Killing of Faith Hedgepeth

Faith Hedgepeth was a nineteen year old member of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe and a third year student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when she was beaten to death in her off campus apartment on September 7, 2012. She had grown up in Warren County, North Carolina, raised by her mother after her parents divorced, and had earned a Gates Millennium Scholarship to attend UNC-Chapel Hill, where she hoped to become the first in her family to graduate college and had considered careers as a pediatrician or a teacher.

Hedgepeth was found dead by her roommate, Karena Rosario, and a friend on the morning of September 7, 2012, in the apartment the two young women shared at Hawthorne at the View, near the Chapel Hill and Durham line. She had been struck over the head with an empty liquor bottle. An autopsy later confirmed she died of blunt force trauma, and evidence showed she had struggled with her attacker before she died.

Her death set off one of the longest running unsolved case investigations in the Research Triangle area. Chapel Hill police collected DNA and other forensic evidence but were unable to identify a match for years, even after clearing an early suspect, a former boyfriend of Rosario's who had reportedly threatened Hedgepeth. Court orders kept most investigative records sealed for nearly two years, a practice that drew criticism from local media outlets and reporters who argued the public had a right to know how the case was being handled.

The case remained unsolved for nine years until September 2021, when Chapel Hill police arrested Miguel Salguero-Olivares after his DNA, collected following a drunken driving arrest, was matched to evidence from the crime scene. He was charged with first-degree murder, and prosecutors later added charges of first-degree burglary, first-degree rape and first-degree sexual offense. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his trial is scheduled to begin on September 28, 2026, in Durham County, nearly fourteen years after Hedgepeth's death.

Hedgepeth's death mattered beyond the personal tragedy for her family because it became a prolonged test of how a university town and its police department handle a violent crime against a young Native American woman, how long a family can be made to wait for answers, and how forensic science can eventually break open a case that had gone cold for years. Her mother, Connie Hedgepeth, and other family members have continued to speak publicly about her as the case has moved toward trial.