The Murder of Faith Hedgepeth: The Trial of Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares: Day Six: Fingerprints and DNA

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[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_01] Content warning, this episode contains graphic discussion of rape and murder. All right, so it's day six of the trial. We're almost a week in to the trial of Miguel Enrique Salguero Olivares for the 2012 murder of Faith Hedgepeth. She was a 19-year-old, highly beloved UNC Chapel Hill student with her whole life ahead of her.

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_01] Her family and friends adored this young woman, and she was just starting out in life, but unfortunately, she was cut down overnight on September 7, 2012. She was seemingly attacked in her bedroom, raped and murdered. It's an extremely senseless and brutal crime. And now there's at least the state's theory that they've got the guy responsible for it. And of course, the defense is saying, no, this is the wrong guy.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_01] And that guy is Miguel Enrique Salguero Olivares. He was a stranger to Faith. And yet the state contends that his fingerprints and DNA were at the crime scene, specifically his DNA within Faith Hedgepeth's body. So we're going through right now the prosecution's case in chief. We're hearing from them about what they feel is relevant and what they feel proves this man's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_01] That's the standard that they need to overcome. The burden lies on the state, not on the defendant to prove innocence, but on the state to prove guilt. So important to remember. But they've had this guy since 2021. We're finally getting to trial now. And today, I think, is some very bombshell evidence as far as the forensic goes. Because we're hearing more from the fingerprints expert. And we're also now hearing from the DNA expert.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_01] So we're recording a bit earlier in the day due to some scheduling constraints. There's going to be stuff about today's day at trial, day six, that we're not going to get to. But we'll get to it tomorrow. So don't worry. We're not going to miss anything. And again, if you hear banging around in the background.

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_00] It's our dogs.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_01] Our dogs have a new game called Let's Drop Heavy Bones on the Wooden Floors in order to scare everyone and startle our mother. So that's that's what nothing bad's happening. Anyways, let's get into it. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_00] 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.

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_01] And this is The Murder of Faith Hedgepeth. The trial of Miguel Enrique Salguero Olivares. Day six. Fingerprints and DNA.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_01] All right.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_01] So let's pick up where we left off and actually get to a couple of things that we didn't yesterday, specifically Summer Maffitt. So this is one of the state's experts. She is a forensic scientist manager at the State Crime Lab in North Carolina at the Western Regional Lab in Hendersonville specifically. And she is the witness for the prosecution who's going to be speaking to fingerprints. Now, we started with her yesterday. We mentioned her in our episode.

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_01] But there were a couple of aspects and questions that we hadn't quite gotten to yet that I would like to get into because I think all of this is highly important as far as the outcome of what's happening. When you hear the state has fingerprints putting this guy in the room and DNA proving sexual contact with the victim, that's what you want to hear about.

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_00] Exactly.

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_01] If that holds, if those experts are credible, if their processes are credible, that's a slam dunk case. I don't really care about anything else that happens. Sometimes people online can do their little conspiracy theories about people who knew faith. But to me, that doesn't matter. That only matters in the absence of evidence like this. When you have evidence like this, I'm sorry. Game over. So but then again, all is not always as it appears.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_01] Sometimes the state can push through a weak case and play games and put evidence out there that makes it sound really good. And then you find out, wait, that's just circumstantial. That's just touch DNA. You know, who knows what that actually means? So we're going to have to keep an open mind and look at this and see what we think. So Maffitt yesterday also, we kind of got into this a little bit, but was talking about the Bacardi rum bottle found at the scene.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_01] If you remember, this was a bottle believed to be used as the murder weapon to bludgeon poor Faith as she lay in her bed, place where she should have been safe. And unfortunately, someone decided that she wasn't going to be because they wanted to rape and murder her. But. Anyways, you know, they talked about Miss Maffitt talked about, you know, processing this bottle.

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_01] She, as the fingerprint analyst, got to it after the DNA experts who are going to hear from after this, got through with it. The reason for that, as we mentioned yesterday, DNA is very delicate. It can be very delicate, especially touch DNA, which could be a thing here. And you don't want to have a lot of people handling it. You want to do the DNA first because, like, if more and more people are handling it, that's worse and worse for DNA.

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_01] Now, the DNA folks also want to be sensitive to the fingerprint folks. So they're not trying to do a lot of swabs over where there might be fingerprints or over where there looks like there might be prints. So they're trying to work together to preserve as much evidence as possible. So you have that's processed. Miss Maffitt notices the reddish brown stains on it, notices some fragmentary ridge details.

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_01] That's referring to the parts of our skin, including our fingers, our palms, bottoms of our feet, have those ridges. And that's what they use when they're trying to determine, you know, does fingerprint match or is there a fingerprint even here? Here's the problem, though. She sees that, but she's also seeing it's not enough to do a comparison. You can't just make something out of nothing.

[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_01] If it's not enough of a print, there's not going to be enough material to compare it to and be able to identify or exclude other prints. So this is such a reminder to me about how delicate this stuff is. We take DNA, fingerprints, all that for granted sometimes. And the reality is you see in this case again and again they're striking out.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_01] You know, this thumbprint isn't enough or this fingerprint isn't enough. This palm print isn't enough. And like what it comes down to is like getting that one thing that works out, that one complete print that breaks it all open. But it's a reminder to all of us, including myself, including you, Kevin, where we might in certain cases expect DNA and say, OK, why isn't there DNA? Why isn't there fingerprints? Wouldn't the killer have touched this, this and that?

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_01] And the answer is sometimes they have, but whatever they left just wasn't quite enough to really allow for a scientific processing of it and exclusion of all others. So she's finding this. They're not enough. There's really no, you know, she's not able to do much with that. She can't do comparison with that. And she also is analyzing not just the bottle, but a white paper bag.

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_01] That was the bag we mentioned earlier found on Faith's bed where she is, you know, it also includes that note. You know, I'm not stupid, bitch, jealous. She's analyzing a cell phone, purple cell phone case, a yellow, a yellow flyer with handwriting. Now, she knows that the flyer and the bag, she talked about this in the last episode or in the last session. And those are porous items.

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_01] So you're going to deal with non-porous versus porous items differently because the way you collect fingerprints off of those is just a different process. She uses a gray color powder with those items. And for the paper items also used a chemical process. And she talked about, you know, for the flyer, for the phone case, for the phone itself, no identifiable latent prints were recovered through this process. So she didn't get anything from those.

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_01] And then she gets in 2014, May 6th, she gets this blue Riesling bottle. The blue Riesling bottle, as a reminder, was found on the floor of the bedroom where Faith was killed. It was not believed to be used as the murder weapon. If it was, you'd expect there to be, you know, blood, things like that on it. But it's just present in the room. Off of that, she also is looking at a couple of other items.

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_01] But she gets three latent prints lifted off of those. So off of that, and again, they're looking at other things. There's a cell phone. There's a Germ-X bottle, spray bottle, remote control, panty liner found at the scene. But off of this bottle, near the neck of the bottle, she gets a palm print. And it's photographed. That's shown to the jury.

[00:11:59] [SPEAKER_01] And she compares that palm print to the known palm print samples of both Karina and Faith that the police gave her. And what Miss Maffet finds that she can exclude Karina, and then she actually finds that they didn't give her a palm print for Faith, so she doesn't have that. But, you know, there's also a fingerprint. She compares that to Karina.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_01] Faith, the comparison was inconclusive. And then the final print she compares to both Faith and Karina, and they're both excluded. So Karina's excluded for all three of those prints. And, you know, that's interesting. She lives there. It wouldn't necessarily be that surprising if she was on there, but it is notable. So those are entered into the automated fingerprint identification system. And that's a databank of fingerprints by law enforcement.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_01] And it doesn't seemingly turn up any results until September 22, 2021, when Chapel Hill Police Department comes back to Miss Maffet and says, we have something we want you to compare this to. And they submit, you know, these known prints of Miguel Salguero Olivares. They're the defendant in this case. And they start, you know, now she has something to base this off of.

[00:13:21] [SPEAKER_01] So she compares the identifiable prints recovered from the blue Riesling bottle to all ten fingerprints of the suspect. The first one, inconclusive. Second one, inconclusive. But the palm print she identifies as the palm print of Miguel Enrique Salguero Olivares.

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_01] And she shows a board that features photos of the palm print and then talks to the jury about her process and analysis and how she came to that conclusion where she identifies the palm print. 2023, it gets worse for this defendant. Because now they have more fingerprint impressions, inked impressions. And she can't reach a conclusion on several and excludes another one.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_01] But she finds a second fingerprint, a left thumb print that matches Miguel Enrique Salguero Olivares. So now his palm and his thumb print are showing up on this blue Riesling bottle at the crime scene. At that point, you know, the verification process takes place. The verification process is where another analyst takes a look at everything and determines whether or not they think she's accurate.

[00:14:39] [SPEAKER_01] And she, at one point, brought the bottle out for the jury and was kind of showing them the bottle, how the defendant would have handled the bottle in order to get those prints. And, yeah. So what do you think of all of that, I guess, so far?

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_00] It's very important to lay that kind of groundwork and make sure the jury knows how this team did its work and conducted things.

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And then when you hear something like, this is, I wrote down her quote. She said, quote, That fingerprint was compared to the known impression submitted to me and identified as the left thumb of Miguel Enrique Salguero Olivares. That means that the latent and the known standards came from the same source. How big of a deal is that evidence?

[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_00] Well, it's potentially quite significant indeed.

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Now, there's a third fingerprint on the bottle that could not be identified. So that's interesting. And the thing I can think of is I think it is a big deal. I do note it's not the murder weapon. It's a bottle found on the floor. So it still is not quite that gold standard immediately. Because you can imagine if someone throws a dinner party, a bunch of people are handling the bottle.

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_01] Fingerprints might. Like, there's innocuous reasons why somebody's prints could get on a bottle like this at a crime scene and not be involved in the murders. Right.

[00:16:19] [SPEAKER_00] But the list of possible reasons narrows considerably, especially when one considers that there's not a known previous connection between this man and Ms. Hedgepeth.

[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_01] That's the big problem facing this defendant is that there is not that link. There's not that thing where it's like, oh, well, they would have been hanging out in this situation.

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[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_01] And that goes for the DNA, too, even more so, frankly. Because sharing a bottle of wine or handling a bottle of wine is certainly a lot less intimate than what the DNA indicates happened. So I do agree with you. Like, this is one of those things. I don't think it's like you can't overcome this. Because, again, it's not the murder weapon. It's not a handprint found in blood. But it's still bad. It's still pretty bad.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_01] Because what it does is it appears, it could potentially be argued, that it puts this man in the room. In the bedroom of a murdered woman who also is found with his DNA inside of her. When you pair it with that, it's damning.

[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_00] It's damning and he needs to have an explanation.

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_01] You know, we were having a romantic evening. We met randomly here and we shared a bottle of wine and then had consensual sex would be something that he really needs to sell the jury on. And then for some reason, I never came forward about it because I was scared because I'm a bad person and I don't care about people. Like, I just I think, yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty bad. But so the bottle, that's what that that's what that has.

[00:22:41] [SPEAKER_01] But it sounds like, you know, with the Bacardi, that's not necessarily what they're looking at so much as this blue bottle. Now it's time for the defense to cross-examine her. And they they very much did cross-examine her. And what they were trying to kind of, I think, tease out in this cross-examination was how, you know, how some of this evidence was handled, raised questions about that. Why didn't you know, at one point they're asking her, why didn't you take any photographs of the Bacardi bottle?

[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_01] And she noted, well, there were no recoverable prints from that. So that's why I didn't do that. But it's kind of, you know, it's sort of it's kind of throw into the jury's minds. Like, is that proper? Shouldn't you be doing it anyway?

[00:23:23] And.

[00:23:24] [SPEAKER_01] Talked about how, you know, like she even said, like, well, the bottle is still available for other examinations. And they're like, yeah, but don't fingerprints degrade over time. And she had to say, yes, they do. You know, they were they were. Why wasn't she examining this or that? Why examine this? And, you know, she noted, like, in some instances, those things that they were asking about were not provided to her or that the Chapel Hill Police Department did not request them. She's kind of dealing with what the police are giving her. She's not unilaterally going and saying, I want this, this and that.

[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_01] So it's a it's a collaborative process and it's not all up to her as far as how that goes. And she talked more about this. This fingerprint system that these fingerprints were uploaded into. And it was noted that the unknown latent prints were uploaded in 2014. So only two years after the murders. And the defense was asking about this and it was interesting. It was an objection from the state.

[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_01] The reason why they didn't want these questions about that was because it indicated it would basically they said this is improper character evidence because the fact that there were no hits in safest since 2014 indicates like he had not committed other crimes. And it therefore elicits improper character evidence. And the objection was sustained. What do you make of that, Kevin? What will they tell us about that objection?

[00:24:43] [SPEAKER_00] Well, basically, the thing to remember in a situation like this is that a person's overall character is not on trial. That's not a person's good character is not evidence that they're innocent of a particular offense. Their bad character is not evidence that they're innocent of an offense. And so it sounds to me like by trying to go into the fact that there were no other hits in the system, they were trying to establish that he did not have a criminal record.

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_01] Right. So, hey, he's not a bad guy. He wasn't like going around doing serial rapes. And, you know, that's interesting. And it's but I think as far as the state's concerned, like, first of all, they they don't they they don't want any any information exonerating him. And second of all, I think people and this is nothing to do with this case in particular. I just mention it because I see a lot of this in true crime commentary. People think that it's got to be a serial killer or an innocent person.

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_01] They think there's no way someone can do something really bad once and then stop. It's got to be a compulsion like with a serial killer. It's got to be something they can't stop doing or they really enjoy doing. A lot of crimes are simply opportunistic and impulsive. It's important to remember that. Also, sometimes you might have an offender commit some type of really heinous crime and perhaps doesn't get anything out of it or doesn't get what they wanted to out of it or they're risk adverse enough to not do it again.

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_01] And that's unsatisfying because we want to sort of think of everything in black and white, but it very much is borne out by like everything. So I would just I would note that. So, yeah, that that's kind of the back and forth at one point, you know, the defense broke out their own little posters and were holding it for the jury. And, you know, I think I mean, I think they were raising good questions about, you know, hey, how thorough was this? Why wasn't this done? Why was this done?

[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_01] And, you know, why didn't they go for this? And I listen, I think they're doing I think it's a very talented defense team. And, you know, again, I don't think the blue bottle alone cinches it because there there could be explanations for that.

[00:26:51] [SPEAKER_00] But I think sometimes people's conceptions of what they expect from a defense attorney may be affected by pop culture. Perry Mason. Yeah. You want these exciting Perry Mason moments. And just as often an effective criminal case put forth by the prosecution doesn't include one single piece of damning evidence. It's more like a bunch of pebbles that add up.

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_00] You can just very similarly have a very successful defense case that is that equivalent where enough little doubts and pinpricks are raised throughout the process that it may lead to cumulative reasonable doubt.

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_01] I think that's exactly right. It's it's sort of I think that's a really good comparison. I think people sometimes don't understand the police perspective, the defense perspective or the prosecution perspective. And they sort of expect big, dramatic fireworks from all three because that's what we see on television all the time. And the reality is far more boring. And the reality is all three groups make mistakes and are imperfect, too. And sometimes I feel like the expectations all around are really off.

[00:28:02] [SPEAKER_01] Like I've been seeing people talk about this on social media and they're like, I can't believe the police didn't swab this or that. And it's like, calm down. Like, you know, like I mean, like truly you're going. True crime brain is going to be the death of the criminal justice system in this country. I will just tell you that. Like people have just totally unrealistic views of all of this. And it's it's it's getting into like neurotic territory. I think people are like I like throughout the whole case because they didn't swab the doorknobs.

[00:28:32] [SPEAKER_01] Ma'am, no, that's not how any of this works. Like I if you think that, then I God help you. I know I hope you're never on a jury. All right. So at one point, this was kind of funny. It's not relevant to anything. But at one point, there was like this very confusing moment after sort of the questioning of Maffet was like ending where the judge is like counsel approach and he's making all these faces.

[00:29:00] [SPEAKER_01] And Jason Murphy, one of the defense attorneys, is looking confused. And some of the prosecutors come up as well. And they're all looking and they're like gesturing. I don't even know what's going on. And then they leave and the judge says his spidey senses had been tingling, but they were off. And then I think he was confused because James Rainsford had stepped outside for a moment. And then you hear him in the background saying, I wasn't out smoking.

[00:29:24] [SPEAKER_01] And everyone's laughing uproariously, including the defendant, which, you know, so I noticed that because I, you know, I was it was just a it was an odd moment. And the judge is like, thank you for coming back. So it was it was silly. And sometimes you have that, I think, in a trial because it's real people doing the job for like weeks and weeks. So oftentimes you'll see people kind of loosen up, even though it's obviously an extremely serious topic.

[00:29:50] [SPEAKER_01] But the next very consequential, I think, witness. And again, I think so Maffet, bad witness for the defendant. This one, I think, is worse. So Erin Ermish is a forensic scientist with the North Carolina State Crime Lab. She works in the biology section. So that refers to DNA analysis, bodily fluid analysis.

[00:30:20] [SPEAKER_01] Serology, which is the identification of body body fluids. So is this semen? Is it blood? Is it saliva? Is it sweat? What is it? That's what you're going to her for. She has is that that's her training. That's what she's focused on. And what the prosecution asked the judge to do is can you tender her as an expert in the field of forensic biology, including DNA analysis?

[00:30:49] [SPEAKER_01] And that was granted. Ermish said she's actually been one of the ones involved in this case since September of 2012. So she's been in it from early on. And she gives, to start out, a presentation on DNA to the jury. That may seem a little bit odd. Because, again, we're true crime people, all of us. If you're watching this, you probably are. And we certainly are. So it's like, well, we know what DNA is. But that's not top of mind for everybody.

[00:31:17] [SPEAKER_01] And for some of these jurors, it may have been a long time since they've been in a biology class. I mean, frankly, I'm so unscientifically minded that I appreciated the DNA presentation because it's like, man, it's just good to refresh your knowledge if you're going to be asking a jury to make some really serious decisions based on that kind of science. So she's talking through that. It's like, what is DNA? What does it mean? You know, like, why is it relevant here? How do we look at it?

[00:31:47] [SPEAKER_01] And she sort of talks through all the evidence she analyzed, much like Miss Maffet did. Miss Ermish is also doing the same thing. Sort of, I was sent this, this and that. And these were my analyses and conclusions and reports about each of these pieces of evidence. And a big part of any investigation, Kevin, I think, is like determining what might have evidence on it to send to these labs.

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_01] Is it realistic? It, okay, here's Kevin's, as many of you know, Kevin's favorite example is to accuse me of stealing cereal from local retail environments. Yes. Total slander and I probably should sue him at some point. But let's say, let's say I, me, or someone who just looks like me, I have an alibi perhaps, robs the local Walmart of all of their cereal.

[00:32:46] [SPEAKER_01] Is it realistic for police to submit every single object in that Walmart to the state crime lab? Because some of it might have my DNA on it.

[00:32:55] [SPEAKER_00] For instance, let's go to the frozen food section. Let's go to.

[00:33:01] [SPEAKER_01] One of those big bins that have all the bouncy balls in them.

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. No. And the answer to that is no. What you're going to do is, okay, if she was here stealing cereal, what are the things that she is most likely to have touched? Let's test those. Because we can't test every single thing in the store.

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_01] Why not?

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_00] Too much time, too much effort, too many resources. And all the time and effort we spend testing, like loaves of bread or things in other parts of the store that are not likely to have your DNA on it. That's time that is not spent testing materials in other cases. There's always lots and lots of other cases.

[00:33:46] [SPEAKER_01] And I think that's important to remember because that means because it is subjective, because you need investigators and experts to go through and say this, not that. There's always going to be room for criticism from defense attorneys who say, but what about that? And you're never going to make everyone happy with that. But, you know, at the same time, being comprehensive, being strategic, it is important.

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_01] So, to use the grocery store as an example, they might look at surveillance footage to track the suspect and see where I went. And maybe my hand touches something at some point and they're able to go and try to get touch DNA off of that. You know, there might be ways to narrow it down. Or if you, for some reason, the footage isn't working, you interview witnesses. Where did she go? Or if you can't get anyone because I'm just that good at my job, you might just say, okay, well, she would have had to be over here.

[00:34:39] [SPEAKER_01] And in order to get to the top shelf, she would have had to climb over here. So maybe that's, you're strategic about it. So in this, one thing that they were obviously wanting to test would be the murder weapon. That makes sense, this Bacardi rum bottle. And that was, that came to Urmish before the fingerprint folks. So she wanted to basically look for samples in areas of the bottle where there were not latent prints.

[00:35:09] [SPEAKER_01] And she didn't want to disturb that for Maffet. So she's testing that. She's testing rectal and vaginal swabs taken from Hedgepeth's body from the autopsy. And with those, those tested positive for semen and sperm. And so indicating sexual contact. Can't tell us the nature of that contact alone, but shows that there was sexual contact.

[00:35:37] [SPEAKER_01] She talked about looking at processes like sperm fraction. That occurs when, you know, they're trying to essentially like take fractions. Like one, they're trying to separate the sample DNA from sperm cells versus DNA from other types of cells. There was also something that didn't turn up anything. There was a swab taken from inside her mouth that tested negative for seminal fluid and sperm.

[00:36:02] [SPEAKER_01] So one thing when she was analyzing the rectal swab in particular, they had a number of folks like Karina Rosario, like Jordan McCrary, like different folks connected with the investigation where they had their DNA. And so might have been looking to do some comparisons with that. Obviously, Karina Rosario being a woman wouldn't be the producer of any semen or sperm.

[00:36:30] [SPEAKER_01] But they're just kind of looking and seeing like if any DNA matches up at any point. So let's take a gander at what Ms. Ermish had to say about what they found with that. Okay.

[00:36:44] [SPEAKER_02] Okay. So DNA from at least two individuals. In some cases, one individual may leave or contribute more DNA to that sample than the other individual.

[00:36:58] [SPEAKER_02] So if that reaches a certain amount more, so if individual A leaves more DNA than individual B, then individual A, that DNA profile would be the predominant profile in that DNA sample.

[00:37:19] [SPEAKER_02] So if that's a partially predominant profile, just means that there was predominance at some of the areas that were tested, but not all of the areas.

[00:37:30] [SPEAKER_02] So once I have my DNA profile from the evidence item and I compare it to the known DNA standard, if there is a difference in the profiles at the areas that I've obtained results between the evidence item and the known DNA standard, then I would say that those profiles do not match. Okay.

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_03] And that's what you said about the profiles from Faith Hedgepeth, Karina Rosario, Jordan McCreary, and Darvin Ebanks? Yes. Okay. And then you said it's from an unknown individual, this partially predominant profile that was found on the rectal swab from Faith. Is that right? Yes. Okay.

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_01] So we're looking at their—so what we're hearing from this expert witness is what some of these terminologies that we're seeing thrown around mean and how it applies. To this, but essentially finding unknown male DNA in the rectal swab indicating this sexual contact.

[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_01] There's instances in other cases where a sexual assault kit can, you know, within a female victim come up with male DNA and it not be indicative of any sort of sexual contact because it's so minuscule that it can just indicate normal contact, being in the same household as a boy or a man. And it doesn't necessarily go there.

[00:38:56] [SPEAKER_01] But with this, with the presence of seminal fluid, with the presence of sperm, it indicates clear sexual contact. Predominantly what she's talking about at this point is processes and how the lab operates and how they test and how—what they go through and what they're looking for, blood, semen, saliva, and different reports that she's done.

[00:39:20] [SPEAKER_01] But at this point, there's not been anything where it's like identifying Miguel Salguero, Salguero Olivares. So why not just lead with that, Kevin? In journalism, we're taught, like, make the—put the most important stuff in the lead. Don't bury the lead. But with lawyers, can you talk about building a foundation and why all this is important to get into?

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_00] You want to—you don't want to just toss information at the jury. You want to make sure they're able to understand that. And for them to be able to understand even if something is tremendously important, they have to know why it's important. So you have to start with the more boring stuff, frankly, to, as you say, to build a foundation. You're kind of creating the frame around which you're giving them information.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_00] And that will enable them to really fully appreciate the significance of that information in a way that perhaps they would not be able to do so if you just started with all the big, sexy stuff first.

[00:40:25] [SPEAKER_01] That makes a lot of sense. And it can be a bit boring, I think, for folks who are expecting the fireworks. But it actually is really important and also responsible because you want to explain how things work and not just, you know, take my word for it. One interesting thing, and I think this is kind of the prosecution trying to get ahead of possible defense questioning. Often it makes sense for the prosecution to kind of flag stuff like this so that the defense can't make hay of it.

[00:40:54] [SPEAKER_01] But there was indications. So they had, you know, they collected Karina Rosario's jean shorts and that came back with blood on them. So you might be thinking, whoa, blood on the roommate's jean shorts? What could that indicate? But the DNA from that was matched to Karina Rosario. So we know that she had been spotting because she had just undergone an abortion.

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_01] So it kind of makes sense. But that's an example, I feel like, of the prosecution being like, let's just cut that off at the pass. Don't need anyone bringing that up. But it also, to me, it was a good sign of the investigation because it was like they're testing everything. You know, they're not like saying, well, Karina couldn't have done this. She seems like a nice kid. They're like saying, give us your jean shorts. If those have blood on them and it matches the victim, we might have a problem here.

[00:41:48] [SPEAKER_01] It gives more credibility to them as far as at least this aspect goes. So you heard that that rectal swab didn't match any known people within the case. And again, that's going to be pretty important, I think. She was examining, of course, swabs, samples, evidence. That's from Faith herself.

[00:42:16] [SPEAKER_01] Also, Jordan McCrary, Karina Rosario. They gave cheek swabs. And someone named Darvin Ebanks. Honestly, I've been trying to like figure out who that is. I don't know. If anyone knows this case really well and has heard that name before, let me know because I'd be very curious. These are people that they're sort of comparing it against early on. And they're swabbing Karina Rosario's cell phone, phone cases. You can imagine if she's in some kind of fight, gets Faith's blood on her, she'd be touching her phone.

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_01] Then it could transfer minute samples. And the passenger side door of the Lexus. Again, that's what Karina Rosario would possibly be getting into and out of. So you can tell they were definitely looking at Karina Rosario early on. From the top of the Bacardi bottle, they did end up pulling a mixture profile. And the unknown aspect of that, I believe that came back to Faith.

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_01] But the unknown aspect of that, she testified that, you know, could be the same as the swabs from the rectum and vagina. So, yeah, we're kind of heating up at this point with Ermesh's testimony. We're going to jump back into it and kind of probably focus a lot of the episode tomorrow on the rest of it because we didn't watch the whole thing. Because, again, we had to kind of cut it off a little bit early today just to deal with some.

[00:43:39] [SPEAKER_01] Kevin has a cold case to interview someone on and research. So we didn't quite get all of it today. But rest assured, anything we didn't get into, we're going to be getting into in tomorrow's episode and tomorrow's coverage and kind of getting more to the bottom of this DNA analysis. We didn't really hear the bombshell. It matches the defendant yet, at least as far. I mean, I'm sure they're going to hear that today, but we didn't hear it.

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_01] But I would very much, I'm looking forward to see that and kind of see what it means in the analysis and kind of where this fits into the wider context of the case. Well, thank you all so much for listening. We really appreciate it and look forward to checking in with you about this case tomorrow.

[00:44:22] [SPEAKER_00] 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 dot com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

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[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_00] Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for The Murder Sheet, and who you can find on the web at kevintg dot com.

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