Jury convicts man of UNC student's 2012 rape and murder on DNA evidence

A North Carolina jury has convicted Miguel Salguero Olivares of first-degree murder, rape, sexual offense and burglary, 14 years after University of North Carolina sophomore Faith Hedgepeth was beaten to death in her off-campus Chapel Hill apartment in September 2012. Olivares, 33, did not testify, and his attorneys rested without calling a single witness. Jurors deliberated six hours over two days.

The case turned on DNA. Olivares was arrested nine years after the killing — not through investigative breakthrough but after a drunk-driving stop, when the sample he was required to give matched crime scene evidence. Forensic scientist Erin Ermish testified that DNA swabbed from Hedgepeth's body was 170 septillion times more likely to be a mixture of Hedgepeth's and Olivares's DNA than hers and an unknown individual's; DNA from the rum bottle prosecutors identified as the murder weapon was 48.6 tredecillion times more likely to come from the pair than from two strangers. A septillion is a one followed by 24 zeros — NASA estimates the entire universe holds only about one septillion stars.

Defense attorneys accused investigators of "tunnel vision" and argued their client was not a monster but a 19-year-old who had consensual sex with the victim days before her death. Prosecutor Angela Garcia-Lamarca told jurors, "The forensic evidence is screaming his name." Prosecutors suggested Olivares may have attended a neighbor's barbecue the night of the killing and returned angry after unsuccessfully hitting on the young women in the parking lot; no witness corroborated the theory, and Garcia-Lamarca conceded jurors did not need to believe it to convict.

Hedgepeth's roommate, Karena Rosario, testified she was drunk and sick when Hedgepeth drove them home from a club around 2 a.m. on September 7, 2012, and that she called a friend to pick her up — leaving Hedgepeth alone. She returned hours later and found the body. The autopsy showed extensive skull fractures and cuts to the face and head, with beating injuries on the arms and legs. Special prosecutor Lisa Coltrane told the jury, "He beat her until her skull cracked like an egg."

The conviction arrives on the timetable of DNA databases and a traffic stop, not of the state's cold case unit — nine years after the murder, the match came from a sample Olivares was compelled to give for an unrelated offense.