Faith Hedgepeth was murdered 14 years ago. The mystery attracted local and eventually national attention after police found the UNC junior from Hollister, N.C., dead in her apartment on Old Chapel Hill Road in Durham in the late morning of Sept. 7, 2012.
Investigators insisted in the years that followed that the case had not gone cold, even as they kept the public largely in the dark.
Then in 2021, police arrested Miguel Salguero-Olivares for driving while impaired and connected him to Hedgepeth’s killing through DNA analysis. Salguero-Olivares, 33, faces charges for first-degree murder as well as burglary, sexual assault and rape.
It’s now one of the most anticipated local murder trials in the last decade. Ahead of jury selection next week, The 9th Street Journal delved deep into the case and a key pretrial decision.
The trial may finally quiet the seemingly ceaseless spiral of rumors and speculation. Here are some of the most pressing questions that still remain.
1.) Did Hedgepeth and Salguero-Olivares know each other?
In the early stages of the investigation, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit believed that the killer knew Hedgepeth and may have lived near her.
Salguero-Olivares was 19 years old at the time and had moved to the U.S. from Guatemala only two years prior. There is no record that he attended UNC, and it is unclear whether he was a student at any other university in the area. At the time of his arrest, he was living with his mother on Garrett Road in Durham, and he was working as a painter and drywall finisher, The News & Observer reported.
Karena Rosario, Hedgepeth’s roommate and friend, has said in interviews with police that she didn’t recognize Salguero-Olivares, but she also didn’t know all of Hedgepeth’s friends, according to evidence shared by defense attorneys in a pretrial hearing. Salguero-Olivares’ mother told WRAL in 2021 that she spoke with her son after his arrest, and he said he had never seen Hedgepeth.
2.) What motive would Salguero-Olivares have had to kill Hedgepeth?
Salguero-Olivares is the only person charged. If he had no prior connection to Hedgepeth, then why would he do it?
Although prosecutors are not required to prove a motive in their case in order to reach a conviction, they do have to prove to the jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Salguero-Olivares acted with intent.
3.) Were the crimes committed by just one person?
The autopsy report indicates that Hedgepeth died from blunt force trauma to the head. Police found her beaten and unclothed from the waist down. Given the extent of the harm and the lack of information about what occurred during the supposed time of the murder, could more than one person have been involved?
4.) Why is there still so much speculation around Hedgepeth’s roommate, Karena Rosario?
It’s nearly impossible to recount Hedgepeth’s death without mentioning Karena Rosario. The two roommates were together throughout the night of Sept. 7, according to the account Rosario told investigators, and Rosario reported the murder to police the next day. For the past 14 years, crime podcasters and pundits covering this story have pinpointed oddities in her account of the evening and questioned her relationship with Hedgepeth.
While prosecutors successfully blocked Salguero-Olivares’ defense attorneys from pinning the crime on Rosario, the defense has filed a motion to call in Rosario, now a New Jersey resident, as an out-of-state witness.
5.) What really happened between the time when Hedgepeth and Rosario returned home and when Hedgepeth was reported dead?
Hedgepeth and Rosario went to local nightclub The Thrill around 1 a.m. and returned home before 3 a.m. in Hedgepeth’s car, investigators reported. UNC soccer player Jordan McCrary then picked up Rosario at approximately 4:25 a.m., and Rosario spent the rest of the night with him.
Rosario has told investigators that she was vomiting in the apartment bathroom for much of the time between 3 a.m. and 4:25 a.m.. Around 3 a.m., a downstairs neighbor reported hearing “thumps” coming from the apartment. When Rosario departed with McCrary, she left the door unlocked and didn’t take a key with her. It’s unclear whether anyone else entered their apartment at Hawthorne at the View afterward.
6.) Were there other fingerprints and DNA on the scene not belonging to Salguero-Olivares?
Investigators analyzed more than 200 DNA samples over the course of the investigation before eventually finding Salguero-Olivares in 2021. The defendant’s DNA and fingerprints corresponded with samples taken from the murder weapon, Hedgepeth’s body, and elsewhere at the 2012 crime scene. But were there any other fingerprints or DNA present?
7.) What might the Chapel Hill Police Department have missed at the crime scene and in DNA testing?
In court hearings, we learned that some evidence from the case was lost, and other forensic evidence was never tested. Will that impact the case?
In addition to blood spots found in the bedroom, defense attorneys have drawn attention to red spots on the bathroom doorframe, around the sink, and in McCrary’s car. The defense filed a motion in July for an evidentiary hearing regarding these samples, specifically the nearly 2-inch long blood stain in the bathroom. Police and FBI officers on the scene had recommended the stain be tested, but investigators later couldn’t find it.
Judge Keith Gregory thought it was “absurd” that evidence was lost, but he doesn’t believe it was lost in bad faith, he said in a pretrial hearing.
8.) What is the meaning behind the cryptic messages collected as evidence?
An unknown author scrawled the three lines “I’M NOT STUPID BITCH JEALOUS” on a white take-out fast-food bag left at the crime scene. Investigators and crime watchers wondered whether the striking message was left by Hedgepeth’s killer or written by someone else as a sort of red herring, possibly even scribbled with the author’s non-dominant hand.
Rosario’s ex-boyfriend Eriq Jones was an early person of interest in the investigation due to messages he posted on social media leading up to and following the murder. He sent messages on Sept. 6 asking for forgiveness “for what he was about to do,” and he changed his Facebook profile picture three days after the murder to a similar statement asking God for forgiveness and protection “from the girls who don’t deserve me and the ones who wish me dead today,” WRAL reported. Jones’ DNA did not match samples collected at the crime scene, and he told CBS in 2021 that the continued suspicion caused him to lose opportunities and friends.
There’s also the matter of Hedgepeth’s phone, specifically a voicemail she left for a friend, assumed to be a pocket dial. The message was time stamped at 1:23 a.m., while she was reportedly still at The Thrill. Audio experts have claimed that they can hear multiple voices on the call. Next, two texts were sent from Hedgepeth’s phone, around the time investigators believe she died. The recipients of both messages told investigators they found the texts unusual for Hedgepeth, and the defense has questioned whether those texts were actually sent by Rosario.
9.) Why did we only hear one voice in the 911 call?
In the recording of the 911 call, a female voice, who introduces herself as Rosario, tells police about the horrifying scene in her apartment. Only one voice seems to be present in the room.
However, Rosario told investigators that she was with her friend Marisol Rangel when she found Hedgepeth’s body that morning, and Rangel recounted the experience in a 2016 interview on ABC News’ “20/20”. Is it possible, as some have speculated, that it was actually Rangel on the phone with police? Or if they were both there, why weren’t they both heard on the call?
10.) Why has this taken so long?
Investigators were ultimately correct in saying Hedgepeth’s case had not gone cold, not two years or even 14 years after she was murdered. But the exact methods of DNA analysis that police used to identify Salguero-Olivares ahead of his arrest remain opaque. Police also gave limited explanation for the gap between the murder charge in 2021 and the other three charges in 2024. As the trial finally plays out in 2026, a long-awaited resolution may finally arrive.
Sophie Endrud
