Posted on 09/07/2016 3:33:42 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Her disappearance sparked a massive manhunt, with searchers using helicopters, horses and an army of volunteers, and even ground-penetrating radar. She was never found and was presumed dead.
The cold case took a new twist Tuesday when the FBI and the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department announced they were excavating at three sites on a hillside near the dormitories. The search is centered on the giant “P” in a hillside sign that stands for Cal Poly. Officials said they picked the locations based on the activities of human decomposition dogs.
...
Sheriff’s investigators along with a specialized FBI team will spend four days digging up three sites. Parkinson said it was one of several locations to be examined but declined to discuss other places at this time.
Smart’s disappearance captivated San Luis Obispo. But it remains unclear whether this week’s dig will prove the break in the case that for years eluded authorities.
Officials were vague about what new information they might now have. Tony Cipolla, a sheriff's spokesman, said only that a tip led them to the area.
“The canines and other information led us to choose the three locations,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller added.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Sean Ragan said the dogs, two Springer spaniels and a German shepard mix, keyed in on the three areas after being brought to the site from the FBI’s Quantico facility. The dogs trained at Civil War battlegrounds and can find the scent of human decomposition, officials said.
...
Smart’s face still appears on a billboard in nearby Arroyo Grande, and her family has explored thousands of leads over the years in their search for the lean, 6-foot-1, high-cheekboned student. On May 25, 1996, the day she vanished, she wore a short-cropped T-shirt, running shorts and red athletic shoes.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
So three dogs and three different hits? Doesn’t sound too promising.
Or maybe too promising (more victims?)
Not to be morbid but she could be in several places
Hmmmm......wonder if Scott needs attention
The dogs trained at Civil War battlegrounds and can find the scent of human decomposition....
***
After all of these years,how much decomposition is still occurring?
The “P” is a very common hiking destination, that area would have been constantly trampled over. There is not a much vegetation to speak of that would be able to hide anything, either. A grave disturbs a lot of ground, and for it to remain undiscovered all these years it would have had to have been deep. Also not exactly practical to carry a dead body UP the side of a hill. Maybe they mean they’re looking somewhere below the P. Still, I’d think that area would have been searched and searched.
Pretty much anyone who knows anything about this case believes she was killed by the last guy she was seen with. He has never been able to be charged.
That’s just who I was thinking of!
Yep. I partied with the pros in SLOtown circa 69 - 72.
Nobody, but nobody is going to pass out on a lawn and
be found buried anywhere near that P. What has always
intrigued me is the idea that the killer might have
buried the body up on Cuesta Grade. There is too
much open space around the P even if you could manage
to pack the body up the hill.
I first heard about the excavations on the radio this morning. I was half asleep but this caught my attention because I remembered the news reports from twenty years ago and I recalled the underlying anxiety when my daughter prepared to enroll at Cal Poly.
Cal Poly is a wonderful university, one of those seemingly unique places where you get so much more than mere money's worth. The quality of the educational program and the caliber of the students are first rate and the physical surroundings are non-pareil.
The central coast is one of the gems of California. The beaches are beautiful. Cayucos, to the north is a beach town straight out of the fifties, Moro Bay is a working harbor with bbq'd oysters on the quay and a public golf course on the shore, the working man's Pebble Beach. Avila Beach seems to always be sunny, even when the rest of the shore is socked in with fog, Pismo Beach is a larger version of Cayucos, with one foot in the past but big enough to support many nice restaurants. If your idea of beach life includes dune buggies, sand rails and quads then there's Guadalupe Dunes.
The town of San Luis Obispo is a destination in itself, an older, well preserved downtown, great eating, and surrounded by rolling hills with scattered oaks, ranches, and too many vinyards and wineries to count, each with it's own tasting room.
I relate the foregoing only to communicate the heavy burden of tragedy against such a backdrop. To those involved there is no greater depth of heartbreak but to those of us who are only onlookers the pain is all the more sharply drawn in relation to its idyllic background.
Where is Kristin Smart? 19 years later, Cal Poly student still missing - May 28, 2015 - Mustang News California Polytechnic State University
Kristin Smart.com - Scroll down, it just keeps getting creepier and creepier.
“but to those of us who are only onlookers the pain is all the more sharply drawn in relation to its idyllic background. “
—
I cannot imagine the pain being worse because of an idyllic background.
It’s unimaginable no matter where it takes place.
.
.
When was the last time you were emotionally pulled into the circumstances of the death of any resident of any one of America’s ghettos?
But murder in the ghetto is all too commonplace!
I wasn’t talking ghettos,I was talking plain,middle of the road neighborhoods without the spectacular scenery that you described.
The type of places in which most of us live.
.
Commonplace? Not really.
Not every ghetto is Chicagostan.
From the looks of where they are digging, they are in the ravine areas at the base of the hill and stuff like that. Reachable, but many of those areas under the trees at the base of the hill there were frequent party spots. It’s a lot more plausible than by the P itself, but still busy. I can’t see a grave going unnoticed, and where was he going to get a shovel? They searched that area like crazy after she disappeared, everyone immediately suspected that’s where he’d have taken her if she didn’t end up in his parents’ backyard. I can’t believe they wouldn’t have found anything that might ever have been there.
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