Texas man pleads guilty to rape, murder in cold case

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A Texas man pleaded guilty last month to a cold-case murder from 1982 after a suspect confessed but was acquitted one year after the killing.

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A woman’s body was found partially naked in a drainage culvert after she failed to show up for work, people.com reported.

Now, after more than four decades of investigation, there is some closure. On Aug. 9, Billy Wayne Ludwigson, 62, pleaded guilty to murdering 64-year-old Velma Nesset and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, according to online court records and a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Nesset, who worked at Permian Mall in Odessa, Texas, usually walked to and from work. Co-workers and family grew worried when she didn’t show up to work on April 19, 1982, and she was reported missing to police, the statement said.

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Her partially naked body was later found in a drainage culvert, authorities said, adding that she had been sexually assaulted and killed.

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Police in Odessa arrested a suspect who confessed to the crime and went on trial in 1983, but he was acquitted for lack of evidence and a false confession, the statement said.

The case eventually went cold. Then, in 2020, the case became eligible for the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative program, a federal program to help solve sexual assaults and sex-related homicides.

Through the program, advanced DNA testing and genetic genealogy was performed, leading investigators to Ludwigson, who was arrested in July 2020 in Denver, Colo., according to the statement.

Authorities said Ludwigson confessed to Nesset’s murder and was extradited to Texas later that year.

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