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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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Faith Hedgepeth’s parents, Connie and Roland, walked down a Durham County courthouse hallway Monday toward the trial of the man charged with killing their daughter over 14 years ago.
Their faces were solemn as a legal assistant from the District Attorney’s Office led them into courtroom 7D at the end of the seventh-floor hall.
A few feet away, three attorneys for Miguel Salguero Olivares, 33, gathered elsewhere on the floor, preparing for a trial that could determine whether their client spends the rest of his life in prison.
Dozens of Durham County residents had also been called to the courthouse. Some will be chosen to spend weeks hearing evidence about the death of a 19-year-old college student and deciding whether Salguero Olivares was responsible.
They had all come to the courthouse for different reasons, but their paths converged on the seventh floor Monday as jury selection began. The trial will be livestreamed by Court TV and other stations, and followed closely by other local and national media.
For much of Monday, however, the courtroom was closed to everyone except the attorneys, the families of Hedgepeth and Salguero Olivares and the prospective jurors.
Hedgepeth was a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill on Sept. 7, 2012, when police found her beaten to death in a blood-splattered bedroom in an off-campus apartment. Police interviewed hundreds of people but did not charge anyone with her killing until 2021, when they said DNA recovered from a sexual assault kit helped lead them to Salguero Olivares through investigative genetic genealogy.
Hedgepeth grew up in southwestern Halifax County, about a 90-minute drive from Chapel Hill. A member of the Haliwa-Saponi tribal community and a Gates Millennium Scholar at UNC, she hoped to become a pediatrician and return home to serve her community.
Just before the trial began, the tribe asked the public in a message posted on Facebook to remember not only Hedgepeth’s death , but also the life of a young woman who would have turned 34 on Sept. 26.
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“The life she lived, the dreams she carried, the people she loved and the promise she represented,” the message said.
Since Hedgepeth’s killing, her loved ones and the Haliwa-Saponi people have carried the pain of her absence, the tribe said. The weeks ahead will be “especially difficult” for those who knew and loved her.
“We continue to pray for truth, justice, healing and a measure of peace for all of us to remember Faith’s legacy,” the message said.
In the courtroom, Salguero Olivares, who has been held in jail since his 2021 arrest, wore a black blazer and a tie instead of the orange jail scrubs he had worn to pretrial hearings. The 10 a.m. hearing started a little late, with Hedgepeth’s family filling the first row on the left side of the courtroom. Prosecutors and defense attorneys first discussed previous and pending motions concerning witnesses and what information jurors would hear.
Around 10:45 a.m., the judge asked everyone except the attorneys and the families to leave, including about a dozen reporters.
About 20 minutes later, prospective jurors carrying water bottles, bags and sweaters were led to Courtrooms 7C and 7D. The rest of the morning’s proceedings were not open to the media. Reporters were let into the courtroom after the lunch break around 2:45 p.m. By this time, Salguero Olivares’ mother had arrived and was seated with one other on the first row of the courtroom behind the defense.
Over the afternoon, six prospective jurors were brought in to answer questions about what they knew about the case and whether they could be fair and impartial. If they answered yes – which each of them did — they were kept in the jury pool for now.
A couple asked whether they could bring up reasons why they didn’t think they could be a juror. Judge Keith Gregory told them that would come later, during another round of questioning.
Jury selection is expected to last about week.
The jury pool was sent home at 5:07 p.m. and asked to return to court Tuesday at 9:30 a.m.
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This story was originally published September 28, 2026 at 3:11 PM.