AUSTIN – The man who pled guilty to a decades-old cold case murder in Ector County will spend the next 20 years behind bars. Billy Wayne Ludwigson, 62, was arrested by the Texas Rangers after years of investigation. He pled guilty to the murder of 64-year-old Velma Nesset and was sentenced by an Ector County jury in August.
An employee at Permian Mall in Odessa, 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 a report was filed with the Odessa Police Department. Nesset’s partially nude body was later found in a drainage culvert. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered.
Odessa Police arrested an alleged male suspect who confessed to the crime; however, during the trial in 1983, the suspect was acquitted for lack of evidence and a false confession. In the years that followed, there were no major breakthroughs in Nesset’s case.
Then, in 2020, Nesset’s case was identified as being eligible for the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) program which is funded by the Department of Justice/Bureau of Justice Assistance (DOJ/BJA). DOJ/BJA provide investigative funding for agencies across the United States to further unsolved sexual assaults and sexually related homicides with the hope of bringing justice to the victims and their families.
SAKI grant funds were utilized for the cost of the Advanced DNA testing and genealogy research through Bode Technologies. The testing led to the identity of Billy Wayne Ludwigson, which was confirmed through normal forensic DNA testing. In July 2020, the Texas Rangers and Odessa Police Department arrested Ludwigson in Denver, Colo., 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, 2024, the now-62-year-old Ludwigson pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 years confinement in a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison.
