Chris Lambert would love to make music again, but it seems like he can’t stop chasing a ghost that has been chasing him for almost 25 years.
A billboard along the California Central Coast Highway led him three years ago to deviate from his career as a singer-songwriter and recording engineer. He created a podcast about the disappearance of Kristin Smart, a freshman at the university, who took over his life.
“I can’t get away from it for more than a few days,” Lambert said. “I just sucked in again because I want to sort things out.”
It was an unlikely twist for someone who refers to himself as a shy “random bearded boy” and who has produced results he never imagined.
On Tuesday, while San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson announced the arrests, he credited Lambert with helping draw worldwide attention to the case and presented several key witnesses.
The longtime suspect, Paul Flores and Smart, were freshmen on the campus of California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo. Now 44, Flores was charged with murder in the murder of the 19-year-old while trying to rape her in the bedroom, prosecutors said.
His father, 80-year-old Ruben Flores, was charged with accessory after authorities said he helped hide the body, which has never been located.
Paul Flores’ lawyer declined to comment on the criminal charge. A Ruben Flores lawyer said his client was innocent.
Lambert has been put in the spotlight with the arrests. His eight-part series, “Your Own Backyard,” garnered 7.5 million downloads on Thursday and was the # 2 podcast on iTunes. Lambert’s phone has been exploding with messages from fans, informants and journalists. He appreciates the attention but has been overwhelmed.
“It drives me crazy,” he said, though he remained focused, patient and polite during a 45-minute interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday.
All the attention does not lead to any money: Lambert does not advertise the podcast, based on donations.
His is the latest in a line of real-life podcasts that play a role in an arrest, a court appeal, or even an exoneration.
“Up and Vanished” led a man to confess to killing a Georgia beauty queen, while “Serial” helped a convicted murderer win a new trial in Maryland. “In the Dark” unearthed new evidence in a case that prosecutors withdrew instead of seeking a seventh trial against a Mississippi man who spent decades on death row.
Lambert, 33, was just eight years old when Smart disappeared off the coast of his own home in the small town of Orcutt, about 225 miles northwest of Los Angeles. He was scared that someone had disappeared and no one knew what happened.
For more than two decades, a billboard with a photo of a smiling Smart announced a $ 75,000 reward. He is in the town of Arroyo Grande, where Paul Flores grew up and his parents still live.
Lambert approved of it many times and eventually motivated him to start researching.
“I thought I would give it a try and see if I could get some people to talk,” Lambert said. “All I have to do is get over my shyness and start calling these people out of nowhere and start asking really personal questions.”
He bought high quality recording equipment and started calling. He located wasted or reluctant witnesses who had not spoken to police, he said.
People opened up to Lambert and he encouraged them to contact the investigators for relevant information. Deputies began calling him to connect them with people he interviewed.
“What Chris did with the podcast was released nationwide to provide new information,” Parkinson said without delving into the new evidence. “It produced information that I think was valuable.”
A former colleague of Paul Flores ’mother, Susan Flores, told her that Mrs. Flores came to work after the 1996 Memorial Day weekend (when Smart disappeared), saying she didn’t sleep well because her husband he had received a phone call in the middle of the night and went to the car.
“It’s been speculated all along that Paul called his father in the middle of the night and his father came and helped him get rid of Kristin’s body,” Lambert said.
A tenant who lived for a year at Susan Flores’ house told her she heard a clock alarm every morning at 4:20 a.m. Smart had worked as a lifeguard at 5 a.m. in the Cal Poly pool, so that you might put the clock on to wake up. at that early hour.
“It looks like this is the time for the podcast series where most people have been completely shaken,” he said. “This may be evidence that Kristin was buried in the backyard or that her belongings were buried in the backyard.”
Susan Flores, who hung up when she was called by the AP, told KSBY-TV in March in the only interview she was granted that she could “shoot many holes at many (Lambert’s) lies.”
She said Lambert never got in touch with her. He said he sent an intermediary to his home and Susan Flores threatened to call police. His efforts to talk to Paul Flores were also unsuccessful, he said.
Lambert spoke with a former Australian exchange student at Cal Poly, who said he saw Flores and Smart fighting near where Smart was last seen. Lambert said investigators had dismissed the story during the early years of the investigation.
Lambert has developed a close relationship with the Smart family, which issued a statement after the arrest, praising his skills and “selfless dedication.”
He is grateful to have been close to the family. He feels he has met Kristin Smart, but he would like to have a chance to meet her.
“For most of my life, Kristin Smart has been a face on a billboard,” she wrote on Instagram. “I learned about Kristin, the daughter, Kristin, the older sister, Kristin, the friend, the neighbor, the roommate. Kristin the swimmer. Kristin the dreamer. And I’ve learned that you can miss a person you haven’t even met. “