The Murder of Faith Hedgepeth: The Trial of Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares: Day Four: Phones

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[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_03] Modern day makeup that's clean, strategic and multifunctional for effortless routines. For a limited time, our listeners are getting a free full sized mascara on their first purchase when they use code M sheet at checkout. Just head to jonesroadbeauty.com and use code M sheet at checkout. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. I'm Anya, and today we're going to be delving into the fourth day of an ongoing murder trial in North Carolina.

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_01] Content warning, this episode contains discussion of rape and murder.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_03] So we are covering the trial of Miguel Enrique Salguero Olivares, who is a man who is accused of murdering Faith Hedgepeth, a 19-year-old UNC Chapel Hill sophomore. Faith was found murdered on September 7th, 2012, in an apartment near the Durham County Chapel Hill border.

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_03] Her roommate and a close friend discovered her body, and the case never saw a resolution until September 16th, 2021. Nine years and nine days after her death, police ended up arresting Miguel Enrique Salguero Olivares, who was a stranger to Faith. Police and prosecutors say that he raped and murdered her, and the defense says they have the wrong guy.

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_03] So we are trying to figure out what the truth of the matter is, and we are watching this trial every day unfold before our eyes, and reporting back to you with our analysis and our thoughts. So today we're going to get into the fourth day. So far we've had two expert witnesses. One is a person who specializes in studying and dealing with sexual assaults.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_03] She's a nurse, and she does a lot of sexual assault examinations. Not only that, but she teaches other nurses how to do this. She has a lot of expertise in that space. In addition to that, we have a former Chapel Hill police investigator with a specialization in cell phone and computer forensics. We examined Faith's phone. So we have the examination of Faith's body and the examination of Faith's phone today,

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_03] and we also have some interesting video footage of Faith's roommate, Karina Rosario, and her sort of initial contacts with police in this case. We're going to take you through all that. Before we get started, I wanted to note we're recording a little bit earlier today, so as to not do our late night recordings. So we will be potentially missing a few things toward the tail end of the trial day. Anything we don't get to today, we will absolutely just put on top on the top of tomorrow's episode.

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_03] So you're not going to miss anything. Just a bit of a note there. And in addition to that, I want to personally apologize. I think the audio came out poorly on Kevin's end in one of the episodes we did recently. That's my bad because I was producing that episode. Something went wrong with our microphones on Riverside, and it just did not. That was as good as I could get it, but I assure you we're going to be taking precautions to prevent that ever again. And in addition to that, some of the clips I've used have not been the best audio.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_03] I included one clip today that I've tried to boost up as much as possible. It's not the cleanest sounding audio in the world, but hopefully it's audible and you can follow along. But until we can figure out a way to really get these clips sounding amazing, we're going to try to be a little bit less reliant on the clips and a little bit more reliant on our own analysis. And if you know how to work audio and get clips easily, please help me. MurderSheet at gmail.com. I need help.

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_03] But no, I appreciate you all for putting up with any issues like that. And thank you so much for listening. It means the world to us. So let's get into it, Kevin. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_01] And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_03] And this is The Murder of Faith Hedgepeth, the trial of Miguel Enrique Salguero Olivares. Day four, phones.

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_03] All right. So the first witness today, we are still very much in the prosecution's case in chief. And the state witness called today to start us out was Dr. Heather Oaleski. And she was called by Angela Garcia LaMarca, the Durham County assistant district attorney who did the direct examination. I've complimented Ms. Garcia Lamarca's performance so far.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_03] She is a very kind of soothing, affable court style. And she's very good, I feel, at conveying the emotions that come with a case that come with the loss of a beautiful 19-year-old young woman who's just starting out in life and never got the opportunity to live that life for no reason. And she's also, I think, good at really kind of establishing the case.

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_03] I feel like all these attorneys that I've seen do the direct and cross-examination so far have been doing a good job with what they have. So in this case, Dr. Oaleski is actually a nurse practitioner. She's a nurse practitioner for Atrium Health. And that company has a forensic health program, and she does sexual assault examinations for them. She also teaches forensic sexual assault examinations to other nurses.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_03] So she's not only doing this herself. She's actually teaching others to do it. That conveys a level of expertise. And the state asked for the judge to recognize her as a sexual assault examination expert. No objection from the defense. So that went through.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_03] So when we're talking about this, I mean, she actually busted out stuff that you might see in sexual education, sex ed, where you have the diagrams of the female genitalia externally and internally. Why do you think something like that is necessary, Kevin, when we're talking about a case like this? That might strike some people as odd. Like, we really need to go back and look at, like, the different parts of female genitalia. Like, why do we need to do that?

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_03] So what's your thought on why they might do this?

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_01] I think it's very important never to assume that the jury knows something which you have not laid out for them. If there's something you want them to know that pertains to a woman's anatomy or what have you, make sure you have an expert. Explain it to them so they understand what it means.

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_03] I think that is really well said because we might all think, well, we know all the different aspects of that. But not everyone may and not everyone may remember what might be relevant in this situation. Especially, we're talking about essentially something that's highly medical in the sense that what she is there to talk about is we know that there was a sexual assault examination done on Faith Hedgepeth's body.

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_03] We also know it's been testified to by the medical examiner that there were no injuries in the sense that no visible injuries that they noticed that were consistent with a sexual assault. And the state's theory is that she was sexually assaulted. So how does that track?

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_03] And someone who may not be familiar with the female anatomy and with just how these things happen, how sexual assaults happen and the results of them, they might think, okay, well, then she wasn't sexually assaulted. And what the state very much wants to emphasize with this witness and what this witness, I feel like her central role is, is saying just because there are no visible injuries on the genitalia does not mean that a sexual assault did not occur.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_03] You can have a sexual assault that results in injuries that are visible and you can have one that does not. And they're both still sexual assault. Like, if we're talking about another crime, that may not be the case, right, Kevin? Like, if someone punches somebody in the face and you're looking for evidence of that, you might look for a broken nose or black eyes or a split lip or a bruise.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_03] And if you don't have anything like that, you might wonder, okay, did this even happen, right? But that's not how sexual assaults work. We know that from, you know, the years of research and experience of experts like Dr. Waleski. So in this portion, and obviously we did not see a lot of that, but they were looking through autopsy reports and autopsy photographs. I believe the jury got to see some of those.

[00:11:14] [SPEAKER_03] Very harrowing, I'm sure. And so you have Dr. Waleski. She's not somebody who was involved in the investigation into Faith's death. It actually came out that about a month ago she was brought in to review the case. Why call her then, Kevin? Why is it important to get someone like her in there, you know, versus Dr. Lauren Scott, who was the medical examiner, who did the autopsy?

[00:11:43] [SPEAKER_03] This woman's not even involved. Why might we bring her in? Why might the state want to bring her in to do this?

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_01] Sometimes it's important for the jury to see the perspective of an independent expert who's coming in and looking at things from a fresh point of view. It reminds me a little bit in the Delphi trial when we had a crime scene analysis named Patrick Cicero. He came in to offer testimony that was derived from his expert examination of photographs and such after the crime.

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_03] I think that's really well said. And she's what you call an expert witness, as was Major Cicero. So they're people who are not necessarily like involved in the original investigation, but they're coming in and using their expertise to analyze the investigation and bring their findings to the jury. And you want people who are going to be scientific and who are going to be measured with what they say. In this case, one thing that comes up a lot is you can't rule out sexual assault.

[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_03] Sexual assault could have happened. The presence of DNA, of male DNA, of male semen, sperm in Faith's body indicates sexual contact. It doesn't tell us about consent. It just indicates contact. That contact can be consensual and everyone wants to have sex and that's fine. It can be rape.

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_03] And what the jury needs to do is look at the totality of everything else so that they can determine what makes sense. And that's what this case is ultimately going to come down to. But this is just, I think, asking the jury, hey, make sure you don't just write it off because there's no injuries. One thing that I was thinking is with expert witnesses, you frequently have cases that essentially play out like the battle of the experts.

[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_03] One side saying this is this is what we think happened. And then it's very easy, I think, to get experts to say whatever you want. Like, unfortunately, there are some unscrupulous experts out there. But in other cases, it might just be enough gray area that you can kind of. Shade it however you want to the jury. Is that fair to say, Kevin?

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_01] It's fair to say you can probably find an expert who will support your point of view. That's why it's so important that the jury gets a chance to hear from these experts in person so the jury can decide how much weight to give to the opinion of a particular expert.

[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_03] The other thing I would say is that a judge is also responsible in the pretrial phase for keeping out experts who are not going to add anything. You know, they don't have to take anybody. The defense can't just or the prosecution, God forbid, can't just bring in a expert who's like a psychic. I saw the killer do it with my psychic mind. Like, that's not going to be allowed in. So, like, there's limits.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_03] But one thing I think it's really important to keep an eye out for is are there points that one side or the other are making that the other side is not countering with an expert of their own? You mentioned Major Cicero from the Delphi trial. One thing I always found interesting is that Major Cicero is a respected crime scene analyst.

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_03] He can look at a crime scene, interpret different things, look at the blood spatter and make some limited scientifically backed conclusions about what makes sense. Doing experiments of his own in order to try to further that. And one thing that always struck me is that the defense in that case had this whole other theory of the crime scene. But they never presented anyone to make that point. They were just conjecturing. And frankly, I don't care what a bunch of defense attorneys think about it.

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_03] I wanted them to have their own expert come out and say, wait a minute. Cicero's wrong. Here's what actually happened or here's what I interpret this. The fact that they could not find anybody to do that indicated it. It indicated basically that no one would be willing to stake their professional reputation to back them up on that. We love looking good and saving money. So we love our wonderful sponsor, Quince.

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[00:20:54] [SPEAKER_03] So when you have a state actor or the state witness here saying one thing, does the defense put on somebody who says no, there have to be injuries or otherwise you shouldn't assume it's rape? Or do they kind of concede that point quietly by not fighting back against that? And you can flip that on the other side too. Of course. Because the state can call rebuttal witnesses against the defense's witnesses.

[00:21:21] [SPEAKER_03] And if they're letting points slide by on that, it's just a way to watch trials where you're kind of like, it's almost like you're listening for the silence. You know? What are they quiet about?

[00:22:01] [SPEAKER_03] What are they quiet about? What are they quiet about? Sexual assault if there are no injuries. And what she said is that if lubricant of some kind is used, that might not result in injury. But the other thing that's so important here is, I mean, I'm not aware, there's not been any testimony to them finding lubricant.

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_03] But the other aspect of this is if a woman is the victim of a possible sexual assault and is on their period, there also may not be injuries. And we know that Faith Hedgepeth was on her period at the time of her death. So that could be a reason why there might be a sexual assault and no visible injuries. So that was something that really stuck out to me in this.

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_03] She also described in extensive detail the process of a forensic sexual assault examination. Most of those situations are going to be occurring on live surviving victims. And unfortunately, in this case, that was not the case. But she did talk about some of the reactions these surviving victims might have. But that's not as relevant to this situation. And yeah, I thought it was very illuminating.

[00:23:16] [SPEAKER_03] I thought she was very credible and well-spoken and detailed. Now, the defense was able to cross-examine her. James Rainsford took the reins on that one and asked her a lot of questions. Did she ever talk with Dr. Lauren Scott, the medical examiner? No, she was not asked to. You know, which makes sense. It's like she's coming in as an independent person looking at the job they did. You know, she doesn't need to interview them or talk to them.

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_03] You know, she can't determine when exactly the DNA is deposited. There's different windows of time that have been positive. But it doesn't sound like there's necessarily like the most scientific consensus in the world. She did not see bruising on Faith's inner thighs. She also talked about how there, you know, there were criticisms from the defense about, well, there was a 120-hour window to collect sperm and like, was there still a chance?

[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_03] Like just things that they might have messed up. She talked about, you know, the defense noted that Dr. Scott did not clean up some of the area of the genitalia. And that's kind of the recommended thing nowadays by the Department of Justice. And that could lead to contamination.

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_03] And she acknowledged that, you know, it's not her job as an expert witness to get up and defend every possible error that the original investigators or the original examiners made. Right?

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_01] Absolutely not.

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_03] Why might that look bad to a jury?

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_01] If an expert witness gets up there and says, guess what, folks? Everything my team did was absolutely correct. Everything done by the people who hired me to testify to you was absolutely perfect. That might damage that person's credibility. It might make them look too defensive. And I think it's actually very helpful to a person's credibility if they're willing to concede while some mistakes were made.

[00:25:23] [SPEAKER_03] Absolutely. So she's not defending everything. The defense wanted to know, could you determine if there were injuries to the uterus? And she noted that they don't really look for that. And, you know, just kind of, I think the defense was taking a lot of shots against how the medical examiner's office handled this case. I feel like the defense is doing a good job and with these cross examinations of trying to say, okay, stuff went wrong.

[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_03] And I'm sympathetic to them in the sense that I think that is something that they do have to work with. I'm not sure at this point I've heard anything that's been super compelling as far as like a really disastrous mistake. But I imagine the goal might be, even if you don't have that, you might have enough to make some jurors be like, well. But it's, you know, it is what it is. They have the case that they have. And I think they're trying.

[00:26:22] [SPEAKER_03] And there was redirect from Ms. Garcia Lamarca. She was able to come in. Can you tell us about redirect? What does that mean?

[00:26:31] [SPEAKER_01] So when you have direct testimony, that's testimony. That's when you're talking to your own witness. If you're a prosecutor, that's a prosecutor's witness. And then you turn it over to the other side for cross-examination. And that's when the people who oppose you get the chance to try to point out, well, here's things about the witness they didn't tell you. Here's things about their story that might affect the credibility of the story.

[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_01] And if you're the person who originally put on that witness and you think, well, they're not telling the complete story here. I want to have a chance to go back and explain a little bit more. Then you do a redirect to cover the things that were raised in the cross-examination.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_03] Yes. And that was talking about, I think, a bit about how best practices have changed over time. It's been a long time since 2012. I mean, it's 2026. Can you believe that? Which freaks me out, frankly, because I graduated high school in 2012. So all of this, it's sending me a bit, you know, that this happened then. Like, this was my first year of college.

[00:27:42] [SPEAKER_03] So I think I kind of relate to Faith Hedgepeth's story in that way where, you know, it's like someone my age approximately, a little bit older, who never got to leave college and, you know, become a full-fledged adult and whatnot. It makes me really sad. But that is to say that many things in forensics have changed since then. And what would have been maybe acceptable back then might not be the best thing to do now, or they've kind of differentiated it.

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_03] So that can make it more complicated for the state's case as they're having to kind of defend things that may have been okay or more okay back then, but, you know, may sound not as sharp and maybe more sloppy nowadays. So that was interesting. And, yeah, I thought this was a good witness.

[00:28:28] [SPEAKER_03] So, you know, I feel like for me, lack of injuries, personally, to give my personal opinion at this time, which is very much I'm open and very much fine with changing my mind on this. But to me, the lack of injuries are important to disclose why that might be.

[00:28:48] [SPEAKER_03] If a victim is basically bashed into unconsciousness early and is not actively fighting back and is on their period, it seems like it could still very much indicate sexual assault. What do you think?

[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I think that's a good point.

[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:29:09] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_03] Go ahead.

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_01] No, I agree with you.

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_03] For me, what I'm looking at now is what is the contact or what would be the contact between the defendant and the victim? Where's the opportunity to form that connection where they decide let's have consensual sex at this time, or at least in this approximate time? And what does that look like?

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_03] Because I think establishing that would be very important for the defense. If they cannot do that, to me, it's going to be very difficult to say, to get to an acquittal.

[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I agree completely.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_03] Because we're having to believe, therefore, that Faith Hedgepeth consensually had sex with an unknown, strange male who was not in the same social circles within this UNC Chapel Hill community that she was, who was not known to her, was not known to any of her friends, was not a mutual connection, who really only had reason to be in that area because his relatives lived there.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_03] And what's more, not only did he had sex with her, but they had anal sex and they had vaginal sex while she was on her period when she expressed discomfort with that. And it was taken as a fact that she was not going to do that with a sexual partner who was a guy who she really liked.

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_03] So, like, that's, to me, to me as a woman, that seems pretty hard to believe.

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_01] It seems a little implausible.

[00:31:01] [SPEAKER_03] I'm really having a hard time believing that. But if they have something where they can connect them and establish him as somebody where that might have been plausible, then I think, to me, the responsible thing to do as a juror is to, if there's two scenarios that are equally plausible, you have to give it to the defense. So if they can give some connection between them, you know, that might change the game for me. But I think it's early days still.

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_03] I don't think we can kind of say he's definitely this or that at this point. Let's just let it play out. The trial is the opportunity to make that decision yourself. Like, I hate it when I see people kind of, like, coming to a hard conclusion and being like, I'm going to die on this hill, like, before the trial's over. It's like, you don't know. Maybe they might come out with something. You don't know. Like, what do you think?

[00:31:51] [SPEAKER_01] You have to wait until you hear both sides. That's the whole point of the trial. Because it's important that both sides get a chance not only to present information to the extent they want to, but to challenge information presented by the other side.

[00:32:09] [SPEAKER_01] And if you have even a casual disagreement with somebody and you want to present that to someone else to see what they think about who's right or who's wrong, you wouldn't think it's fair that if that person made up their mind just based on what the other person said, you'd want to have your say too.

[00:32:55] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. So, let's talk about the witness. witness. This is, first of all, the prosecutor who direct examined this witness is Lisa Coltrane, the special state prosecutor I mentioned. And I like her style, too. She's kind of very matter of fact and kind of getting people, you know, she's very direct. I like her. So Walker, Brian

[00:33:22] [SPEAKER_03] Walker is the witness. He is a former Chapel Hill police investigator who specialized in cell phone forensics, computer forensics. He's a digital forensics investigator. And he examined Faith's cell phone. Now, can you talk a little bit, Kevin, about how important a cell phone can be for the

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_01] modern day police investigation? The amount of information that you could get from a person's cell phone is absolutely incredible. Your cell phone can tell us where you've been, what times you were there. It can tell us if you, why you were there, were you moving around? It can tell us everybody you've been in contact with either via voice calls or through text. It can also offer a record of your

[00:34:09] [SPEAKER_01] email communications. So it's really quite incredible the amount of information you can get from a cell

[00:34:15] [SPEAKER_03] phone. Yes, it is a trove. And this data extraction of this cell phone occurred on September 9th, 2012. And Walker used Celebrite to get this data. Celebrite is well known as a, you know, a major company that deals with such things, doing phone extractions for investigators. But things kind of

[00:34:40] [SPEAKER_03] picked up and then they slowed down really quickly because the defense actually had an objection around some of this that they wanted to make outside of the presence of the jury. And the judge duly cleared the room of the jurors. And what the defense was essentially trying to put out there was they objected to the contents of the victim's phone being admitted. They felt there were, you know,

[00:35:06] [SPEAKER_03] process issues, privacy issues. And this was the response from Ms. Coltrane. I will play a short

[00:35:16] [SPEAKER_02] clip here. It's number one, this is not entirely sure what the objection is to since nothing, there is an extraordinary amount of data on that flash drive. And I'm not exactly sure because we haven't talked about anything specifically that is being presented to the jury. However,

[00:35:42] [SPEAKER_02] this is not for the truth of the matter asserted. This is simply, this is the data that was on this phone. And this is what has been extracted from this phone. This is the physical exhibit. It would be the same, you know, if we had the cell phone in here and we're clicking through all of the buttons to show what was on there on the cell phone itself. And therefore, none of this is for the truth of the

[00:36:07] [SPEAKER_03] matter asserted. So you have our explanation there. What the defense was saying was that they should not admit data from the evening of September 6th, the early September 7th. And what the state also noted was that the defense has opened the door to this because they've asked witnesses like Carina Rosario, Faith's roommate. Well, like how many calls did you get from her? How many calls did you make to her?

[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_03] You know, different things that would kind of be covered by this extraction. So when they're talking about the truth of the matter, Kevin, versus just entering all of this into evidence, what can that

[00:36:44] [SPEAKER_01] refer to? That can refer to hearsay. Hearsay is the principle that we do not want anything entered into a trial setting that goes to the truth of a matter. Unless that's something that is sworn testimony. You don't want to just say, oh, I heard somebody say this, or I heard somebody say that.

[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_01] That is not fair if such things are being admitted in a way where the person making the assertions is not under the penalty of perjury if they misstate things and if they can't be cross-examined.

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_03] Yes. And the defense extensively talked about hearsay in their objection. And the judge considered this and ended up overruling the objection and allowing this in. So the truth of the matter would, if they were introducing it for that, it would make it hearsay, right? Okay. And they're

[00:37:47] [SPEAKER_03] saying that's not why. So that is allowed in over the objection of the defense. Why is it important for the defense to object to this on the record too?

[00:37:59] [SPEAKER_01] If there's anything that the defense thinks is unfair, they need to object and get it on the record. And the reason for that is that they want to be able, if their client loses, if their client is found guilty, there will more than likely be an appeal. An appeal is when other lawyers come in and say, oh, the trial is unfair. And they will be looking for things that were done over the objections of the

[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_01] defense. And if there's something that is allegedly unfair that the defense has not objected to, in many cases, that would not be available as an appellate issue.

[00:38:40] [SPEAKER_03] Next up, Walker also testified to this not being the only phone he extracted. He also extracted Karina Rosario's cell phone and got all of the timeline of all the messages and texts and calls and whatnot that occurred in the relevant September 6th to September 7th. Obviously with

[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_03] Rosario, she was the last person to see Faith alive. And elements of her story police may have found concerning, namely the fact that somebody testified that she said she had blood on her hand. Now, we've since talked about that and sort of how that came out. But I mean, from the police, you know, from police investigators, I would imagine they would want to know more about her. So getting her phone extracted, which I take she did willingly, she

[00:39:32] [SPEAKER_03] gave it to them, would be important to make sure she doesn't have anything concerning on her phone that could point out some kind of involvement. An additional thing that Walker testified to was a Chapel Hill police recording of the interview that police did with Karina shortly after the murder. And in that, she gives a detailed timeline. It's not the best audio, so I'm not really going to

[00:39:56] [SPEAKER_03] include it here. But she's sort of sitting there and recounting a lot of it is repetitive to what we already heard her testify to. So I won't get as into it. But some background, she talks about the night before the murder, talks about how Karina was at the library at 8 p.m. Faith was at a pool party and then came to pick her up, took her to the library and left Karina at the library, then went off to see

[00:40:25] [SPEAKER_03] Talib. And she had recently told Karina that she had feelings for Talib. But Karina guessed that they probably didn't have sex because of the period. It wasn't uncommon for them to hang out. And at some point, you know, I don't think Karina really knew where she was at that point. But at some point, Faith returns, picks her up around 1130 to midnight, walked back to the car. And while they're walking back to the car, they get the plan, let's go to the thrill. Because they knew they wouldn't

[00:40:51] [SPEAKER_03] have to pay. They wore shorts and tube tops, put their hair in buns, and are texting the friend who works at the door, kind of going back and forth. And, you know, Karina said she was going to pay for everything. Faith was more of the designated driver. Faith was dancing. They were hanging out with soccer players. And Karina, again, recounted by closing time, she's really drunk. She doesn't

[00:41:17] [SPEAKER_03] remember stopping for anything on the way over. She just really remembers throwing up and Faith helping her throw up, trying to text all these various men. And then, you know, what we heard before that she went off with Jordan. And eventually when she woke up around 8, 830, Jordan has to go to class. She's calling and texting Faith, hey, can you get me my notes for my papers that are due today? I have class

[00:41:45] [SPEAKER_03] at 11. She's feeling very hungover, gets help from Marisol. And then we kind of go through the

[00:41:51] [SPEAKER_01] going into the crime scene. Yeah, and as you say, a lot of that is stuff we've already heard. But during the course of a trial, it's important that the jury does hear some of these things more than once, especially in a situation like this. Because what if in this interview, closer to the time of the crime, she was saying things that were different? I think that's something a jury would want to know about.

[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_01] And also, I would think generally we would assume that a person's memory of an event is better the closer in time to that event. So that makes this interview, which was conducted obviously closer in time to the event, quite significant indeed, even if we're not like learning a lot of really

[00:42:36] [SPEAKER_03] interesting new details. Yes, absolutely. It's not about what is the most interesting narrative or the most like streamlined thing. Like in fiction, you would expect this to be edited out. But for a jury, the repetition can be helpful. It's sort of more like educational than entertainment. And you also have her kind of recounting, you know, the fact she was recovering from an abortion at this time.

[00:43:03] [SPEAKER_03] She was spotting and, you know, doesn't remember bleeding a lot, but she was bleeding off and on. But she was so drunk and messed up that morning. She didn't care and had sex with Jordan anyway. I think he testified that he didn't remember any blood. But what happened was at this point, the officer kind of confronts her about what Jordan said, which was that she thought she had blood on her hand at one point, really like a smudge on her finger. And she says, well, you know, I scratched my

[00:43:33] [SPEAKER_03] hand with a pencil and talked about it with faith. Like, oh, no, am I going to get lead poisoning? But it didn't make her bleed. So it wouldn't be that basically talks about like there's no reason I would have I didn't I wasn't cut. I wasn't injured. There's no reason of that. She doesn't say like, oh, he's lying or anything like that. But she does note that she had been throwing up red alcoholic slushy drinks. And maybe it was that. And it was kind of a tense moment between her and

[00:43:59] [SPEAKER_03] the detective, more of the detective being tense. She seemed pretty kind of like nervous. But, you know, that's not really unexpected. Talked about how she thought Faith died. You know, she said she wouldn't really get undressed like that, especially if she was on her period. She wouldn't just be nude in the apartment or anything like that or nude from the waist down. She talks about the biscuit in the bag and how one of her one of the guy who got her pregnant,

[00:44:26] [SPEAKER_03] one of his friends got it for her a time out, I guess, a restaurant. And she didn't know the guy's name, but she didn't remember any writing on that. And of course, there's this kind of mysterious message of I'm not stupid, bitch jealous. So she's not remembering anything like that. pre-existing that the next, you know, thing that happened was there was a cross

[00:44:52] [SPEAKER_03] examination by the defense of Walker. And, you know, they were asking, OK, there's all these messages where there's no name. And what does that mean? Who are these mysterious people? And what Walker says is when in that case, it's sort of like when you're texting with someone, they're not in your context. So I imagine for the defense, you know, it's like, well, we don't know everyone she was talking to. Right. Raises that possibility.

[00:45:16] [SPEAKER_03] The next witness we heard from was Johnny Britt, who was with the Chapel Hill Police Department. And she responded to the call to come in about Faith Hedgepeth being dead, said that Karina did not seem drunk, but she could smell alcohol on her. You know, kind of seeing these two young women who were extremely distressed, seeing this really messy apartment. There's

[00:45:40] [SPEAKER_03] clothes everywhere. She found the kitchen in particular pretty nasty and was kind of, I think, got the sense grossed out. And they're kind of seeing some of these things, this blue Riesling bottle on the floor. The sheets on the bed were black, so that made seeing the blood a bit more difficult. And he noticed Faith's black eyes, despite not being super close to her. He noticed

[00:46:05] [SPEAKER_03] a tampon on the floor and noticed the white takeout bag with this I'm not stupid bitch jealous thing on it. So they keep a crime scene log and they talk to a supervisor on what they should do next. And they need to start talking with different people who are showing up. Talked to Marisol, who was extremely emotional. And then also talked to Karina. They talked about her ex and how he broke

[00:46:31] [SPEAKER_03] down the door to the bathroom and different, you know, folks. I believe Jordan at some point showed up at the scene and doing things, you know, answering questions about what the crime scene techs were doing. And in addition to that, they show a picture of Faith's car, shows the gas cap open. She also remembered going to the apartment complex from a crossface building. And there's this picnic table

[00:47:00] [SPEAKER_03] and grill there and your eye level to the parking lot from there. Like you can very much see, I believe, where she parked. So the state outlined in their opening their theory that basically this guy, the defendant, noticed Faith while he was at this all-night cookout that happened there until like 5 a.m.

[00:47:23] [SPEAKER_03] and his relatives lived in the, in that apartment complex and were part of the sort of Guatemalan community there. It's painting a picture that the state wants you to believe of what, what that looks like. Oh, and here's Nicholas. He's going to give his expert insights, aka he doesn't know anything. What do you have to say, Nick? He's suspiciously silent. He's like slinking away. No,

[00:47:53] [SPEAKER_03] no, he's coming back. We already heard from one investigator or one police officer who had previously been at the scene. Why is it important for us to hear from more? I think that's a way to

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_01] assess credibility. Are these investigators accurately describing things? Are they telling us the same things? Are they telling us different things? It can only help the case. So Officer Britt

[00:48:16] [SPEAKER_03] actually attended the autopsy and was able to determine, okay, this is a homicide from, from speaking with the medical examiner and was able to take the swabs from Faith's body to the police department. They find male DNA present. She notes that like they were able to figure out like Faith was super likable and she was involved in a lot of stuff, had a lot of friends like from school or Red Robin where she worked. They were looking at all the men all over the place there,

[00:48:44] [SPEAKER_03] taking DNA samples from all of them for like two years, hundreds and hundreds of samples with just nothing, nothing matches. And eventually she was reassigned and the investigation continued to chug away without her. And for Cross, the defense was asking her about like how many officers were there with you and she said three to four. But yeah, it was a good, it was a good day.

[00:49:12] [SPEAKER_03] I think it was a good day for the prosecution. It seems like a lot of their story is hanging together and sort of seems to be coming together in that sense. But any good defense attorney will tell you like it's their job to kind of smash that all up and bring in the reasonable doubt. So I don't think this is over. I'm very curious to see what the defense is ultimately going to say. I'm going to be curious to see what other things the prosecution brings into it. A lot of this isn't necessarily the

[00:49:40] [SPEAKER_03] most blockbuster testimony that you're ever going to see in your life, but it's the building blocks of what they need to convey to the jury to try to get a conviction. So I'll be looking forward to seeing more. Anything from today that we didn't get to, we will certainly get into more later. But for the time being, thank you so much for listening and we really hope you find these helpful.

[00:50:07] [SPEAKER_01] Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheet at gmail.com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

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