Life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 25 to 36 more years for other crimes!
“It’s not fair,” the convicted murderer said, after he was sentenced! To me, the only unfair thing is that not all murderers are sentenced the way he was.
A jury found Miguel Salguero-Olivares guilty of first-degree murder, rape, sexual offense and burglary in the 2012 killing of Faith Hedgepeth, a UNC-Chapel Hill student and North Carolina native. He faces multiple sentences, including life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Friday, October 23, 2026 | 4:29 PM EDT | Updated 11:10 PM EDT
A jury found Miguel Salguero-Olivares guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree rape, first-degree sexual offense and first-degree burglary in the 2012 killing of UNC-Chapel Hill student Faith Hedgepeth.
The verdict, delivered Friday in a Durham County courtroom, came more than 14 years after Hedgepeth, 19, was found beaten to death in her off-campus apartment in Chapel Hill on Sept. 7, 2012.
Salguero-Olivares was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder conviction. He also received sentences of 64 to 89 months for burglary, 240 to 348 months for first-degree rape and 240 to 348 months for first-degree sexual offense. The judge ordered the sentences to run consecutively, rather than concurrently.
Salguero-Olivares is appealing his convictions and sentences.
As the verdict was read, Salguero-Olivares could be heard saying, “It’s not fair.” His mother was seen crying, and Salguero-Olivares shook his head at times.
Miss Hedgepeth was murdered in 2012; Mr Salguero-Olivares was not arrested and charged with the crime until September 16, 2021, nine years after the killing. THe police were able to collect his DNA following a drunk driving arrest, and that linked him to the crime. Even with that, it took another five years to bring him to trial. At least he gets five years of sentence credit off of his sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Yes, that is a sick joke on my part.
But this goes along with something I have previously said: murderers should not get out of prison until the day their victims come back to life. Mr Salguero-Olivares gets to spend the rest of his miserable life locked up, gets to think for the next fifty or so years about what he has done. Perhaps he will find the Lord while he is in prison, and confess and repent of his sins; that is the most we can hope for him.
According to ABC Channel 7, Mr Salguero Olivares arrived in the U.S. from Guatemala with his single mother in 2010, when he was 17 years old. His mother was present in the courtroom when he was tried, convicted, and sentenced; one wonders if she thought that she should have stayed in Guatemala with her son.
There has been no information disclosed that I could find concerning whether he ever sought or obtained legal status in the United States, but 2010 was during the term of President Obama and his programs for minors brought illegally to the United States, and his arrest didn’t occur until 2021, when Joe Biden was President. Normally I would say he’s exactly the kind of person who should be deported, but no, he should never get out of prison to be deported. Let him suffer in prison over what he did.