Monday marks the beginning of jury selection in the long-awaited trial for Miguel Salguero-Olivares, the suspect in the long-standing investigation over Faith Hedgepeth’s murder. Questions in the community still swirl about the 19-year-old’s death in 2012, which sent the Chapel Hill community down a rabbit hole of speculation and attention. The court proceedings will unfold in Durham County under the prosecution of the Durham County District Attorney Santana Deberry’s office and is set to last many weeks.
Here are details from the incident and resulting investigation to know as the trial gets underway:
2012
The trial will look to explain the mystery of what happened in the early morning hours of September 7, 2012. Faith Hedgepeth and her roommate, Karena Rosario, returned to their apartment off Old Durham-Chapel Hill Road after being out at The Thrill nightclub. Rosario left around 4 a.m. with a UNC student and returned around 11 a.m. to find Hedgepeth hanging off her bed, beaten to death. Chapel Hill Police took the lead on the investigation, eventually reporting an empty and bloody Bacardi rum bottle found in the room as the murder weapon. Rosario was questioned several times by investigators but was never charged for any involvement in Hedgepeth’s death. A note seemingly scribbled onto a white takeout food bag and insinuating jealousy added to the open-ended clues.
Faith Hedgepeth, in a photo publicly provided by her family in 2012.
The loss of a 19-year-old UNC student, the description of the crime scene to the public, and the lack of any immediate arrests drew attention and concern around what happened. In the following years, investigators slowly unsealed more information from the crime scene to inspire anyone to come forward with information but drew no critical leads. It was later revealed that police pulled DNA from 52 pieces of case evidence and cross-referenced those samples with more than 200 others to rule out potential suspects.
2021
It was not until 2021 that one of those DNA samples from Hedgepeth’s apartment suddenly received a match. 28-year-old Miguel Salguero Olivares, who was living in Durham at the time, was arrested in Wake County that August for driving while impaired and a DNA sample was put on record. Authorities issued an arrest warrant when he didn’t show up for his initial court appearance – which then coincided with when state and Chapel Hill investigators sought Olivares for additional DNA samples after it matched with evidence from the Hedgepeth case. Law enforcement eventually arrested him on September 16, 2021, with Chapel Hill Police holding a press conference to announce the connection to the 2012 investigation.
Olivares has remained in the Durham County jail since then, and is charged with first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, first-degree rape and first-degree sexual offense. He moved to the U.S. as a child with his mother from Guatamala and worked as a painter and drywall installer, according to the News & Observer.
Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares, following his arrest in 2021. (Photo via the Durham County Sheriff’s Office.)
2026
Olivares, who is now a 33-year-old, pleaded not guilty to the charges this August to set up the jury trial, which has been going through several pre-trial motions and hearings.
Orange and Chatham County District Attorney Jeff Nieman is familiar with the case from it happening in the community – but is not the office trying it, since Hedgepeth’s murder happened just over the county line in Durham. But he spoke with 97.9 The Hill last week to help preview the trial and the legal approach.
Chiefly, Nieman said this delay in court action – five years – between an arrest and the start of a murder trial is not particularly unusual. While it is an undoubtedly long gap, he said the complicated nature of the evidence and case itself likely contributed to the wait for Olivares to face a jury.
Nieman said the results of last week’s evidentiary hearing are reflective of some of the defense’s tactics calling into question how the initial crime scene and investigation were handled. That includes the focus on a blood sample from 2012 that was lost by local police.
“I’ve had things like that happen,” Nieman said. “It doesn’t happen often, and it is a problem when it does. But for it to become a major problem for the prosecution, the defense needs to show that it was done in some way either intentionally or maliciously. And the judge found that was not the case in this – the defense moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that evidence was lost, and that was denied.”
Additionally, Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory ruled against bringing in evidence to inculpate Hedgepeth’s roommate, Rosario, which the defense spent hours on during last Monday’s hearing. It will limit just how much lawyers can argue Rosario’s involvement to the jury, with Gregory saying the decision came down to a lack of evidence of why it would exonerate Olivares. Nieman said this distinction is important in North Carolina law.
“People out there probably say, ‘Well, if there’s evidence somebody else did it, the jury ought to hear it,’” the Orange County district attorney said. “Well, the judge needs to first hear that there’s enough evidence that it’s a fully credible allegation it was someone else. Because if not, then the argument would be jury could be confused by the pointing fingers in all directions when really the question here is whether the defendant in this case is guilty.”
Ultimately, what could the results of the trial hinge on? Nieman said he believes it’s the reason why Olivares was arrested seemingly out of the blue.
“The DNA evidence seems to be the key,” he said. “That seems to be the answer to [why] there was a nine-year delay between when the offense happened and the arrest. That was because they got a DNA hit.
“On the other hand,” Nieman added, “the waning of time is going to make difficult for witnesses to testify as clearly as they would if it had happened closer [to Hedgepeth’s death]. And so, my guess is the key is going to be in the faith the jury has in the DNA [related] testimony and evidence.”
Rosario and Marisol Rangel — another friend of Hedgepeth’s, who returned to the apartment with Rosario on September 7, 2012 and saw the crime scene — are expected to take the stand as part of the trial. Among the pre-trial motions, Judge Gregory ruled that the pair do not qualify from an exception of no audio recording, video, or still photography during their testimony.
If found guilty of murder, Olivares will automatically be sentenced to life in prison. At the time of his arrest in 2021, Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry said she would not seek the death penalty in the case, which is consistent with her office’s philosophy around capital punishment.
Featured photo by Dakota Moyer/Chapel Hill Media Group.
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