Prosecutors urged jurors to rely on evidence “screaming the truth” instead of noisy defense team distractions as closing arguments got underway Thursday in the trial of a man accused of killing a North Carolina college student 14 years ago.
Faith Hedgepeth was a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when she was beaten to death in her off-campus apartment in September 2012. Miguel Salguero Olivares was arrested nine years later after being pulled over for driving while intoxicated and providing a DNA sample that prosecutors say matched evidence from the crime scene.
“For parents to lose a child and not know what happened or who did it is unbearable. Now we know," prosecutor Angela Garcia-Lamarca said in her closing argument. “The forensic evidence in this case is screaming the truth. We know who did it. The forensic evidence is screaming his name: Miguel Salguero Olivares. What we don’t know, and maybe will never know, and what can be the incurable agony is: Why?”
Alguero Oliveras has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, rape, sexual offense and burglary charges. He did not testify during the trial, and his attorneys rested their case without calling any witnesses. They will make their closing arguments later Thursday.
Nearly two dozen witnesses testified for the prosecution, including Hedgepeth’s roommate and other friends, crime scene technicians, state and local law enforcement and a DNA expert.
Early testimony focused on Hedgepeth’s life and her last night alive, when she and her roommate returned home from a club around 2 a.m. Karena Rosario testified that she was drunk and sick when Hedgepeth drove them home but later called a friend to pick her up and she went out again, leaving Hedgepeth in the apartment alone. She returned hours later that Sept. 7 to find Hedgepeth’s body.
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.”
Prosecutors allege Salguero Olivares, now 33, was a stranger who killed Hedgepeth in a fit of rage. Garcia-Lamarca suggested he may have attended a barbecue hosted by Hedgepeth's neighbor that night, had unsuccessfully made advances to the young women as they returned home and then returned, embarrassed and angry, after Rosario left. No witnesses corroborated that theory, but the prosecutor told jurors, “You don't have to believe that to know he's guilty.”
They said his fingerprints and palm print were found on a wine bottle at the scene and that his DNA was found on a rum bottle covered in blood that investigators identified as the weapon in the killing, in Hedgepeth's body and on a note written on a fast-food bag found at the scene.
Erin Ermish, a forensic scientist with the state crime lab, testified that she could never say with 100% certainty that a DNA sample came from a particular person. But she 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 mixture of DNA 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.
In cross-examining witnesses, 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. But Coltrane dismissed all of 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.”
Several jurors cried after viewing autopsy photos of Hedgepeth, according to local media accounts. Salguero Olivares, meanwhile, cried when prosecutors played video of a jailhouse call between him and a friend who has since died.
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The story has been updated to correct the spelling of Faith Hedgepeth’s last name in one reference.
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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.
