Faith Hedgepeth
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. A young college student was found murdered inside her North Carolina off-campus apartment in September 2012. But from the beginning, the authorities were very tight-lipped about their investigation.

And the more they released about what was going on, the more questions everyone had about what happened to Faith Hedgepeth. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 163. The murder of Faith Hedgepeth. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

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or simply click the link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now, let's get to this week's episode. On the morning of Friday, September 7th, 2012, students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were shocked to learn a fellow UNC student had died. But it wasn't only that a student had passed away that left everyone on edge. It was because the student was murdered inside of her off-campus apartment.

Word spread quickly throughout the University of North Carolina campus about the murder of 19-year-old Faith Hedgepeth. Originally from Hollister, North Carolina, Faith was a sophomore at the university. Her parents were Ronald and Connie Hedgepeth, and she had an older sister, Rolanda, who was 18 when Faith was born. Faith's parents divorced when she was only a year old, so she was primarily raised by her mom and older sister.

Their significant age difference meant that Rolanda, her older sister, was more like a second mother to her. She was given the name Faith because her mom Connie believed it was what she needed to raise her. She already had two sons and an older daughter. By the time Faith was one, she had become a single mom. At the time of her murder in 2012, Faith was in her second year at the UNC Chapel Hill campus on a Gates Millennial Scholarship.

This scholarship, established by billionaire Bill Gates, awards high-achieving minority students with money to attend college. Many students who receive this scholarship money, like Faith, wouldn't have the financial means to attend college otherwise. So this money was a huge deal for Faith and her family. She was also incredibly deserving of the money.

Throughout high school, she maintained an almost perfect grade point average. She was also a cheerleader and participated in many after-school programs and activities. Besides receiving money from the scholarship, Faith also worked part-time at the Red Robin Restaurant near the Durham border to help pay for things like groceries and gas. If Faith had graduated from UNC, she would have become the first person in her family to graduate with a degree.

After college, she had dreams of becoming a pediatrician, but that dream never came to be. The news about Faith's murder rocked the UNC Chapel Hill campus and its community. Chapel Hill is a relatively safe place to be, and no one could think of a single person who would want to kill Faith. She was described as an outgoing and intelligent young lady.

She was also known for her love of helping people. That's probably why she wanted to become a pediatrician someday, so that she could continue to take care of people. In the early days of the investigation, the Chapel Hill police were tight-lipped about the case. All they said was that Faith had been found dead inside her off-campus apartment between Durham and Orange Counties, and it wasn't an accident. She had been murdered just days shy of her 20th birthday.

But other than that, the police didn't say much. They wouldn't say how she was murdered or what the exact cause of death was. They also wouldn't say if they had any suspects. This type of secrecy was completely out of character for Chapel Hill PD. They weren't the type of law enforcement agency known to keep investigations highly secret. But there was something about this particular case that felt different.

and they argued that it was in the best interest of the investigation to keep everything under seal, so not even Faith's family was kept updated about the case. Two months after the murder, the Daily Tar Heel, the UNC Chapel Hill student newspaper, filed a petition to unseal some case documents related to the investigation.

By November, the public and media were frustrated that the police just weren't saying anything about what happened or where the investigation was headed. Everyone, except for the Chapel Hill Police Department, seemed to be in the dark. All they knew was Faith had been murdered and no one had been arrested yet.

But instead of releasing anything related to the case, the judge in the matter ordered that all documents related to Faith's murder remain under seal for at least another 45 days. This meant that the media and public wouldn't know anything for at least another month and a half. Four months later, this is now January, the police finally revealed some key details about their investigation.

They confirmed that Faith's killer's DNA was found at the scene, and the DNA belonged to a male. But they wouldn't say exactly where the DNA was found or who it belonged to. They also announced the FBI was called to assist the Chapel Hill Police Department in creating a profile of the suspect. The FBI speculated that Faith's killer had likely expressed interest in her in the past.

Maybe he had approached her or even asked her out on a date. The FBI also said his behavior has probably changed following the murder. So people around him might notice that he started acting differently. He might even start to show an unusual interest in Faith's case. Now, following this announcement in January, the public and media were hopeful that they would disclose more details about the case. But they didn't.

The Chapel Hill Police Department and the FBI were determined to keep their investigation a secret. And in May 2013, the court extended another seal on all documents related to the case for an additional 60 days. By the first anniversary of Faith's murder, the public and media were desperate for answers. For over a year, 12 long months, the police had left them in the dark.

All everyone knew was that the case was still open and no one had been arrested. By September 2013, word was leaked to the media that the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation was being brought in to help. But that was it. No one knew what they were called in to do or where the investigation was headed. After that, another full year passed without almost complete silence by the police.

By 2014, the media submitted another petition to the court to release case documents. This time the petition was headed by the Tar Heel, the UNC student newspaper, the Raleigh News and Observer, and Capital Broadcasting Company. By that point, they were desperate to find out what was going on and why the police weren't talking.

The media felt like the police were hiding stuff about Faith's case, like maybe hiding sloppy police work. Or they didn't want anyone to know the case had turned cold and they weren't really doing anything to try and solve it. In an article published by the Tar Heel, a lawyer for the newspaper had this to say, quote,

Over the next few months, media outlets all over North Carolina published articles criticizing the Chapel Hill Police, the FBI, and the State Bureau of Investigation.

Without any official documents to review, all they could write about were their assumptions about the case. One article talked about how two of Faith's neighbors who lived in the same apartment building said the police never asked to search their apartments. They said investigators only searched Faith and Karina, her roommate's apartment, but they didn't seem interested in anyone else living there.

These neighbors also said that they never saw detectives canvas the neighborhood or speak to anyone. So these statements led many people to speculate whether the Chapel Hill Police Department had done a good enough investigation. And this went on for months. The media kept writing about things that they could only speculate about because nothing was being officially released or made public.

Then by July 2014, almost two years after the murder, the court ordered the case records to be unsealed. Finally, the public and media got some of the answers that they had been searching for. The public learned that at the time of her murder, Faith lived at the Hawthorne at the View apartment complex. It was a popular off-campus student housing building between Chapel Hill and Durham.

She shared the one-bedroom apartment with another UNC student, Karina Rosario. Faith and Karina had met and become friends when they were both freshmen. Then they moved in together to save some money. The plan was for Faith and Karina to share the one-bedroom space until Faith received her financial aid money. Once she got the money, she hoped to move to another apartment where she would have a little bit more space and she wouldn't have to share a one-bedroom.

Before they started living together, Karina was dating a guy named Eric Jones, but their relationship was far from ideal. Karina and Eric reportedly had a very toxic relationship, and the relationship had turned abusive. At one point, Karina had even taken out a restraining order against him after she ended the relationship and moved out.

In July 2012, Eric tried two different times to break into the apartment where Faith and Karina lived even after she changed the locks. So she felt like she needed the restraining order because he simply wouldn't leave her alone. With the order in effect, Eric wasn't allowed to see Karina or go near the apartment. The Chapel Hill investigators learned that Faith was the one who drove Karina to the courthouse to file the paperwork for the restraining order.

She was essentially the one who convinced Karina it was time to make sure that he couldn't see her or go to the apartment. So the investigators wondered if Eric could have had something to do with Faith's murder. Not only did Eric not like Faith because she took Karina to get the restraining order against him, but he also felt like she had a lot of influence over Karina. And he felt like she was a big reason why Karina decided to end things with him.

According to investigators, at one point, Eric threatened Faith over the phone, saying that he would kill her if he wasn't allowed to go to the apartment and see Karina. This all happened in the weeks and months leading up to Faith's murder. So the investigators wondered if this could be the motive for murder. If he didn't like Faith and had tried at least two times in the summer to break into the apartment.

According to the police reports, by September 2012, the only person the Chapel Hill Police could identify as someone who didn't like Faith was Eric Jones. As the public waited to learn more about the case, the Chapel Hill Police were putting together a timeline of Faith's last known whereabouts, and more and more information about the case was slowly being leaked to the media.

Over the next several months, the Chapel Hill police released what they believed was the timeline of her murder. Around 8 p.m. the night of September 6, 2012, Faith and her roommate Karina went to Davis Library, the student library on the UNC campus. According to Karina, they were there to study for upcoming exams. While at the library, Faith texted her dad about possibly joining a sorority on campus.

After studying together for a little while, Faith left the library for a bit, but she returned later on to pick Karina up so that they could head back to their apartment. Faith and Karina left Davis Library around 11.30 p.m. and were back at the apartment around 12 midnight. Chapel Hill investigators disclosed that the Hawthorne at the View apartment building was situated at the end of a road, and there was only one way into the complex and one way out.

The building was almost entirely surrounded by trees, which meant that Faith and Karina's second floor apartment was really difficult to see from the entrance. According to Karina, when they got inside the apartment, they locked the front door behind them and started getting ready to go out for the night. They were inside the apartment for about 30 minutes before they left together around 1230 a.m.,

About 10 minutes later, they arrived at Thrill Nightclub, a popular club in the area for UNC students. One of the reasons why it was a popular spot for undergrad students was because this particular nightclub allowed people under 21 inside. For many students like Faith and Karina, it was a fun spot to hang out with other young people and go dancing. Video evidence captured Karina walking out of Thrill at 2.06 a.m.,

By that time, it was September 7th. Later, Karina told investigators she left the club a little before closing time because she wasn't feeling well, and she wanted to head back to the apartment and go to sleep for the night. A few minutes later, after the camera captured Karina leaving the club, Faith was also seen leaving. This became the last sighting of Faith alive by anyone besides her roommate.

By 3 o'clock a.m., both girls were back inside the apartment. When investigators canvassed the complex looking for witnesses after the murder, they found a woman named Joy. In an interview with 20-20, Joy said she lived in an apartment below Faith and Karina on the first floor. She told the investigators that she heard several loud noises coming from their apartment a little after 3 o'clock in the morning.

When she was asked what the noises sounded like, she said, quote, they sounded like it could have been a heavy book bag being dropped. It could have been an end table being turned over, end quote. But despite hearing the strange noises, she didn't go upstairs and check on the girls or call the Chapel Hill police.

When investigators searched Faith's computer records after the murder, they learned that someone logged into Faith's Facebook account sometime after they got back to the apartment at 3 a.m. They were only logged in for a few minutes, and then they logged out. However, it's unclear whether it was Faith, Karina, or someone else who logged on.

A search of Faith's cell phone was also done. Investigators learned that at 3.40 a.m., Faith sent a text to a guy friend named Brandon Edwards. Brandon Edwards had once dated Karina. The text read, quote, End quote.

Three minutes later, a second text was sent from Faith's phone. This time it was just a single word, than. Later on, investigators said that they believed the second text message that said than was sent to correct the previous text message that said aha. They thought Faith meant to say this, Karina needs you more than you know, instead of aha.

Following these text messages, Faith's cell phone was never used again. This was at 3.40. Besides the text messages, phone records showed that Karina also called Brandon around the same time Faith texted him, but he didn't answer. A few minutes later, Karina texted her friend Jordan McCary. Jordan was a soccer player for the UNC soccer team and was a guy Karina was seeing at the time.

At 4.25 a.m., Karina said she left the apartment and got inside Jordan's car, who was waiting downstairs. After he picked her up, the two headed to his apartment on West Longview Street in Chapel Hill. When investigators asked Karina if she remembered locking the front door behind her, she said she didn't think so. This meant that when Karina left to go to Jordan's apartment, she might have left the door unlocked while Faith was still inside.

About six and a half hours later, Karina tried calling Faith to see if she could come pick her up from Jordan's house, but she didn't answer. So she decided to call her friend Marisol Rangel to pick her up and take her back to the apartment. She said she didn't think anything about Faith not answering because she figured she was still asleep. They both had been out late the night before.

So a little after 11 a.m., Karina and Marisol got to the apartment. They called out for Faith, but she didn't answer. So they went into the bedroom and found her. Faith's body was discovered on the bed inside the bedroom she shared with Karina. She was half naked, and her body was wrapped in a bloody comforter. As soon as Chapel Hill detectives got to the apartment, they started collecting evidence. And the small one-bedroom apartment had a lot of it.

Faith's body was wrapped in the comforter, almost completely soaked in blood. When they lifted the blanket, they saw a significant amount of blunt force trauma injuries to her head. Whoever killed her had used some type of heavy or sharp object to beat her over the head. But it wasn't only the blanket where detectives found evidence.

There was blood spatter on the bed where the pillow was, and there was also blood spatter throughout the entire bedroom. Blood was practically everywhere, on the walls, the bedroom door, and even on the sides of the bed in the closet. A bloody, empty glass bottle of Bacardi peach rum was also found near Faith's body. This is the object detectives believed was used to beat and kill Faith.

On the bed, detectives found a bizarre note inside a timeout fast food bag, a popular 24-hour fast food restaurant in Chapel Hill. Inside the bag was a white piece of paper with the handwritten words, I'm not stupid, bitch, and jealous, written with a black ballpoint pen. Unlike many other parts of the bedroom and the bed, the bag had no blood on it.

This seemed to suggest that it was placed there after the murder happened or it was written beforehand. Another strange thing about the note was that it looked like it might have been written with someone's non-dominant hand, like if they were right-handed but they wrote the note with their left. So the detectives wondered if this was the suspect's way of disguising their handwriting.

When an autopsy was performed, investigators discovered she had also been sexually assaulted, and Faith had died from blunt force trauma to the head. The injuries to her head were consistent with the kind of marks a glass bottle would leave behind. Besides the injuries to her head, she also had a lot of bruises and cuts on her arms and legs. There was even blood found underneath her fingernails.

All of this told detectives that Faith was in a fight for her life with her attacker that night. Based on when Karina left and came back to the apartment, they believed that she was murdered sometime between 4.25 a.m. and 11 a.m. All of this evidence seemed to tell a story about what might have happened.

Investigators started throwing around the idea that sometime after Karina left the apartment to go to Jordan's house at 4.30 a.m., someone entered the apartment. Before she left, she said Faith was asleep in the bedroom. But since she couldn't remember if the door was locked or not when she left, someone probably simply walked into the apartment after she was gone.

Maybe the killer was waiting outside and saw that if Karina left, Faith would be alone. Once her killer was inside, Faith was asleep in her bed, but was woken up by the intruder. Investigators believed that's when he sexually assaulted her and then used a bottle of rum to beat her over the head. He then wrapped her body in the comforter and left. But who was he?

After the search warrant and investigative reports were made public, many wondered if Karina's ex-boyfriend Eric Jones could have had something to do with it. He was the only person the police identified as not liking Faith. She was the one who convinced Karina to break up with him and go get that restraining order. So there was a lot of bad blood between Faith and Jones.

He had even posted a weird message on Facebook shortly before the murder. His Facebook said, quote, Dear Lord, forgive me for all of my sins and the sins I may commit today. Protect me from the girls who don't deserve me and the ones who wish me dead today. End quote. But there was one big problem with him being the prime suspect.

His DNA didn't match the DNA collected in Faith's rape kit or the DNA found on the empty rum bottle. So although he might have seemed like a good suspect in the beginning, the forensic evidence didn't match. When the records were unsealed about 18 months after the murder, the media finally got access to the original search warrant of Faith's apartment and the police records that supported them.

Although most of the names were redacted, the public learned a lot about what was collected from the apartment, including the foreign male DNA, the empty rum bottle, and the searches done on Faith's phone, computer, and Facebook. But something else interesting was also released, the 911 call.

In July 2014, the entire seven-minute 911 call from when Karina discovered the body was also released. And when the media got their hands on the tape, it led to even more speculation. Now, the entire 911 call is available online if you're interested in listening to it. I'm not going to play the entire phone call here, but let's listen to a small portion of it.

He's unconscious. I just walked in the apartment and there looks like there's blood everywhere. Okay, listen to me. Listen to me. Somebody's already sending me an ambulance. Okay? I need to get some information from you and I'm going to tell you how to help her, okay? Okay. Okay. How old is she? She's 19. Okay.

I don't know. I don't want to touch her, but... Listen to me. Is she breathing? I don't know. You need to check and see. Is she breathing? I don't think so. I don't think so. Okay, listen to me. There's blood everywhere. There's what? There's blood everywhere. Okay.

I don't know what I'm saying. Okay, is she on? Again, that's only a small part of the call. The entire conversation was a little over seven minutes. But as soon as this call was released to the media, it created a firestorm of speculation. The biggest news outlets to talk about the call was the News and Observer, a newspaper company based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

And what they did was report on several parts of the 911 call that they found strange. The first was that it might not have been Faith's roommate, Karina Rosario, who was on the phone. Instead, they thought that it might have been her friend, Marisol, who dropped her off that morning.

The news and observer pointed out that throughout the call, the 911 dispatcher asked the caller for her name multiple times until she finally identified herself as Karina. The newspaper also points out that the caller kept saying her friend, referring to Faith. She never mentioned Faith by name. She kept saying my friend. The caller also never told the dispatcher that Marisol was at the apartment with her.

But the strangest thing about the 911 call was how reluctant the caller was to touch Faith's body. Throughout the call, 911 begged her to see if Faith had a pulse or was breathing. She asked her over and over again to get closer to the body to see if she might still be alive. They needed to know if she was still breathing or had a pulse before paramedics could get there.

But over and over again, she seemed really reluctant to follow any of the dispatcher's instructions. This was something the news and observer thought was strange. They argued that if it really was Karina on the other end of the phone, why didn't she want to touch her body? And why didn't she say that her friend Marisol was there? And if she was so afraid to touch the body, why didn't she ask her friend Marisol to do it?

At some point during the investigation, one of Faith's friends turned over a strange voicemail to the police, a voicemail that seemingly captured one of Faith's last moments alive. Faith's friend came forward and told investigators that she left what sounded like a pocket dial voicemail on her cell phone the night she was killed.

Initially, the friend said she deleted it because she thought that Faith had called her on accident and she knew Faith was known to sometimes pocket dial people. So she deleted it and didn't think about it again until after she found out that Faith had been murdered. As soon as she heard the news, she thought about that weird voicemail message. So she called her cell phone service provider to see if they could recover the message. Since she deleted it, it was no longer on her phone.

Luckily enough, the cell phone company recovered the message and sent her a copy of it. But when the friend contacted the Chapel Hill Police Department, they brushed her off. The investigators didn't think the message had anything to do with the case because of when it was timestamped. The voice message was timestamped at 1.23 a.m. This would have been around the time when Faith and Karina were still at the nightclub.

So according to the detectives, this was several hours before she was attacked and killed. And if that's the case, the message didn't have anything to do with the investigation. So the police discounted it. But in 2016, four years after the murder, new and compelling information about the pocket dial was discovered.

In 2016, the voicemail was sent to Arlo West, a forensic audio expert, to see if he could uncover anything from the message. For the first four years of the investigation, the message was never tested. And according to Arlo West, he did find something in the message that might help the investigation. Although the audio is really staticky and everything sounds distorted, it's not a

He heard something strange after he enhanced the audio using special equipment. There were four voices heard in the message, two male voices and two female voices. According to the forensic audio expert, the first female can be heard saying, quote, ow, my head, ow, help me, get off me. The second female then said, do it.

Seconds later, the first male said, I think she's dying. Do it anyway. The forensic expert also said he heard the second female threatening the first female by saying, quote, fuck you. I'm pissed. I'm going to kick your face, bitch. I figured out that bullshit. You liar. You intentionally lied.

It went on for a little bit longer, but probably the most chilling part that can be heard on the video came toward the end of the message. According to the audio expert, one of the male voices could be heard saying, I can't believe that you really did it, Rosie. And the second female replied, go get help, Eric.

What's chilling about that statement is that the audio expert wondered if Rosie was short for Karina Rosario, Faith's roommate and friend who was with her earlier that night, and Eric, well, Eric was her ex-boyfriend, Eric Jones.

Everything the forensic audio expert uncovered from the messages was turned over to the police, but they stood their ground. They didn't think the message had anything to do with Faith's murder, simply by the timestamp. Remember, it was recorded at 1.23 a.m., much earlier than the assault and murder occurred.

And besides that, they didn't have any other evidence suggesting Karina or her ex-boyfriend Eric Jones had anything to do with the murder. Eric's DNA didn't match the evidence collected from the crime scene or Faith's rape kit. But the forensic audio expert disagreed. He argued the timestamp on the message could have been wrong. Sometimes cell phone towers can be glitchy and report inaccurate timestamps on phone calls and text messages.

So in his opinion, the timestamp could have been wrong, which meant the message could have actually been left at the exact moment that Faith was being attacked. Later that year, in September 2016, the suspect's DNA was sent to Parabon Nanolabs, a private lab in Virginia that specializes in DNA phenotyping, a way of predicting someone's physical appearance through their DNA.

Parabon Nanolabs used the DNA collected from Faith's body and the scene to create a 3D image of what they believed her killer could look like. This image was based on his unique physical traits obtained from the DNA. According to Parabon Nanolabs, the killer was, quote, very strongly Native American and European mixed ancestry or Latino, end quote.

They said it was a good chance he or his family was from Mexico, Colombia, or some other South American country. And there was an 80% chance he had olive skin tone, little to no freckles, and black hair. The only thing the lab couldn't determine from the DNA was his height, weight, or age at the time of the murder. Once they had the image, it was circulated nationally and locally across many news stations.

They hoped the image was good enough for someone to come forward and say they recognized it. But it wasn't. That particular image could have matched thousands, if not millions of people. So although the DNA phenotyping might have been a good investigative tool, it didn't identify Faith's killer. Faith's murder remained unsolved for the next 10 years.

Although investigators had the suspect's DNA, it wasn't a match to anyone in the database. In total, they had collected the killer's DNA on 52 separate pieces of evidence collected at the scene, but they couldn't find a match for anyone.

Although several potential suspects popped up over the years, including Faith's roommate Karina and her ex-boyfriend Eric Jones, no one was ever arrested. And for almost a decade, Faith's family and the community of Chapel Hill wondered if the case would ever be solved. Was a vicious killer still walking the streets? One of the most popular theories was that Faith probably knew her killer.

People thought maybe it was someone she went to school with or someone she worked with at the Red Robin restaurant. But over the years, investigators spoke with almost everyone who knew Faith. They conducted over 2,000 interviews and collected over 750 DNA samples. All were cleared. But there was always the possibility Faith's killer was someone outside her immediate circle.

Maybe it was someone she knew, and maybe they had even met once or twice, but the police had no idea they existed. The answer to these questions would remain elusive for over a decade. On August 16, 2021, investigators finally got the break they desperately sought.

On August 16, 2021, 28-year-old Miguel Seguro Olivares was pulled over in Raleigh, North Carolina, on suspicion of driving under the influence. As part of his arrest for DUI, he was required to submit a DNA sample. A few days later, on September 7, a North Carolina judge issued a warrant for Miguel's arrest. He was scheduled to be in court for his DUI arrest but never showed up.

so a warrant was issued. A few days later, his DNA that was collected at the time of his DUI was uploaded to the DNA database. Authorities in Chapel Hill were alerted about a possible match in their Faith Hedgepeth investigation.

On September 14, 2021, investigators learned that the DNA collected in Faith's murder case matched someone recently uploaded to the database. The match was for Miguel Olivares. Two days later, on September 16, Chapel Hill authorities announced that they had made an arrest in Faith's case. They said Miguel's DNA from the traffic stop matched the foreign DNA collected at the murder scene.

They also said his fingerprints matched a palm print found on the murder weapon, the empty glass bottle of rum. Immediately after his arrest, authorities searched his house in Durham. They wanted to see if he kept anything about the murder, like a trophy or newspaper clippings about the case. But it's unclear whether anything connected to the murder was ever found.

Miguel Olivares is currently being held in the Durham County Jail without bond. He has pleaded not guilty to the murder and is currently awaiting trial. Investigators haven't said whether they've identified a motive or not. And they haven't said how Faith and Miguel knew each other or if they did at all.

All that's been released through court documents is that Miguel's DNA was found in several key places, including Faith's rape kit, the murder weapon, and the strange note on her bed. According to investigators, no one else's DNA was found at the scene, only that of Faith's killer. After almost a decade, the person believed to be responsible for the murder of Faith Hedgepeth is finally behind bars.

Durham County prosecutors and investigators are confident they have enough forensic evidence to secure a first-degree murder charge in the case. But even with all the forensic evidence, there is still so much we don't know. Did Faith and her killer know each other? What did the bizarre note mean? Was her killer simply trying to throw investigators off? Or did it mean something to him?

Then there are questions about whether other people were involved. The forensic expert who studied the pocket dial voicemail that Faith left on her friend's cell phone said that he heard four voices on it, two male and two female voices. Are there other potential suspects out there? We may have to wait until this case goes to trial to finally discover the truth. Faith's legacy lives on through the Faith Smile Scholarship.

The program was started by her family and is funded through donations. The Faith Smile Scholarship was created to provide scholarship money to Indigenous women pursuing college degrees. Two $1,000 scholarships are awarded each year on Faith's birthday, September 26. To date, the program has awarded more than 20 scholarships in Faith's memory. One of the recipients was Taylor Williams.

Taylor grew up in the same Hollister community that Faith grew up in. Another recipient was Zian Richardson. Zian told CBS 17 News, quote, I sort of saw myself in the legacy she left behind, so wanting to help her people, kindness to others, a big heart, a bright personality, and just to have a scholarship award in the honor of someone like that, it was a very humbling thing for me.

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