ECTOR COUNTY — In 1982, Velma Nesset was employed at the Permian Mall in Odessa.
Often, the store clerk walked to and from work. On April 19, 1982, Nesset’s co-workers and family grew concerned when she didn’t show up for work and a report was filed with the Odessa Police Department.
Nesset’s partially nude body was later found in a drainage ditch. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered.
While the Odessa Police arrested an alleged male suspect who confessed to the crime, during the trial in 1983, the suspect was acquitted for lack of evidence and a false confession. In the years following the murder, there were no breakthroughs in Nesset’s case.
Fast forward to today, and the decades-old cold case murder has been solved. Sixty-two-year-old Billy Wayne Ludwigson was arrested by Texas Rangers after years of investigation. In July 2020, the Texas Rangers and Odessa Police Department arrested Ludwigson in Denver, Colorado. and obtained his confession for Nesset’s murder. In October 2020, Ludwigson was extradited to Texas and indicted by an Ector County jury on murder charges.
On Aug. 9 of this year, Ludwigson pleaded guilty to the murder of 64-year-old Velma Nesset and was sentenced by an Ector County jury. He was sentenced to 20 years confinement in a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison.
But how did the Texas Rangers crack a decades-old murder case?
In 2020, Nesset’s case was deemed eligible for the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) program. The program is funded by the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Both of these federal agencies provide investigative funding for law enforcement agencies across the U.S. to further unsolved sexual assaults and sexually related homicides with the hope of bringing justice to the crime victims and their families.
In Nesset’s case, SAKI funds provided for the cost of advanced DNA testing and genealogy research through Bode Technologies. This DNA testing is what led to the identity of Ludwigson and was later confirmed through normal forensic DNA testing.
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