Faith Hedgepeth was a UNC sophomore when she was killed on Sept. 7, 2012. Her murder was unsolved until Sept. 16, 2021, when Chapel Hill police made an arrest in her case. The murder trial begins Sept. 28, 2026. Here’s ongoing coverage about Hedgepeth and the case.
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Content warning: This story contains some content that may be upsetting to some readers.
The Faith Hedgepeth murder trial continued Monday with an expert witness in sexual assault, followed by a former Chapel Hill investigator with cell phone expertise and the lead investigator taking the stand.
It was a marked contrast from graphic crime-scene photos shown to jurors on Friday and a video of the apartment on the Durham-Chapel Hill border where the 19-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill student was bludgeoned to death Sept. 7, 2012.
Miguel Salguero Olivares, the man accused of Hedgepeth’s murder, looked away, covering his face with his hand, when the images of her body appeared on the screen.
Chapel Hill evidence technician Tamika Price also testified Friday about police missteps, including a failure to search some areas of the apartment and possible blood evidence that later went missing.
Genetic genealogy led to Salguero Olivares’ arrest in 2021. He has no prior criminal convictions and no known connection to Hedgepeth. He has pleaded not guilty to murder, rape and burglary.
Chapel Hill Police Capt. Johnnie Britt, the lead investigator in the case, testified that the first officer at Hedgepeth’s Hawthorne on the View apartment smelled alcohol on her roommate Karena Rosario’s breath. Rosario and a friend Marisol Rangel were “pretty distraught,” Britt said.
Britt arrived a short time later, finding the apartment messy and blood splatter on the bedroom wall, she said. Hedgepeth’s clothing from the night before was in the dining room area, she said, and a white bag on the bed seemed out of place. On the bag was a handwritten note: “I’M NOT STUPID B****” and “JEALOUS.”
Britt recalled interviewing Rosario and Rangel at the scene, along with other people who arrived while police were there, she said. Rosario’s ex-boyfriend Eriq Takoy Jones IV showed up, as did Jordan McCrary, who had picked up Rosario earlier that morning.
“Some people made it a little easier for us because they just kind of showed up,” Britt said.
She also described a photo of Hegepeth’s car parked in front of her building with an open gas cap, and how she returned to the complex later to follow up with neighbors.
She was not involved with collecting evidence nor did she supervise those technicians, Britt said on cross-examination. But DNA results returned a few weeks later from the State Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab gave investigators their first clue to the male suspect, she said.
Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory allowed her to continue despite objections from defense attorney James Rainsford, who argued prosecutors were skipping over testimony about how the evidence was collected and processed.
The DNA results marked “a massive undertaking for us,” Britt continued, because Hedgepeth was very likeable and into a lot of activities. They started looking at the people around her: in her classes, at work, her apartment complex, and the club she visited hours before her murder.
They obtained hundreds of DNA samples over two years, but didn’t find a match, she said.
Rainsford pushed Britt on the result of police interviews with Hedgepeth’s downstairs neighbor, who reported hearing noises from upstairs early that morning, and with Jones. Britt said Rangel told her Rosario had a domestic violence protective order against Jones, but Britt didn’t have any interaction with him, she said.
McCrary later left her a voicemail regarding his conversation with Rosario about blood on her hand when he picked her up. He was called in for an interview, Britt said, without elaborating, and an SBI investigator tested the car.
Gregory dismissed court shortly before 5 p.m. Britt is expected to return to the witness stand at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.
The prosecution played two clips totaling about an hour of a 2 1/2-hour interview with Rosario, on Sept. 8, 2012, at the Chapel Hill Police Department.
In the video, Rosario is questioned about what she and Hedgepeth were doing before the murder when they went to an off-campus party and then to a library on the UNC campus. Hedgepeth left for about an hour, Rosario said in the video. She later learned that Hedgepeth had visited a male friend before returning to the library.
The women then went to the Chapel Thrill nightclub and returned to their apartment around 3 a.m., Rosario told the investigator.
Hedgepeth went to the bedroom they shared at the apartment after bringing a trashcan to Rosario in the bathroom because she had gotten drunk and got sick, Rosario said.
Rosario called McCrary to come pick her up and told Hedgepeth she was leaving around 4:25 a.m. She did not go into the bedroom, Rosario said.
She left the apartment door unlocked, only taking her cell phone, she said.
The next morning, Rosario said she called Hedgepeth repeatedly for a ride, but after not getting an answer, she called Rangel, who returned to the apartment with her.
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The bathroom light was still on, Rosario told the investigator, and the sheets in the bedroom weren’t on the bed.
She didn’t see Hedgepeth until she walked to the other side of the bed, finding her wrapped in the comforter off the side.
She pulled off the comforter and saw blood on the pillow, Rosario said. Hedgepeth’s tampon was on the floor and her shirt was pulled up; she didn’t have any pants on, which was unusual, Rosario said.
“I didn’t think she was dead. I just thought she passed out. I don’t know why,” she told the investigator. Rosario and Rangel then called 911, she said.
“She wasn’t drunk, so I know she wouldn’t have just jumped in the bed that way,” she said.
Rosario said she didn’t remember a conversation with Jordan about blood on her hand after getting in his car.
Rosario said she didn’t see the Time-Out fast-food bag found at the scene when she found Hedgepeth, but a friend had bought her an egg and cheese biscuit from Time-Out earlier in the week. She had taken a bite, leaving the rest of the biscuit in the bag in her bedroom, she said.
Assistant District Attorney Angela Garcia-Lamarca did not question former Chapel Hill Police Department criminal investigator Bryan Walker about the video clips. Defense attorney James Rainsford asked about some texts and calls saved in Hedgepeth’s phone without a name. It’s possible they were contacts, Walker said.
Walker, an expert in cell phone and computer investigations, also testified briefly about how he gets information from cell phones.
Rainsford objected to Garcia-Lamarca’s questions, and the judge sent the jury out of the room for about 25 minutes. Rainsford argued that admitting the contents of Hedgepeth’s cell phone would bring in multiple levels of hearsay, which witnesses have not testified about. It could also violate Salguero Olivares’ due process, Rainsford said.
He also objected to testimony about a limited number of messages involving Rosario.
Garcia-Lamarca said the messages corroborate witness testimony, including by Rosario, that the jury heard last week.
Gregory overruled both objections, but Garcia-Lamarca said she would take “a safer course of action” and only ask Walker about cell phone records from Sept. 6-7, 2012.
The jury returned to the courtroom, but Gregory, after briefly consulting with the attorneys, dismissed them for lunch at 12:30 p.m.
Heather Waleski, a forensic sexual assault nurse with Atrium Health’s Child Protection Team, spent most of the morning describing how a typical sexual assault exam is conducted on a living patient.
It includes a visual scan of the body and clothing, as well as a scan using an “alternative light source” to show bodily fluids or chemicals, she said. A digital camera and swabs are used to collect DNA samples and high-resolution images.
Injuries from sexual assault typically appear on external genitalia or the cervix inside a woman’s body, said Waleski, who was not directly involved in the investigation but reviewed photos and a report from Hedgepeth’s post-mortem exam.
As the court was shown a photo of Hedgepeth’s genitalia, Waleski said there were no external injuries in the photo, but unfortunately, she said on cross-examination, the photo did not allow her to view all the potentially affected areas.
Still, the lack of findings in the report “is not inconsistent with sexual assault,” she said, nor does it rule out that the sexual contact was consensual, she added on cross-examination.
She also confirmed that she did not speak with the experts who conducted the autopsy and sexual assault examination, and she has no way of knowing when the DNA found on Hedgepeth’s body was left behind, she told defense attorney James Rainsford.
Defense attorneys met with prosecutors and Gregory in his chambers as court started Monday to discuss whether to allow the media and the public to access some of the evidence in the trial.
Gregory agreed to the request, but said some of the crime scene photos would remain sealed. He also ordered personal information contained in the documents, such as names and addresses, be redacted.
Prosecutors described Salguero Olivares, now 33, as a stranger to Hedgepeth who broke into the apartment after Rosario left around 4:20 a.m., beat Hedgepeth with a rum bottle, raped her and left her to die. They say DNA evidence links him to the crime.
Defense attorneys have questioned Rosario’s account of that night, pointing to the blood on her finger and raising questions about whether she was still in the apartment when Hedgepeth was killed.
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This story was originally published October 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM.