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The Faith Hedgepeth Murder Trial · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, usually when we talk about a medical diagnosis,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: there's this expectation of absolute precision.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Right. Like it's just pure math.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's like engineering. You break your arm, the
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: x-ray shows that jagged white line on the black film,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and the doctor just points it and says, well, there
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: It's totally binary.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: It's either broken or not broken. It's clean. And, I mean,
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: more importantly, it's comforting, you know?
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We just naturally gravitate toward things that we can see,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: things we can categorize in, well, solve with a single glance.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: But when you step into the world of forensic investigations,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: especially cold cases that involve these really complex interpersonal dynamics,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: that x-ray machine just completely shatters.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, completely. It's gone.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: We're looking at an investigative landscape that is just completely murky.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And our mission today, for you listening, is to step
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: right into the deep end of those muddy waters.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: We really are.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: We are going to unpack a confounding... Just heartbreaking 14-year-old
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: mystery that is finally making its way into a courtroom.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: We are talking about the tragic 2012 murder of a
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: 19-year-old college student named Faith Hedgepeth in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Yeah.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: And this is a case that has just fundamentally haunted
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: that community.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Truly.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: It's a story of immense lost potential. But from an
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: investigative standpoint, I mean, it features a timeline that seems
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: to just aggressively defy logic. It's a case defined by
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: impossible contradictions.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It really is. And to navigate this labyrinth today, we
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: are drawing from a highly specific, deeply informed source. We're
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: working with excerpts from an East Idaho News YouTube video
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: featuring journalist and true crime producer Kelly McClure.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: She's had incredible work on this.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: She has. She's followed this case intimately for over a decade.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: She previously worked at Crime Watch Daily. And she has
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: built a really close relationship with the victim's family, particularly
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Faith's father, Roland. So she brings a super granular understanding
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: of all the moving parts here. She's providing the facts,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: the glaring anomalies, and really the sheer frustration of a
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: case that went cold despite a seemingly massive abundance of
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: physical evidence.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: And, you know, the core contradiction we have to grapple
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: with today is this collision of the crime scene and
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the suspect.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Because on one hand, you have a physical scene that
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: practically screams intimacy. The staggering level of violence, the highly
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: specific nature of the evidence left behind, I mean, it
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: all points to a crime driven by intense personal passion
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: or just boiling anger. Exactly. But on the other hand,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: thanks to cutting-edge genetic genealogy deployed nine years after the fact,
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: the primary suspect heading to trial appears to be a
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: total phantom, just a complete stranger.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: It's crazy. It's the forensic equivalent of finding a meticulously
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: crafted DNA deeply personal handwritten love letter at a crime scene.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: But then the DNA on the envelope belongs to a
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: guy who lives three states away and can't even read.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect way to put it.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: It just defies basic human behavioral logic. But before we
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: get to the DNA and before we dissect the trial
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: strategies that are taking shape as we speak, we need
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: to set the baseline.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: We really do. We have to talk about who was lost.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Right, because this isn't just a puzzle. It is a
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: profound tragedy. We are talking about Faith Hedgepath.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: And by every metric, Faith was just an extraordinary young woman.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, she was only 19.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Beautiful, bright, with her entire future just laid out right
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: in front of her. Our source highlights that she was
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: a Gates Millennium Scholar.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Which is huge.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is not just a standard scholarship. That is
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: a fiercely competitive, prestigious award that really speaks to a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: rare level of academic dedication and sheer brilliance.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And beyond that, She was a proud member of the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Haliwa-Saponi Native American tribe and a first-generation college student.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: And what's fascinating here is how that specific detail, you know,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: being a first-generation student, is really crucial for understanding the
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: sheer weight of this loss. How so? Well, when a
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: first-generation student from a really tight-knit community like the Haliwa-Saponi
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: tribe goes off to a major university, they aren't just
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: going for themselves.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: They are carrying the hopes, the pride. and the entire
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: future trajectory of that community on their shoulders. Her success
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: was a collective triumph. So, naturally, her murder became a
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: collective enduring trauma.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: It sets a deeply poignant backdrop against the really cold
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: clinical facts of the investigation we're about to explore.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: It grounds the whole conversation. We definitely have to keep
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: that human element in focus for you guys listening as
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: we look at the basic premise, which is this. On
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the morning of September 7th, 2012, Faith Hedgepeth was found
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: brutally beaten to death in an off-campus apartment in Chapel Hill.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: To even begin to understand the trial happening today, 14
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: years later, we have to reconstruct the baffling crime scene.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And to do that, we have to look at the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: physical evidence left behind. Evidence that points in two entirely different,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: just maddening directions.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: It is arguably the ultimate forensic paradox.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the physical space. There is a crucial
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: misconception that Kelly McClure is absolutely adamant about clearing up immediately.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Well, this is so important.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Right. A lot of early media reports stated this murder
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: happened in Faith's apartment. It did not. Faith was actually
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: in a transitional housing period waiting for her university financial
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: aid to process.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Which is so common for college students.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So she was temporarily crashing with her friend, Karina Rosario.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: It was Karina's one-bedroom apartment. Faith did not live there permanently.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: And that administrative footnote, you know, about the college housing,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: is actually a foundational piece of the psychological puzzle here.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: How does that change things?
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Think about the implications of target selection. If a predator
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: is breaking into an apartment with a specific person in mind,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: whose apartment is it? It's Karina's.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: The location itself points toward the primary resident, not the
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: temporary guest who just happens to be sleeping in the bed.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: So if this was a targeted attack, The geography of
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: the crime scene introduces the immediate possibility of mistaken identity.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: We'll definitely see how that plays into the defense's strategy later.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: But for now, let's step inside Karina's bedroom.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: The scene is horrific. Our source describes it as extremely
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: bloody and deeply disheveled. There are clear, violent signs of
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: a massive physical struggle. Faith had been sexually assaulted, and
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the medical examiner ruled the cause of death as blunt
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: force trauma to the head.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: And the murder weapon wasn't taken from the scene. It
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: was left right there.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Yes. A glass Bacardi rum bottle.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: The source also mentions a wine bottle was present, but
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the Bacardi bottle was the suspected weapon. Now this brings
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: us to a highly specific, totally chilling forensic detail.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: You have the bottle.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: The Bacardi bottle was not just lying on the floor
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: amongst the debris. It was found wrapped up in the bedsheets.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: It was physically bundled into the fabric.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: This is so weird.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: To me, it's almost like a makeshift silencer for a
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: blunt weapon, like wrapping the glass so it doesn't shatter
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: on impact, or maybe to mitigate the blood spatter, or
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: even just to soften the horrific sound of the blows
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: so the neighbors wouldn't hear glass breaking against bone.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And that analysis highlights a terrifying presence of mind on
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: the part of the killer.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Consider the typical psychology of a blunt force attack. Usually,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: if you are in a frenzied reactive rage, you just
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: grab whatever object is closest. a lamp, a statue, a bottle,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: and you swing it wildly.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Just blind panic.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If it breaks, it breaks. It's an act of
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: blind passion. But if you take the time to deliberately
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: wrap that bottle in a bed sheet before using it
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: as a bludgeon, well, that implies a momentary pause in
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: the violence.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: A calculation.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, a calculation. It implies an assailant who is actively
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: thinking about the physical mechanics and the acoustic consequences of
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: the assault while it is actually happening. It shifts the
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: profile from a pure crime of blind rage towards something
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: with a hint of premeditation, or at least a very
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: grim tactical awareness.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: But wait, if he wrapped the bottle to muffle the
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: sound or prevent a mess, why would he just leave
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: it there bundled in the sheets?
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: That's the question.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: If you have the tactical awareness to create a makeshift silencer,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: wouldn't you have the tactical awareness to take the murder
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: weapon with you?
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: And that is exactly where the behavioral profile starts to fracture.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Leaving the weapon implies panic, or maybe an interruption, or
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: simply a belief that the weapon cannot be traced back
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: to them. But the contradictions definitely don't stop there.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: They don't. Our source brings up another forensic anomaly. It
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: is a graphic detail, but it is absolutely necessary to
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: understand the full scope of what investigators were grappling with.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Faith was on her menstrual cycle at the time of
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: the attack, and the assailant removed her tampon. Yeah.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: And from the perspective of forensic psychology and crime scene analysis,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: that is... An exceedingly rare detail in sexual assault cases.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I can imagine.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: It is an anomaly that forces investigators to just throw
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: out standard profiling templates and ask entirely new sets of questions.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Because most crimes of opportunity or rapid home invasion assaults,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: they don't involve that level of invasive specific action. It
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: requires a level of control and time that really contradicts
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: a frenzied struggle.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The mechanism of that action requires either total subjugation
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: of the victim or a scenario where the victim is
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: already incapacitated.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: It also raises the immediate question of whether this was
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: a single offender or if multiple people were involved.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Think about the logistics of the violence. If you have
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: one person wielding a heavy glass bottle, maintaining physical control
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: of a struggling 19-year-old woman, the logistics of a secondary,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: highly specific invasive action become incredible. complicated for a lone attacker.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: It makes investigators wonder, was there an audience? Was there
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: a primary aggressor and an accomplice who was participating or assisting?
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Or does it point to a lone offender with a
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: very specific, highly aberrant pathology? Perhaps someone motivated by sexual
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: sadism or a desire to humiliate.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: It's a deeply disturbing thought, but it completely changes the
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: calculus of who might be in that room. But the
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: scene goes from brutally complex to utterly bizarre with the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: next piece of evidence.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, the note.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Amidst this chaotic, bloody, horrific struggle, investigators found a
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: handwritten note.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: The fast food takeout bag note. This is the piece
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: of evidence that that has launched like a thousand internet theories.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Sitting on the bed in Karina's bedroom was a fast
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: food takeout bag. And written on this bag was a
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: message that read, quote, I'm not stupid bitch jealous, end quote.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: The silence of that note is just deafening when you
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: look at the reality of the room around it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Because I am stuck on the
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: logistics of this note. We have a scene described as
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: incredibly bloody. A brutal, intimate, hands-on murder involving a blunt
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: object and a severe struggle. Yeah. And yet, this fast
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: food bag, with this specific message written on it, was
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: found on the bed with absolutely no blood on it. None.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Which makes no sense.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: The source explicitly points this out. And there's an ongoing
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: question of whether the pen used to write it was
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: even found near it. I have to completely reject the
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: logic of this sequence of events.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: If you, as an attacker, have just committed a frenzied,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: bloody murder... Do you really stop, look around, find a pen,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: grab a greasy fast food bag and write a cryptic,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: punctuation-free message with no blood transfer from your hands?
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Or does this feel staged? Like a magician's misdirection? Like,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: look over here at this jealous note. Don't look at
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the actual forensic reality of the scene.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: You are circling the exact dissonance that has paralyzed this
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: case for over a decade. The note is the wild
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: card that refuses to fit into any neat narrative box.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Truly.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: The source mentions a handwriting expert named Peggy Walla, who
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: analyzed the note. Her analysis, which is based on the
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: biomechanics of handwriting, suggested a few key things. Okay. First,
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: the sharp points and heavy pressure lines indicated it was
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: written in a state of high agitation or anger. Makes sense. Second,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: and more importantly, she theorized it might have been written
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: with a non-dominant hand, specifically the left hand for a
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: right-handed person.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? Why would anyone do that?
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: To intentionally disguise their handwriting.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: But that makes no sense if the killer is a
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: total stranger. You only disguise your handwriting if you fear recognition.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: You only disguise your handwriting if you believe the police
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: will eventually ask you for a writing sample to compare
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: it against. Exactly. That implies the writer is someone in
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the victim's inner circle. Someone who knows they will be interviewed.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The very act of disguising handwriting implies a pre-existing
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: relationship and a fear of being caught through familiarity. And
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: then you have to analyze the linguistics of the phrasing itself,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: which is incredibly strange.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not stupid bitch jealous.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: As Kelly McClure points out in the source material, how
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: are we supposed to parse that? There is no punctuation.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: None.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Is it supposed to read, I'm not stupid bitch, I'm jealous?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Or is it, I'm not a stupid jealous bitch? Or
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: is it two separate thoughts entirely?
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Kelly even joked... darkly about the absurdity of it, comparing
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: it to finding a note from her husband saying, I'm
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: not stupid bitch jealous I got the In-N-Out burger.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: It's so disjointed. It is.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Which makes me wonder, is it an inside joke that
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: has absolutely nothing to do with the murder? What if
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: it was just a piece of trash that was already
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: sitting on the bed, left over from a previous day,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and it just happened to be there during the attack?
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is entirely possible it's just unrelated debris.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: College apartments are not notoriously spotless.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: But if we operate under the assumption that the killer
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: wrote it, it creates an unbearable tension in the narrative.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: The brutality of the scene, the specific nature of the assault,
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: the disguised handwriting, and the explicit expression of jealousy, all
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: of it strongly points toward an intimate crime.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Definitely.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: A crime born of passion, personal grievance, and rage. It
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: points a glowing neon arrow towards someone Faith or Karina
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: knew intimately. Yet, as we will see, the unblinking science
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: of DNA evidence... It tells a completely different, wildly contradictory story.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: So because the physical scene offers these conflicting narratives, investigators
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: had to meticulously scrub the timeline backward. They needed to
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: see exactly where the timeline might fracture or the opportunity
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: for a killer to enter the story actually occurred. Right.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: And the terrifying part is how aggressively normal the night
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: was leading up to the murder.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Tracing that timeline reveals an evening that started with absolute
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Monday normalcy. and ended in a series of digital anomalies
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: that legal teams are still debating today.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Let's walk through September 6th, leading into the early morning
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: hours of September 7th. According to our source, this was
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: a quintessential college night in early fall.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Just a standard Thursday night?
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Faith attends a sorority rush event with a friend.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: That's standard mix-and-mingle networking. Then, because she is a highly
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: dedicated Gates Millennium Scholar... She doesn't go to a party.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: She heads straight to the library to study. Wow.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Good for her.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: And she stays there until about 11 p.m.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: It paints a very clear psychological portrait of a balanced,
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: responsible young woman. She's managing her social obligations and her
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: academic rigorousness perfectly.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So around 11 p.m., she and Karina Rosario leave the library.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: They head back to Karina's apartment. They hang out for
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: a bit, change clothes, get ready. And then around midnight
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: or midnight, perhaps 1230 a.m., they head out to a
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: local downtown Chapel Hill club called The Thrill.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: And the source heavily emphasizes the normalcy of this transition.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Downtown Chapel Hill is a classic, vibrant college town environment.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: It's dense with bars, sandwich shops, coffee joints.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: The Thrill was just the social hub where everyone eventually
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: ended up on a Thursday night. Faith knew people there.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: It was an environment she navigated comfortably. There's absolutely nothing
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: ominous or high risk about the setup of this evening.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Which makes the impending violence feel so much more jarring.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: You go from a crowded, loud, supposedly safe college bar
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: to a nightmare scenario in a matter of hours.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Happened so fast.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: The club shuts down around 2 a.m., and here we
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: have our last piece of concrete, irrefutable evidence. Security camera
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: footage shows Faith and Karina leaving the Thrill. They are
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: seen standing outside on the sidewalk, talking to a couple
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: of men for a few minutes.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: And this is the absolute last verified public sighting of
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Faith Hedgepeth alive. It is.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: The concrete certainty of the security camera ends at 2 a.m.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: From that moment onward, investigators are forced to rely on
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: witness statements, digital footprints, and a massive amount of deduction.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: The timeline becomes incredibly murky.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: And it fractures almost immediately. According to Karina's statements to
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: law enforcement, they head back to Karina's apartment after leaving
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the club. Karina claims neither of them is feeling very well.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Maybe they had too much to drink. Maybe they were
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: just exhausted from the week. So they go back with
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the intention of just sleeping it off. But then we
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: hit a massive digital footprint that makes no logical sense.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: The 3.40 a.m. text message. This is a structural pillar
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: that the entire timeline rests upon, and it is fundamentally unstable.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: At 3.40 a.m., a text message is sent from Faith's phone.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: It is sent to a man named Brandon Edwards. Now,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Brandon is Karina's ex-boyfriend. Right. And the text, according to
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: the source, says something along the lines of, hey, Brandon,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: can you come over here, please? Karina needs you more
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: than you know. Please let her know that you care.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Let's analyze the linguistics of that message. It is highly emotive.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: It is urgent. It is pleading on behalf of someone else.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: And Brandon, who apparently doesn't even have Faith's number saved
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: in his phone, replies simply, who is this?
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Naturally.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And then complete silence. There is no further response from
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Faith's phone. This text is like a digital ghost. Think
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: about the phrasing. Karina needs you more than you know.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Was it actually Faith typing that? Or was someone else
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: holding her phone, typing that message, actively trying to lure
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Brandon to the apartment? Or, even darker, was the killer
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: sending that text from Faith's phone to establish a false timeline?
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Were they trying to create digital proof that Faith was
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: alive and texting at 3.40 a.m. when she was already dead?
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: You have to reconcile that 3.40 a.m. text message with
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: the physical timeline Karina provided to the police. According to Karina,
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: at 4.30 a.m., which is less than an hour after
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: that highly emotional text was sent, she leaves the apartment.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: She is picked up by two male friends, Jordan McRae
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: and Jacob Beatley, in Jacob's car. And she goes to
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: sleep at their apartment, allegedly leaving Faith asleep in her bed.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: So Karina leaves at 4.30 a.m., but this brings up
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: a huge discrepancy. A piece of auditory evidence that throws
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: everything into absolute chaos. The downstairs neighbor.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Yes. The individual living directly beneath Karina's apartment reported to
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: the police that they heard a violent struggle.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: They heard heavy thumping on the ceiling, noises indicative of
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: a fight, furniture moving, or an assault. and they firmly
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: placed the time of those noises between 3 a.m. and 3.20 a.m.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: The math here is terrifying. If the violent struggle, the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: blunt force trauma, the shattered glass, the murder, if that
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: happened at 3.20 a.m. as the neighbor testified, then who
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: on earth sent the coherent, emotionally manipulative text message From
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Faith's phone at 3.40 a.m.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Faith couldn't have sent it if she was already dead
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: or incapacitated. And furthermore, if the brutal, bloody murder happened
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: at 3.20 a.m., what exactly was happening in that tiny
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: one-bedroom apartment for the next hour and ten minutes until
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Karina calmly walked out the door with her friends at 4.30 a.m.?
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: It creates.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: The temporal equivalent of a locked-room mystery. The established timelines
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: directly and violently contradict each other. They really do. You
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: are left with three possibilities, and all of them are problematic. One,
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: the neighbor's perception of time is drastically wrong, and they
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: heard the struggle much later.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Two, the origin of the text message is deceptive, sent
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: by the killer to buy time. Or three, Karina's timeline
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: of her own departure and awareness of events is flawed.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Because logically, you cannot have a brutal murder occur in
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: a small one-bedroom apartment while another conscious person is present
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: without them noticing.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: You just can't.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: And you certainly cannot have a deceased victim sending coherent
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: text messages 20 minutes after they were killed.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: It's completely maddening. But the physical timeline pushes forward into
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the daylight. Morning breaks on September 7th. Karina wakes up
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: at her friend's apartment. She claims she needs a ride
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: to class and tries to call Faith to come pick
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: her up.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: And she can't reach her. No.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: So Karina calls another friend, Marisol Rangel. Marisol picks Karina
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: up and the two of them drive back to Karina's apartment.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: And here we encounter another hotly contested physical detail. The
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: state of the primary entry point. The front door.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Karina claims that when they arrived, the front door to
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the apartment was unlocked. They walk in and at roughly
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: 11 a.m. they find Faith dead in Karina's bedroom. They
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: discover this horrific bloody scene and Karina calls 911. Yeah.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: The timeline seems to conclude there. The discovery is made.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: But While that 3.40 a.m. text message was incredibly confusing,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: there was another digital artifact from that night, one that
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: was hidden for years and offers a terrifying glimpse into
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: the dark.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: The voicemail. This is a piece of evidence that didn't
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: even surface publicly for four years. But once it did,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: it completely altered the acoustic landscape of the entire investigation.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: It really does. So let's introduce the pocket dial. Faith
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: had a friend named Yuna. The source describes Yuna as
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: a very studious individual, someone who goes to bed early.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: While Faith and Karina were out at the thrill, Yuna
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: was fast asleep.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: But Yuna wakes up the next morning to a missed
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: call from Faith's cell phone and a voicemail. The timestamp
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: on the voicemail says it was left at approximately 1.23 a.m.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Which places it squarely in the middle of the time
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Faith and Karina were allegedly standing in the nightclub. Exactly.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So Yuna listens to the voicemail. She hears a wall
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: of background noise. She hears yelling. She hears heavy music.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: She logically assumes, oh, Faith is at a loud club.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Her phone bumped against something in her purse. It's just
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: a classic butt dial. She doesn't hear anyone saying, help me, Yuna.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So she deletes it. Because who keeps a two-minute recording
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: of distorted club noise?
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: No one.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: But later that day, Yuna learns the horrific news that
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Faith has been murdered. Realizing the potential importance of that
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: accidental call, Yuna contacts her cellular provider and manages to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: have them restore the deleted voicemail from their back-end servers.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: And the recovery of that audio is where the complex
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: science of audio forensics takes center stage.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: A restored, highly compressed cellular voicemail from 2012 is not
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: going to be crystal clear. It's going to be muddy, staticky,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: and dense. The source mentions that an audio forensics expert
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: named Arlo West was brought in by the family to
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: analyze the tape.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Audio forensics is an incredible, highly technical field. Think of
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: the background music as a thick wall of low-frequency sound.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Audio forensic experts don't just turn up the volume on
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: the tape.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Right. It's way more advanced.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: They use sophisticated software to digitally map the sound waves
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: and erase those specific bass frequencies. They peel away the
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: music and the ambient static like layers of paint, isolating
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: the specific high-frequency ranges of human vocal cords until only
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: the speech is left behind.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: And what Arlo West enhanced and transcribed is deeply disturbing.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: According to his analysis, this wasn't just young people shouting
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: drink orders over a DJ. The enhanced audio contains distinct
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: sounds of distress. It sounds like a violent argument. It
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: sounds like Faith is in trouble, actively engaged in a confrontation.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: But this is precisely where the interpretation becomes a massive
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: legal and investigative battleground. As Kelly McClure notes, The content
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: of the voicemail is intensely contested by different experts.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And I have to push back on the interpretation of
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: this audio, purely playing devil's advocate here.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Because human hearing is incredibly subjective, especially when we are
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: primed to hear something awful. Have you ever stared at
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the clouds and someone says, doesn't that look like a dragon?
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: And suddenly you can't unsee the dragon.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: That's auditory pareidolia. Your brain is a pattern recognition machine.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: If I tell you to listen to a tape of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a murder... your brain will try to find a murder
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: in the static. Young people yelling over loud, thumping bass
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: music in a crowded bar, that is literally what a
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: club sounds like.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: It does sound chaotic.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Right. It sounds aggressive. Couldn't we just be projecting our
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: retrospective knowledge of her horrific death onto an entirely innocent,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: accidental pocket dial from the thrill? Are we truly hearing distress,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: or are we just hearing 2 a.m. college town chaos?
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question, and it is a completely
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: valid scientific argument. It is the exact argument defense attorneys
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: will use to challenge the audio in court. Auditory pareidolia
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: is a documented psychological phenomenon. Right. But the context of
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: the voicemail is severely complicated by a massive technological glitch.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: A glitch that fundamentally breaks the entire timeline law enforcement
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: was working with and changes everything about how we interpret
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: those sounds.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: The timestamp discrepancy. This completely upends the narrative.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: When investigators finally looked back at the actual cellular carrier logs,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: you know, the raw data from the cell towers rather
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: than just the time displayed on the handset, there was
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: evidence of a massive anomaly. Wow. A three-hour discrepancy in
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: the timestamp of the carrier logs compared to local time.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: This can happen due to network delays, server syncing issues
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: across different time zones, or just hardware glitches when a
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: phone is connecting and disconnecting from different towers in a
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: crowded area.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: If that timestamp was off by three hours, then that
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: call didn't happen at 1.23 a.m. while they were dancing
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: at the club. It happened three hours later. It happened
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: at 4.23 a.m.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Which drops it into an entirely different universe of context.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. Let's do the math again. 4.23 a.m.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: is roughly the exact time Karina is leaving the apartment
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: with Jordan and Jacob. Right. 4.23 a.m. is an hour
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: after the neighbor heard the violent thumping and the struggle.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: If that voicemail was left at 4.23 a.m., then the yelling,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the arguing, and the distress we hear isn't the background
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: noise of the throw. It is the acoustic reality of
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Karina's apartment in the immediate aftermath, or perhaps the final moments,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: of the attack.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: It forces you to completely reevaluate the physical mechanics of
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: the call itself. Was the phone buried deep in a purse,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: muffled by thick fabric, as one would expect from a
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: typical club pocket dial?
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Probably not.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Our source notes that audio analysis suggests the reporting wasn't
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: deeply muffled. It sounded much clearer than a phone buried
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: in a bag. It sounded like it was in a
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: front pocket, or perhaps out in the open, sitting on
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: a surface.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Was she holding it? Was it an accident, or was
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: it a desperate, aborted attempt to call a responsible, studious
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: friend for help in the middle of a nightmare? Did
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: she grab the phone, dial Yuna... and then drop it
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: during the physical struggle.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: It is a haunting possibility. And if it was recorded
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: at 4.23 a.m., the critical question becomes, the voices captured
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: on that audio, the people arguing, who are they? Right.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Because according to Karina's narrative, Faith is asleep and alone
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: at that exact moment. Or Karina is just walking out
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: the door with two men. The voicemail transforms from a
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: benign digital artifact into a potential audio recording of the
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: killers standing over their victim.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Despite having all of this, despite having a timeline, witness statements,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: a recovered and enhanced voicemail, a suspected murder weapon with
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: a latent palm print, and biological DNA evidence recovered from
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: the sexual assault at the crime scene, the Chapel Hill
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Police Department hit an absolute brick wall.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they really did.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: They ran the DNA and it matched no one. They
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: were chasing a phantom.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: We must emphasize how statistically unusual this is, given the
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: intimate nature of the crime scene we discussed earlier. Exactly.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Criminology statistics show that crimes featuring extreme close quarters blunt
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: force violence, sexual assault, and taunting handwritten notes are overwhelmingly
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: committed by someone known to the victim, an ex-partner, a
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: jealous friend, a stalker. The behavioral evidence screams intimate partner.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: So the police did exactly what you would expect. They
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: cast a massive suffocating net over Faith and Karina's inner circle.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: They looked at everyone who had access to that apartment.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: They had to.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: They took DNA swabs from 50 to 60 men. They
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: looked hard at Karina's ex-boyfriend, Eric Takoi-Jones. This is a
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: guy that Faith actively disliked. In fact, Faith had actually
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: helped Karina navigate the legal system to get a restraining
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: order against him.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: From an investigator's perspective, he had means, motive, and opportunity, theoretically.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: He had a documented history of conflict with the victim.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: He fit the profile perfectly.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: But they tested his DNA against the crime scene sample,
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: and it wasn't a match. Nope. They tested the guys
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: the girls were seen talking to outside the club on
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: the security camera. Not a match. They tested Jordan McRae
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: and Jacob Beatley, the guys Karina left with at 4.30 a.m.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Not a match.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: They tested Brandon Edwards, the guy who received the mysterious 3.40 a.m.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: text message. Not a match. Every single person in their orbit,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: everyone who made sense behaviorally, was cleared by the unblinking
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: science of DNA. What is remarkable here is the discipline
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: of the Chapel Hill Police Department.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly easy in high-profile, emotionally charged cases, cases
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: where the community is demanding an arrest, to succumb to
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: tunnel vision, to try and force the circumstantial evidence to
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: fit the most likely suspect.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: And we see that all the time.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: But they followed the science. The source notes they're incredible patients.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: They kept the case tight. They didn't leak details to
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: the press to trump up sensationalism.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: They maintained open communication with the family, but they refused
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: to classify it as a cold case. They simply bided
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: their time, knowing that the DNA profile they held was
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: the ultimate trump card. And they just had to wait
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: for the technology to catch up to the evidence.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: And it took a decade of waiting. In 2016, there
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: was a minor technological step forward. They utilized a company
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: called Parabon Nanolabs, which specializes in DNA phenotyping. Yes. To
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: understand this, imagine DNA not just as a barcode, but
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: as a blueprint. Parabon doesn't look for a direct match.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: They look at specific genetic markers called SNPs. single nucleotide polymorphisms.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: By analyzing these SNPs, their software can predict physical traits.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: It's amazing technology.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: It could predict eye color, hair color, skin pigmentation, and
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: even basic facial morphology. They released a computer-generated composite sketch
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: predicting the suspect was a mix of Latino or Native
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: American descent with dark hair and a darker complexion.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Which is a highly controversial investigative tool.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Wow. Releasing a face without a name. based entirely on
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: genetic probabilities and algorithms, can be dangerous. Imagine being on
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: a jury and the prosecution shows you a computer-generated face
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: based purely on a genetic algorithm.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: I see what you mean.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Do you trust a computer's guess enough to point a finger?
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: It can lead to false accusations from the public or
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: distract investigators with thousands of useless tips. But in this case,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: it was a signal to the killer and the public
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: that the police were still actively working the science. The
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: case wasn't dead.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: But the real turning point, the earth-shattering breakthrough that changes
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: the trajectory of the entire case, didn't come until 2021.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: And it came via genetic genealogy. This is the exact
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: same technology that finally caught the Golden State Killer. Let's
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: break down how this works because it's fascinating. Investigators take
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the unknown crime scene DNA and upload the genetic profile
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: to public genealogy databases.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: The ones people use for their family trees.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Yes. These are the sites people use to find their
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: ancestors or figure out where their grandparents immigrated from. The
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: software looks for shared segments of DNA called centimorgans. The
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: more centimorgans you share with someone, the closer you are related.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: So investigators aren't looking for the killer. They are looking
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: for the killer's second or third cousins. Once they find
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: those distant relatives, genealogists painstakingly build massive family trees backward
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: to a common ancestor, say a great-great-grandparent. and then build
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: the tree forward again, tracing every single descendant, until they
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: find a branch that intersects with Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: in September 2012.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: It is revolutionary, painstaking police work that combines hard genetics
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: with historical document research. And in this case, the genealogy
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: led them to a specific family tree, and eventually to
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: a man living right in the area, a Guatemalan national
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: named Miguel Salguero Olivares.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: But they still needed his direct physical DNA to confirm.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: They can't just arrest him based on a theoretical family tree.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: They need a one-to-one match.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: So they need to execute a covert DNA grab. And
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: the opportunity presents itself when Olivares is pulled over by
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: local police for drunk driving. He is highly intoxicated. While
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: he is in custody, police covertly collect his DNA.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Just like standard procedure.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: It could be from a discarded water cup in the
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: interrogation room or a swab taken during processing. They rush
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: it to the lab. run it against the crime scene
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: sample from 2012, and it is a direct, undeniable, statistical match.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: The Phantom finally has a name.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Incredible.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: And to seal the deal, in early 2022, they take
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: his palm print, and it is a perfect match to
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: the latent print found on the Bacardi rum bottle left
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: wrapped in the bloody sheets.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: The physical evidence against him is overwhelming. The science is absolute.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We finally have the who.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Miguel Salguero Olivares. But this brings us crashing right back
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: into our central contradiction. We have absolutely zero. Why? Nothing.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: We have a massive gaping motive void. Let's look at Olivares.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: At the time of the murder in 2012, he was
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: 19 years old, the exact same age as Faith. He
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: had arrived from Guatemala in 2010. But here is the kicker.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: He didn't go to UNC. He didn't go to Chapel Hill. Right.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: He was not in Faith or Karina's social circles. He
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: wasn't one of the 50 or 60 guys orbiting their
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: lives that the police originally tested. As Kelly McClure explicitly
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: states in the source, he was completely off the radar.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Nobody in that apartment complex knew who he was.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Criminal investigations traditionally rely on the triad of means, motive,
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: and opportunity. In this case, the DNA and the palm
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: print definitively solidify the means. He physically held a bottle.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: He was physically present for the sexual assault. The unlocked
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: door of the apartment complex provides the opportunity. But the
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: motive is a complete blank canvas.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: It makes no sense.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Why would a 19-year-old with absolutely no connection to these
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: college girls enter that specific apartment at that specific time
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: and commit such an intimate, brutal, highly personal crime?
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: The source floats one tiny piece of speculation to try
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: and bridge this gap. Kelly says it's unconfirmed, but it's
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: the only potential link anyone has been able to find.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: There is a rumor that Olivares may have worked as
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: a pizza delivery driver in the Chapel Hill area at
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: That's interesting.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Maybe he delivered food to their apartment complex once? Maybe
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: he saw them at a local restaurant and fixated on them.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: It's incredibly thin, almost gossamer.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, the lack
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: of a clear motive introduces a terrifying alternate theory that
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: the defense might explore. The wrong target theory.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Consider the physical environment again. It is Karina's apartment. It
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: is not Faith's. It is the middle of the night,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: likely between 3 a.m. and 4.30 a.m. The bedroom is dark.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Faith and Karina, according to the source, shared some general
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: physical similarities. They both had dark hair, dark complexions, similar builds.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: If a stranger enters a dark apartment belonging to Karina
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: with a specific intent to attack the resident, was Faith
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: murdered by mistake?
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: That's awful.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Did she die simply because she was sleeping in the
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: wrong bed in the wrong apartment at the wrong time?
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I have to push back hard on that theory because
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: it ignores the physical evidence we already discussed. If it
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: was a random stranger, a crime of opportunity, a break-in,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: or even if it was a targeted attack but he
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: got the wrong girl, how on earth do we explain
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: the fast food note?
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: The note, yeah.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I'm not stupid bitch jealous. Strangers do not write jealous
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: notes on fast food bags. A burglar doesn't take the
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: time to disguise his handwriting with his left hand, to
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: express complex emotional jealousy toward a victim he doesn't even know.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: It's true they don't.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: The physical DNA evidence points entirely to a random stranger,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: but the behavioral evidence, the disguised note, the removal of
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: the tampon, the sheer overkill of the blunt force trauma,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: points entirely to an intimate partner. Those two facts cannot
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: coexist comfortably in the same reality.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: And that profound contradiction is exactly what the defense team
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: is going to exploit. Because despite a flawless DNA match,
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: A trial is never a foregone conclusion.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: No, never.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: A trial is a narrative battle. The jury has to
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: believe the story the evidence tells. And with the trial
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: finally beginning 14 years later, the prosecution is walking in
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: with the ultimate biological trump card, but the defense is
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: walking in with a mountain of bizarre anomalies designed specifically
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: to cast reasonable doubt.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: And some of those anomalies are... structural failures by the
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: investigators themselves. The defense doesn't just have to rely on
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: confusing timelines. They have actual police errors to point to.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: The source reveals a staggering piece of lost evidence. Early
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: in the investigation, right after the murder, the Chapel Hill
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Police Department collected a blood swab from the doorframe of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the bathroom in Karina's apartment.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: A blood swab from a doorframe in a highly violent
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: bloody crime scene? is a premier piece of evidentiary gold.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: It can tell you if the killer injured themselves or
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: if someone else was bleeding as they moved through the apartment.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: And they lost it. The evidence is simply gone. It
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: was misplaced, destroyed, or vanished in the evidence room over
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: the last 14 years. We will never know whose blood
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: was on that doorframe.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: You can clearly see how a skilled defense attorney will
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: weaponize this fact. The defense will stand before the jury
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: and ask, whose blood was that? Was it face? Was
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: it the real killer's blood left behind after he cut
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: his hand on the shattered glass? Was it the roommate's blood?
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: It creates a gaping hole in the forensic narrative. The
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: prosecution will say they have Olivares' DNA on the victim,
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: but the defense will pivot and say, you lost the
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: DNA that proves someone else was in that apartment. You
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: destroyed the evidence that could have exonerated my client.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: That's a huge problem for the state.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: It introduces the potent specter of the real killer escaping
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: because of police incompetence.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: That's the physical evidence. But the behavioral timeline is full
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: of these dark little rabbit holes that the source rapid
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: fires at us. These inconsistencies are chilling when you lay
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: them out sequentially. Listen to this. A guy that Faith
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: had been dating recently received a text message informing him
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: that Faith had been murdered. But he received that text
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: message at 11 a.m.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Which is the exact time the body was allegedly discovered
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: by Karina and Marisol.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Right. But Karina didn't actually call 911 until 1110 a.m.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: So how did this guy, who was not at the apartment,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: who was nowhere near the scene, know she was dead
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: before emergency services were even dispatched?
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: That makes no sense.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Who texted him? How did the information travel faster than
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: a call to the police?
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: It implies that a network of communication was happening before
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: the authorities were brought into the loop. It suggests a
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: deliberate delay in reporting the crime while people got their
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: story straight, or simply panicked and called friends before calling
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: for help.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: It gets worse. Faith's own mother, Connie, was not notified
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: of her daughter's death until 2 p.m. that afternoon. So
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: random guys she dated knew hours before her own mother did.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: That is just awful.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: And then there is the 911 call itself. Karina called 911.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: She says her friend Marisol is right there with her.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: They have just walked into a one-bedroom apartment and found
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: their friend brutally beaten to death in a horrifically bloody scene.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: But according to Kelly McClare, who has analyzed this case
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: and this audio for years, Marisol cannot be heard in
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: the background of that call. There is no screaming, there
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: is no crying, there is no audible panic in the background.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Karina's own demeanor on the call has been subject to
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: intense public scrutiny. Is it the flat affect of deep
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: shock and trauma, or is it something else entirely?
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: These are the emotional and temporal anomalies that fuel reasonable doubt.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: When you combine a lost blood swab, a delayed 911 call,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: a bizarre 3.40 a.m. text message, and a note that
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: doesn't match the suspect profile... You have a potent defense narrative.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: You really do.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: The trial strategy for both sides is already taking shape
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: based on these facts. The prosecution strategy is going to
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: be incredibly narrow, highly focused, and heavily reliant on unblinking science.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: They will center their entire case on Miguel Salguero Olivares.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: They will point to the DNA derived from the sexual assault.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: They will point to his palm print on the Bacardi
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: rum bottle used as the murder weapon.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: That's their anchor.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: They will argue that the statistical probability of that DNA
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: belonging to anyone else is mathematically zero. They will likely
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: try to dismiss all the anomalies, the note, the text,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: the voicemail, as either red herrings, strange coincidences, or chaotic
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: actions taken by the defendant that we simply cannot explain
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: because we cannot know his mind.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Their argument will essentially be, we don't need to prove
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: why he wrote a weird note or why the neighbor's
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: clock was wrong. We just need to prove that his
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: hand was on that bottle. And his DNA was on
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: that victim.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The defense, however, is going to wage a war
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: of context. Their job is not necessarily to prove Olivares
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: is innocent, but to prove that the state's narrative is
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: fundamentally flawed, incomplete, and untrustworthy. Yeah. They will likely try
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: to point the finger inward, back at the inner circle
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: that the police originally investigated. They will play on the
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: unlocked door. They will hammer the bizarre timeline, the neighbor
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: hearing a struggle at 3 a.m., while a text is
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: sent at 3.40 a.m.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: They'll bring up the lost swab, too.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: They will weaponize the lost blood swab. They might argue
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: that Olivares' DNA might be present from a previous unrelated
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: encounter if he was a delivery driver. Or they will
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: viciously attack the chain of custody of the DNA evidence
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: over 14 years.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Notably, the source mentions that the judge has currently ruled
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: against the defense introducing evidence of an alternate suspect, meaning
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: they might be legally barred from explicitly pointing the finger
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: at Karina or Brandon or anyone else in court. But
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: the tension remains. They will inject doubt into every single
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: seam of the prosecution story.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: It is going to be a fascinating, heartbreaking trial to
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: watch unfold. And that brings us to the end of
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: our deep dive today. We have traveled from a horrific,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: bloody scene in an off-campus apartment, analyzed a bizarre, punctuation-less
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: note on a fast food bag, dissected the science of
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: audio forensics and a time-shifted voicemail, and traced the revolutionary
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: path of genetic genealogy that led to a covert DNA
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: swab at a traffic stop, finally putting a face to
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: a phantom. It is a labyrinth of a case.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: As we close, it is crucial to reflect on the
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: endurance of the Hedgepeth family. For 14 years, they have
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: lived inside that labyrinth. But they have refused to let
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: the darkness of this mystery consume the light of their
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: daughter's life.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: That's so true.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: The source specifically mentions that the Halila-Saponi tribe established a
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: scholarship in Faith's honor. It ensures that another young person
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: from their community will get the chance to go to
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: college to achieve the dreams that Faith was so actively
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: pursuing in that library on her final night. It proves
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: that her legacy is ultimately defined by her bright life,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: her rich heritage, and her academic brilliance, not just the
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: brutal mystery of her death.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: That is beautiful and vital to remember. But I want
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: to leave you, our listener, with one final provocative thought
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: to mull over. Something that builds on the evidence we've discussed,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: but stretches into the reality we all navigate today. If
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: Miguel Salguero Olivares is indeed the killer, and this was
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: truly a random crime of opportunity committed by a stranger,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: it forces us to confront a terrifying reality about our
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: digital age.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: We walk through life assuming that we are constantly tracked
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: and recorded. We leave behind massive digital footprints, text messages, voicemails,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: security camera footage, cell tower pings. We inherently assume that
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: if something terrible happens to us, those digital breadcrumbs will
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: tell our story.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: That there'll be a map.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Right. They will form a map that points straight to
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: the truth. But the Faith Hedgepeth case asks a chilling question.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: What if those digital breadcrumbs don't solve the mystery? What
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: if a delayed voicemail timestamp and uncharacteristic text message and
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: a strange note don't illuminate the truth but actually create
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: a labyrinth of false narratives that takes 14 years to escape? Wow.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: It makes you wonder how much of our digital lives
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: is actually a map and how much is just noise,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: blinding us to the reality in front of us. Thank
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: you so much for joining us on this deep dive.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Keep asking questions, and we'll see you next time.