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May 1996. California Polytechnic State University. A freshman named Kristin Smart walks home from a party and never arrives. No body. No arrest. For two decades, that's where it stayed.
Your Own Backyard, hosted by Chris Lambert, dug back into the case from his own hometown turf, re-interviewing witnesses, poring over old police reports, and putting new public pressure on a case that had gone cold enough to feel forgotten. Episode 01 opens with the image that haunted the town for years: Kristin's face on a billboard, a silent plea nobody could answer.
What Lambert's reporting helped surface wasn't just renewed attention — it was momentum. The podcast is widely credited with helping push investigators back into the case, and in 2021 Paul Flores was arrested and later convicted of her murder, with his father Ruben also charged in connection with the case. But the show's opening episode predates all of that. It drops you right into the uncertainty, the rumors, and the small-town suspicion that built for 25 years before answers came.
If you want to understand how a independent podcast helped crack open a quarter-century mystery, start from the beginning. Listen on Apple Podcasts and hear where it all started.
