Jury convicts man of rape, murder 14 years after UNC student’s death

“We know who did it. The forensic evidence is screaming his name,” said prosecutor Angela Garcia-Lamarca, who described the “uncurable agony” Hedgepeth’s family has endured.

“When the defendant brought that bottle down on her head and she started to bleed, that was the start of a bleeding that still hasn’t stopped,” she said. “He sentenced her to death. He sentenced everybody else who loved her to life. There was no one there to protect her. There was no one there to stop him — until now. Y’all are here. You’re here now, and you can stop him.”

Prosecution suggests victim spurned defendant’s advances

Nearly two dozen witnesses testified for the prosecution, including crime scene technicians, state and local law enforcement, a DNA expert and Hedgepeth’s friends.

Hedgepeth’s roommate, Karena Rosario, testified that she was drunk and sick when Hedgepeth drove them home from a club around 2 a.m. that Sept. 7. She said she later called a friend to pick her up, leaving Hedgepeth in the apartment alone. She returned hours later to find her roommate’s body.

Prosecutors suggested Salguero Olivares may have attended a barbecue hosted by Hedgepeth’s neighbor that night, unsuccessfully hit on the young women in the parking lot and then returned, embarrassed and angry, after Rosario left. No witnesses corroborated that theory, but Garcia-Lamarca told jurors, “You don’t have to believe that to know he’s guilty.”

An autopsy showed Hedgepeth suffered extensive skull fractures and cuts to her face and head, and she was also badly beaten on her arms and legs.

“He beat her until her skull cracked like an egg,” special prosecutor Lisa Coltrane said in her portion of the closing arguments. “That is what the last moments of this vibrant young woman’s life was.”

Forensic evidence was a focus

Experts testified that the defendant’s fingerprints and palm print were found on a wine bottle at the scene and that his DNA was found in Hedgepeth’s body, on a note written on a fast-food bag found at the scene and on a rum bottle covered in blood that investigators identified as the weapon in the killing.

Erin Ermish, a forensic scientist with the state crime lab, said DNA swabbed from Hedgepeth’s body was 170 septillion times more likely to be a mixture of DNA from Hedgepeth and Salguero Olivares than from Hedgepeth and an unknown individual. One septillion is a 1 followed by 24 zeros. In contrast, NASA estimates the entire universe contains only 1 septillion stars.

Ermish also said the DNA mixture from the top of the rum bottle was 48.6 tredecillion times more likely to be from Hedgepeth and Salguero Olivares than from two unknown, unrelated individuals. One tredecillion is a 1 followed by 42 zeros.

The defense highlighted investigation mistakes

Defense attorneys questioned Rosario’s account of that night, the processing of the crime scene and the reliability of some DNA evidence. They pointed out that police failed to search some areas of the apartment and later lost some possible blood evidence and emphasized that DNA from sexual intercourse can remain for days afterward.

“Maybe he was living the same life as other 19- and 20-year-old children that we’ve heard about in this case,” defense attorney Jason Murphy said. “Maybe he had too much to drink, maybe he forgot about an encounter.”

But Coltrane dismissed that as “noise.”

“No matter what kind of mistakes were made or things that were missed, it doesn’t erase the palm print; it doesn’t somehow lift the DNA out of Faith,” she said. “They didn’t talk to every single person in Chapel Hill, and it doesn’t matter. They still got the guy because he left his DNA like confetti all over that room.”

Holly Ramer, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

Jury convicts man of rape, murder 14 years after UNC student’s death

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