She had been beaten over the head with a blunt instrument, later found to be an empty liquor bottle, and evidence of semen and male DNA was present at the crime scene.

A note left at the scene, suggesting the writer was jealous, is also believed to have been written by the killer; it was among a large group of documents released by police two years after the crime, following a court action brought by several local media outlets.

[2] Four years after the killing, a Virginia DNA testing company prepared and released, at police's behest, an image showing what the suspect might look like based on his genetic phenotype.

[7] The evening of September 6, 2012, a Thursday, began at 5:45 p.m. with Hedgepeth attending a rush event for the campus chapter of Alpha Pi Omega, a historically Native American sorority she hoped to join.

A half-hour later they left again, heading for The Thrill, a now-closed[8] nightclub in downtown Chapel Hill which admitted customers under the legal drinking age of 21 to dance.

The two young women arrived at The Thrill around 12:40 a.m. After almost an hour and a half of dancing, Rosario told police later that she was having an upset stomach and wanted to leave.

A woman who lived below the two and was awake watching television said that she heard three thumping noises, which she described as similar to a heavy bag being dropped or furniture being overturned, shortly afterward.

The autopsy determined that Hedgepeth had died from blunt force trauma to the head, likely a result of being hit by an empty rum bottle in the apartment.

[10] Within days the university's board of trustees, the local Crime Stoppers chapter, the Haliwa-Saponi tribe, and the apartment complex had offered a combined $29,000 in reward money for information leading to an arrest.

In the 2008 murder of Eve Carson, who at the time was UNC-CH's undergraduate student body president, a $25,000 reward had led to the killers' arrest.

[12] In November, The Daily Tar Heel, UNC-CH's student newspaper, petitioned the judge who had ordered the investigation records sealed to release an early search warrant in the case.

[16] Two months later, the Tar Heel noted that the Hedgepeth case remained open, along with the death case of David Shannon, a UNC-CH freshman whose body had been found on the grounds of a Carrboro cement plant the previous October 27 (while he had died from a fall, the autopsy found he was severely intoxicated, and the Carrboro police suspected hazing and believed there might be other students who could tell them more about the circumstances of Shannon's death).

[17] In March 2014 the Tar Heel was joined by the Raleigh News & Observer and Capitol Broadcasting Company, which owns three television and radio stations in the Research Triangle area, in opposing the district attorney's motion to extend the seal another 60 days.

[18] During a hearing on the motion, the district attorney filed a more specific accounting of what investigative work had been done, allowing the media to report for the first time on what police had searched in the immediate aftermath of the crime.

She speculated that the seal's real purpose was to conceal early missteps by the Chapel Hill police, who might also not have been competent enough to handle the investigation by themselves.

They told her that during the preceding summer, they strongly suspected the domestic violence later reported between Rosario and Jones; they thought the police presence on the day the body was found was related to that until they learned otherwise.

[9] Two of the neighbors told Dulaney that while the police sealed off the four-unit block where Hedgepeth and Rosario lived with crime scene tape, they only searched the women's apartment and not any of the others in it.

[9] In downtown Chapel Hill, Dulaney talked to the owner of a towing service who had the contract for the Thrill's parking lot.

Media organizations were able to review and report on the search warrant applications and the investigative notes that had supported them, with most names redacted, for not only the residences and cars but Hedgepeth's phone, computer, Facebook records and bank account.

"[21] Among the evidence collected was a note left near Hedgepeth's body with the text: It was sloppily written in ballpoint pen on what was determined to be the torn-off bottom of a white paper bag of the type commonly used for carry-out food.

Police believe the bag may have come from Time-Out, a popular 24-hour restaurant in Chapel Hill that would have been the only place open[22] at the time Hedgepeth and Rosario left The Thrill.

[10] It was mostly inaudible and of minimal evidentiary value until Crime Watch Daily hired audio expert Arlo West, who specializes in enhancing such recordings.

[24] On a September 23, 2016, episode of the ABC News program 20/20, Chapel Hill police released an image generated by Parabon NanoLabs, a genetic testing company in Reston, Virginia, of what the suspect who left the semen might look like based purely on the phenotype in his DNA profile.

Most of his genetic markers pointed to Mexican, Colombian and Iberian ancestry, with some other South American and African countries making up the balance.

Parabon believed with over 80 percent confidence that the suspect would have a skin tone in the olive range, with very few freckles or none at all and black hair.

In the past they said they do not believe the killing was a mere crime of opportunity by a stranger, and instead it was committed by someone in her social group, likely someone who knew her through UNC-CH.

"It's a piece of the puzzle we do not have if we connect the direct physical evidence," Celisa Lehew, who took over the case as the department's new chief investigator in 2016, told the reporter regarding that theory.

"[21] On September 16, 2021, the Chapel Hill Police Department arrested Miguel Salguero-Olivares, 28, of Durham, on a first-degree murder charge in Hedgepeth's death.

He had not been a suspect originally, but was identified through DNA samples after he had been arrested on a drunken-driving charge in Wake County the preceding month.

According to court documents released in January 2022, the DNA found at the scene and the palm print on the murder weapon match Salguero-Olivares.