SBI Special Agent testifies about defendant’s arrest in UNC student murder case

Court on Friday wrapped with the testimony of NC SBI Special Agent in Charge Justin Heinrich, who has worked on the Faith Hedgepeth murder case since 2013.

Heinrich said he joined the investigative team into the UNC student’s murder around the one year anniversary of her death. 

He participated in multiple interviews with Hedgepeth’s roommate, Karena Rosario, over the course of the investigation. 

“They were remarkably consistent from earlier videos that I had viewed,” Heinrich said of Rosario’s statements. “The main points and the main story remained pretty consistent all the way through.”

Heinrich also testified that Rosario was cooperative throughout the investigation. 

“That’s always been a takeaway,” Heinrich said. “She’s always made herself available. She hasn’t changed her phone number for the last 14 years. Even when she returned to the state she was from, she continued to be available to us.” 

Heinrich said the investigation focused on the people closest to Faith before moving outward to a larger group of suspects.

“One of the things that was different about this case was we had really good DNA evidence that could help guide our investigation,” Heinrich said. “We didn’t just have to rely on what someone said because people can lie. So we knew if we found the person who left their DNA in all these items in the crime scene, that would be significantly be our person.”

Heinrich testified that the crime scene showed signs of violence, including the positioning of Faith’s body.

“The manner in which the roommate reported she had last seen her was not consistent with the way we found her,” he said. “All of those things together led me to establish in my mind that this was a violent assault that included sexual violence.”

Heinrich also testified about Hedgepeth and Rosario’s phone records and their last communication, tower dumps of the area near The Thrill and the Hawthorne, and the difficulty of finding a suspect.

He testified that in 2021, the defendant, Miguel Salguero-Olivares, was identified as a person of interest. 

Heinrich said Salguero-Olivares’ name had never come up during the investigation before that, despite a spreadsheet of 1,700 people investigators had looked into. 

He testified that the defendant was born in 1993 in Guatemala, and arrived in the US-and Chapel Hill specifically- in 2010. 

According to Heinrich’s testimony, at the time of Hedgepeth’s death, Salguero-Olivares lived at the King’s Arms apartments, a couple miles south of Hedgepeth’s apartment in the Hawthorne at the View.  

Prosecutors showed a map identifying Salguero-Olives’ 2012 place of employment at Outback Steakhouse on Mt Moriah Road, just down the street from Hedgepeth’s place of employment at Red Robin on New Hope Commons Blvd.

Heinrich will be back on the stand on Monday.