Arrest made in 2012 murder of Native UNC-Chapel Hill student Faith Hedgepeth
It took nine years and nine days, but dogged police persistence has finally yielded an arrest in the 2012 murder of UNC-Chapel Hill sophomore Faith Hedgepeth, a member of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe.
“Nine years and nine days ago tragedy struck our community,” Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue, the executive director for community safety, said in a press conference Thursday afternoon. “Police officers responded to a heartbreaking scene. One where a promising young life had ended way too soon.”
Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares, 28, of Durham, was charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond, reported WTVD-TV. Authorities would not comment on whether he would also be charged with a sexual-assault crime, though police have said Hedgepeth was brutally beaten and raped.
Police emphasized that the investigation was ongoing and implied there could be others involved, though they did not mention a role.
“Patience will be asked of you,” said Blue, according to The News & Observer. “This story will take time to completely unfold.”
Hedgepeth was majoring in biology as she attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Gates Millennium scholarship, reported Indian Country Today at the time.
She was found bludgeoned to death in her off-campus apartment at about 11 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 7, 2012, a death that Chapel Hill police immediately ruled a homicide.
Over the years police have collected reams of evidence and conducted thousands of interviews, Attorney General Josh Stein said, noting that 12 analysts had worked on 53 evidence submissions and analyzed 229 samples. That included a scrawled note found next to her body, as well as a chilling voicemail.
While police had plenty of DNA evidence, they did not have a name to match it to, they told Indian Country Today in 2016.
Her parents, Roland and Connie Hedgepeth, were on hand for the arrest announcement.
“When I got the news this morning I didn’t do anything but cry,” Connie Hedgepeth told reporters. “And thank God and praise God, because I put it in his hands, and it was his timing.”
Hedgepeth’s death was especially painful given the high rate of violence against Native women. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Rep. Deb Haaland, one of two Native American women elected to the House of Representatives before her cabinet appointment, has worked to make the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women a priority.
