Suspect charged with murder of UNC student Faith Hedgepeth denied bond
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Faith Hedgepeth Murder
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. Here are stories about Hedgepeth and the case from The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun.
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The man charged with killing a UNC sophomore found bludgeoned to death nine years ago will remain in jail without bond, a judge ruled Friday morning.
“It’s alleged that the defendant Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares did unlawfully, willfully and feloniously with malice and forethought kill and murder Faith Hedgepeth,” on Sept. 7, 2012, said District Attorney Satana Deberry said at the start of the hearing.
Salguero-Olivares, 28, of Durham was charged with first-degree murder on Thursday, nine years and nine days after Hedgepeth, 19, was found dead in a friend’s apartment in September 2012.
Salguero-Olivares appeared in the courtroom via video conferencing. He has a previous conviction of driving while impaired and pending traffic charges in Wake County, Deberry said. Court records show he was convicted of DWI in Orange County in 2014.
Deberry’s statements were relayed through an interpreter to Salguero-Olivares, who wore an orange jumpsuit and a white mask.
Deberry asked for Salguero-Olivares to continue to be held with no bond. Public Defender Ernest Smith agreed.
“Based on the guidelines of this court, we understand that no bond is standard,” Smith said.
Durham County District Judge Pat Evans agreed and ordered he be held on no bond, along with that a public defender be appointed to represent Salguero-Olivares.
His next hearing is set for Oct. 7.
Police found Hedgepeth’s body hanging off the bed, face up. She wore only a black shirt, pulled up over her head, according to a search warrant released in 2014.
Chapel Hill Police did thousands of interviews and tested hundreds of DNA samples during the years-long investigation that was covered by national media and told in different television crimes series. Attorney General Josh Stein, speaking at a Thursday news conference, said 229 DNA samples have been analyzed to rule out suspects.
Salguero-Olivares, who wasn’t previously among suspects that police considered, was arrested Thursday morning and charged with Hedgepeth’s murder. Authorities matched him to DNA found at the crime scene, they said.
Police have not said when he became a suspect or person of interest in the case.
“When I got the news this morning, I didn’t do anything but cry, and thank God,” said Connie Hedgepeth at Thursday’s news conference. “When I cried, it was tears of joy, tears of relief, knowing that someone had been arrested in her case.”
‘A new beginning’
Hedgepath’s father, Roland Hedgepeth, and friend Cheyna Smith attended the hearing. They sat at what is typically the defendant’s table in front of a laptop in which Salguero-Olivares appeared.
Roland Hedgepeth said he felt emotional after the arrest.
“It’s just a new beginning,” he said. “Everything is just starting.”
He said he wants the public to remember his daughter for who she was as a person with a sweet smile and loving ways, and not as a young woman who was murdered while she was in college.
Hedgepeth grew up in Hollister, a small community on the Warren-Halifax County border, The News & Observer reported. She was a member of the Haliwa-Saponi tribal community and entered UNC on a scholarship. She was also working her way through college, with the dream of becoming a pediatrician and moving back home to serve her community.
Thursday night, Roland Hedgepeth told The News & Observer while driving home Thursday night to Hickory that he hopes Salguero-Olivares’ arrest will lead to more progress in the investigation.
“It’s been a long nine years,” Roland Hedgepeth said at an earlier press conference.
“I want to thank God for this day that he allowed me to stay alive to see this day,” he added. “Of course, I know the case is not solved. This is not the end; just the beginning, but I want to thank God for that.”
What happened to Faith Hedgepeth?
On Sept. 7, 2012, Hedgepeth had been staying with friend Karena Rosario until she could move into her own place later in the month.
Hedgepeth and Rosario went out about midnight to a Chapel Hill nightclub on Rosemary Street called The Thrill.
They left the club around 2:06 a.m. and returned to the off-campus apartment near the Durham-Chapel Hill border, according to surveillance footage.
Rosario left the apartment around 4:35 a.m., picked up by a male friend, and left Hedgepeth home alone and asleep in the bedroom. The front door to the apartment was unlocked, she told police.
Rosario arrived back to the apartment about 11 a.m. She called 911 after she found Hedgepeth on a bed with blood under head.
Medical examiners concluded blunt-force trauma to Hedgepeth’s head caused her death, according to an autopsy report released to the public in September 2014.
The report also showed cuts and bruises on her arms and legs, and blood under her fingernails. Blood was spattered on the wall and closet door.
In addition to blood and tissue evidence, police collected semen from Hedgepeth’s body.
Over the course of the years-long investigation, Chapel Hill Police Department conducted thousands of interviews and performed hundreds of DNA tests based on forensics found at the scene of the killing.
Search warrants released in September 2014 indicate that police initially looked closely at several men in connection with the case but none matched the DNA found at the scene.
In 2016, police released a computer-generated composite of the possible killer, created by Parabon Nanolabs based on DNA evidence at the scene.
The DNA phenotyping indicated the man is likely Latino with dark olive to light olive skin tone, brown or hazel eyes and black hair. Police said previously the composite sketch does not rule out that others may have been involved.
Who is suspect?
Salguero-Olivares spoke little to no English when he arrived in the U.S. from Guatemala about two years before the 2012 killing of Hedgepeth, his neighbor told The News & Observer. He was about 19 when Hedgepeth was killed.
Court records indicate that before he moved to Durham, he lived in an apartment complex on Ephesus Church Road in Chapel Hill.
Salguero-Olivares was arrested and charged with driving while impaired in Wake County last month, according to court records.
Salguero-Olivares was also charged with no operator’s license, no liability insurance, an open container alcohol violation and a registration violation, according to court records.
He failed to appear in court Sept. 3 and an outstanding order for his arrest was issued Sept. 7, court documents showed.
This story was originally published September 17, 2021 at 10:40 AM with the headline "Suspect charged with murder of UNC student Faith Hedgepeth denied bond."
