A Texas man pleaded guilty last month to the 1982 cold case murder of a woman whose body was found partially naked in a drainage culvert after not showing up for work.
After more than four decades of investigation, Billy Wayne Ludwigson, now 62, pleaded guilty to murdering 64-year-old Velma Nesset and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Aug. 9 in Ector County court, according to online court records and a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety.
An employee at Permian Mall in Odessa, Texas, Nesset usually walked to and from work. On April 19, 1982, her co-workers and family grew worried when she didn’t show up for work, and she was reported missing to police, according to the statement.
Nesset’s partially naked body was later found in a drainage culvert, authorities said, adding that she had been sexually assaulted and killed.
While Odessa police arrested a suspect who confessed to the crime and went on trial in 1983, he was ultimately acquitted for lack of evidence and a false confession, according to the statement. In the years that followed, there were no major breakthroughs in Nesset’s case and it went cold.
Then, in 2020, Nesset’s case became eligible for the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative program, a federally funded program that aims to solve sexual assaults and sex-related homicides, authorities said. Through the program, advanced DNA testing, including genetic genealogy, was performed and eventually led investigators to Ludwigson.
In July 2020, the Texas Rangers and Odessa Police Department arrested Ludwigson in Denver, Colo., according to the statement. Authorities said he confessed to Nesset’s murder and was extradited to Texas later that year.
