A man has pled guilty to a decades-old cold case murder in Ector County and will serve 20 years in prison. Billy Wayne Ludwigson, 62, was arrested by the Texas Rangers after years of investigation. He admitted to murdering 64-year-old Velma Nesset and was sentenced by an Ector County jury in August.

Nesset, an employee at Permian Mall in Odessa, typically walked to and from work. On April 19, 1982, her co-workers and family grew concerned when she did not arrive at work, prompting a report with the Odessa Police Department. Her partially nude body was later discovered in a drainage culvert; she had been sexually assaulted and murdered.

Odessa Police initially arrested a male suspect who confessed to the crime. However, during the trial in 1983, he was acquitted due to lack of evidence and a false confession. Nesset’s case remained unsolved for many years without major breakthroughs.

In 2020, Nesset’s case became eligible for the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) program funded by the Department of Justice/Bureau of Justice Assistance (DOJ/BJA). This program provides investigative funding for agencies across the United States to further investigate unsolved sexual assaults and sexually related homicides.

SAKI grant funds were used for advanced DNA testing and genealogy research through Bode Technologies. The testing identified Billy Wayne Ludwigson as the suspect, which was confirmed through standard forensic DNA testing. In July 2020, the Texas Rangers and Odessa Police Department arrested Ludwigson in Denver, Colorado, where he confessed to Nesset’s murder.

Ludwigson was extradited to Texas in October 2020 and indicted by an Ector County jury on murder charges. On August 9, 2024, Ludwigson pled guilty and received a sentence of 20 years confinement in a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison.