Newly filed documents in the case of Faith Hedgepeth show previously uncovered claims around those close to her on the night she was murdered.

Motions filed on July 3 look into the possible involvement of Hedgepeth’s roommate and ask for more expert witnesses and DNA testing. 

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The filing was signed by Chris Barnes, Jason Murphy and James Rainsford, attorneys for Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares, who was charged with Hedgepeth’s murder. The motions call for an out-of-state witness, the notice of an expert witness and a request for the release of more evidence.

The out-of-state witness attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in September 2012 when the murder occurred. The man was friends with Hedgepeth and her roommate, and after hanging out with them at a club the night of the murder, the roommate asked him to pick her up from their off-campus apartment around 4 a.m. The friend said the roommate was upset and had blood on one of her fingers when she entered the car he was driving.

Hedgepeth was later found beaten to death inside an apartment. She was 19.

WRAL News is not naming the roommate or potential witness since they have not been charged.

The blood sample was tested for a possible DNA match to Hedgepeth, but there wasn’t enough DNA material to create a profile. Years later, a private lab also failed to create a DNA profile because part of the swab was consumed during SBI testing. 

The friend reported seeing blood on the roommate's hand in a voicemail to a Chapel Hill police investigator at 7:01 p.m., about eight hours after the roommate reported finding Hedgepeth dead.

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The toxicology findings in Hedgepeth’s autopsy found that her blood alcohol concentration was .02 at the time of her death. Police estimated that Faith’s death would have occurred before the roommate left the apartment with the friend.

Salguero-Olivares was taken into police custody on Sept. 16, 2021, after a DNA sample was sent to the State Crime Lab that matched the DNA profile found at the original crime scene. Josh Stein, then North Carolina’s Attorney General, said more than a dozen analysts worked on the case and ran lots of forensic tests over a nine-year span.

“The piece of evidence that was submitted to the lab had a match with DNA that was secured from the crime scene,” Stein told WRAL at the time.

Investigators found that the roommate did not have cuts on her hand or suffered any injuries that would have caused her to bleed.

Attorneys also want an expert witness to examine fingerprints on a Bacardi bottle found near Hedgepeth's body. 

The defense plans to call an expert witness who will testify that the two bloody thumbprints on the bottle do not match those of Salguero-Olivares. They want to compare the roommate’s fingerprints to those on the bottle. 

The SBI report from their findings said that ‘there were no identifiable latent prints noted or developed on the Bacardi bottle.’ As a result, the SBI didn’t compare the roommate’s fingerprints to the ones on the bottle.

In November, prosecutors amended the original indictment to include new charges against Salguero-Olivares. They included first-degree burglary, first-degree rape and first-degree sexual offense.

Court records show more than 39,000 pages of evidence, and the state is expected to call 30 expert witnesses to trial. During a quarterly homicide status hearing in January, attorneys for both sides said they were ready to schedule a trial.

The next administrative hearing in the case is set for October.

Hedgepeth would have turned 33 years old in 2025. She was from Warren County.