A man convicted in the killing of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student spoke just three words after receiving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“It’s not fair,” Miguel Salguero-Olivares said following his sentencing, 14 years after Faith Hedgepeth was killed, according to WRAL.
At an Oct. 23 hearing, the 33-year-old was found guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree rape, first-degree burglary and first-degree sexual offense.
Salguero-Olivares’ attorneys did not immediately answer a request for comment from Oxygen.
Faith, a 19-year-old biology major, was discovered dead in her off-campus apartment on Sept. 7, 2012. According to Chapel Hill police, her body was propped against the bed, her shirt had been pulled upward and her lower body was exposed beside a pool of blood.
Investigators found a bloodied bottle of Bacardi rum wrapped in Faith’s sheets. A handwritten message saying, “I’m not stupid b—h jealous” had been attached to a fast-food bag on the bed.
Faith’s roommate, Karena Rosario, told police that she and Faith had gone to the UNC library and a nightclub the previous night. They returned home at about 2:40 a.m., after which Karena left to visit a friend. When she came back around 11 a.m. with another friend, they found Faith’s body.
An autopsy concluded that Faith died from blunt force injuries to the head. A sexual assault examination also detected semen that was later linked to evidence collected at the crime scene.
For the next nine years, investigators pursued DNA leads, published a 3D computer-generated image of the suspected killer and announced a $40,000 reward for information resulting in an arrest and conviction.
“If anyone was in the area and saw something, no matter how insignificant, it might have a connection,” Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue said during a 2014 news conference. “We would hope they would come forward.”
The case moved forward in September 2021, when investigators used genetic genealogy to locate relatives of the suspected killer, ultimately leading them to Salguero-Olivares. Police arrested him during a traffic stop, and he pleaded not guilty to all four charges.
At trial in October, prosecutors argued that Salguero-Olivares barely knew Faith and attacked her with the rum bottle after she rejected his advances at a barbecue.
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“Faith shut him down, she embarrassed him,” Durham Assistant District Attorney Garcia-Lamarca said in court. “He sat with his friends, maybe they teased him, but he was not feeling good about it and he was drunk.”
Garcia-Lamarca told jurors that Salguero-Olivares waited until Karena had left the apartment, then forced his way inside and raped and beat Faith “until her skull cracked.”
“He was angry,” Garcia-Lamarca said. “He was acting out of rage.”
The defense countered that DNA recovered from the apartment came from more than one person.
“Finding something doesn’t mean a crime occurred,” defense attorney James Rainsford said, according to WRAL. “You have to connect them.”
Rainsford also argued that Salguero-Olivares could not have written the message on the takeout bag because he was still learning English at the time.
Defense attorney Jason Murphy further contended that Salguero-Olivares’ DNA appeared only on the top of the bottle, while investigators had never tested Faith’s sheets for genetic material.
“After a prior consensual encounter,” he said, according to WRAL, “you might find some DNA on the sheets.”
During the hearing, Faith’s mother Connie Hedgepeth told the judge that she had long forgiven Miguel.
“It was just three weeks after her death. It didn’t matter who done it, I knew that I had to forgive, and I do forgive, but my heart aches for his family,” she said, according to the Associated Press. “It was just such a senseless and cruel act, but we have to go on, and we just have to trust God and go on with our lives.”
Miguel plans to appeal his convictions and sentence, according to WRAL.
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