Faith Hedgepeth

Case background and investigation

Faith Danielle Hedgepeth was a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member of the Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe. On the morning of September 7, 2012, she was found bludgeoned to death in her off-campus apartment at Hawthorne at the View in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. According to investigators and later court records, she had been beaten with a bottle and, autopsy findings indicated, sexually assaulted. Her roommate reported discovering the body after returning to the apartment.

The killing launched one of North Carolina's most closely watched unsolved investigations, involving Chapel Hill police, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and, later, the FBI. Investigators said a handwritten note was found near Hedgepeth's body, scrawled on a fast-food takeout bag and containing a profane, threatening message; police released an image of the note in 2014 in hopes the handwriting would generate leads. Authorities reported that they had recovered the suspected killer's DNA early on from evidence at the scene, including the note bag, a bottle and a sexual-assault kit, but for years the genetic profile did not match anyone in law-enforcement databases.

According to police, the breakthrough came through forensic genetic genealogy. Investigators said they used the DNA profile to identify distant relatives who shared genetic markers with the unknown contributor; some of those relatives were interviewed and provided DNA samples, which authorities said helped narrow the search. Police also reported that a palm print recovered from the bottle used in the attack was later matched to a suspect's left palm.

On September 16, 2021 — nine years after the killing — Chapel Hill police announced the arrest of Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares, then 28, of Durham, North Carolina. He was taken into custody with SBI assistance and initially charged with first-degree murder; he was later also charged with first-degree rape, first-degree burglary and first-degree sexual offense. He was denied bond. Court documents released afterward described how investigators said they linked him to the crime-scene DNA and the palm print. Salguero-Olivares has been charged only; he has not been convicted, and the allegations described by investigators remain to be tested at trial.

The case has moved slowly toward trial. Prosecutors have said the file contains more than 39,000 pages of evidence and that the state expects to call roughly 30 expert witnesses. Defense filings have raised questions about the handling of physical evidence, including a blood sample collected from a bathroom door in 2012 that Chapel Hill police reportedly said they no longer possess, and have advanced a 'third-party guilt' theory pointing toward other individuals. In a January 2025 status hearing, the Durham County district attorney moved the case out of administrative homicide status and into trial preparation. On November 6, 2025, a judge set a trial date of September 28, 2026. In mid-2025 Salguero-Olivares also faced new drug charges in jail, and in June 2026 a judge denied a prosecution request to seal future pre-trial motions from public release. The case went to trial on schedule.

Jury selection began at the Durham County Courthouse on September 28, 2026, before Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory. The prosecution built its case on the DNA recovered from the scene, the palm print and the forensic genetic genealogy work that had led investigators to Salguero-Olivares; the defense called no witnesses and he did not testify. On October 23, 2026, after roughly two days of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, under both the premeditation and felony-murder theories, as well as first-degree rape, first-degree sexual offense and first-degree burglary. After victim impact statements from Hedgepeth's family that afternoon, Judge Gregory sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder, with consecutive sentences of 240 to 348 months for each of the two sexual offenses and 64 to 89 months for the burglary, and ordered lifetime sex offender registration. Salguero-Olivares, who maintained that the outcome was unfair, has given notice that he is appealing the convictions and sentences; the convictions stand unless an appellate court sets them aside.