Texas Rangers Solve Decades Old Murder Using DNA Technology

The Texas Rangers have successfully solved a murder that was committed 42 years ago, thanks to a grant that paid for modern DNA analysis, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. 

Velma Nesset was an employee of the Permian Basin Mall in Odessa, Texas in 1982. On April 19th of that year, her friends and co-workers became concerned when she failed to show up for work.

Velma liked to walk to and from work, and sadly, it was during one of those walks that the 64-year-old woman was sexually assaulted, murdered, and left partially nude in a drainage culvert.

Odessa Police thought they had their man- Johnny Foote, a co-worker of Velma's, who had gone looking for her after she was late for work.

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According to The Other Side of Life — An Angel’s Story, Johnny was an intellectually disabled man who falsely confessed to the crime after being hounded by investigators and being told, falsely, that he had failed a polygraph test- a now debunked method of "lie detection."

Johnny had not seen Velma's body when he went looking for her, because of the way the shadows fell on her body during the time of day he went searching. Police assumed he was lying about not seeing her body because he had committed the crime.

He had been surrounded by people at the time of her murder- there was no way he could have committed the crime. Luckily, Johnny would be acquitted on a lack of evidence in 1983.

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However, that left the case unsolved for decades, until Nesset's case became eligible for DNA analysis funded by the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) program.

The DNA resulted in a hit- identifying Billy Wayne Ludwigson, 62 of the crime. He would have been 20 years old when he assaulted and murdered Velma. This is what he looks like now.

Billy was extradited to Texas and subsequently pleaded guilty to the murder. He was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison.