Faith Hedgepeth Attended UNC in Chapel Hill When She Was Bludgeoned To Death And A Mysterious Note Left Behind. Updated 09/23/2023

Update 09/23/2023: 

On September 16th, 2021, Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares arrested and charged with Faith's murder. Authorities used DNA ancestry technology to help find him. Investigators obtained his DNA without his consent during a DWI traffic stop. A palm print on the murder weapon, which was the wine bottle, matched the suspect's left palm. He is currently awaiting trial.

“Faith… well, Faith was a joy-- a true joy. She was a gift, you know, because she came to us at a low point in my life. She kept me going. She was my Faith.”-Roland Hedgepeth 

Faith Hedgepeth was as beautiful on the inside and she was on the outside. She was a lively woman who wanted to help people, especially children and hoped to one day become a pediatrician. She was much loved by her family, friends and her Haliwa-Saponi Native American tribe. She would have been the first one in her family to graduate from college, but her life was violently cut short, just weeks before her 20th birthday.

Faith was born September 26th, 1992, in Warren County, part of the Haliwa-Saponi Native American tribe's traditional territory in North Carolina. Her parents are Roland and Connie Hedgepeth. She was the fourth child born to the family. Unfortunately Roland had a drug problem and Faith's parents divorced within a year of Faith being born. Roland moved to Hickory, North Carolina, about a four-hour drive away and Faith was raised by her mother, with help from her sister, Ronalda, but Faith kept in close contact with her father.

In high school Faith was a cheerleader and a member of many extracurricular clubs and organizations. She was also an honor student and even earned the highly selective Gates Millennium Scholarship. When it came time to apply for college, Faith was determined to go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her father had also attended UNC-Chapel Hill, but never finished after starting a family with Connie.

The first two years at the university went well for Faith and as she began her third year at UNC, she was planning to further her studies and become a pediatrician. But, she took the spring 2012 semester off because she started to struggle. She told her mother that she was thinking about becoming a teacher instead. Connie told Faith that the world was wide open for her and if she put her mind to it, she could achieve anything.

Faith remained in the Chapel Hill area over the summer, living in an off-campus apartment at the Hawthorne at the View complex between Chapel Hill and Durham. She planned to move to another apartment after her financial aid for the fall semester was made available to her. 

Faith shared the apartment with Karena Rosario, with whom she had been friends since freshman year, and Karena's boyfriend, Eriq Takoy Jones. Karena and Eriq had a volatile relationship and Karena became a victim of domestic violence. Eventually Karena ended the relationship and Eriq moved out. However, he had in early July 2012 twice attempted to break into the apartment, even after the locks had been changed. Faith eventually drove Karena to court to get a protective order that required Eriq to stay away from the apartment. Eriq reportedly resented Faith for that and during a phone conversation, he threatened to kill her if he could not get back together with Karena.

Faith's family saw her alive for the last time on Sunday, September 2nd, 2012 at an early birthday celebration for Connie. After Faith’s  shift as a waitress at Red Robin in Durham, Faith and Karena drove to Warren County to join them.

On Tuesday, Connie's actual birthday, Faith called her and wished her happy birthday. That was the last time Connie spoke to her baby girl.

At 5:45 p.m. on Thursday, September 6th, Faith attended a rush event for the campus chapter of Alpha Pi Omega, a sorority she hoped to join. At 7:15 p.m. she left, saying she had to work on a paper she was writing about the history of her tribe. She and Karena went to the university's Davis Library to study together at 8 p.m. Between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. she exchanged texts with her father about her hopes to join the sorority. 

Roland said that Faith always knew the right time to text him. It was like she could sense when something was going wrong in Roland's life. She always would tell him to have faith. He said that she always made him feel like he was the most special person in the world.

Faith left Karena at the library briefly and returned around 11:30 p.m., after which they returned to their apartment together, arriving there around midnight. About a half and hour later they left yet again. Security footage shows the two women arriving at the now-closed nightclub “The Thrill” in downtown Chapel Hill. It was a popular club among college students because it admitted patrons under the legal drinking age of 21 to dance. After almost an hour and a half of dancing, Karena was allegedly having an upset stomach and wanted to leave. Security cameras at the club show her and Faith leaving at 2:06 a.m. 

At 3 a.m., a neighbor said she heard the girls moving around in their apartment. She said that it sounded like a heavy bag being dropped or furniture being overturned. Around the same time, records show Faith’s Facebook page was accessed.

At 3:40 a.m., a text was sent from Faith's phone to that of Brandon Edwards, a former boyfriend of hers, saying "Hey b. Can you come over here please. Rosario needs you more aha. You know. Please let her know you care." Three minutes later, another text was sent from her phone to Edwards' with the single word "than," believed to be a correction for the "aha" in the previous text. That was the last evidence of activity from her phone. At 4:16 a.m., Edwards sent a return text asking who had sent the previous text.

Karena's phone records show she was also trying to call Edwards around the same time. He did not answer, and when he did not she tried to call Jordan McCrary, a UNCCH soccer player she knew. Karena believed that Faith was asleep when she left the apartment at 4:25 a.m. She left the door to their place unlocked for some reason and got in McCrary's car. McCrary drove Karena to the home of another acquaintance on West Longview Street in Chapel Hill. After 10:30 a.m., Karena began trying to arrange a ride home. She first called Faith, who did not answer. Then she called another friend, Marisol Rangel, who came and took her back to her apartment.

It was about 11 a.m. when Karena and Marisol walked into the apartment that Karena shared with Faith. They both called to Faith and when she didn't answer they went into her bedroom and found her bloodied and partially nude, wrapped in a quilt. They immediately dialed 9-1-1. 

9-1-1: "911 where is your emergency?"

Karena: "I...um...i just walked into my apartment and my friend is like, she is unconscious. I just walked into the apartment there looks like there is blood everywhere.

911: "Alright, listen to me, when you touch her how does she feel? Does she feel warm?"

Karena: "No, she feels cold."

When police arrived, they found Faith lying face up, her face halfway off the bed and a pool of blood underneath her head. She only had a black T-shirt on that was pulled up over her head.

When she received the call that her little girl was dead, Connie just couldn't believe it. After she got off the phone, she was just in shock, but she had to make the calls to the rest of the family. 

Details of the investigation were not discussed publicly at first, a deviation from the Chapel Hill police's usual practice. Faith's autopsy report was also sealed. Two years later, Durham County court officials unsealed documents and her autopsy report in the search for her killer.

The autopsy report revealed that Faith had died from blunt force trauma to the head, which investigators believed was caused by an empty rum bottle found in the apartment. The report also detailed cuts and bruises on her arms and legs, along with blood under her fingernails. 

It was also revealed that there was a fast-food bag with a hand-written note that read, “IM NOT STUPID. BITCH. JEALOUS.” that was found near Faith’s body. The bag may have come from Time-Out, a popular 24-hour restaurant in Chapel Hill that would have been the only place open when Faith and Karena left The Thrill. It uses such bags and is a short distance away from the nightclub.

The note didn't have blood on it, which would indicate that it was either written some where else and then placed there or that it was written after Faith's murder.

A voice recording was also released which may have been of Faith's last moments. It seems that she might have "pocket dialed" her friend that the voicemail was left for. In the recording it might sound like she was screaming in pain. It is hard to tell without it being analyzed.

Eriq Jones was an aspiring rapper at the time of Faith's murder. He was quoted saying this about Faith, "From what i knew of her, she was the sweetest person in the world. If you needed her and she could do it she was there."

Despite what he said about how he claimed to feel, Eriq seemed to be a very strong suspect from the beginning. Police learned of his history of domestic violence and his threat against Faith. They also found that the night before, around 6 p.m., he had texted an acquaintance asking for forgiveness "for what I am about to do" and then posted the same message on his Twitter feed. Three days later, he changed the banner on his Facebook page to read "Dear Lord, Forgive me for all of my sins and the sins I may commit today. Protect me from the girls who don't deserve me and the ones who wish me dead today."

After a little bit of coaxing, Eriq cooperated with police and his apartment and car were searched for evidence. He also submitted a DNA sample. Authorities found nothing that linked Eriq to Faith's murder and his DNA did not match the semen collected at the scene. DNA from Edwards and many other men whom police found had been at The Thrill during the same time as Karena and Faith was also tested, with the same result.

In 2016, police released an image generated by Parabon NanoLabs of what the suspect who left the semen behind might look like based on the phenotype in his DNA profile. According to Parabon, the suspect was Native American and European mixed ancestry or Latino with olive skin, brown or hazel eyes and black hair.

Eriq wasn't the only one that Faith's family found suspicious. It seems as though Karena and Marisol's actions after they found Faith's body seemed suspect. First, it seemed that the 9-1-1 operator thought that Karena was alone when she called 9-1-1. 

911: "You're doing alright. You're doing alright you just stay on the phone with me."

Karena: "I see the police."

911: "i just don't want you to be alone right now."

Karena: "OK."

911: "OK. You just stay on the phone with me."

Karena is the only one that can be heard  that 9-1-1 call. In my opinion, she does sound genuinely upset during the call though.

The downstairs neighbor also thinks that Karena was acting suspicious that day. She said that she ran into Karena and Marisol, just minutes after the two found Faith's body. She said that they didn't act like people that found a dead body, especially someone who was brutally murdered and a roommate. She also said that Karena was just texting and that Marisol was softly crying.

I think people handle things in different ways, but you never know 100% about someone. All i can say is that in the 9-1-1 call Karena did say twice in a row that she had just walked into the apartment. i don't know why she felt that that was the most important thing to make known.

Faith's family, especially her father, worries that as time marches on that Faith's case will be forgotten. But detectives involved in Faith's case say that it is only a matter of time before the case is solved.

Faith not only made an impact when she was alive, but her legacy lives on now with the Faith Hedgepeth Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship is offered to help a Native American woman from a North Carolina tribe earn a higher education.

Anyone with information about Faith’s case should contact the Chapel Hill Police Department at (919) 614-6363 or Chapel Hill Crime Stoppers at (919) 942-7515 or http://www.crimestoppers-chcunc.org.

There is also a reward offered for information leading to the capture of Faith's killer.