Content warning: this article contains mention of sexual assault and details some readers may find disturbing.
The Durham County trial over Faith Hedgepeth’s 2012 murder will pick up on Wednesday after a break in the action from the prosecution team finishing with its last witness on Monday.
With testimony stretching across nine days, Judge Keith Gregory granted the jury a day off on Tuesday — which also allowed defendant Miguel Salguero-Olivares and his lawyers time to prepare for presenting their own evidence and witnesses. The jury is trying to determine whether Salguero-Olivares is guilty of murdering and raping the 19-year-old Hedgepeth after breaking into the Chapel Hill apartment where she was staying with her friend on September 7, 2012. The case captured national attention for several years as law enforcement sought to identify a suspect in the case who, as investigators shared, left both DNA and fingerprints at the crime scene. Salguero-Olivares was arrested on the charges in 2021 with Durham County holding him in jail since.
Ahead of the defense’s presentation of evidence, here are highlights from the prosecution’s witness testimony and how proceedings wrapped up on Monday:
DNA, Fingerprint Evidence Suggest Salguero-Olivares Was in Apartment
The state’s team of Assistant District Attorneys Angela Garcia-Lamarca and Brooks Stone, as well as Homicide & Arson Resource Prosecutor Lisa Coltrain, laid out in their opening argument the DNA evidence as key to Salguero-Olivares’ guilt.
“He left his DNA on the murder weapon, a Barcardi rum bottle that was otherwise covered in blood,” Garcia-Lamarca told the jury on October 7. “He left his DNA on the boxer shorts Faith used to sleep in. He left her used, bloody tampon on the floor next to the bed after he pulled it out of her body. He left his DNA inside of her vagina — his semen, and his sperm. He left his DNA inside of her rectum — his semen, and his sperm.”
That evidence proved to be the most critical piece brought forward in testimony that ties the Durham resident to the scene of the crime in 2012, especially with investigators and friends of Hedgepeth saying they could not find any indication that she knew Salguero-Olivares. After interviewing and checking the DNA of nearly 300 people who either knew Hedgepeth or lived nearby, Chapel Hill Police investigators and the State Bureau of Investigation were no closer to identifying the profile present at the crime scene.
Latent print analyst Summer Maffett with the State Crime Lab testified on October 13 and 14 that in 2014, she found a partial left palm print and thumb print left on the blue Riesling wine bottle found in the bedroom where Hedgepeth was likely killed. The prints did not match anyone in the state’s database of fingerprints initially – but when asked to review them again in 2021, after Salguero-Olivares was arrested and fingerprinted following a drunk driving incident, Maffett made a positive identification. To help walk through her identification process, the prosecution brought out evidence for the latent print expert to display to the jury, as well as poster-boards of Salguero-Olivares’ palm print alongside the palm print found on the Riesling bottle.
A portion of the Crime Lab report generated by Summer Maffett in September 2021, showing the latent print collected in 2014 from the blue wine bottle (top) and the palm print collected from Miguel Salguero-Olivares after his arrest (bottom). The red dots, Maffett testified, are areas she determined as corresponding ridge events in both palm prints, leading to the identification of the two prints. (Photo via courtroom pool footage.)
Additionally, State Crime Lab DNA analysis expert Erin Ermish testified on October 14 and 15 that an unidentified DNA profile was found in semen in Hedgepeth’s body, as well as the bloody Bacardi bottle. But after Salguero-Olivares’ DNA was taken, Ermish later determined with a statistically-significantly high confidence that the unknown DNA profile matched his.
The prosecution also presented body camera footage from investigators who spoke with Salguero-Olivares on September 16, 2021 — the day he was arrested on murder charges — which depicted Salguero-Olivares twice denying either recognizing or having sex with Hedgepeth. Another video of Salguero-Olivares in jail on a video call was presented with the goal of highlighting a handwriting sample to compare to the note left on a white takeout bag near Hedgepeth’s body, although the prosecution did not call a handwriting expert to the stand.
Evidence Handling Looms Large in Testimony
It’s very common for trial witnesses to establish their expertise or baseline practices to the jury to help explain the facts in different cases. But with much of the defense’s opening argument focused on how evidence was handled and whether pieces are missing — a pivot from their initial approach of arguing third-party guilt — an emphasis was placed on the practices followed by Chapel Hill Police crime scene technicians and how evidence was handled by both the police department and State Crime Lab.
Chapel Hill Police Evidence Technician Tamika Price testified to how she processed the Hawthorne at the View apartment unit, taking photos of the crime scene and areas of interest to investigators in September 2012. She also discussed what she remembered swabbing for blood tests and DNA collection, sharing the proper procedures and how she recalled handling the evidence on what was her first homicide case to process — since Price had only started in the role just weeks prior to Hedgepeth’s death.
Both Price and her mentor, Shelethea Wright-Quick, testified to handling evidence in the best way to prevent any contamination, with Price also telling the jury she did not remember moving or manipulating Hedgepeth’s body in any way that would change the state she was found in. The State Crime Lab analysts also walked the jury through their processes of handling evidence, taking samples from areas to that would limit cross-contamination between departments and what to do if there’s a limited amount to be sampled.
One potential piece of evidence from Rosario and Hedgepeth’s apartment went missing for the investigators, however, which Salguero-Olivares’ defense team returned to frequently in their lines of questioning. The stain of a red substance on the bathroom doorframe was photographed by Price when processing the scene in September 8, 2012, and Wright-Quick testified she saw her colleague also swab the frame and put the sample into a box with other evidence being collected by police. But the swab could not be located when Chapel Hill Police began sending evidence to the crime lab, and was ultimately never tested. The defense pressed Price on where the swab could have gone and why it was not mentioned in her report of the crime scene until a revision was added in 2025, to which Price mainly testified that it was her first case and she would do things differently now. When asked whether she thought anything else from the crime scene was not processed correctly or missed, she said: “No, nothing else I recall or have observed in this case.”
Faith Hedgepeth, in an undated photo publicly provided by her family.
Other Questions Left Unanswered
Beyond what happened to the sample of the bathroom doorframe stain, several other questions still remain at the end of the prosecution’s case about what happened after Rosario left her apartment around 3:30 a.m. The final timestamp in the overnight hours is 3:40 a.m., when Hedgepeth’s phone sent an out-bound message to her friend Ty McNeil, saying she was thinking of him and that she loved him.
Critically, the prosecution had no witnesses that could provide evidence of Salguero-Olivares being at the apartment community the night of September 6, 2012 – nor establish any direct connections to those who lived there. Former tenant of Hawthorne at the View Luis Alfonso Lainez Lopez testified of holding a cookout with his family and friends in the Guatemalan immigrant community the night of the murder. Using a picnic table and grill right across the road from Rosario and Hedgepeth’s building, Lopez told the jury several people joined the party as it extended into the night — specifically recalling a friend-of-a-friend he did not recognize. But he did not remember or recognize Salguero-Olivares, and investigators also said some other witnesses in the case sought for testimony had moved back to Guatemala since 2012.
Those in Hedgepeth’s immediate friend group who testified — Rosario, Alexis Evans, Taaliv Cochrane, Marisol Rangel, as well as Jordan McCrary — all said they did not remember the slain college student mentioning a Miguel or Salguero-Olivares, nor did they recognize him from interactions before his arrest.
Investigators and the prosecution also did not lay out the timeline of when they became aware of Salguero-Olivares’ fingerprints and DNA being in the state’s database following a drunk driving charge in August 2021. Both Maffett and Ermish testified to checking the suspect’s identifying information against the evidence collected from the crime scene, but not who might have requested the procedures.
Miguel Salguero-Olivares in the courtroom during opening arguments of his trial on Wednesday, October 7, 2026. (Photo via courtroom pool footage.)
Judge Gregory Denies Defense’s Motion to Dismiss
After the state rested on Monday, Defense Attorney James Rainsford quickly moved to dismiss all charges against Salguero-Olivares, claiming the prosecution did not lay out the timing or enough evidence to sufficiently prove his client premediated a murder or raped Hedgepeth. He also continued to try and turn attention back to Rosario.
“I think the jury can look at the photos that are in evidence and form the opinion that it was a staged crime scene… that there was another theory to the case, [with] a blood trail leading to the bathroom from a person who got into a Lexus and left. [These elements] absolutely point away from any sort of premeditated or deliberate murder my client is accused of. We have no idea what time someone comes into an apartment…I just don’t see any premeditation or deliberation, I also don’t see a murder.”
Meanwhile, Coltrain said the fact “unequivocal” DNA evidence puts Salguero-Olivares at the crime scene crosses the necessary threshold to have the trial continue.
“I think there’s evidence of premeditation and deliberation…there’s case law that says P+D can form between the shots of a gun,” the prosecutor said. “And if that can happen, it can certainly happen when you go in and you arm yourself with a heavy bottle and strike someone as violently as Faith was attacked. In addition to P+D, the state clearly has evidence to move forward on a felony murder conviction.”
“The motion to dismiss is noted for the record, respectfully,” Gregory said immediately afterward. “That motion to dismiss is denied.”
With that ruling, the trial will resume on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. with Gregory saying he will colloquy — or hold a public discussion — with Salguero-Olivares and the defense team before they begin their presentation of evidence.
Featured image via the courtroom press pool.
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