Investigators in California said they did not locate the remains of Kristin Smart at a property where earlier soil testing suggested the presence of human remains.
“We did not recover Kristin Smart,” the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Saturday afternoon. “Detectives will be evaluating any evidence we have recovered to aid in the investigation.”
Ms. Smart was a 19-year-old student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, who vanished after an off-campus party on Memorial Day weekend in 1996.
After more than two decades, her killer, Paul Flores, was arrested in 2021 and convicted of her murder in 2022. Investigators have continued to search for Ms. Smart’s remains. On Wednesday, the sheriff’s office began searching a property owned by Mr. Flores’s mother in Arroyo Grande, Calif., roughly 15 miles south of San Luis Obispo.
Orlando Mayorquín is a Times reporter covering California. He is based in Los Angeles.
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