
“If released,” the request read, “this information has the potential to compromise the ability of the Chapel Hill Police Department to conduct a thorough and complete investigation as details related to Ms.

The Chapel Hill Police Department submitted its first request to temporarily seal case records in the Faith Hedgepeth investigation on Sept. And you trust this badge, and you trust this patch.” “The only reason that this works,” he tells community members, “is because you believe in me. Many see him as someone with whom they can talk about Carolina basketball, the best restaurants on Franklin Street or last week’s robbery at the iconic Old Well.īlue believes in British Prime Minister Robert Peel’s 1829 declaration that “the police are the public, and the public are the police.” Since being sworn in as Chapel Hill’s police chief in 2010, Chris Blue has spent every day fighting to earn his citizens’ trust. A $2,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest. Later that afternoon, the Chapel Hill Police Department released a statement saying that they were investigating the death as a homicide. Police suspected that blood on the bottle, as well as semen found nearby, belonged to the killer. A Bacardi Peach Red bottle sat near Faith’s bed and was determined to have been the murder weapon. They found Hedgepeth’s body beaten and naked from the waist down. Investigators arrived at the apartment eight minutes later. “Hi, um, I just walked into my apartment…and my friend she’s, like, she’s unconscious.” Rosario left at 4:25 a.m.Īt 11:01 a.m., police received a phone call from Rosario. The two arrived back home to their apartment near UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus around 3 a.m. 7, 2012, Faith Danielle Hedgepeth left the Thrill nightclub in Chapel Hill with her roommate, Karena Rosario. These words are etched forever onto her gravestone.Īt 2:06 a.m. When the fight to reclaim her memory seems impossible, though, he revisits the last text message he ever received from her. Hedgepeth doesn’t need to look through any of the 10 binders on his daughter’s bed to picture her face smiling back at him. Hedgepeth spent years studying the scraggly drawing at the bottom before realizing that Faith had drawn him a “no-smoking” sign. A third holds a letter that Faith sent to her father from her mother’s house in elementary school. A second binder holds a picture from her first powwow at the Haliwa-Saponi tribal grounds in Warrenton.

Many of them are blurry, the result of Roland printing out small digital images from Facebook and Instagram on large sheets of paper.

“It’s like she was stolen.”Ī thick three-ring binder at the far side of Faith’s bed holds pictures from her time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s not like she died,” Hedgepeth says. It’s on the Carolina blue bracelet he wears, and it’s on each of the six worn-out bracelets he keeps on the dresser in her room.Įvery day for the past five years, the Chapel Hill Police Department has searched for the identity of his daughter’s killer.
FAITH HEDGEPETH LICENSE
Her name is on the crosses on his walls, the towels in his bathroom and the license plate of his 2008 Honda Accord. It’s on a dozen framed photographs and paintings throughout his home in Newton. It’s on his phone background, and it’s on his checkbook. Faith Hedgepeth’s face is always the first thing her father, Roland, sees when he walks through his front door.
