Greater than 27 years after Cal Poly San Luis Obispo scholar Kristin Good disappeared, her household is suing the college, alleging that its police pressure ignored a number of studies of suspicious conduct by the Cal Poly scholar who would show to be her killer.
Paul Flores, who was the final individual seen with the 19-year-old Good after a Memorial Day weekend occasion in 1996, was convicted in October 2022 of murdering her. However her physique has by no means been discovered.
“There isn’t a query that Cal Poly failed our daughter, Kristin Good, in a number of methods earlier than and after her tragic homicide by Paul Flores,” the Good household stated in a press release Monday. “Had the college acted correctly, carried out an intensive investigation into Flores’ previous regarding conduct, and applied applicable disciplinary measures, Kristin would possible nonetheless be alive in the present day.”
Good’s mother and father, Stan and Denise Good, her brother, Matthew Good, and her sister, Lindsey Stewart, asserted within the Superior Court docket criticism that they didn’t absolutely comprehend the college’s failure till its president issued an apology in Might. Their lawsuit, filed Thursday, alleges negligence, wrongful demise and negligent infliction of emotional misery.
The swimsuit additionally alleges that the errors made by college police allowed Flores to rape different girls within the years after. The household is searching for unspecified damages.
“Cal Poly’s breaches of its authorized responsibility embody however aren’t restricted to the next: It didn’t pursue a lacking individual case promptly, didn’t interview witnesses well timed, didn’t seal the first suspect’s dorm room as against the law scene, allowed the suspect’s room to be sanitized and cleaned earlier than it was searched, and didn’t search the suspect’s room till sixteen days after Kristin disappeared,” attorneys for the household alleged within the lawsuit.
The college’s police pressure didn’t completely examine within the early phases, dismissing her disappearance and ignoring studies it possessed about Flores’ “threatening, stalking, and harassing conduct,” the lawsuit asserts. Kristin Good was final seen strolling towards her dormitory with Flores on Might 25, 1996.
“If Cal Poly had correctly acted on these studies, carried out an investigation, and appropriately disciplined [Flores], he wouldn’t have been on campus, and due to this fact wouldn’t have been capable of homicide Kristin,” the lawsuit alleged.
Good’s disappearance and the homicide investigation have haunted the Central Coast faculty group for many years, with billboards interesting for proof to convict her killer. She was legally declared lifeless in 2002.
Two of her buddies contacted the college’s police the day after she disappeared. However officers declined to take a report and advised her buddies they wished to attend till the Memorial Day weekend was over, based on the lawsuit. They advised Good’s mom that Kristin most likely went tenting, regardless of her mom’s insistence that it wasn’t like Kristin to take action, the lawsuit states.
In Might, Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong publicly said: “We’re very sorry for what the Good household has endured. What they’ve been by is unimaginably heartbreaking, and I really feel for them in methods I can’t categorical with phrases. Whereas it’s a completely different administration now than was in place in 1996, we acknowledge that issues ought to had been carried out in another way — and I personally want that that they had.”
The college has declined to touch upon the lawsuit, saying it doesn’t talk about ongoing litigation.
The lawsuit alleges that Cal Poly police had the next studies about Flores in its possession earlier than Good disappeared:
- In December 1995, a feminine Cal Poly scholar filed a college police report alleging Flores had been harassing her, together with climbing the trellis of the scholar’s house constructing to spy on her from her balcony. Cal Poly police apprehended Flores on the location and recognized him because the “offender,” the lawsuit alleges.
- In January 1996, Flores was reported for vandalizing Cal Poly grounds and property whereas intoxicated. That very same month, he was required to attend a “Mediation/Data Assembly” as a result of he had allegedly harassed a employees member on the college, based on the lawsuit.
- In March 1996, three feminine Cal Poly college students filed studies to school police accusing Flores of harassment and stalking. Based on the lawsuit, Flores repeatedly telephoned them for six weeks and stuffed their answering machine with silent hang-up calls. They, too, alleged that Flores had climbed on their balcony and tried to interrupt into their house in December 1995, based on the lawsuit.
As well as, the lawsuit alleges that in December 1994, Flores was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery, and Cal Poly’s police division had entry to the California Regulation Enforcement Methods database that features these information.
“After turning into conscious of 5 studies of Flores’ harassing, stalking, and violent conduct, any cheap college would have engaged in a disciplinary course of associated to Flores,” based on the lawsuit. “An affordable college would have expelled, or no less than suspended, Flores.”
The Smarts’ lawsuit stated Cal Poly’s failures allowed Paul Flores to sexually assault and harm a number of girls through the 25 years main as much as his April 13, 2021, arrest. Two of these girls testified they have been drugged and sexually assaulted in Los Angeles County in 2008 and 2011, respectively.
Robert Sanger, Paul Flores’ protection legal professional, concludes his case throughout closing arguments in Flores’ homicide trial on Oct. 5, 2022, in Monterey County Superior Court docket in Salinas.
(Laura Dickinson / San Luis Obispo Tribune)
Of their circumstances, the prosecutor famous Flores had supplied to provide the ladies rides dwelling after assembly them, solely to drug and repeatedly rape them at his home.
Flores is serving 25 years in jail. Final yr, a gaggle of scientists revealed knowledge that they are saying confirmed indications of human stays within the soil of his mom’s property.