Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Justice for Faith Hedgepath: The Trial of Miguel Salguero-Olivares

Transcript

Justice for Faith Hedgepath: The Trial of Miguel Salguero-Olivares · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: When you sit down to put together like a massive
0:02
thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, there's this underlying assumption, right. You
0:07
assume that all the pieces actually belong to the same picture.
0:10
Speaker 2: Right, You trust the box exactly.
0:12
Speaker 1: You spend hours, maybe days, grouping all the colors, finding
0:16
the edge pieces, and you're just trying to force these
0:18
pieces together based on the image printed on the front
0:21
of the.
0:21
Speaker 2: Box, because the human brain is just completely desperate for order.
0:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, we crave it.
0:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
0:26
Speaker 1: So you create this theory of what the image is
0:28
supposed to look like, and you force the pieces to
0:30
conform to that theory. But I want you to imagine
0:33
spending nine years trying to force these pieces together.
0:36
Speaker 2: Nine years is a long time to be scaring at
0:38
the same pieces.
0:39
Speaker 1: It is, and you're getting increasingly frustrated, right, only for
0:44
a completely unexpected, entirely different piece to just just suddenly
0:48
drop from the ceiling onto your.
0:49
Speaker 2: Board and it fits perfectly.
0:51
Speaker 1: It fits perfectly. Yeah, but it changes the entire picture
0:54
you thought you were looking at. It reveals that you've
0:57
been building the wrong puzzle for nearly a decade.
1:01
Speaker 2: I mean, the psychological toll of that realization. On an
1:05
investigative team is just profound.
1:07
Speaker 1: Oh, I can't even imagine.
1:08
Speaker 2: You have to dismantle a narrative that has calcified over
1:12
years of intense focus. You have to admit that the
1:15
foundational assumptions guiding your search were completely fundamentally flawed.
1:20
Speaker 1: Which police departments do not like doing.
1:22
Speaker 2: No, they don't, because suddenly you are holding a piece
1:25
of undeniable, objective truth that connects to absolutely nothing in
1:29
your existing framework.
1:30
Speaker 1: So welcome to this deep dive. Today, we are taking
1:34
you inside a harrowing cold case that is finally, after
1:38
all these years, beginning to thaw. We're looking at the
1:41
twenty twelve murder of a nineteen year old college student
1:43
named Faith Hedgepeth. It's a heavy one, it is, and
1:46
our mission today is twofold, and we're going to get
1:48
into the absolute granular mechanics of how a case like
1:50
this operates. First, we need to carefully unpack the tragic
1:53
timeline of her final hours, the crime scene itself, and
1:57
that staggering nine year hunt for her killer. Right. Second,
2:00
we're going to examine the fascinating legal chess match that
2:03
is currently unfolding as this case finally heads toward a
2:05
trial and that.
2:06
Speaker 2: Pre trial phase is where the actual architecture of a
2:09
conviction or an acquittal is built.
2:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what we want to show you today.
2:13
Speaker 2: We're going to look really closely at the filtering mechanisms
2:16
of the justice system. You're going to see the mechanical
2:19
process of how a judge decides what scientific evidence is
2:23
even legally permissible to present to a jury.
2:26
Speaker 1: Because it's not a free for all, no.
2:28
Speaker 2: Not at all. You'll see who defense attorneys construct a
2:31
viable alternative narrative to neutralize DNA evidence, and how the
2:35
constitutional rights of a defendant crash right into the psychological
2:39
well being of a traumatized witness.
2:41
Speaker 1: Because we all know that pre trial motions kind of
2:43
set the boundaries of the sandbox, right sure, but the
2:46
motions filed in this Durham County courthouse are just wild
2:49
because you have the state actively trying to suppress its
2:53
own desperation and a defense team building what basically amounts
2:57
to a legal Faraday Cage around their client.
3:00
Speaker 2: It really is incredible to read through.
3:02
Speaker 1: So we've got a massive stack of sources here. We
3:05
have investigative reports, forensic lab summaries, court filings, and the
3:09
actual transcripts from these pre trial hearings. We're going to
3:13
break it all down for you.
3:14
Speaker 2: Let's start by grounding ourselves in the reality of who
3:17
this case is actually about.
3:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's important. It's September twenty twelve. Faith Hedgepath is
3:23
nineteen years old. She's a junior at the University of
3:26
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
3:27
Speaker 2: And she is described and all the source material as
3:30
having this incredibly vibrant, really packed college.
3:34
Speaker 1: Schedule, the most junior tribe.
3:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she was super heavily involved in campus life,
3:38
deeply connected to her roots in the Halawa Sapony tribe.
3:42
And she's attending events for her sorority Alpha pay Omega.
3:45
Speaker 1: Which is actually the country's oldest historically Native American sorority.
3:49
Speaker 2: Right, And she was a biology major. She had real
3:51
aspirations of becoming a pediatrician. So the picture painted of
3:55
her life in the fall of twenty twelve is one
3:57
of just incredible forward momentum.
4:00
Speaker 1: She had everything going for her exactly.
4:03
Speaker 2: She was balancing a really rigorous academic load with a
4:07
very active social life and strong ties to her cultural heritage.
4:11
At this specific time, she was temporarily staying in a
4:14
one bedroom off campus apartment at a complex called Hawthorne at.
4:19
Speaker 1: The View, and she's sharing this place with a close
4:22
friend of hers, Krina Rosario.
4:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
4:25
Speaker 1: So when you look at the timeline of her final
4:27
night this is Thursday, September sixth, going into the early
4:31
morning hours of Friday, September seventh, it starts out so
4:34
incredibly normally, which I think makes the impending violence feel
4:38
even more jarring.
4:39
Speaker 2: It's very mundane at first.
4:40
Speaker 1: Right, the police reconstruct a timeline that shows Faith attended
4:44
a rush event for her sorority that evening. After the event,
4:48
she went to the Davis Library on the UNC campus
4:50
to study.
4:51
Speaker 2: Very typical Thursday night for a diligent student exactly.
4:54
Speaker 1: So after the library, she goes back to the apartment
4:57
she's sharing with Karina to get ready to go out
4:58
for the night.
4:59
Speaker 2: The plan was to go to a local nightclub in
5:01
downtown Chapel Hill called The Thrill. The Thrill, Yeah, it
5:05
was an eighteen and up club, a really popular spot
5:07
for college students in the area. They arrive at the
5:10
club around twelve thirty am.
5:12
Speaker 1: And they have them on camera, right they do.
5:15
Speaker 2: The security footage from the club shows them dancing, interacting
5:18
with various people, and generally just participating in the typical
5:22
college nightlife ecosystem.
5:23
Speaker 1: Write nothing out of the ordinary, no.
5:25
Speaker 2: And according to Karina's statements to the police, they left
5:28
the club and returned to their apartment around three am.
5:30
Speaker 1: Okay, three am.
5:32
Speaker 2: Yes. At that point Karina stated that Faith was tired,
5:36
complained of an upset stomach, and just went into the
5:38
bedroom to go to sleep.
5:40
Speaker 1: And this is where the timeline tightens like a vice.
5:42
It creates this locked room mystery aspect that would just
5:46
paralyze this investigation for.
5:48
Speaker 2: Years, it really does.
5:50
Speaker 1: So they get back at three am, face goes to sleep.
5:52
Karina tells police that she ended up leaving the apartment
5:55
again around four thirty am to ride with a male friend, which.
5:59
Speaker 2: Leaves a very specific window, a tiny window.
6:02
Speaker 1: We have this highly specific ninety minute window where they
6:05
are presumably both inside that small apartment. Then Karina has
6:09
gone and Karina does not return until much later that
6:13
morning around eleven am, right.
6:15
Speaker 2: And she brings another friend with her when she returns,
6:17
Marisol Rangel.
6:18
Speaker 1: So the physical layout of the space becomes incredibly critical here.
6:22
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we are talking about a standard, relatively compact one
6:26
bedroom apartment. If a violent struggle occurs in that space,
6:30
it is not going to be easily contained or muffled.
6:33
Speaker 1: No, everyone would hear it, right.
6:35
Speaker 2: So when Karina and Marisol unlock that door and walk
6:38
into the apartment at eleven am, the environment they step
6:40
into is one of severe chaotic violence.
6:43
Speaker 1: It's just horrific. Karina immediately dials nine to one one.
6:47
The audio of that call, which we will analyze heavily
6:49
later when we get to the legal motions, is just frantic.
6:51
She tells the dispatcher that her friend is unconscious and
6:54
there's blood everywhere.
6:56
Speaker 2: And when the Chapel Hill police arrive and conduct protective
6:59
sweep of the apartment, they find Faith dead in the bedroom.
7:03
Speaker 1: The crime scene details as they are explicitly laid out
7:06
and the unsealed police warrant applications are really grim. But
7:10
we have to look at the mechanics of this scene
7:12
because the physical evidence left behind dictates literally everything the
7:17
police do.
7:17
Speaker 2: Next, it's the bloaprint for the whole investigation.
7:20
Speaker 1: Right. She was found face up, hanging off the bed,
7:23
positioned over a large pool of blood. Her black shirt
7:26
had been pulled up over her head, and she had
7:28
no clothes on from the waist down.
7:29
Speaker 2: The very chaotic scene.
7:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the investigators noted significant blood spatter on the
7:34
closet doors and the surrounding walls. Also, a used feminine
7:39
care product was lying beside her on the bed.
7:41
Speaker 2: When forensic investigators analyze blood spatter, they're looking at the
7:44
physics of fluid dynamics to tell them the story of
7:47
the assault. Blood doesn't just splash randomly, you.
7:50
Speaker 1: Know, right. It follows physical laws exactly.
7:52
Speaker 2: It reacts to force, gravity, and the surface tension of
7:55
the fluid itself. So high velocity spatter like from a gunshot,
7:58
looks like a fine mist, but medium velocity spatter, which
8:02
is typically associated with blunt force trauma, creates much larger droplets.
8:06
Speaker 1: Like what they found on the closet.
8:08
Speaker 2: Yes, the presence of medium velocity cast off spatter on
8:11
the closet doors indicates that a weapon was raised and
8:14
swung multiple times with significant force.
8:17
Speaker 1: God, and the.
8:18
Speaker 2: Autopsy confirmed this, detailing severe brutal blunt force trauma to
8:23
the head as the cause of death.
8:25
Speaker 1: And the weapon wasn't a knife or a gun brought
8:28
to the scene by someone who had planned a surgical strike.
8:32
Investigators believe she was beaten to death with an empty
8:35
Boocardi rum bottle that was found in the apartment, which
8:38
reportedly had blood and tissue adhering.
8:40
Speaker 2: To it, which is huge. The choice of weapon is
8:43
a massive psychological indicator for criminal profilers.
8:47
Speaker 1: Because it wasn't brought there exactly.
8:49
Speaker 2: A Bacardi bottle is a weapon of opportunity. This suggests
8:52
the killer likely did not arrive at the apartment with
8:54
the premeditated intent to commit a murder using their own
8:57
specialized tools.
8:58
Speaker 1: They just grabbed what was there.
9:00
Speaker 2: Right, the violence escalated and the perpetrator grabbed whatever was
9:03
heavy and within reach to inflict damage. It speaks to
9:06
a disorganized crime scene driven by sudden explosive rage rather
9:11
than cool, calculated premeditation.
9:14
Speaker 1: Then we have to look at the detail that just
9:15
stops you in your tracks. According to the police reports,
9:19
right in the center of the bed, left in plain view,
9:22
there was a handwritten note.
9:24
Speaker 2: This is the part that changes everything.
9:26
Speaker 1: It really does. It was written in blue pen on
9:29
a white fast food takeout bag and the note read
9:33
quote I'm not stupid, followed by the B word and
9:36
then the name Jalous.
9:38
Speaker 2: The inclusion of a handwritten note transitions this crime scene
9:41
from a horrific act of violence into an intensely personal communication.
9:46
Speaker 1: It's so bizarre.
9:47
Speaker 2: It is. When an investigator walks into a room and
9:49
sees blunt force trauma with a weapon of opportunity, combined
9:53
with a victim who has been partially undressed and culminating
9:56
in an insulting handwritten message, the profile immediately in on
10:00
interpersonal dynamics.
10:01
Speaker 1: It's not a random robbery, not at all.
10:03
Speaker 2: A random burglar who panics upon finding a resident home
10:07
wants to minimize their time on the scene. They want
10:09
to escape. They do not linger in an apartment with
10:12
a body, locate a pen, find a piece of trash,
10:14
and compose a derogatory note.
10:16
Speaker 1: It takes time.
10:16
Speaker 2: It takes time, psychological comfort in the space, and a specific,
10:22
venomous message they feel absolutely compelled to deliver.
10:26
Speaker 1: It screams personal vendetta. It implies a pre existing relationship.
10:30
It's just fraught with high emotion and perceived betrayal.
10:34
Speaker 2: It sets the psychological anchor for the entire investigation. It
10:38
directs the police to look entirely at the victim's inner circle.
10:42
They're looking for someone who feels scorn, someone who feels
10:45
their intelligence have been insulted, hence the I'm not stupid phrasing,
10:50
and someone who has access to the apartment.
10:52
Speaker 1: But when you look at the timeline, though, the mechanics
10:54
of this locker room mystery are just terrifying.
10:56
Speaker 2: They really are.
10:57
Speaker 1: Karina says they got home at three am. She says
11:00
she left at four thirty am. If Faith was killed
11:03
after Karina left, you have a killer who manages to
11:06
slip into the apartment in the early dawn hours, navigate
11:08
the space, commit this incredibly loud, bloody and violent murder
11:12
with a rum bottle, take the time to write a note,
11:15
to clean themselves up enough not to leave a trail
11:17
of blood out the front door, and just vanish into.
11:19
Speaker 2: The morning, all without anyone calling the police.
11:22
Speaker 1: Right, all without anyone in the surrounding apartments calling in
11:25
a noise complaint. And if it happened while Karina was
11:28
there between three point zero and four point three zero,
11:31
I mean, how could she not know? A one bedroom
11:34
apartment does not have the acoustic insulation to hide a
11:37
blunt force homicide.
11:38
Speaker 2: The window of opportunity is minuscule. It requires either incredible
11:44
statistically improbable luck on the part of a random intruder,
11:48
or it requires intimate knowledge of the apartment, the door locks,
11:51
and the specific schedules of the women living there.
11:54
Speaker 1: It's a nightmare for the detectives.
11:56
Speaker 2: The timeline math is suffocating for an investigator. But because
11:59
of the rage evident in the assault and the personal
12:02
nature of the note, the police didn't spend much time
12:04
looking for a random phantom. They looked for someone with
12:07
a documented motive, and.
12:08
Speaker 1: They didn't have to look very far. Almost immediately, a
12:11
person of interest shot right to the very top of
12:14
their suspect list, a man named Eric took Away Jones.
12:17
When you're staring at an impossible timeline, you don't look
12:20
for a stranger. You look for someone who already has
12:23
a history of kicking the door down. Eric Takway Jones
12:27
was Karina Rosario's ex boyfriend, and his behavioral history was
12:31
a giant, flashing red siren for law enforcement.
12:34
Speaker 2: Oh Absolutely, in the context of homicide investigations, Escalating domestic
12:38
violence is the single most reliable predictor of future lethality,
12:42
and he had a history, a highly documented history of
12:45
violence directed specifically at that apartment on July eleventh, just
12:49
a couple of months before the murder, the Chapel Hill
12:51
Police had to respond to a domestic assault call at
12:54
the Hawthorne at the View Complex.
12:57
Speaker 1: And this wasn't just a shouting match.
12:58
Speaker 2: No. During that incident, Jones physically kicked two doors in
13:02
the apartment entirely off their frames.
13:04
Speaker 1: The physics required to kick a door off its frame
13:06
are substantial. You're splintering the jam, you're sharing the strike
13:10
plate screws out of the wood, and you're bending the hinges.
13:13
It is an act of explosive physical rage designed to
13:16
terrorize the people on the other side of that.
13:18
Speaker 2: Door, and Faith recognize that she did.
13:22
Speaker 1: Faith, recognizing the severe danger of this escalation, allegedly encouraged
13:27
Karina to legally protect herself.
13:30
Speaker 2: Karina took that advice and obtain a Chapter fifty B
13:33
domestic violence protective order against Jones.
13:35
Speaker 1: Which is a big deal in North Carolina.
13:37
Speaker 2: It is in North Carolina. A fifty BEE order is
13:40
not handed out casually. A judge has to review evidence
13:43
and find that acts of domestic violence have occurred, which
13:46
can include attempting to cause bodily injury or placing the
13:50
aggrieved party in fear of imminent serious bodily injury.
13:53
Speaker 1: So it's official.
13:54
Speaker 2: The existence of this act of restraining order provides the
13:57
police with a massive piece of the puzzle j judicially
14:00
recognized history of threat and violence.
14:03
Speaker 1: Then you had the witness testimony that starts rolling.
14:05
Speaker 2: In.
14:05
Speaker 1: A couple of days after the murder, a former roommate
14:08
of Faiths called the police and provided a shilling statement,
14:12
really check. She told investigators that over the summer, Faith
14:15
had confided in her that Jones absolutely despised Faith. He
14:20
reportedly resented Faith's influence over Karina. He viewed Faith as
14:24
the primary barrier preventing him from repairing his relationship with Karina.
14:28
And most damning of all, he had allegedly explicitly threatened
14:32
to kill Faith if Karina didn't get back together with him.
14:35
Speaker 2: If you are the lead detective on this case, the
14:37
narrative is practically writing itself.
14:39
Speaker 1: It's all right there.
14:40
Speaker 2: You have a suspect with a documented history of violence
14:43
at the exact location of the homicide. You have an
14:46
active restraining order indicating ongoing threat. You have a stated,
14:50
documented motive of intense resentment towards the victim, and you
14:54
have witness testimony of a direct, specific death threat against
14:58
the victim's life.
14:59
Speaker 1: You can't ask for for a better suspect on paper.
15:01
Speaker 2: Right from an investigative standpoint, you have crossed the threshold
15:04
from suspicion into active case building, and.
15:07
Speaker 1: His behavior in the hours and days after the murder
15:10
only solidifies that narrative. The police warrant applications detail how
15:15
after initially being interviewed by authorities, Jones actually returned to
15:18
the crime scene.
15:19
Speaker 2: Which is always a red flag.
15:21
Speaker 1: He walked right up to the active police tape outside
15:23
the apartment building. He got so close that officers had
15:26
to physically intervene and order him to leave, reminding him
15:30
that Kareena's fifty B restraining order against him was still
15:33
active and she needed to be able to safely return
15:35
to her residence once the scene was cleared.
15:38
Speaker 2: Returning to the scene of a crime is a heavily
15:41
documented phenomenon in forensic psychology.
15:43
Speaker 1: It happens in the movies all the time.
15:46
Speaker 2: While it is a trope in fiction, it happens frequently
15:48
in reality. The motivations vary. Sometimes it is morbid curiosity,
15:53
Sometimes it's a tactical decision to gauge the police presence
15:56
and see how much evidence is being collected, trying to
15:59
see what they know exactly. And in cases of domestic
16:02
or interpersonal violence, it can be a subconscious assertion of
16:05
dominance over the space where the ultimate control was exerted.
16:08
Speaker 1: Wow, and as if his physical presence wasn't suspicious enough,
16:12
his digital footprint was practically glowing on the dark. Investigators
16:17
received a tip from an anonymous source who reported that
16:19
Jones had texted them the day before the homicide, strangely asking.
16:23
Speaker 2: For forgiveness out of nowhere.
16:25
Speaker 1: Out of nowhere. Then he updated his social media with
16:29
a deeply cryptic public post. He wrote, and I quote,
16:33
Dear Lord, forgive me for all of my sins and
16:36
the sins I may commit today. Protect me from the
16:38
girls who don't deserve me and the ones who wish
16:41
me dead Today.
16:42
Speaker 2: When you analyze the linguistics of a post like that,
16:45
time stamped and the immediate proximity of a brutal murder
16:47
of a woman he had explicitly threatened, it reads as
16:50
a psychological leak.
16:52
Speaker 1: A psychological leak.
16:53
Speaker 2: I like that term, so yeah, Because the phrase sins
16:56
I may commit today suggests premeditation and a disturbed state
17:00
of mind bracing for an impending action.
17:02
Speaker 1: It sounds like he's hyping himself up.
17:04
Speaker 2: And the fixation on girls who don't deserve me perfectly
17:07
aligns with the motive of a scorned ex partner harboring
17:10
deep seated resentment toward the women he feels are conspiring
17:13
against him. It's the kind of circumstantial evidence that prosecutors
17:17
used to build compelling narrative of intent and malice for
17:19
a jury.
17:20
Speaker 1: So you had the violin X, the structural damage to
17:23
the apartment, the legal restraining order, the death threats, the
17:26
weird apologies, and the incredibly specific social media posts.
17:30
Speaker 2: It's all there.
17:31
Speaker 1: The police look at all of this and they think,
17:33
we have our guy. We've built the puzzle. We just
17:36
need to run the DNA from the crime scene, match
17:38
it to Jones, and we can make the arrest.
17:41
Speaker 2: And this brings us to the mechanics of forensic biology.
17:44
We know from the unsealed reports that police recovered seamen
17:47
at the crime scene, which they believe belonged to the perpetrator.
17:50
Right biological evidence, They obtained a DNA sample from Eric
17:53
Tacoy Jones. They sent it to the North Carolina State
17:56
Crime Laboratory and they waited for the genetic confirmation and
18:00
that would close the case.
18:01
Speaker 1: But the match never came. It didn't. The lab report
18:04
came back and it was an absolute conclusive non match.
18:08
Eric Tacoi Jones's DNA was not the DNA left on
18:12
faith hedge bet.
18:13
Speaker 2: To really understand the finality of that, you have to
18:15
understand how DNA profiling works. Forensic labs do not sequence
18:19
your entire genome.
18:20
Speaker 1: They just look at specific parts, right.
18:21
Speaker 2: Yes, they look at specific locations on your chromosomes called
18:24
short tandem repeats or STRs. These are non coding regions
18:28
of DNA where a sequence of letters repeats itself. The
18:31
number of repeats varies wildly from person to person.
18:35
Speaker 1: Sounds like a barcode kind of yeah.
18:37
Speaker 2: The FBI's code is system looks at twenty of these corlosi.
18:41
If the DNA left at the crime scene has twelve
18:44
repeats at a specific locus and Eric Tacoy Jones's DNA
18:48
has fifteen repeats at that same locus, he is excluded.
18:52
Speaker 1: It's just math.
18:53
Speaker 2: It is not a matter of opinion or interpretation. It
18:55
is a mathematical certainty he did not leave that DNA.
18:59
Speaker 1: I try to imagine to the atmosphere in the Chapel
19:01
Hill precinct when that lab report was opened. You funneled
19:05
massive amounts of energy, resources and manpower into building an
19:09
air tight case against this guy.
19:11
Speaker 2: You're ready for the conviction.
19:12
Speaker 1: You have the motive, the opportunity, the history of violence,
19:15
and the objective reality of science just obliterates your entire
19:19
theory in a single cage of test results.
19:22
Speaker 2: This scenario is the textbook definition of confirmation bias and
19:26
criminal investigations, often referred to as tunnel vision.
19:29
Speaker 1: Tunnel vision, Yeah, it.
19:30
Speaker 2: Is a cognitive heuristic where investigators form a theory early
19:33
in the case based on compelling, circumstantial evidence, like a
19:36
suspect who is literally kicking doors off their hinges.
19:39
Speaker 1: It's hard to ignore that.
19:41
Speaker 2: Right, and then human nature compels them to view every
19:44
subsequent piece of ambiguous evidence through the lens of that
19:48
suspect's guilt.
19:49
Speaker 1: You filter everything to fit the theory. The cryptic note
19:52
left on the takeout bag, the investigators must have assumed
19:55
Jones left it to taunt the roommate. The weird social
19:59
media pose to out sins I may commit. They read
20:01
it as a digital confession.
20:03
Speaker 2: You start molding the evidence to fit the suspect rather
20:06
than letting the evidence lead you to the suspect. It
20:09
is incredibly dangerous because while you are focused on the
20:12
perfect circumstantial suspect, the actual perpetrator's trail is going cold.
20:18
Speaker 1: And DNA doesn't care about your theories.
20:20
Speaker 2: DNA is completely agnostic. It doesn't care about your behavioral profiles,
20:23
your restraining orders, or your social media analysis.
20:26
Speaker 1: Wow.
20:26
Speaker 2: When the lab cleared him, the police were plunged into
20:29
a terrifying reality. They had lost crucial investigative momentum. The
20:34
timeline was still mathematically impossible, and they had to look
20:36
into the void and admit they had absolutely no idea
20:39
who is in that room with.
20:40
Speaker 1: Faith, and that void swallowed the case for a very
20:43
very long time. This is where the investigation enters a long, brutal,
20:48
cold winter. We are talking about nine years of following
20:51
every conceivable lead and repeatedly hitting a brick wall.
20:55
Speaker 2: It wasn't for lack of effort, though they deployed an
20:57
unprecedented amount of resources. We didn't just sit on the
21:00
DNA profile. They actively hunted for a.
21:03
Speaker 1: Match, right remember the night club, the Thrill. The police
21:06
pulled all the available security camera footage from that night.
21:10
They meticulously identified every single man who was seen interacting
21:14
with Faith or Karina at the club.
21:16
Speaker 2: That is painstaking work, it is.
21:18
Speaker 1: They tracked those men down across the state. They requested
21:21
DNA samples, conducting dozens and dozens of buckle swabs. A
21:25
buckle swab is simply rubbing a Q tip on the
21:27
inside of the cheek to collect epithelial cells for an
21:30
str profile.
21:31
Speaker 2: They cast a massive dragnet across the tri state area.
21:34
Speaker 1: The scale of the genetic testing in this single investigation
21:37
was staggering. Court records specifically note that the North Carolina
21:42
State Crime Lab performed more DNA analysis for the Faith
21:46
Hedgepeth case than for any other individual case in the
21:50
entire history of the state's crime lab.
21:52
Speaker 2: That's wild. They were swabbing acquaintances, neighbors, and people who
21:56
just happened to be in the downtown area that night,
21:58
and you.
21:58
Speaker 1: Can imagine the friction there, the friction between solving a
22:02
horrific murder and the civil liberties implications of asking dozens
22:06
of innocent men to surrender. The genetic privacy to the
22:09
state was immense.
22:11
Speaker 2: All the legal and ethical debates were definitely happening.
22:13
Speaker 1: But every single swab came back negative, every single one.
22:17
So as the years tick by, the police turned to
22:19
cutting edge technology out of sheer desperation. In twenty sixteen,
22:23
four years after the murder, they partnered with a company
22:26
called Parabond Nanolabs.
22:27
Speaker 2: Parabon is fascinating.
22:29
Speaker 1: They specialize in a technology called DNA phenotyping. Basically, they
22:33
take the genetic code left at the crime scene and
22:35
use it to predict the physical appearance of the unknown suspect.
22:38
Speaker 2: The science behind phenotyping is a massive leap from traditional
22:42
str profiling.
22:43
Speaker 1: How does it work exactly well?
22:45
Speaker 2: While STRs just give you a meaningless string of numbers
22:48
to match against a database, phenotyping looks at single nucleotide
22:52
polymorphisms or smps. These are variations at a single position
22:57
in a DNA.
22:57
Speaker 1: Sequence oka smps right.
23:00
Speaker 2: Carabon analyzes thousands of these SNPs to look for genetic
23:03
markers that dictate physical traits. They are analyzing the genes
23:07
responsible for melanin production to predict eye color, hair color,
23:11
and skin pigmentation.
23:12
Speaker 1: They can actually build the face from it, they.
23:14
Speaker 2: Look at genes associated with facial more fadulty to predict
23:17
bone structure, jawline, and even the likelihood of freckling.
23:21
Speaker 1: So the police took this data and released a composite
23:23
sketch generated by the parabon algorithms. The snapshot predicted that
23:27
the suspect was a Latino male with olive skin, brown
23:31
or hazel eyes, and.
23:32
Speaker 2: Black hair, a very specific profile.
23:34
Speaker 1: They released this sketch to the public, blasting it across
23:37
news networks and social media, hoping someone would recognize the
23:40
face predicted by the DNA, But still the silence was deafening.
23:45
The tip lines yielded nothing actionable. The years continue to
23:48
pass twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty until
23:53
September twenty twenty one.
23:55
Speaker 2: Almost exactly nine years to the day after Faith was murdered,
23:58
the tectonic plates of the case finally shifted.
24:01
Speaker 1: The Chapel Hill Police Department, alongside the North Carolina Attorney General,
24:05
held a major press conference. They announced that they had
24:07
made an arrest. A thirty three year old man named
24:10
Miguel Salgero Olivari's was charged with first degree murder.
24:13
Speaker 2: The most astonishing element of this arrest is that Miguel
24:16
Salgero Olivari's was a complete ghost.
24:18
Speaker 1: In the case file, a total ghost.
24:21
Speaker 2: In an investigation that generated thousands of pages of reports, interviews,
24:24
and tips. His name had never appeared, he had never
24:27
been interviewed by detectives. He was not on any peripheral
24:30
suspect list. He was entirely unknown to the authorities in
24:33
the context of this murder.
24:35
Speaker 1: The mechanism of how they found him is a testament
24:38
to the inescapable net of modern genetic databases.
24:41
Speaker 2: It really is.
24:42
Speaker 1: Just days before the press conference, Salgero Olivari's was involved
24:45
in a routine, unrelated incident. He was bowled over and
24:49
investigated for a DUI in a neighboring jurisdiction.
24:52
Speaker 2: Just a standard traffic stop YEP.
24:54
Speaker 1: And as part of that standard arrest procedure, law enforcement
24:57
obtained a sample of his DNA assess the swab, generated
25:01
his str profile, and uploaded it into the State database,
25:05
which communicates with the National CODIS system.
25:07
Speaker 2: Which is constantly running comparisons.
25:09
Speaker 1: The system runs an automated algorithmic comparison against all the
25:13
unsolved crime scene profiles in the database, and it pinged,
25:17
the computer found a one hundred percent match.
25:19
Speaker 2: Boom.
25:20
Speaker 1: The DNA left at the incredibly violent, bloody crime scene
25:23
in Chapel Hill nine years earlier belonged to the man
25:26
sitting in a holding cell for a traffic violation.
25:29
Speaker 2: The implications of this from modern society are just staggering.
25:32
We are living in a paradigm where you can commit
25:34
a horrific, seemingly perfect crime, evade all traditional detective work
25:39
for a decade, and leave absolutely no witnesses and think
25:42
he got away with it exactly. But a minor unrelated
25:45
infraction a broken tail light and expired registration or a
25:50
duy forces your biology into the system, and in an instant,
25:54
the algorithm pulls you out of total obscurity and links
25:57
you to a murder.
25:58
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
25:59
Speaker 2: The private debates surrounding the collection of DNA for misdemeanor
26:02
arrests are intense, but from an investigative standpoint, it is
26:06
the ultimate trump card.
26:07
Speaker 1: But while the DNA match salls the who, it creates
26:10
a massive glaring mystery regarding the why. Because it's been
26:15
fourteen years since Faith was murdered, It's been five years
26:18
since Selgaro Olivarius was arrested and his life has been
26:21
thoroughly dissected by investigators, and to this day, as we
26:24
sit here, there is still absolutely no known connection between
26:27
him and Faith hedgepath none.
26:29
Speaker 2: That void of connection is incredibly rare in these types
26:32
of genetic genealogy or database hits.
26:34
Speaker 1: They usually figured out pretty quickly.
26:36
Speaker 2: Ran Usually when a cold hit occurs, investigators immediately begin
26:40
reverse engineering the suspect's life in the year of the murder.
26:44
Within days, they usually find the overlapping node. They discover
26:47
the suspect was a maintenance worker at the apartment complex,
26:50
or a delivery driver who frequented the area, or a
26:54
friend of a friend who attended the same parties, something
26:57
to link them. But in this case, despite five years
26:59
of digging post arrest, the state has produced no evidence
27:03
of any relationship, interaction, or even passing familiarity between Salgero
27:07
Olivares and Faith Hedgepet And.
27:09
Speaker 1: This brings up the most critical question as we head
27:11
toward a trial. If there is no connection, how on
27:15
earth does the state explain the motive to a jury.
27:17
Speaker 2: That's the million dollar question.
27:19
Speaker 1: We discussed the mechanics of that crime scene at length.
27:21
The blunt force trauma with a rum bottle, the victim
27:24
being partially undressed, the handwritten note on the takeout bag
27:28
explicitly saying I'm not stupid. That scene communicates rage and
27:32
intimacy highly personal. Does a jury require a story that
27:36
explains that rage? Does a jury need a why? Or
27:39
is the objective science of the DNA match enough to
27:42
secure a conviction?
27:44
Speaker 2: This is the central tension of the upcoming trial. Legally speaking,
27:48
the prosecution is under no obligation to prove motive.
27:51
Speaker 1: They don't have to explain why.
27:52
Speaker 2: No, they don't. The burden of proof requires them to
27:55
prove the actus rees, the criminal act itself, and the
28:00
men's reha the intent to commit the crime. They do
28:03
not have to prove why the defendant wanted to commit
28:05
the crime, only that he committed it. And a DNA match,
28:09
particularly semen found on the victim in a sexually charged
28:12
crime scene, is incredibly persuasive evidence of the act.
28:16
Speaker 1: But juries are not robots computing legal statutes. They're human
28:19
beings exactly.
28:20
Speaker 2: Human beings are narrative creatures. We crave stories that make
28:24
sense of chaotic events. When a jury has shown photographs
28:26
of a crime scene that violent with a handwritten note
28:29
calling the victim a derogatory name. Their cognitive framework demands
28:33
a narrative that explains that level of targeted specific anger.
28:37
Speaker 1: It just doesn't fit the stranger profile right.
28:39
Speaker 2: If the prosecution stands before them and says, we have
28:42
no idea why he did it, We have no idea
28:44
how he got into the apartment, we have no idea
28:46
why he wrote the note. But his DNA is here,
28:48
it leaves a massive narrative vacuum, and defense attorneys are
28:52
highly skilled at filling narrative vacuums with reasonable doubt, which brings.
28:56
Speaker 1: Us to the courtroom, the arena where this narrative battle
28:59
is curve being fought. The story has shifted from the
29:03
quiet streets of Chapel Hill to the legal battle field
29:06
of the Durham County Courthouse.
29:08
Speaker 2: The stakes are incredibly high now.
29:10
Speaker 1: Miguel Salgaro Olivarre's has pleaded not guilty to all charges,
29:14
which include first degree murder, first degree burglary, first degree rape,
29:18
and first degree sexual offense. He is facing a life sentence.
29:22
The trial is scheduled to begin on September.
29:24
Speaker 2: Twenty eighth, But there's a whole war happening first.
29:26
Speaker 1: Yes, before the jury pool is even assembled, there is
29:30
a brutal, high stakes war being fought behind the scenes.
29:33
Speaker 2: The public often assumes that the trial itself, the opening statements,
29:37
the cross examinations, the dramatic objections, is where the outcome
29:41
of a case is decided. But the reality of the
29:44
justice system is that trials are frequently won and lost
29:48
months before they begin. During the pre trial hearings.
29:51
Speaker 1: We're talking about motions and Lemma mine. This is the
29:53
crucial phase where the defense and the prosecution file extensive
29:58
legal briefs arguing over the evidentiary universe of the trial.
30:02
Speaker 2: They're setting the boundaries.
30:03
Speaker 1: They are fighting over what the jury will actually be
30:06
allowed to see, hear, and consider.
30:08
Speaker 2: Think of a trial as a tightly controlled experiment. The
30:11
jury is only permitted to evaluate the data that survives
30:14
the judge's filtering process. In pre trial motions, the attorneys
30:18
are arguing over the rules of that filter.
30:20
Speaker 1: What stays in and what gets tossed right.
30:22
Speaker 2: They argue over what evidence is too prejudicial, what is
30:25
irrelevant to the charges, and what investigative methods fall short
30:29
of scientific standards. Because once a jury hears a piece
30:32
of information. You cannot surgically remove it from their brains.
30:36
Even if the judge instructs them to disregard.
30:38
Speaker 1: It, you can unring the bell.
30:40
Speaker 2: The goal of pretrial motions is to ensure the jury
30:43
never hears the damaging information in the first.
30:45
Speaker 1: Place, and in the Hedge Pith case, the pre trial
30:48
motions are fascinating because one of the most aggressive motions
30:51
to suppress evidence came not from the defense but from
30:55
the prosecution.
30:56
Speaker 2: Which is wild.
30:57
Speaker 1: The state was actively asking the judge to exclude their
31:00
own investigative reports from the trial.
31:02
Speaker 2: It is a highly unusual maneuver. Typically, the defense is
31:06
the party fighting tooth and nail to suppress the state's evidence,
31:09
claiming it was obtained illegally or is scientifically unsound.
31:13
Speaker 1: But here the state stood up and essentially admitted to
31:16
the court. Look over the course of the nine years
31:19
before we had a DNA match, we grew increasingly desperate.
31:22
We had immense public pressure, a grieving family, and zero leads,
31:27
so we commissioned some analyses that were frankly highly unconventional.
31:31
Speaker 2: They were trying anything they could, and.
31:32
Speaker 1: The prosecution explicitly asked the judge to ban the jury
31:36
from ever, hearing about two specific investigative avenues they pursued.
31:39
Let's break them down first, the nine to one one
31:42
call analysis. Oh yes, when Carita Rosario discovered the horrific
31:46
scene at eleven am, her first action was to call
31:49
nine to one one. The Chapel Hill Police Department took
31:52
the audio recording of that emergency call and sent it
31:54
to a man named Mark maclitch for specialized analysis.
31:58
Speaker 2: And what exactly was he analyzing?
32:00
Speaker 1: Well, during the pre trial hearings, the prosecutor had to
32:03
admit on the record the Militch formed his opinions based
32:07
solely on the linguistic choices in phrasing Karina used during
32:10
that single traumatic phone.
32:11
Speaker 2: Call, solely on her words on the call.
32:14
Speaker 1: Yes, he didn't know Karina. He didn't know her baseline
32:17
speech patterns under normal conditions. He didn't know the intricate
32:21
context of a relationship with Faith or Eric Talco Jones.
32:25
He just listened to the syntax of a woman discovering
32:27
her brutally murdered friend and decided to analyze her underlying
32:30
psychology based on the words she chose in a moment
32:33
of sheer panic.
32:35
Speaker 2: I mean it is the epitome of subjective interpretation masquerading
32:38
as objective analysis. Attempting to decode gild or innocence from
32:42
the linguistic structure of an emergency call without any established
32:46
baseline is scientifically perilous, But the state.
32:49
Speaker 1: Didn't stop there. The second thing they wanted hidden from
32:52
the jury was a written statement analysis.
32:54
Speaker 2: Let me guess more linguistics yep.
32:57
Speaker 1: On the day of the murder, Karina provided a written
32:59
statement the police detailing her timeline of events. The State
33:04
Bureau of Investigation, the SBI, took that written statement and
33:07
sent it to an analyst named mister Schaeffer.
33:10
Speaker 2: Okay.
33:10
Speaker 1: During the pre trial hearings, an SBI agent actually took
33:13
the stand and testified under oath that the agency had
33:17
never used this specific analytical technique before in a homicide case.
33:22
He openly admitted that they were going through the case
33:24
file with a fine tooth com trying desperately to shake
33:27
loose a new lead.
33:28
Speaker 2: The technique they used is closely related to a practice
33:30
known as SCAN or scientific content analysis, which was developed
33:34
by a former Israeli intelligence officer named Avenom Sapir.
33:38
Speaker 1: What is that actually involved?
33:39
Speaker 2: The methodology involves an analyst scrutinizing a written statement for
33:43
signs of deception. They do this by looking for incredibly subtle,
33:46
granular linguistic shifts. For example, they track when a subject
33:49
changes pronouns, shifting from we went to the club to
33:53
I went home ooh.
33:54
Speaker 1: Looking for slips of the ton.
33:55
Speaker 2: They look for what they call abandoned thoughts, where a
33:58
sentence trails off or changes direction mid thought. The underlying
34:03
theory of scan is that deception requires a heavier cognitive
34:07
load than truth telling, and that the subconscious mind will
34:10
betray the lie through these structural linguistic anomalies.
34:13
Speaker 1: So if you change your sentence halfway through your lying.
34:16
Speaker 2: An abandoned thought under this theory indicates a truth that
34:19
was almost spoken but hastily suppressed.
34:22
Speaker 1: The judge presiding over the pre trial hearings listen to
34:25
all of this, and through both of these analyzes out
34:28
they're strictly banned from being mentioned in the trial. The
34:31
judge excluded them under rule seven oh.
34:33
Speaker 2: Two, which is a very important rule.
34:35
Speaker 1: Let's dive into the mechanics of rule seven oh two
34:37
because it is the ultimate gatekeeper of the American court room.
34:40
How does it actually work?
34:42
Speaker 2: Rule seven oh two of the rules of evidence dictates
34:45
who can testify as an expert witness and what kind
34:48
of scientific or technical knowledge can be presented to a jury.
34:51
It is heavily influenced by a landmark Supreme Court case
34:55
called Dobert v. Merril Dow Pharmaceuticals Gilbert Okay. Before Dobert,
34:59
Court TI use the Fry standard, which basically just asked,
35:02
is this technique generally accepted by the scientific community? But
35:06
dober and rule seven oh two put a much heavier
35:09
burden on the judge to act as a strict gatekeeper,
35:12
so the.
35:12
Speaker 1: Judge can't just take the expert's word for it.
35:14
Speaker 2: Precisely, if the state or the defense wants to introduce
35:17
science into the courtroom, the judge has to evaluate the
35:20
actual methodology. Has the technique been rigorously tested using the
35:24
scientific method has it been subjected to peer review and
35:28
published in reputable academic journals.
35:30
Speaker 1: They need actual proof it works.
35:32
Speaker 2: Is there a known quantifiable error rate? And are there
35:35
established standards controlling how the technique is applied?
35:39
Speaker 1: And linguistic statement analysis fails these tests spectacularly.
35:43
Speaker 2: It completely collapses under empirical scrutiny, psychological and linguistic studies
35:48
have repeatedly demonstrated that pronoun shifting or syntax changes are
35:52
not reliable indicators of deception.
35:54
Speaker 1: People just talk like that naturally.
35:55
Speaker 2: Especially under stress. People under immense trauma, sleep deprivation, or
36:00
the stress of a police interrogation utilize cognitive shortcuts. They
36:05
truncate sentences, they change perspectives, and they struggle to linearly
36:09
organize their thoughts.
36:11
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean they're guilty.
36:12
Speaker 2: No, Presenting a self created interpretive framework, like declaring that
36:16
an abandoned sentence fragment means someone is covering up a
36:19
murder as objective science, is incredibly dangerous. A jury gives massive,
36:25
sometimes undue weight to a person sitting on the witness
36:28
stand who has been anointed by the court as an expert.
36:31
Speaker 1: So the judge shut it down.
36:33
Speaker 2: The judge rightfully recognized that this linguistic analysis was junk
36:36
science and barred it from the trial to prevent the
36:39
jury from being misled by a subjective theory wrapped in
36:41
the illusion of scientific authority.
36:43
Speaker 1: But wait, I am stuck on the strategic logic of
36:45
this specific motion. I completely understand why the judge hates
36:49
junk science and barred it under rule seven oh two.
36:52
But why would the state preemptively try to hide its
36:54
own homework.
36:55
Speaker 2: To save face. Mostly, But if.
36:57
Speaker 1: I'm the defense attorney representing Salgaro Olivari's I want the
37:01
jury to see that linguistic analysis. I don't want it
37:04
introduced to prove that Karina was deceptive. I want it
37:07
introduced to show the jury how incredibly sloppy, biased, and
37:11
desperate the police investigation had become.
37:13
Speaker 2: You'd want to expose the desperation exactly.
37:16
Speaker 1: I'd want to stand in front of the jury and say,
37:18
look at these investigators. They were so desperate to pin
37:21
this murder on anyone that they resorted to linguistic voodoo
37:25
and Tarot card level psychology. If they were willing to
37:29
compromise their integrity for that, why should you trust their
37:32
handling of the DNA evidence against my client.
37:35
Speaker 2: That is a very sharp, aggressive, strategic thought, and it's
37:38
exactly the kind of calculation defense attorneys make every day. However,
37:42
in this specific instance, the defense attorney, James Rainsford, actually
37:47
agreed with the state's motion to exclude the reports.
37:50
Speaker 1: He agreed with them.
37:50
Speaker 2: He did not fight to keep the junk science in
37:52
the trial.
37:53
Speaker 1: Why it seems like such a missed opportunity to attack
37:56
the credibility of the investigation.
37:58
Speaker 2: Because introducing john science into a trial is like detonating
38:02
a grenade in a very small room. You cannot control
38:06
the trajectory of the shrapnel.
38:08
Speaker 1: Oh I see.
38:09
Speaker 2: If the defense successfully argues to let the jury hear
38:12
an expert testified that the surviving roommate's nine to one
38:15
one call showed distinct psychological markers of deception, the jurymon
38:19
actually believe the expert.
38:21
Speaker 1: They might buy into the junk science exactly.
38:23
Speaker 2: They might start focusing entirely on the roommate instead of
38:26
the defendant. Now you might think, well, isn't that what
38:28
the defense wants. Yes, they want the jury looking at
38:30
the roommate, but they want to introduce that doubt using
38:34
factual physical anomalies that the state cannot easily explain away.
38:38
Speaker 1: Right, They want solid evidence of doubt.
38:40
Speaker 2: If they rely on easily debunked linguistic junk science to
38:44
cast suspicion on the roommate, the prosecution will simply tear
38:47
the methodology apart on cross examination, making the defense look
38:51
desperate and manipulative. The defense wants to control the narrative
38:54
of reasonable doubt using concrete physical discrepancies, not subjective linguistic boots.
39:00
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, that makes perfect sense. They want a sturdy
39:03
foundation for their alternative theory. Let's pivot exactly to that
39:08
theory then, because the defensive strategy is becoming crystal clear
39:11
in these pre trial filings, and it's incredibly.
39:14
Speaker 2: Aggressive, stremely aggressive.
39:16
Speaker 1: They are building a legal Faraday cage around Selgirl Olivares.
39:20
They are actively attempting to point the finger of suspicion
39:23
away from their client and aiming it squarely at the
39:26
surviving roommate, Karina Rosario.
39:29
Speaker 2: It is a tragic, often devastating, but highly effective legal strategy.
39:33
Speaker 1: The defense doesn't need to prove that Karina committed the murder.
39:37
They just need to generate enough static electricity or in
39:40
her bizarre behavior that the signal of the defendant's DNA
39:44
match cannot.
39:45
Speaker 2: Get through to the jury just snuffed out.
39:47
Speaker 1: Let's break down the specific physical claims that a sense
39:50
laid out in their court filings to try and shift
39:52
the blame. First, they point out a glaring physical anomaly.
39:56
Karina had unexplained blood on one of her fingers when
39:58
she got into her friend's car shortly after four thirty am.
40:01
Speaker 2: And remember this is right at the end of the
40:03
tiny window when Faith was likely killed. The state countered
40:06
this by explaining that the blood on her finger was
40:08
swabbed and tested by the crime lab, but there was
40:11
an insufficient volume of genetic material to yield a usable
40:15
str profile. It was too small of a sample to
40:18
match to Faith.
40:20
Speaker 1: But if you the defense attorney, you just shrugs the
40:22
jury and say the roommate was in the apartment during
40:25
the window of the murder and she left with unexplained
40:27
blood on her hands. The state can't prove whose blood
40:30
it was. Make of that what you will. It plants
40:33
the seed second claim, and this is wild. Karina explicitly
40:37
told police during her interviews that the shirt she was
40:40
wearing earlier that night had been left at a friend's house,
40:44
but the defense alleges in their filings that the specific
40:47
shirt she described was actually found by crime scene investigators
40:51
partially underneath Faith's body on the bloody mattress.
40:53
Speaker 2: If the defense can prove that during the trial, it
40:56
is a massive physical discrepancy.
40:58
Speaker 1: It puts her right there.
40:59
Speaker 2: It invokes low cards exchange principle. A foundational concept in
41:03
forensic science which states that every contact leaves a trace.
41:09
If her clothing is intimately entangled with the victim's body
41:12
at the scene of the violence, it forcefully contradicts her
41:15
stated timeline and places her physically closer to the act
41:19
of the murder than she admitted.
41:21
Speaker 1: Third, and this is the detail that gave me absolute
41:24
chills when I read the transcripts. The defense claims that
41:27
during police interviews, Karina repeatedly used the phrase I'm not.
41:31
Speaker 2: Stupid, which is the exact specific phrase written in bluepen
41:35
on the fast food takeout bag left next to the
41:38
victim's body.
41:39
Speaker 1: Yes, when you look at the psychology of linguistics under stress,
41:42
the repetition of a specific defensive phrase like I'm not
41:45
stupid during a police interrogation is fascinating.
41:48
Speaker 2: The jury is going to notice that.
41:50
Speaker 1: The defense is going to hold up the photograph of
41:52
that note, play the audio of Karina using that exact
41:55
phrase to the police, and let the jury connect the dots.
41:57
Speaker 2: It's very persuasive.
41:59
Speaker 1: And finally, they cite an early police report where an
42:02
investigative officer noted that when Karina viewed the horrific, bloody crime, scene.
42:07
She showed quote, absolutely no emotion and just stared at
42:11
the bloody mattress as if it were an irrelevant object.
42:14
Speaker 2: The defense's use of that police report weaponizes the public's
42:18
misunderstanding of trauma. How So, there is a pervasive phenomenon,
42:22
often called the CSI effect, where juries expect victims and
42:25
witnesses to behave in very specific theatrical ways weeping, hysterically, screaming, fainting.
42:31
Speaker 1: Like on TV show, but.
42:32
Speaker 2: The psychological reality of severe trauma is often entirely the opposite.
42:36
The brain is overloaded by the horror of the event,
42:39
and it initiates a dissociative response. The nervous system shuts
42:43
down emotional expression as a survival mechanism, leading to a
42:46
flat effect or a blank stare. The officer observing Karina
42:49
likely misinterpreted profound psychological shock as cold indifference.
42:53
Speaker 1: But the defense doesn't care about the clinical psychology of
42:56
trauma dissociation. They care about optics. They are going to
42:59
take that police report, pair it with the phrase I'm
43:02
not stupid, add the bloody shirt under the body, and
43:05
present it to the jury as a compelling mosaic of suspicion.
43:09
Speaker 2: And if we unpack this legally, we have to return
43:12
to the core concept of reasonable doubt. The defense does
43:15
not have the burden of proof.
43:16
Speaker 1: They don't have to solve the case.
43:17
Speaker 2: They do not have an obligation to prove to a
43:20
mathematical certainty that Karina Rosario murdered Faith Hedgepeth. The burden
43:25
rests entirely on the state to prove that Miguel Silgero
43:30
Olivares committed the crime.
43:32
Speaker 1: All the defense has to do is prove that the
43:34
state's narrative is muddy, incomplete, and inherently flawed.
43:38
Speaker 2: They just need to present an alternative theory, supported by
43:41
physical anomalies from the crime scene, that is plausible enough
43:44
to make one single juror hesitate before voting to convict.
43:48
Speaker 1: It is the Faraday cage strategy. They're blocking the state's signal,
43:52
but it highlights a truly tragic, deeply uncomfortable reality of
43:56
the criminal justice system. The people closest to a victim,
44:00
the friends, the family members, the roommates, who are already
44:03
enduring unimaginable grief, often become collateral damage in a defense
44:07
teams strategy.
44:08
Speaker 2: It happens so often.
44:09
Speaker 1: Kaarina Rosario lost her friend in a horrific, violent way,
44:13
and now fourteen years later, she is going to be
44:16
dragged into a Durham County courtroom, placed under oath, and
44:20
essentially accused of murder on the public record, just so
44:23
the defense can create a smoke screen of reasonable doubt
44:26
for their client.
44:27
Speaker 2: Which leads us directly into the most emotionally charged, philosophically
44:30
complex pre trial motion of this entire.
44:33
Speaker 1: Saga, the battle over the camera.
44:34
Speaker 2: Battle over camera access in the courtroom.
44:36
Speaker 1: This specific motion is where the foundational constitutional rights of
44:39
the defendant crash head on into human empathy and the
44:43
psychological protection of a witness.
44:45
Speaker 2: The prosecution filed emotion practically begging the judge to ban
44:49
all media cameras from the courtroom, specifically during the testimony
44:52
of Karina Rosario and also for Marisol Rangel, the other
44:56
friend who helped discover the body.
44:58
Speaker 1: The state made a very impact human argument. They pointed
45:02
out to the judge that this is not a normal
45:04
cold case because the killer's identity was a complete mystery
45:07
for nine long years. Nature abhorred the vacuum.
45:10
Speaker 2: The Internet filled the void, the.
45:12
Speaker 1: Public, the Internet sleuths, the true crime forums, the communities online.
45:18
They all hyper focused their suspicion on the last person
45:21
known to have seen Faith alive, Karina.
45:24
Speaker 2: The prosecutor explicitly stated in the hearings that Karina has
45:28
lived for over a decade under intense, suffocating public scrutiny.
45:32
She has been the presumed suspect in the court of
45:34
public opinion, dissected by armchair detectives who have analyzed every
45:37
rumor and every detail of her.
45:39
Speaker 1: Life, which is just awful to think about.
45:41
Speaker 2: The state argued that forcing her to testify about the
45:43
most traumatic mourning of her existence under the glaring, unforgiving
45:46
lights of global media cameras might psychologically break her.
45:50
Speaker 1: They were genuinely worried.
45:51
Speaker 2: They expressed genuine concern that the sheer pressure of testifying
45:55
for an audience of millions might render her unable to
45:58
testify accurately or thoughtful, thereby damaging the state's case.
46:02
Speaker 1: But the defense fired back with the heaviest legal artillery
46:06
available the United States Constitution.
46:09
Speaker 2: They cited the Fifth and sixth Amendments. The sixth Amendment
46:12
contains the confrontation Clause, which guarantees a criminal defendant the
46:16
right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. It
46:19
also guarantees the right to a public trial, and the.
46:22
Speaker 1: Historical context of a public trial is really crucial here.
46:26
The framers of the Constitution specifically wanted to prevent the
46:30
abuses of secret tribunals, like the infamous Star Chamber in England,
46:34
where people were tried and condemned in closed rooms without
46:37
public oversight. How open courts ensure the integrity of the process.
46:41
Speaker 2: Exactly, But the defense introduced a very specific, nuanced legal
46:45
concern called vouching. The defense argued that if the judge
46:49
orders the cameras out of the room just for Koreina's testimony,
46:52
it sends a subliminal, highly prejudicial message to the jury.
46:55
Speaker 1: So walk me through the mechanics of vouching. How does
46:58
a jury internalize that?
46:59
Speaker 2: Imagine you are sitting in the jury box, the media
47:02
cameras have been rolling all week, broadcasting the testimony of
47:05
police officers, forensic experts, and other witnesses.
47:09
Speaker 1: Everything is open.
47:10
Speaker 2: Then Karina Rosario is called to the witness stand. The
47:13
judge suddenly stops the proceedings, orders the media to power
47:17
down their equipment or physically leave the court room, And
47:20
only then does her testimony resume. Subconsciously, the jury analyzes
47:25
the judge's behavior.
47:26
Speaker 1: They wonder, what's so special about her.
47:28
Speaker 2: The jury thinks, Oh, the court is protecting her. The
47:31
court trusts her. The court believes she is an innocent
47:34
victim who requires special accommodation.
47:36
Speaker 1: The defense attorney articulated this perfectly in the transcripts YEA.
47:40
He told the judge that clearing the cameras makes it
47:42
look like the court is saying trust her. She didn't
47:44
have anything to do with anything.
47:46
Speaker 2: That is the definition of the court subtly vouching for
47:49
a witness's credibility, and in the American legal system, a
47:53
judge must remain an entirely neutral arbiter. The judge can
47:57
never ever be seen as taking a side on whether
47:59
it was witness is telling the truth or lying.
48:02
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
48:03
Speaker 2: If the jury believes the judge trusts Karina, the defense's
48:07
entire strategy of casting suspicion on her is instantly neutralized.
48:11
Speaker 1: The defense also pointed out to the judge that the
48:14
media didn't just invent this suspicion out of thin air.
48:17
The true crime forums didn't act alone.
48:20
Speaker 2: No, they didn't.
48:21
Speaker 1: The defense reminded the court that years ago, when the
48:24
case was incredibly cold, former Chapel Hill Police Chief Alsa
48:28
Lake actually went on national television. She sat down for
48:32
an interview on ABC's twenty twenty and publicly questioned whether
48:35
Karina was giving the police truthful information. The authorities themselves
48:40
stoked the fires of public suspicion.
48:42
Speaker 2: So the defense's argument is essentially one of hypocrisy. You
48:45
cannot point the finger of suspicion at this woman on
48:48
national television for years to drum up leads and then
48:51
demand a secret private hearing to protect her when she
48:54
finally has to answer hard questions under oath from the defense, and.
48:57
Speaker 1: The judge, bound by the constitutional way to the sixth Amendment,
49:01
agreed with the defense. The motion to ban the cameras
49:04
was denied. The camera stack the media will be allowed
49:06
to stay and broadcast Kreina's testimony. But we absolutely must
49:11
pause here and state the crucial, bottom line, objective fact
49:15
of this entire situation. Kaarina Rosario has never faced any
49:19
charges in connection with the murder of Faith Hedgepeth.
49:22
Speaker 2: Ever, she is legally innocent. She has never been arrested
49:25
or indicted for any crime. Related to this case. But
49:28
this intense legal debate over camera access really crystallizes the delicate,
49:32
almost impossible balance a judge has to walk in high
49:35
profile cases tyrope. You have a defendant whose literal life
49:39
and liberty are at stake. He is facing life in prison.
49:42
He has an absolute constitutional right to a public, transparent
49:45
trial where the credibility of every single witness is scrutinized
49:48
in the open air. But on the other side of
49:50
the scale, you have a traumatized witness whose psychological well
49:53
being is being sacrificed to the relentless machinery of the
49:56
adversarial trial process.
49:57
Speaker 1: It makes me wonder, in this modern a era of
50:00
Internet sleuths, true crime documentaries, and TikTok investigations, is it
50:05
even possible to protect a witness anymore without violating a
50:09
defendant's rights. The minute her name appears in a public
50:13
court document, the internet dissects her life.
50:16
Speaker 2: It is a modern dilemma that the founders who drafted
50:19
the six Amendment couldn't possibly have anticipated. They had no
50:22
idea when they wrote about a public trial. The public
50:25
meant the thirty or forty local citizens who could physically
50:28
fit into the wooden gallery of a town courthouse. Today,
50:32
the public means millions of people scrutinizing your facial expressions,
50:36
your tone of voice, and your micro movements in four
50:38
K resolution on YouTube, instantly rendering verdicts in the comments section.
50:43
Speaker 1: It's a completely different world.
50:44
Speaker 2: The psychological pressure on a witness in that environment is
50:47
something the judicial system is still struggling to manage.
50:50
Speaker 1: It's entirely overwhelming. So what does this all mean as
50:53
we look towards September twenty eighth and the start of
50:55
this trial in Duran County.
50:57
Speaker 2: It means we're in for a very complex trial.
50:59
Speaker 1: Have a in Miguela sel Guero Olivares, facing a life
51:03
sentence based on a genetic algorithm match. Yeah, we have
51:06
a trial that has already been heavily shaped, filtered, and
51:10
edited by these intense pre trial motions. Junk science has
51:14
been hidden, defense strategies have been aggressively telegraphed. The cameras
51:18
are locked in place, and the stage is set.
51:20
Speaker 2: The pieces are all on the board.
51:22
Speaker 1: And most importantly, we have a community and a family
51:25
that has been desperately waiting fourteen long years for a
51:28
definitive answer to what happened.
51:30
Speaker 2: In that apartment, And in the center of all of
51:33
this legal maneuvering, scientific analysis, and constitutional debate is Faith Hedgepeth,
51:39
a nineteen year old young woman who is violently, senselessly
51:43
robbed of her future.
51:44
Speaker 1: Her legacy is incredibly important to remember here. She isn't
51:46
just a name on a cold case file or a
51:48
data point in a DNA database or a subject of
51:51
true crime speculation. Today, there is a Faith Hedgepeth Memorial
51:54
Scholarship Fund.
51:55
Speaker 2: That's a beautiful thing.
51:57
Speaker 1: It was specifically established to help Native America women from
52:00
North Carolina tribes pursue higher education. It is an active,
52:05
ongoing effort to ensure that she is remembered as a
52:09
vibrant student, a deeply proud member of the Halawasa Pony tribe,
52:13
and a force for good in her community, rather than
52:16
just the victim of a brutal crime.
52:18
Speaker 2: Supporting educational access for young Native women is a powerful
52:22
and enduring way to reclaim her narrative from the tragedy
52:25
of her final hours.
52:26
Speaker 1: It really is. We started this deep dive talking about
52:29
a massive jigsaw puzzle, about the agonizing process of forcing
52:33
the wrong pieces to fit and the shock of the
52:35
right piece finally dropping from the ceiling and changing the
52:37
entire picture. But as we wrap up our analysis today,
52:41
I want to leave you with this final thought to
52:42
mull over on your own. When a horrific crime goes
52:45
unsolved for over a decade, the shadow of suspicion doesn't
52:49
just hang in the air. It attaches itself to people.
52:52
Speaker 2: It becomes a part of their identity.
52:54
Speaker 1: It stretches out, and it can permanently alter the lives
52:57
of innocent people who just happen to be in the
52:59
victim's orbit. Even when the objective machinery of DNA science
53:03
finally points its finger at a total stranger, a ghost
53:06
pulled from a routine traffic stop. Can the court of
53:09
public opinion ever truly give those original suspects their lives back?
53:13
Can you ever unring the bell of a decade of suspicion?
53:17
Speaker 2: That is a heavy, lingering question that speaks to the
53:20
colladal damage of every unsolved case.
53:22
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive.