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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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After nearly nine days of testimony, prosecutors and defense attorneys in the Faith Hedgepeth murder made their closing arguments Thursday.
Prosecutors are trying to convince jurors that Miguel Salguero Olivares raped and fatally beat the 19-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill student in 2012. For the first time, they presented their theory of what happened that morning, describing a possible scenario not established through witness testimony or other evidence.
Salguero Olivares has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, rape and burglary. His defense attorneys challenged the state’s evidence and argued that police had tunnel vision for him and that prosecutors failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
The jury began deliberating shortly after 3 p.m.
Attorneys for Salguero Olivares argued that police developed tunnel vision after linking their client to the crime scene, ignoring evidence that pointed to Hedgepeth’s roommate, Karena Rosario. They also criticized the investigation and questioned the prosecution’s theory of what happened.
Defense attorney Jason Murphy questioned why police placed so much emphasis on Salguero Olivares’ initial insistence that he did not know Hedgepeth when they first approached him in 2021.
Why didn’t investigators consider that Salguero Olivares was 19 at the time and might have been living a similarly promiscuous lifestyle to the one Rosario and other witnesses described, he asked.
“Why wouldn’t he be going out and sometimes having too much to drink, forgetting things?” Murphy asked, including intimate encounters police questioned him about nine years after Hedgepeth’s death.
Murphy also said sperm can remain viable for up to 10 days and argued that semen on bedsheets could have been transferred to other items on the bed.
He questioned why investigators accepted Rosario’s inability to remember saying she had blood on her finger after leaving the apartment the day of the murder but viewed Salguero Olivares’ statements with suspicion.
Defense attorney James Rainsford challenged the prosecution’s theory of the killing, saying there was no evidence, such as cellphone activity, that a group of people had gathered outside Hedgepeth’s apartment. He also questioned the claim that Salguero Olivares tampered with Hedgepeth’s gas cap, pointing out that it could only be opened from inside the car.
And he argued that it made little sense for his client to wait outside the apartment on the chance that Rosario might leave, giving him an opportunity to attack Hedgepeth.
Rainsford also questioned the reliability of the investigation, pointing to a State Bureau of Investigation agent who presented what he believed was a handwriting sample from Salguero Olivares’ laptop, only to later acknowledge that it was an internet meme.
For the first time prosecutor Angela Garcia-Lamarca outlined a possible motive for the killing.
She told jurors that when Hedgepeth and Rosario returned home from the club around 2:40 a.m., Rosario was drunk and Hedgepeth was taking care of her.
Across the street, a group of people associated with Salguero Olivares was drinking at a cookout that had started hours earlier at a neighboring apartment, the prosecutor said.
As Hedgepeth helped Rosario, who was sick, Salguero Olivares approached them. But Hedgepeth, protective of her roommate, shut him down, Garcia-Lamarca said.
“Are you stupid?” Hedgepeth responded, according to the prosecutor, who suggested Hedgepeth confronted him about approaching Rosario while she was drunk.
Salguero Olivares was “angry, humiliated” in front of his friends, Garcia-Lamarca said. She told jurors he then tampered with the gas cap on Hedgepeth’s car, unscrewing it and leaving it hanging.
The two women went upstairs to their apartment, but Rosario left around 4:20 a.m.
Salguero Olivares saw her leave and knew Hedgepeth was alone, Garcia-Lamarca said.
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“He was angry; he put that in the note,” she said. “This happened because he felt stupid.”
She added that while they can’t know for sure that this is what happened, “it doesn’t matter.”
When inside, Salguero Olivares beat Hedgepeth with a rum bottle, ripped her tampon out, pulled her clothes off and raped her, Garcia-Lamarca said.
Garcia-Lamarca went on to outline the different elements of the four crimes that the jury is considering: burglary, sexual assault, rape and murder.
Special prosecutor Lisa Coltrain told jurors that “the evidence in this case is louder than the noise” that surrounds the case.
Coltrain warned that Salguero Olivares’ attorneys are going to focus on the noise. Listen to evidence, she said. “What I don’t want you to do is get sucked into the noise,” she said.
Coltrain emphasized that the defense had presented no evidence, despite telling jurors during opening statements that they would hear from UNC professors, a neighbor who heard thumps coming from the apartment while Rosario was still there, and some of Salguero Olivares’ former girlfriends.
“Did you hear from one of them?” Coltrain asked the jury.
Coltrain also showed a video of the first time police approached Salguero Olivares in 2021 and asked whether he knew Hedgepeth.
He said over and over again that he didn’t know her, Coltrain said.
“Then how, sir, is your sperm inside her vagina?” Coltrain said to the jury.
Coltrain also pointed to a conversation Salguero Olivares had with his mother, during which he told her he had never seen Hedgepeth or brushed up against her.
During that jail conversation, Salguero Olivares, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala around 2010, told his mother he knew of the apartment complex and had visited with a relative but didn’t associate with any of the Guatemalans who lived there.
Coltrain highlighted another part of his denial: “I had not even realized that such trashy apartments existed.”
“I wonder what apartment he was talking about,” Coltrain said, alluding to the messy apartment Hedgepeth and Rosario shared.
Coltrain also addressed criticism of the investigation, including investigators’ inability to recall searching and collecting evidence in other rooms of the apartment, a lost blood sample collected from the bathroom door and the lead SBI agent mistakenly presenting a widely circulated meme as a writing sample from Salguero Olivares.
All of that is noise, Coltrain said. And it doesn’t negate the evidence prosecutors have, including the DNA that Salguero Olivares left on multiple items in the apartment.
“He left his DNA like confetti all over the room,” Coltrain said.
Coltrain also sought to counter defense suggestions that Rosario was involved in the killing, arguing that no evidence supports that theory.
Defense attorneys have pointed to what they described as a “trail of blood,” leading to Rosario, including a blood sample collected near where Rosario said she had been sitting in the bathroom before she left the apartment. Police later lost that sample. The defense also pointed to testimony from the young man who picked Rosario up from the apartment that morning and said he saw blood on her finger.
“Karena is a distraction that makes no sense,” Coltrain said.
Coltrain urged jurors to apply reason and common sense, arguing that whoever killed Hedgepeth would have been covered in blood.
She showed jurors photographs of the shirt and shorts Rosario was wearing that morning, pointing out that none of Hedgepeth’s blood was found on Rosario’s clothing or cellphone.
Coltrain argued that the killer had washed blood from their hands in the bathroom, but it makes no sense that Rosario could have killed Hedgepeth and emerged with only a tiny spot of blood on one finger.
She also pointed out there was no evidence of animosity between Rosario and Hedgepeth.
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The charges that the jury will consider include:
This story was originally published October 22, 2026 at 8:31 AM.