DNA Twist Upends Murder Trial

Coronavirus particles and DNA strands in a colorful background. — Photo: Shutterstock

A college student was beaten to death in her own bed, and the man on trial says the DNA found at the scene proves nothing about when it got there.

Story Snapshot

Miguel Salguero-Olivares faces trial for the 2012 murder of UNC-Chapel Hill student Faith Hedgepeth, found beaten in her apartment.
Prosecutors say his DNA links him to a bloody rum bottle, a vulgar note, and evidence taken from Hedgepeth’s body.
A 2021 genetic genealogy search connected crime-scene DNA to Salguero-Olivares after nine years with no suspect.
The defense says his DNA is missing from the bottle’s neck, from the tampon, and points to unidentified bloody thumbprints and a lost bloodstain sample.

A Decade-Old Case Reaches A Jury

Faith Hedgepeth was 19 when she was found dead in her Chapel Hill apartment in 2012, beaten with enough force that investigators believed a weapon was used. Her roommate had left the apartment around 4:20 a.m., and whoever came in after that left behind DNA on several objects near the bed, according to trial testimony. The case sat unsolved for nine years before detectives got a break that would eventually put a name to the evidence.

Investigators say they used DNA from distant relatives and public genealogy databases to build a family tree that led them to Salguero-Olivares in 2021. That kind of forensic genealogy has cracked dozens of cold cases nationwide in recent years, but it only produces a name. It does not, by itself, explain how or when a person’s biological material ended up at a crime scene, a gap the defense has leaned on hard.

What Prosecutors Say The Evidence Shows

Assistant District Attorney Angela Garcia-Lamarca told jurors that Salguero-Olivares’s DNA turned up on the presumed murder weapon, inside Hedgepeth’s body, and on a vulgar note written on a fast-food bag. Evidence technician Tamika Price testified about exhibits recovered from the scene, including a bloody Bacardi bottle, a blue Riesling bottle, boxer shorts, and photographs documenting the apartment’s condition the morning Hedgepeth was found. The medical examiner testified the bottle could have caused Hedgepeth’s injuries.

Prosecutors describe the bottle as having been found tangled in the comforter beside the bed, consistent with their theory that a stranger used it as a weapon during the assault. That is a coherent story, and DNA tying a defendant to multiple pieces of evidence at the scene is serious proof a jury can weigh heavily. But serious proof is not the same as proof without gaps, and this case has some notable ones.

Where The Defense Is Pushing Back Hardest

Defense attorney James Rainsford told jurors that finding someone’s DNA does not prove when it was left or how it got there, arguing prosecutors still have to connect the dots. That is not a dodge. It is a real distinction forensic scientists themselves draw between confirming whose DNA something is and proving when or how that person touched it.

The defense says Salguero-Olivares’s DNA was not found on the neck of the bottle prosecutors call the murder weapon, and was not found on the tampon removed from Hedgepeth, though male DNA turned up on the tampon string. They have also pointed to two unidentified bloody thumbprints on the bottle that an expert testified do not match the defendant. None of that proves innocence. But it does mean the state’s DNA story is not as seamless as “all over the crime scene” headlines suggest.

DNA BREAKTHROUGH PUTS SUSPECT ON TRIAL 14 YEARS AFTER UNC STUDENT'S MURDER

For years, DNA collected after 19-year-old Faith Hedgepeth was found murdered failed to match hundreds of people investigators tested.

Then genetic genealogy led authorities to Miguel Enrique…

— Erik Hoffmann (@TheErikHoffmann) October 13, 2026

Evidence Handling Questions Jurors Can’t Ignore

Price testified the Bacardi bottle was not photographed at the original scene and was only photographed later at the police crime lab. She said she did not know why. A former Chapel Hill police forensic specialist separately testified that a bloodstain collected from the apartment’s bathroom door frame went missing before it could be tested, and her report was never updated to note it was lost.

These are the kinds of documentation gaps that fair-minded jurors should take seriously, not because they erase a DNA match, but because chain-of-custody sloppiness is exactly how wrongful outcomes happen on either side. A case built on genuine physical evidence should withstand scrutiny of how that evidence was handled. Jurors deserve a clean record, and right now the record has holes that both sides are fighting over in open court.