Man Sentenced For 1982 Cold-Case Murder of Odessa Mall Employee

ODESSA, TX – A man who pleaded guilty to a decades-old cold case murder in Odessa will spend the next 20 years in prison.

Billy Wayne Ludwigson, 62, was arrested by the Texas Rangers in 2020 in connection to the murder of 64-year-old Velma Nesset.

He was sentenced by an Ector County jury last month.

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, DNA testing led to the identity of Ludwigson, which was confirmed through normal forensic DNA testing. 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, 2024, the now-62-year-old Ludwigson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years confinement in a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison.