The Murder of Faith Hedgepeth: The Trial of Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares: Day Twelve: The Verdict

So let's go back to why we are here.

We are here, unfortunately, because on September 7th, 2012, a young woman, 19-year-old UNC Chapel Hill sophomore Faith Hedgepeth, was brutally raped and murdered in in her apartment in Durham County, North Carolina.

Again, she was attending UNC Chapel Hill.

This is near the border with Chapel Hill.

She's staying in this apartment with her roommate and dear friend, Karina Rosario, and Karina's having a tough night after some drinking leaves.

Faith is left alone in the apartment and is just brutally murdered.

murdered the case goes unsolved for a number of years again this is back in 2012 and september 16 2021 there was finally some really major movement in the case that is when salguero olivares was arrested that was apparently due to some investigative genetic genealogy that occurred pointing to him and also with some assist from a driving while intoxicated charge that he was facing On this case, we've seen essentially like what is this DNA going to come down to? Whose story about the DNA is going to be better? I want to emphasize this to everyone listening.

DNA is circumstantial in and of itself.

There can be DNA in places for totally innocuous reasons.

And what that boils down to, the way I look at DNA, when I would encourage everyone to look at the DNA in any case, is does this have a good reason to be here? That's the question.

So if you're having like a hypothetical case where somebody says, well, you know, let's say someone's murdered in their home.

And certainly that happened in this case.

And a boyfriend who frequently comes over, their DNA is found all over the scene.

That's something that if there's a logical explanation for the DNA being present in a particular location, If that doesn't require a crime to have been committed, then it doesn't really mean a lot.

Could be innocuous, could not be innocuous.

The guy could have done it, but we just don't know because his DNA has a reason to be there because he was there all the time because he's a boyfriend who's frequently over there.

Now, if it's a stranger whose DNA is suddenly appearing at the scene and they have no connection to the victim.

That's a different story.

Yes.

If they're denying knowing the victim, that's a different story.

If they have no real plausible explanation for why their DNA is present, that's a different story.

And of course, that is exactly what happened here.

So let's go over the trial just briefly.

Some of the major figures we have on the defense side, James Rainsford sort of seemed to be the lead on a lot of this.

Jason Murphy, another defense attorney.