Suspect charged with murder of UNC student Faith Hedgepeth denied bond
The man charged with killing a UNC sophomore found bludgeoned to death nine years ago made his first appearance in court on Friday morning.
Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares, 28, of Durham was charged with first-degree murder on Thursday, nine years and nine days after Faith Hedgepeth, 19, was found dead in a friend’s apartment in September 2012. Salguero-Olivares appeared virtually in the courtroom.
Judge Pat Evans ruled Salguero-Olivares will remain in jail on no bond.
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 outlined in different television crimes series.
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.
How was Hedgepeth killed?
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 aspired to return and work in her community as a pediatrician.
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.
