Inside the hunt for killer of University of North Carolina student found beaten, bloodied
Faith Hedgepeth, 19, died in an off-campus apartment after a night out in 2012.
What began as an innocent night out for 19-year-old Faith Hedgepeth ended in a devastating tragedy that shocked the community.
The University of North Carolina sophomore was found bloodied and beaten to death in the morning of Sept. 7, 2012, in a bed in an off-campus apartment she was staying in with her roommate, Karena Rosario.
For 14 years, authorities searched for Hedgepeth's killer, finally using new DNA technology to identify the alleged killer.
A new "20/20" episode, "Justice for Faith," airing Friday, Oct. 30 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and streaming the next day on Disney+ and Hulu, dives into Hedgepeth's murder.
You can get more behind the scenes of each week's episode by listening to "20/20: The After Show" weekly series right on your 20/20 podcast feed on Mondays, hosted by "20/20" co-anchor Deborah Roberts.
Hedgepeth grew up a member of the Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe in the remote town of Hollister, North Carolina. Her community described her as intelligent, good-spirited and involved in her community.
"Faith was a bundle of joy," Roland Hedgepeth, her father, said in an interview with legal analyst "20/20" correspondent Ryan Smith. "She was a godsend in my life. She gave me a reason to want to live."
On the night of Sept. 6, 2012, Hedgepeth and Rosario went to a night club called "The Thrill." They returned to the apartment a little after 2 a.m., according to Rosario.
Acknowledging that her memory of that night wasn't complete, Rosario said she vomited upon returning home and was picked up by a friend, Jordan McCrary, at about 4:25 a.m. While she said she did not see Hedgepeth right before she left, she assumed she was in the bedroom.
When Rosario returned home in the morning, she found Hedgepeth on the bed, bloody and unconscious, naked from the waist down and her shirt pulled up over her head.
Police responded to Rosario's 911 call and pronounced Hedgepeth dead. They determined the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, and that the murder weapon was likely a Bacardi bottle that was found in the bedroom.
Investigators found evidence that she had been sexually assaulted, leading them to believe she had been raped by her killer.
Authorities also found a note in the bedroom written on a takeout bag.
"I'm not stupid, b----, jealous," it read.
Investigators determined that DNA evidence recovered at the crime scene belonged to an unidentified male.
The search for Hedgepeth's killer would continue for years, rattling Hedgepeth's tight-knit indigenous community. Authorities pursued more than 1,800 people as possible suspects without significant leads.
"We got thousands and thousands of different tips and leads that came in," Celisa Lehew, Chapel Hill Police Department chief, said in reflection on the case in a new "20/20" interview. "Nothing ever led to anything. We spent an exorbitant amount of time chasing every lead and every tip because that's all we had in the moment."
In 2021, new DNA technology gave the case new life. The technique, called single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), allowed investigators to use genetic genealogy to research family ties to the DNA found at the crime scene.
SNP, coupled with technology that produced information on physical attributes that aligned with the DNA found at the crime scene, led investigators to determine the DNA was linked to an individual of Latino ancestry.
Using these leads, as well as a photo found on social media, authorities believed they had their suspect: a man named Miguel Salguero-Olivares, who was 19 years old at the time of Hedgepeth's death.
In September 2021, police arrested Salguero-Olivares after following him to collect his DNA and matching it to the sample from the crime scene. He denied ever knowing Hedgepeth.
Salguero-Olivares's trial began in September 2026. He pleaded not guilty.
His defense argued that Rosario knew more than she was letting on. Rosario allegedly had something red on her hand when she met McCrary the night of Hedgepeth's death, which the defense argued was blood. She denied it was blood, saying it could have been vomit since she had been drinking red slushies that night.
Prosecutors pushed back on allegations against Rosario, citing an abundance of DNA evidence and handwriting on the bag at the crime scene that appears to match that of Salguero-Olivares.
Salguero-Olivares declined to testify in trial, and his defense did not present any evidence.
The jury found Salguero-Olivares guilty of first-degree murder, rape, sexual offense and burglary, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder plus additional prison time for the remaining convictions. His defense said he plans to appeal.
Hedgepeth's family, friends and community remember Hedgepeth for her energy and joy. They said her spirit lives on in part through the "Faith's Smile Memorial Scholarship," awarded annually to Native American youth who are incoming freshman at a four-year university.
She's also remembered by the MMIW Memorial Grove, an organization that brings awareness and support to victims and families who are a part of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls epidemic.
"I remember her just bein' so lively, just bouncin' all over the place," Connie Hedgepeth, her mother, said. "Just ready to go and tackle the world. So somebody robbed me of that. I miss just feelin' alive, you know, when you're around her. I just miss that a lot."
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