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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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Jurors in the Faith Hedgepeth murder trial heard Thursday from two people who were among the last to see her alive, as defense attorneys questioned her former roommate about her account of that night.
Karena Rosario faced cross-examination about the hours before Hedgepeth’s killing, while Jordan McCrary, who picked Rosario up from the apartment that morning, also took the stand. Prosecutors also played the 911 call she made after finding Hedgepeth dead.
The News & Observer is in the Durham County courtroom providing live updates during the day. Follow through the day for the latest from the trial.
Tamika Price was one of two Chapel Hill forensic evidence technicians, who processed the crime scene after Hedgepeth’s killing. During Price’s testimony, jurors were shown a video of the outside and the inside of Hedgpeth’s apartment.
The video included Hedgepeth’s body hanging off the bed, her hair wet with blood and her shirt pulled up. There was blood on the comforter and pillows. There was also blood splatter behind the bed and by the closet. The jurors were also shown crime scene photos.
Chapel Hill police officer Michael Castro testified that he was one of three officers who initially responded to Rosario’s 911 call and described how he found Hedgepeth dead in the bed, with a black shirt pulled over her head.
Rangel picked up Rosario from McCrary’s home on the morning of Sept. 7, 2012, and drove her to the apartment Rosario shared with Faith Hedgepeth.
Rangel walked upstairs with Rosario, calling out “Faith” as they moved through the apartment.
“We walked in, and there was just blood everywhere,” Rangel said.
Rosario called 911, and Rangel stood beside her as she spoke to the operator. The two then went outside and walked downstairs, where they saw a police officer arrive.
Afterward, they were taken to speak with UNC counselors before talking to police, Rangel said.
Over the years, Rangel and Rosario grew apart, she testified.
“I don’t remember the last time I talked to her. It’s been years,” Rangel said.
Rangel said it is now difficult for her to talk about Hedgepeth. She cannot stop thinking about the day she saw her friend covered in blood, but she also doesn’t want that image to overshadow other people’s memories of Hedgepeth.
“It’s all I can think about, the blood and everything,” Rangel said through tears.
When her testimony finished, she walked outside the courtroom into the Hall, but her sobbing could still be heard from inside.
Linda Holp, the 911 operator who answered Karena Rosario’s call on the morning Hedgepeth was found dead in September 2012, took the stand Thursday.
Jurors listened to a recording of the call, during which Rosario told Holp that her roommate was unconscious.
“I just went into the apartment,” Rosario said. “There is blood everywhere.”
Holp instructed Rosario to check whether Hedgepeth was breathing.
“I don’t know what happened,” Rosario said.
Holp persuaded Rosario to touch Hedgepeth to see whether she was warm.
“No, she feels cold,” Rosario said.
“OK, don’t touch anything else,” Holp told her.
Holp then instructed Rosario to go into the living room and stayed on the phone with her until police arrived.
McCrary had been dating Rosario and picked her up from the apartment she and Hedgepeth shared near the Durham-Chapel Hill line around 4:20 a.m. Rosario had started texting and calling him that morning and asked him to come get her.
Salguero Olivares’ attorney James Rainsford played video of McCrary telling a detective about the night Hedgepeth was killed. McCrary said Rosario and Hedgepeth went back to their apartment around 3 a.m., and Rosario went to the bathroom because she didn’t feel well. Rosario called McCrary and asked him to pick her up, McCrary told the detective.
When Rosario got into the car, she noticed a small smudge of blood on her finger and identified it as such, McCrary told the detective. McCrary asked her why there was blood on her finger, and Rosario told him she didn’t know.
McCrary told the detective he didn’t ask anything further. The two spent the rest of the night at his house on Longview Street in Chapel Hill.
The next morning, McCrary woke up for his 9 a.m. class and asked Rosario how she would get home, he told the detective. She told him Hedgepeth would pick her up.
Read more Once scrutinized in UNC student Faith Hedgepeth’s death, roommate takes the stand
Later, while McCrary was in class, Rosario called him twice, he told the detective. McCrary texted her asking what was going on.
“I just went into my apartment, and Faith is dead,” Rosario texted McCrary, according to his interview.
McCrary soon called Rosario, but police soon arrived, so she hung up, McCrary told the detective. McCrary later pressed Rosario on what happened the night of Hedgepeth’s death, but Rosario said she had not heard any commotion before McCrary came to pick her up.
After that day, McCrary testified “there was no relationship” between Rosario and him.
When Rainsford asked if he ever knew Salguero Oliveras or remembered either Hedgepeth or Rosario mentioning him, McCrary testified he did not.
Rainsford asked Rosario about Jordan McCrary telling police that when he picked her up around 4:20 a.m. on the morning of Hedgepeth’s death she said she had blood on her finger.
Rosario said she doesn’t recall saying that. She said she likely thought it was from the red slushy tequila drinks that she had consumed at The Thrill.
Rainsford also questioned why Rosario told police that she had left a polka dot tube top at McCrary’s on the morning of the killing. Police found the top in the bed in her and Hedgepeth’s apartment.
After waking up in the morning, Rosario said, she changed into a purple top she had previously left at McCrary’s previously. “I honestly thought I left it,” Rosario said.
Rainsford begins his cross-examination of Rosario. He asks Rosario about what happened after they returned from The Thrill around 3 a.m. on Sept. 7, 2012.
Rosario said she threw up in a trashcan in the bedroom and then moved to the bathroom and started texting people. Rosario said she didn’t communicate with Hedgepeth after that, and Rainsford questioned whether she thought it was odd Hedgepeth didn’t check on her. Rosario said she was drunk and focused on texting one of her ex-boyfriends and talking to McCrary, with whom she had previously spent the night.
Rainsford also asked why Rosario left the apartment at 4:20 a.m. and did not wash her face, brush her teeth, or take anything besides her phone. Rainsford also asked why she didn’t bring her backpack if she had class the next morning. Rosario said she wasn’t thinking that far ahead and was focused on connecting with and spending time with McCrary.
As Rainsford prepares to cross-examination of Rosario, he checks with Judge Keith O. Gregory about his order limiting statements implicating Rosario, ensuring that he understood correctly that he could introduce certain evidence that the prosecutors and the defense agreed on.
The account Rosario gave police in 2012 has been scrutinized for years by investigators, defense attorneys and the public, and Thursday’s questioning could bring some of those lingering questions into the courtroom.
In the summer of 2025, the three-member defense team for Salguero Olivares started filing motions, seeking evidence and raising questions about whether Rosario was in the apartment when Hedgepeth died.
Prosecutors, including Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry, called the information misleading and unsuccessfully sought to have all future pretrial filings and hearings closed to the public. Prosecutors, however, were successful in asking the judge to limit statements and evidence about Rosario that the defense team sought to use to allege that she was involved in the killing.
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 connects him to the crime.
Defense attorneys have questioned Rosario’s account of that night, pointing to a witness who said he saw blood on her finger and raising questions about whether she was still in the apartment when Hedgepeth was killed.
Once scrutinized in UNC student Faith Hedgepeth’s death, roommate takes the stand
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This story was originally published October 8, 2026 at 8:30 AM.