South Carolina authorities say a local reporter assisted them in making a significant breakthrough in a 1975 cold-case murder.
The Greenville County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the identity of Oscar James Nedd, a murder victim previously known only as Mr. X, when a hunter discovered his body at Highway 20 and Blakely Road “wrapped in a sheet and smoldering, indicating it had been set on fire” in 1975.
“Sheriff Hobart Lewis credits Brad Willis’ podcast ‘Murder, Etc.’ for drawing attention to this case,” the sheriff’s office stated in a press release on Monday. Willis, a former investigative reporter for WYFF-TV, launched the “Murder, Etc.” podcast in 2019 after realizing that his work as a young journalist may have helped keep the wrong man in prison for a double murder in 1975, and he began investigating.
“I helped keep a man in prison for double murder. One of the victims was a Greenville County deputy in 1975. And when I found that [the convicted killer] had been paroled, I jumped on the news and ran it as swiftly as possible without delving too far. “And after I published that story, the parole board revoked his parole, and he remained in prison for another six years,” Willis told Fox News Digital.
During that six-year time, Willis claimed he was “given a lot of information and started doing a lot of research and came to the belief that the man” who had his parole revoked in the case “was likely innocent.” He eventually made direct touch with that man and quickly realized that his narrative was far more complicated than Willis could have imagined. Willis discovered via his reporting that the Greenville Sheriff’s Office was corrupt in 1975, with felons serving as police officers.
Greenville has evolved into a sought-after destination. “Back then, it was the Wild West, full of corruption, corrupt cops, murderers, hitmen, and other things you don’t think about anymore,” Willis said. “And this man who was relatively uneducated and had never had any criminal past of any sort was, all of a sudden on his way to death row [for the 1975 double murder].”
While working on his podcast, which became a 27-part series, Willis released an episode titled “Greenville, We Have A Problem,” in which he investigates other unsolved deaths that occurred in 1975, when all of the internal corruption among law enforcement was allegedly taking place.
“One of the things we decided on … as we dug a little bit deeper, was that it was going to be really important to start looking at all of the murders in Greenville County around that time,” Willis explained. “So we decided to focus on the entire year of 1975 and investigate how all of those killings occurred and whether they were solved. The first murder victim discovered in 1975 was a man found in the county’s southern region, his body still smoking. He had been set on fire and wrapped in a duvet or bedspread of some kind.
That was Mr. X.
When Greenville County Sheriff Hobart Lewis ran for office in 2020, he happened to be a frequent listener of Willis’ program.
After being elected, Lewis devised a plan to reinvigorate Greenville County’s cold-case unit. On Monday, officials were able to identify Mr. X as Oscar James Nedd of White Plains, New York, who was 23 years old at the time of his murder, which the coroner’s office had previously classified as a homicide by blunt force trauma and strangling.
In July 2020, the sheriff’s office unearthed Nedd’s body and sent his skeleton remains to the National Unidentified and Missing Persons System (NAMUS) for DNA testing. A profile was constructed for the victim, whose name remained unknown until Monday.
In February, the White Plains Police Department contacted Greenville County investigators “regarding a match with a missing person case they had been working on since 1975,” the sheriff’s office stated. That person was Nedd.
Nearly 50 years after Nedd died, authorities were able to locate his family members, who confirmed his identification. The homicide investigation has since been moved to the White Plains Police Department. The White Plains Police Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s query. Willis thinks the matter will be resolved after nearly 50 years of unanswered questions.
“I know there is a suspect. Willis said, “I know the White Plains police are aware that there is a suspect.” “It’s disappointing that the current investigators can’t work on the murder case because it’s not theirs.” The body was believed to have been dumped here. … I know there are investigators who still care, and there is a family who wants justice. I still believe that this case can be resolved after 50 years. “That’s insane.”
Nedd was born in Georgia but went to White Plains to attend college, according to foxnews.
Since Lewis took office in 2020, the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office’s cold case team has solved 11 cases.
“The tireless work and innovative approaches employed by our investigators have brought closure to a case that has remained a mystery for nearly five decades,” Lewis said in a statement on Monday. “Their desire to obtain justice for victims and their families is admirable. I’d want to congratulate every member of our cold case squad for their hard work and dedication.”