, like Roxy. I think probably I was her closest, longest friend. So she was friends with my sister. My sister was in her grade. I'd say she was probably one of the best friends you can ask for. Just a very kind, polite, caring, shy girl. She helped me with my homework a lot.

because she was really, really, really smart. Some of the funnest memories we have are her parents would take her and I to Yosemite and we'd climb, you know, climb or hike. Kristen loved to shop and we would go to the Spree outlet. which was really fun, you know, as a little kid or just a young girl. It's a big, basically, warehouse of just boxes and boxes of discount clothing. She used to share her clothes with me.

And she was always so sweet about it, you know. She loved Bob Marley, Tom Petty. She even liked rap. My sister and I... would pick her up. I don't think she had a car in high school. So my sister was always the DJ of all of our music and some of the songs that we played, you know, Kristen would get.

I just smiled thinking about it because she'd get all, you know, embarrassed, you know, kind of or just because we would play some of the, you know, more graphic songs. But she was really shy. Really shy.

After graduating from Lincoln High School on June 8, 1995, Kristen traveled to the island of Oahu to work as a camp counselor and lifeguard at Camp Mokuleia. over what no one knew would be the last summer of her life. Chris, can you hear me? I tracked down Rachel Bird, who shared a cabin with Kristen at Mokuleia that summer. Kristen was my co-counselor at camp, and so...

I spent every single day with her, morning, noon, and night, for three months or whatever it was. You are told who's in your cabins. There's younger cabins, you know, medium-age cabins, and older cabins. So we took care of the youngest kids for a whole summer. And Kristen and I got placed together. Feeding her, she was tall, beautiful wand. Surfer girl, like really chill.

Only, gosh, four or five weeks after summer camp had started, my cousin passed away. Then she had a heart problem and she passed. And I remember Kristen being somewhere that actually was a big support to me during that time because it was really, my cousin was like a sister to me.

She was always there for me. And I think there's actually a picture at one of our Aloha ceremonies. And there's a picture where I'm crying and Kristen's hugging me. And she's just a sweet girl. You know, she was definitely like the surfer girl. She loved being out in the water. Anytime she could go circuit rest period or anything like that, she wanted to be out there doing that. I remember doing hair wraps on her hair. She was just that very, like, earthy.

I wouldn't want to say like flower child, but like that kind of like, yeah, like nothing ever seemed to get there. Calm and collected. You know, we were both tall. I'm tall and hefty and she was tall and skinny, but it was a joke that like the two of us were the Twin Towers.

because we were both so tall. We were both over, like, you know, six feet-ish, and her legs went up to, like, my shoulders, and my legs went to, like, her knees because I'm tall but with short legs, and she just had these legs for days, and she was gorgeous, right? Like, anybody would be around, and she'd be like,

the person that's not muted, automatically your eyes would go straight to Kristen because she just had that look. We'd go to Waimea and we'd get Shea Vice with the kids. It's fun zone 24-7, right? Where I was more kind of the nurturing mother type, she was very, like, mellow. It's all good. It's good. Like, we're good. When you were there, it was all about just me.

Being in Hawaii, being at the beach, we have pictures of being out front of our cabin with all of us dancing on picnic tables. You know, we were young and it was fun, you know? And then... winter reunion we had a winter reunion like between Christmas and New Year's I think I actually went over New Year's um it's a smaller version of camp not as many kids and then we were getting ready to go back um in June to be

again and I know she'd been hired because I was working at the camp and we were going to be co-counselors again and that whole summer was kind of this well where is she is she somewhere did she go somewhere it's like you're just you know dancing through life and then all of a sudden Something stops it and somebody's gone and it's like, wait, but I want to hold on to those memories. Like I want to remember every moment because I didn't know there weren't going to be any more moments.

Focused on her academics but struggling with mild ADD, Kristen had doubled up her workload to graduate a semester early, attending San Joaquin Delta College for extra credits to increase her chances of being accepted to a four-year university.

It worked. She was accepted to UC Santa Barbara and had already paid a deposit for a dorm room there when she abruptly decided that she would rather attend somewhere a little closer to home. So after returning from Oahu, Kristen moved from Stockton to San Luis Obispo to study at California Polytechnic State University, known to students and locals as Cal Poly, where she originally intended to major in architecture.

but later switched to communications studies with the goal of traveling the world as a reporter like Joan London. Here again, her friend Roxy from Stockton. We stayed close until she left for school. I don't do therapy too often, but I'm in PT right now because I just had a baby. Some weird things have been popping up. Have you ever had mouth treatment before where they put your hand in your mouth and they do all your muscles?

A memory popped back in my head, maybe too, because you had called me. You know, she was going off to college and she did not want to come back to Stockton. You know, she just wanted to become an architect and live overseas. kind of just become, you know, free. She told me she wouldn't be calling me too much when she left for school, which was heartbreaking because I was a senior at the time, so I didn't talk to her when she was in school at all.

I guess that's kind of common, you know, when you leave a town like Stockton. But the neat thing, you know, my husband said that I didn't peak in high school. Well, I'd say that Kristen didn't peak in high school.

You know what I'm saying? Like, she had her life to pique. I think that it was her time to shine, you know, get her architect degree and see the world, you know? Because she enrolled late, she missed her chance to get a dorm room on campus. So she moved into the Stinner Glen Apartments at 1050 East Foothill Boulevard, now known as The Slow. So she had a really nice roommate there. I thought she was nice.

But she came from a very small, very sheltered kind of background. So it wasn't an unhappy dorm relationship. She just wanted to be on campus. Her name from the get-go was on the waiting list. When she returned to Cal Poly after spending Christmas 1995 with friends back at Camp Mokulaia, she moved into room 120 at Mirror Hall.

one of six historic residence halls known as the Red Bricks. When she got the call that she could go, she had to give 30 days, I think, to Stenner Glen. And then I didn't help move her. She somehow... I probably found someone with a car or something, but she got resettled. And she said, oh, it's so much better. I can walk to class. Because, you know, Standard Glen is not right next door. Acclimating to life on campus, Kristen worked to reinvent herself.

using nicknames like Kiana or Marisol in her emails, and dyeing her naturally blonde hair brown. She still called her parents every Sunday, though, and they traveled down to San Luis Obispo several times to visit her. We probably went down after the Christmas holidays and we went down after Easter vacation because we'd gone on a trip with the kids. That's when I saw the brown hair.

She told me about the brown hair and sent a picture, but it's seeing in person. I go, okay. She was like all children going away. They're rather independent when you get to college. Myself, my wife. Yourself and everyone else knows that, you know. And it was like brown. But I think, you know, sometimes kids make their hair red or green or something. So how long she would have kept it?

I don't really know. The college classes came as a bit more of a struggle for Kristen than high school had. And not long after moving into Muir Hall, she started to express doubts about whether Cal Poly was right for her. There were other places, she told her mother, like the University of the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico, where she could go to get a doctorate. When Denise came down to visit her in early 1996, Kristen broke down.

begging her mother to let her drop out and go somewhere else. She really felt everyone was too much the same. And the reality of it is freshman year is really hard year for many. majority, I would say. It's a huge transition, being away from home, being responsible for your laundry and having to do your homework. And she was working as a lifeguard, so she would try to get as many hours as she could at the pool.

And of course, as the newbie, which hours are open? You know, the 5 and 6 a.m. hours. And she was, like most teenagers at the time, they loved their sleep. So she was probably tired. She was fatigued and adjusting. But like I said, I don't think it's unusual for kids in their first year of college to... In fact, I had a friend whose son...

was a year ahead of Kristen, and he was at Pepperdine. And I talked to her about Kristen not wanting to be there. I said, oh, my God, that just sounds like Todd last year. He just wanted out of there so bad. But once he... He finished that year, it's like, I never said I didn't want to come back here. So it's just a transitional phase, I think. And I think with my other two, they were really entrenched in swim team.

And they swam for their colleges. So you kind of have a built-in network of fast friends that you blood, sweat, and tears with. So it's very much of a bonding thing. And for other kids going to college... You have to work to build your network of friends. It's not automatic. And although she could have swum on the swim team, and they asked her to at Cal Poly, I think maybe she was a little swimming burned out.

She wasn't always a happy camper. She wanted to, after being there for nearly a year, she wanted to go to another school to travel more. She wanted to go to school overseas. She had all these.

grandiose ideas, at least they appeared that way to me at the time. In early May of 1996, with just a few weeks left of the spring quarter, Denise sent her daughter a letter, reminding her that she had a world of opportunities at her fingertips. and urging her to learn from her mistakes and finish out the semester. I do remember writing it. It's probably the last letter she got from us, so that's kind of hard.

And like, you know, everybody's mentioned before, she was a smart enough kid. But it's like, I think she's trying to do too much at one time. So you learn from your mistakes. You have to prioritize what's really important. And you're in school, not turn a lot of money. You're in school. so that you can in the future have a career that you like and earn your money. So I think she tried to take on too much and didn't really prioritize the academic piece of it.

I don't have any issues of... I mean, kids go off to college, you don't know what they're doing. So she certainly didn't write and tell me, oh, I went and did this. So it was... Parents get a very modified version of what's going on. And the version I got was... Well, I can't study that much because I have to go to work. I have to get up. You don't understand. I have to get up at 4.30 in the morning. It's like reprioritize. So we weren't really there and we weren't helicopter parents.

Because she was, you know, 19. She knew everything then. Do you remember the last time you saw her in person? I do remember sitting on the bed in the hotel room with her and just kind of talking about life. kind of in general. And then we were going to go to her dorm later. I think Stan took her back to her dorm. And she said, but you have to wait a little while because I'm going to clean it up. You're going to be so impressed at how clean our room is.

And Crystal was gone that weekend. So they talked about Lindsay could spend the night in the dorm with her. It just didn't happen just because, I don't know, I think we went, what's the place where you go eat? Eat ribs? McClintock. Oh, McClintock, yeah. Yeah, so I just got laid, and she went back to the hotel with us. So it was probably whatever spring break was for them.

March or something like that. On May 22nd, Kristen wrote her last letter to her friend, Anne-Marie, who she hadn't really kept in touch with after going away to college. On stationery decorated with angels and cherubs, She expressed her condolences. My mom died suddenly by suicide when I was a freshman in college. We were both freshmen at the same time. I was in San Diego and she was in Cal Poly.

And after Kristen went missing, her mom found this letter and she had written a sympathy note to me and she actually had talked to her mom about it over the phone. And Denise, you know, gave that to me about a month or so after. Kristen went missing and it's something I've held on to to this day because it means so much of the words that she you know that she wrote and how much she cared.

even though we were apart because we were both at different schools and whatnot. Pre-cellphone era, Kristen had a standing date to call home every Sunday night from her dorm room. to stay in touch with her family. On Friday, May 24, the start of a three-day Memorial Day weekend, she made an unscheduled phone call to her parents, who were out at the time.

She left a message on their answering machine that she had good news and would call back on Sunday. Stan and Denise Smart listened to the message later that night. My wife actually had a message. Good news, good news. I don't even know how we found out along the way, but we did find out that the call was about... She was concerned about a grade, and they apparently had found a paper, you know, or a test that...

and she had a good score on it, so she was excited about that. Was it a biology or chemistry class or something? They couldn't find her final, so they had given her an incomplete. Well, we were talking about that. beforehand because she didn't like confronting people. And I said, if you took the test, it's their responsibility to find it. So don't feel bad that you put it in the wrong pile or did you put your name on it?

And she said it was a Scantron, so you had to fill out your name. So her name was on it. So I heard afterwards, I don't know if it was from, I don't know how we found out, but we found out that that's what the good news, the good news was. So if you only knew then what you knew now, you know, just... It's a nice, nice community, wonderful people, and...

I can't think of a safer location. However, it's just like any location. There are one or two people that can destroy someone's life, so things can change overnight.

After making the phone call, Kristen got dressed and ready to go out with friends for the night. After settling on a gray crop top, black shorts, and a pair of red Puma brand shoes, she left Meir Hall with her friend. Margarita Campos, who lived in the room next door to hers. She didn't bring her ID or money with her, and she had lost her room key, so she was depending on Margarita's key to get them back into the dorm building that night.

They ran into two other girls in the hall, who were also looking for something to do, so the four of them flagged down a guy in a truck they knew and asked him to drive them around to find an off-campus party to attend. As a side note, Kristen was afraid to drive and never got her own driver's license. Margarita Campos was probably Kristen's only close friend at Cal Poly. They bonded over their ADD.

and spent a lot of time in Margarita's room talking about boys and making cassette mixtapes. I tried to get in contact with Margarita for a few months, through social media and email, and when those were unsuccessful, through cold calling her. My name is Chris Lambert. Hello. Hi, is this Chris? It is. Hi, Chris, this is Margarita. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner.

The story of Kristen's last night has been told many times, and through small inaccuracies in early news stories, the details have become mixed up and embellished over the years. So I ask Margarita to walk me through her memory of that night. from how they decided to go out looking for a party in the first place, right up to the last time she ever saw Kristen. So that night, she was hanging in my room.

And I was kind of stressed out because I was like, oh, my gosh, I have this biology final. And I hated biology at the time. Like, I ended up switching my major. That said, I was stressed out. She's like, oh, God, what are we going to do tonight? I was like, I don't know, nothing. I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to study. She's like, oh, come on, we have to do something. That's when she brought her music. She was like, oh, can I use your...

I had a like a double cassette tape so you can make a recording you know of music and so she's like oh I want to make a recording of this or something as we were listening to music and that's why in my mind I just think of Cyndi Lauper as I see her true colors.

I remember her like almost telling me, come on, Margarita, we're going to go out. Like, you can't just stay here. Like, we have to go out. And I was like, oh, God. It was almost like she wasn't going to let me not. She wasn't going to let me stay home. She wanted me to go. And then somehow we connected with the girls down the hallway and they were all the way down the hallway. And I guess one of the girls was like, someone's going to pick us up and we're going to go to some party.

I don't know if it was a party or a get-together or something, but we went down, ended up all piling up in this truck and driving to some residential home. At a house off of Foothill Boulevard, they sat and watched a few guys play video games for a while. before they decided it was, in Kristen's words, a dud, not how she wanted to spend her Friday night. It was a dud, and Kristen's like, oh my god, this is such a dud. Like, we are leaving, you know? I think they gave us beers.

And that's why we had only had one beer when I left her. They went back to driving around in the truck for a while, looking for a better party. Because it was Memorial Day weekend, though, a lot of students had left town to stay with their families.

And the parties were scant. That night was such a chill night. It was such a quiet night in San Luis Obispo. And it was just a couple of us driving around a truck around town. I'm pretty sure Kristen was the one who said, just drop Marguerite and I off here. Because we're just going to keep walking around. We're going to keep walking around. I'm pretty sure it was California and Foothill. Kristen and Margarita walked around for a bit.

eventually ending up near the unofficial frat houses surrounding the Cal Poly campus, where there had to be at least one party going on. Margarita followed Kristen into the parking lot of the Foothill Hacienda Apartments at 190 California Boulevard before she started to get tired of looking.

cut over probably to Crandall. And I was like, um, no, I'm cool. I had to pee. And I was like, and actually I remember that very vividly. I'm like, I really have to pee, Kristen. And she's like, just go here in the bushes, you know? just go pee right here and i was like no i just i want to go back i'm tired i don't think there's any any parties like i don't think there's any parties and she's like well let's just try this street let's just try this street and i was like i i don't want to

And so I just, I was just, I just became uncertain. I put my foot down and I just wanted to go back. And she was like, no, I'm just going to walk up this way. And I was just like, please. And she's like, please. And we had this sort of like, please. No, you please. No, you please. You know? But just like really quick, Margarita, really quick. And I was like, no, Kristen, I don't want to. And I think she was so determined to find a party. And I was so over it. She wanted to find that party.

And she was begging me and begging me. And I was like, well, as long as you get home safely. So I gave her my key because I knew that.

By the time I walked back to the dorm, the doors would still be open. But if she took any longer, the doors would be closed. It was almost like in the nick of time. I remember rushing back. And I'll never forget her shadow was against the partially on the... back wall and partially on the on the dumpster there was like a big dumpster trash can and it was cool i was like her shadow was just really tall and big and um and

That's one of my last memories. I'm going this way. You're going this way. Here's the key. Bye. And she was disappointed in me. I mean, honestly, I think that's what was hard for me. She was angry. She was angry that I didn't want to go with her.

But not angry to the point of like, if she saw me the next day, she would have probably been like, oh, you missed this great party, you know? She wouldn't have been angry with me as in like, I never want to talk to you again. It wasn't like that. Angry or not. Margarita handed her room key to Kristen and turned and walked up Monte Vista Place, back towards California Boulevard. Kristen walked the opposite direction, to Foothill Boulevard, towards Crandall Way.

I left her by herself knowing that she was not going to go home until she tried every avenue to find a social outlet that night. She just wanted to have a social outlet that night. And she was not going to give up. While she had no idea that it would be the last time she ever saw her friend, guilt has weighed on Margarita in the years since. And she didn't come back. It didn't take Kristen long to find the party she was looking for. A little after 10pm...

just a tenth of a mile from where she split from Margarita. She walked into a birthday party being thrown by members of the Kappa Chi fraternity for a senior named Ryan Swampy Fell and his friend Tom Gore. at 135 Crandall Way. Like a lot of people, I initially had the impression that Kristen had been at a crazy frat party.

with shirtless guys doing keg stands and punching each other in the face. But that's not exactly right. About 20 people were invited to Swampy Fell's party. That's his nickname, Swampy. But several people filtered in and out. like Kristen. What happened inside is a little hard to discern. The people who attended have been notoriously tight-lipped in the years since, talking only to investigators in the immediate aftermath of the party, and never publicly.

Part of the reason for this is that a lot of people present were members of Kappa Chi, and college fraternities have a code of silence involving incidents that could get their charter revoked. In 2002, Sigma Chi pledge Brian Gillis died in his Stinner Glen apartment, the same complex that Kristen lived in during her first quarter at Cal Poly. GHB, or gamma hydroxybutyrate, sometimes referred to as the date rape drug, and the main ingredient in a concoction known as fatorade.

was found in his system, which he was believed to have ingested at a Sigma Chi party the night before. When his roommate found him in the morning, he had asphyxiated on his own vomit. After the news broke, members of Sigma Chi drove up to Lake Nassimiento to have what they referred to as a roundtable discussion, fueling speculation that they were trying to get their stories straight as a way to cover up their involvement.

Cal Poly's Sigma Chi chapter lost its charter four months later and was ordered to pay over $350,000 as the result of a wrongful death suit filed by Brian's parents. In December 2008, another Cal Poly freshman named Carson Starkey died of alcohol poisoning after a hazing incident by Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Before calling paramedics hours later, Fraternity members removed Carson's pledge pin in an attempt to hide their association.

When asked why charges took so long to be filed, the San Luis Obispo police chief blamed a lack of clear and open cooperation by the fraternity throughout the investigation. Their charter was later suspended. Outside of that reasoning, I've encountered a lot of hesitance that I can't explain. Even when I reached out to party attendees who were not members of the frat.

Some of them blocked me on social media, and others tried to severely downplay how much of the party they could remember, even though I only contacted them after hearing from their own friends that they had shared very vivid stories about being there. Since the party is such an important detail in Kristen's case now, I really want to talk to someone who was there, so I'm not just trying to stitch together two or three unverifiable details that have been rumored over the last 20 years.

But how am I even going to find out who was there that night, if none of them will ever talk? It's important to explain here that Kristen's case has never been declared cold. Even though it's gone unsolved for 23 years, a case is only considered cold when law enforcement decides that they've exhausted all of their leads. Early on in researching this story,

I traveled to the San Luis Obispo courthouse to request any records on the case that I'm legally allowed to see, and I find out pretty quickly that it's mostly a dead end. Because the investigation is still considered ongoing and active, None of the documents or evidence are disclosable to the public. But what the clerk is able to give me essentially turns out to be a table of contents of those non-disclosable items.

paperwork from a previous legal effort to get a hold of these documents, which I'll talk about in later episodes. The list is pretty insightful, but incredibly frustrating to go through, to see the titles of reports I'm not allowed to read, with descriptions like, Supplemental Report Regarding Underwear, and Memo Regarding Pizza Cart. On page 17, there's a list of initials that each read Report of Contact. Towards the top of the page is Report of Contact with RF, Ryan Swampy Fell.

After verifying the initials of four other known attendees of the party, who I'll mention a little later, I'm able to confirm that this whole page is a list of people who were interviewed in the aftermath of Kristen's disappearance. most of whom had seen her on the night of May 24th. And, with the aid of social media, I start sifting through friend lists, looking for matches to those initials.

double-checking them with sites like LinkedIn to confirm whether or not the people I'm finding attended Cal Poly in 1996, and then, each time I feel strongly that I've located another attendee, using their friend lists to search for more. One of the easiest sets of initials to fill in is TB, because Trevor Belter came forward in 2013 on an episode of True Crime with Aphrodite Jones to say that he was at the party that night with his best friend Dominic.

who was a member of Kappa Chi. When the word gets out that I'm working on a documentary about this case, I find out that Trevor Belter and I actually have a mutual friend in San Luis Obispo. And she hooks me up with his phone number.

Hey, Chris, it's Trevor. Um, you know, I'll be, I'll be honest with you. Usually, uh, nowadays I don't talk to people, uh, because I've told, I've told my story and, but like, I love podcasts and you're a friend of April. So I'm happy to talk to you. I'll give you the whole scoop. I really can't answer the great questions like what happened that night. So I do have like...

a certain level of a story that I think could be important to you. So here's a question for you right now. Am I being recorded? Yes. Okay. Is that okay? Do you want me to stop? No, no, no. Totally fine. I mean, I get it with a podcast. Why don't you tell me about what you're working on and maybe how I can help illuminate the story for you? I let Trevor know, not so subtly, that my equipment for recording in-person interviews is a lot fancier than my equipment for recording over the phone.

So come down to LA. I'd love to see you. Just like that, I make a plan to drive down the following Thursday, but I let him know that I'm kind of surprised by his willingness to talk so openly after years of not talking. And he's honest with me. He's had a few cocktails tonight, but he's still willing to commit to meet in person.

You know, we could, we could set up and we could just, you know, podcast and just, you know, you just ask me the questions and I'll, I'll tell you, but I just want to make sure that like you understand my perspective on things so you can. Look, I just want you to tell the right story, right? I want it to be the best of your angle. Look, I think we'll have a great conversation on Thursday, you know, and I'll have my wits about me and I won't be all fucking buzzed. We'll have a great time.

He texts me his address, and I put it on my calendar. Great talking to you, great meeting you. Bye. Trevor is important to the story. not just because he can give me insight into what Swampy Fell's party looked like and who else was there, but also because he talked to Kristen, several times at the party.

The following Thursday, I'm driving on the Los Angeles freeway to Trevor's house in bumper-to-bumper traffic. My car broke down a week before, and while it's in the shop, the only car available to rent... was a white 2019 Mustang convertible. I'm a little embarrassed that this is going to be his first impression of me, but it's better than postponing our meeting.

When I pull up in front of his house, the car projects a lit-up Mustang logo onto the street from my side-view mirror. I'm not sure what the purpose of this feature is, except to add insult to injury. Okay, cool. You're all sealed up? You're in for the hound. That's Friday. That's Fox. We sit down in his office, which is covered in every type of Beatles memorabilia you can imagine.

Records, toys, autographs, and a series of giant wall panels that make up their faces. Trevor's dog, Fox, an American Eskimo, sits on the floor in front of him. You'll hear him panting every once in a while. Can I be talking? Hi, my name is Trevor Belter. I am 43 years old. Fox. Let me know if this is going to drive you nuts. If this is going to be problematic. Would you lay down?

where he gets all that energy. All right, so Dominic had told me early in her day, he's like, hey, Swampy's having his birthday party. We're having a small get-together at the Crandall house. And my memory serves me that I got there around 10, 10, 15. And Kristen Smart was already there. So it wasn't a big party. Do you just want me to continue with the story? You have to estimate how many people.

Well, when I walked in there, I would think maybe there wasn't more than like 12 or 15. I mean, it was not a lot. And at the most... Well, then at the most towards the end of the night, right around the time when I last saw Kristen before she went inside, it doubled or if not quadrupled. So it was between like 30 and like 45 people. I just remember there was a ton of people outside in the backyard. Fish would have been playing.

It would have been a lot of fish. It probably would have been Grateful Dead. It probably would have been Dave Matthews, I would think. But definitely, that house is a big jam band house. They liked the dead. They liked fish. It wasn't your hits of the day. It wasn't like, you know, like Hootie and the Blowfish or whatever it was at the time or Seal or whatever. No, it would be definitely like Allman Brothers.

Grateful Dead, Fish, primarily Fish. Those guys all, to this day, they all love Fish. So that would have been what was playing. When you walk into the Crandall house there, when you walk in to the left, there was a pool table. So there's a pool table right there.

And then there was a little half bar. It was like a bar. And there were like two or three stool seats. I remember for sure there's two seats. There might have been three stools. So I see my friends and they're like, hey, do you want a beer? And I think my memory is that. I had a Budweiser. So I would have been sitting first, stool, and then Dom sitting next to me. So I walked in, and I didn't even notice Kristen, right? She walks over.

And this is exactly how this happens. So she walks over. She is wearing vinyl shorts. She's wearing a midriff shirt. Obviously, she's very, very pretty. Okay? She walks up to me. I think she might have said, hi, I'm Roxy. And I went, hi. And then she kisses me. Like full on in the mouth with tongue. Like full on kisses me. And I'm like, huh? She grabs my hand and takes me to the bathroom. And I'm like, I had heard stories about the Crandall.

way bathroom that like you know crazy crazy sex happens there i was like oh my god am i gonna be one of those stories i don't know who this girl is oh my god you know she pulls me in there and i remember it was dark for a second and then she finds the lights and she immediately walks over to the mirror and starts

smoothing out her makeup and she says, do you think I'm ugly? I'm like, no. And then I started to like look at her and she's like the way she was like, but do you think I'm ugly? Do you think I'm ugly? And I'm like, no. And I was starting to get more of a sense of who this girl was. And I'm like, okay, there's no shenanigans that are going on in here.

And she goes, okay, I have to go. I got to use the bathroom, okay? And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. I'm like, I don't even know how I got here. Trevor thinks Kristen's only motivation for pulling him into the bathroom was to make another guy jealous. Almost as soon as the door had closed, she asked him who she should hook up with, a tall basketball player who Trevor had been talking to when she approached him, or another guy who he didn't know at all.

It's not what Trevor was hoping for, and he's not about to give up that easily. I go, well, I'd pick me, right? This is the first thing I see. She goes, uh-huh, yeah. You know, while she's doing her makeup. And I'm like, okay. So Kristen's clearly not interested in doing anything more with Trevor. According to him, nothing else happened, and Kristen kicked him out after about a minute.

So I go and I sit down at the stool and Dom is like, dude, what is going on with Vinyl Chick? And that's the guys at the party are calling her Vinyl Chick because she was wearing vinyl shorts. Actually, polyester most likely, based on everything I've learned. Roxy Quicksilver brand board shorts. Not all that unusual for Cal Poly and May, but the guys at the party certainly noticed, referring to them variously as vinyl, nylon, spandex,

bicycle shorts, even a black skirt in early news reports. Much of the early investigation focused on Kristen's appearance and behavior at the party. Trevor had one more encounter with her before he left that night. out in the backyard. She comes up again and they're all, leave him alone. Leave him alone, Roxy. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. She's like, please talk to me. And that's now she's like really like inebriated.

She goes, come back here and talk to me. And she's like, he hates me. And I'm like, no, no. She's referring to the basketball player who she apparently had tried to flirt with, but had been rebuffed by. And then I said to her, I'm like, geez, you know, dude, what is your sign? Because I was in astrology. I was 20. And she goes, Pisces. I go, hey, I'm a Pisces. What's your birthday? February 20th. And I go, whoa, Roxy, that's my birthday. I said, we share the same birthday with Kurt Cobain.

Really? I go, yeah. And then she grabs me by my face. She grabs me by my ears and pulls me in for a kiss. Quick, not a good kiss. And it was, I pushed her back. I was like, no, no, no, we don't. We don't have to do that or something. And she goes, eh, like another rejection. And she turns around, walks up, and she walks into the house, and it's the last I ever saw her. Trevor walks home around midnight, stopping for a donut and a pint of milk at Donut Stop.

in the California and Taft Plaza, before getting back to his place on Toro Street around 1 a.m. According to the list of investigative documents, law enforcement interviewed Trevor on three separate occasions. as recently as 2005. That's probably because they found his trip to the bathroom with Kristen a little suspicious and wanted to follow up on it. Or because, like me, they found him willing to talk and eager to help.

From the parking lot where she separated from Margarita, determined to find a party even if she had to go alone, to the forward way she introduced herself to Trevor, a picture starts to emerge for me. A picture of a girl who's stuck in a school that she doesn't feel like she belongs at. A girl who introduces herself to everyone as Roxy. It's not really clear whether she borrowed that name from her Stockton friend.

or from the Roxy Quicksilver shorts she was wearing that night. A girl whose freshman year is almost over, who can't wait to be back in Hawaii and to find some way to transfer to a school on a tropical island. And to deal with it all, she's trying her hardest to be recognized. To stand out from the crowd. To break out of her shell. To appear bold and confident, even if she doesn't feel that way on the inside.

It's definitely not the best night of her life, but it's probably not the worst either. She just needs to get back to her dorm. When Swampyfell's party comes to a close at around 2am, A group of students pours out of the front door to start walking back to campus. A freshman named Cheryl Anderson has been ditched by a friend who was supposed to walk her back to her dorm, so another student named Tim Davis offers to escort her.

While they're standing around in the front yard talking to friends, Tim notices Kristen lying on the neighbor's lawn, at 137 Crandall Way, and helps her to her feet. He tells her she needs to leave, but it's clear that Kristen is very intoxicated now, and unable to walk on her own. So Tim tells Cheryl that they need to take Kristen back to her dorm too, and the three of them head towards campus.

A little ways up the road, a third student named Paul Flores catches up to them. He's also heading back to the Red Bricks and offers to help them, wrapping an arm around Kristen's waist to hold her up. From 135 Crandall Way, The walk back to the dorms is about a half mile. It's the route you heard me walk in the beginning of this episode. Along Campus Way, behind the Health Services Building, up Via Carta, and right on Perimeter Road.

Tim Davis' car is parked in a campus lot, so he breaks with the group to turn left on perimeter. Cheryl's dorm, in the Sierra Madre Towers, is down Grand Avenue. So rather than walk up towards Muir Hall with Kristen and Paul, she asks him to make sure that Kristen gets back to her room and says goodnight. Paul stops instead at the pathway of his own dorm, Santa Lucia Hall.

which is closer, and watches Kristen walk by herself the 40 or so yards up the path to Mirror Hall, and they both go to their respective rooms, alone. At least, That's what he tells the police. Next time.

You've been listening to Your Own Backyard, Episode 1, A Face on a Billboard. Your Own Backyard is written, produced, and hosted. by Chris Lambert. Associate producer is Alexandra Wallace. Special thanks to Dennis Mann, Peter King, Nicholas Winery, Candice Vanderplass, Derek Payne, Jamie Lewis, Garen Sinclair, Sandy Arnold, April Cole Worley, Carrie Quimby Zenich, Alyssa Brigham, Kaylin Pope, Sydney Brandt, Olivia DiGennaro, Dallas Bronson, Giovanna Sarnicola, and Matthew Frank.

If you feel that you have information that could help law enforcement with their investigation, you can directly contact San Luis Obispo Sheriff's Detectives at 805-781-4500. Want to reach out to us directly? Send an email to yourownbackyardpodcast at gmail.com To keep up with new episodes, subscribe to your own backyard on Apple Podcasts and follow us on Facebook or Instagram. Original music is by Chris Lambert.

Want to help keep Kristen's memory alive? You can donate to the Kristen Smart Scholarship at kristinsmart.org or by shopping at smile.amazon.com and selecting the charity Justice for Kristen. How do you feel about me doing this? Is this a little bit of an invasion? No, because we've done many interviews in this room, and usually we have the television people arrive, and then they have to reorganize our room.

So this is less intrusive, just doing an audio, et cetera, et cetera. So, no, I'm comfortable with that, and I think you're doing a fine job, and we really appreciate what you're doing. So I'd be happy to help you any way I can. Yeah, it's interesting having a young person like yourself doing this.