Kristin Smart Was Found Passed Out at a Party, Then Never Seen Again: 'This Is Creepy'

'People Magazine Investigates' goes inside the case of 19-year-old Kristin Smart, who disappeared after attending an off-campus college party in 1996

On the Friday of Memorial Day weekend in 1996, Kristin Smart, a freshman at California Polytechnic University, set out with friends for a night of fun, later hanging out at an off-campus party until the wee hours. 

At around 2 a.m., the 19-year-old was found passed out on a neighbor's lawn, and two students, including one of Smart’s friends, offered to help her get back to her dorm, since she was unsteady on her feet. While they headed back to Muir Hall, where Smart lived during the school year, freshman Paul Flores volunteered to walk her home.

No one ever saw Smart again. The next afternoon, when Smart failed to show up for a study session, her friend alerted campus police, which didn’t begin fully investigating her disappearance until that Tuesday, when classes resumed.

Smart’s disappearance and the decades-long investigation that followed is examined in the upcoming People Magazine Investigates episode “Where Is Kristin Smart?,” which airs Monday, Nov. 18, at 9/8c on ID/Investigation Discovery and streams on Max. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

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Before Smart stepped out that night, she called her parents, Stan and Denise Smart, and left a message telling them that she and some friends were heading to a party. Having already lost her dorm key, she decided to leave her wallet and ID behind so she wouldn't lose anything else important.

The group went to one off-campus party, but Smart wasn't having fun. She was adamant that there were better parties to be found, but her close friend, Margarita Campos, who lived in the dorm next to hers, said she was done for the night. The two parted ways, but not before Campos loaned Smart the key to her dorm room.

The next morning, Campos woke up to study with Smart, who seemingly didn’t make it back to her dorm room.

“I was kind of looking forward to hearing what adventure she went on, but it was like noon and I didn't hear a knock and I knocked on her door,” Campos recalls in the clip. “Nothing. Like 1:30. Nothing. And I thought maybe she doesn't want to hang out with me because I left her.”

“But the next day when her roommate came back after Memorial weekend, I was able to go in her room and saw her wallet and campus ID,” Campos adds. “When I realized that she never came home from the night of the 24th, I was like, 'This is creepy.' So some of the girls and I called campus police.”

Authorities continued to investigate and tracked down Flores, the last person who saw Smart before she disappeared. But did he have the answers they needed to find Smart?

People Magazine Investigates: Where is Kristin Smart? premieres Monday, Nov. 18, at 9/8c on ID and streams on Max.