Updated

Updated · Fox News · Oct 13

Salguero-Olivares Trial Centers on 1.75-Liter Rum Bottle and DNA in 2012 Hedgepeth Killing

Updated

Updated · Fox News · Oct 13

Salguero-Olivares Trial Centers on 1.75-Liter Rum Bottle and DNA in 2012 Hedgepeth Killing

Q: Why did the victim's roommate claim her sleeping position made no sense hours before the grim discovery?

Because Rosario said Faith Hedgepeth did not appear intoxicated enough to have gone to sleep in that condition, and the clothing arrangement looked abnormal to her. In the police interview played for jurors, Rosario said Hedgepeth “wasn’t drunk” and “wouldn’t have jumped into bed that way.” She told investigators that the way Hedgepeth appeared to have gone to bed “doesn’t make sense” because, in Rosario’s view, Hedgepeth would not normally sleep in that position or with her clothing arranged that way. That comment became important at trial because Rosario was one of the last known people to see Hedgepeth alive. Prosecutors used her statements to help reconstruct the final hours before the killing. When Rosario later returned to the apartment, she found signs that something was wrong: blood in the room, bedding pulled aside, and Hedgepeth lying beside the bed, nude from the waist down with visible injuries. So Rosario’s point was not simply about posture. She was telling investigators that Hedgepeth’s state when found — especially how she was dressed or undressed and how she seemed to have ended up in bed — was inconsistent with normal behavior and suggested that something had happened to her after Rosario left the apartment.

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Oct 13

Second-week testimony in Durham focused jurors on a 1.75-liter Bacardi bottle prosecutors say was the murder weapon, plus a crumpled biscuit bag bearing the note, “I’m not stupid, b----. Jealous.”
Crime-scene investigators testified the defendant’s DNA was found on both the bag and the rum bottle, evidence prosecutors say ties Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares to Faith Hedgepeth’s 2012 killing.
Defense lawyers attacked the investigation instead, highlighting unphotographed evidence, uncollected items and a missing swab from a reddish bathroom-doorframe stain that initially tested as possible blood.
Karena Rosario, Hedgepeth’s former roommate, told jurors she left the apartment around 4:25 a.m. with Hedgepeth alive and returned about 11 a.m. to find the 19-year-old dead beside her bed.
Salguero-Olivares, 33, was charged after genetic genealogy and a 2021 DUI-stop DNA sample revived the long-unsolved case; he faces life without parole if convicted, with no death penalty sought.