South Carolina officials are crediting a local journalist with helping them achieve a major breakthrough. A 1975 cold case murder case.
The Greenville County Sheriff’s Office released the identity of a man on Monday. The murder victim was Oscar James Nedd, He was formerly known as Mr. X, because a hunter found his body “wrapped in a sheet and smoldering” near Highway 20 and Blakely Road in 1975, indicating it had been set on fire.
“Sheriff Hobart Lewis credits Brad Willis’ podcast ‘Murder, Etc.’ for bringing attention to this case,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release Monday.
Willis, a former WYFF-TV investigative reporter, started the “Murder, Etc.” podcast in 2019 after he realized his reporting as a young reporter may have helped put the wrong man behind bars for a double murder in 1975, and he began investigating.
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Oscar James Nedd, 23, was identified Monday as the victim of a 1975 murder that remains unsolved. (Greenville County Sheriff’s Office/NAMUS)
,I played a role in putting a man in prison for a double murder. One of the victims … Greenville County Deputy “At that time, in 1975. And when I found out that (the convicted murderer) had been released on parole, I read the story right away and ran it as quickly as I could without digging into it. And when I published that story, the parole board later revoked his parole, and he spent another six years in prison after that,” Willis told Fox News Digital.
Willis said that over a six-year period he “was given a lot of information and did a lot of research and came to the conclusion that the man whose parole was revoked was probably innocent.”
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The Greenville County Sheriff’s Office has credited journalist and podcast host Brad Willis for helping identify Mr. X. (Handout)
He eventually made direct contact with the man and soon learned that his story was more complicated than Willis had imagined. Through his reporting, Willis learned that in 1975, the Greenville Sheriff’s Office was rife with corruption and employed criminals as police officers.
“At that time, it was the Wild West, full of corruption, corrupt police, murderers, killers…”
“Today, Greenville … is a boutique community where people like to come. At that time, it was the Wild West, full of corruption, corrupt police, murderers, killers, things like that, things you don’t think about anymore,” Willis explained. “And this guy who was relatively uneducated and never had any kind of criminal past was suddenly on death row (for a 1975 double murder).”
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A sheriff’s petition from the 1970s in Greenville County, South Carolina. (Handout)
While producing his podcast, which eventually became a 27 episode long series, Willis aired an episode titled “Greenville, We Have a Problem”, in which he attempted to get to the bottom of other unsolved murders that occurred in 1975, when all the internal corruption was at its peak. Law enforcement This event was believed to be occurring.
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“One of the things we decided … as we dug a little deeper, was that it would be really important to look at all The murders Willis said, “In Greenville County at that time. And so we decided to pick the entire year of 1975 and study exactly how all of these murders occurred and whether they were solved. The first murder victim found in 1975 was a man who was found in the southern part of the county and his body was still smoldering. He had been set on fire and wrapped in a blanket or some type of bedspread.”
He was Mr. X.
Mr. X was the first recorded murder in Greenville County in 1975. (Brad Willis)
When Greenville County Sheriff Hobart Lewis was running for election in 2020, he was a regular listener of Willis’ podcast.
After being elected, Lewis planned to revive Greenville County’s cold-case unit. And on Monday, officers were able to successfully identify Mr. X as Oscar James Ned. White Plains, New York, Joe was 23 at the time of his killing, which the coroner’s office initially ruled a case of blunt force trauma and strangulation.
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The Greenville County Coroner’s Office ruled Ned’s death a homicide by blunt force trauma and strangulation. (Brad Willis)
The sheriff’s office exhumed Ned’s body in July 2020 and then sent his skeletal remains to the police. National Unidentified and Missing Persons System (NAMUS) was called in for DNA testing, and a profile was created of the victim, whose identity remained unknown until Monday.
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in February, White Plains Police Department The sheriff’s office wrote that Greenville County investigators were contacted “for a matching search to a missing person case they had been working on since 1975.” That person was Ned.
Authorities were able to contact Ned’s family members, who confirmed his identity nearly 50 years after his death. The murder case has since been turned over to the White Plains Police Department.
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An old newspaper clipping states that ‘Miss X’ is buried next to ‘Mr. X’ in two unsolved murder cases. (Brad Willis)
Investigators believe Ned was murdered in White Plains and that his The body was dumped in South Carolina.
The White Plains Police Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s inquiries. Willis is hopeful the case will reach its conclusion after nearly 50 years of going on without answers.
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“I know there’s a suspect.”
“I know there’s a suspect. I know the White Plains police know there’s a suspect,” Willis said. “It’s frustrating, I think, that the current investigators here can’t work on a murder case anymore because it’s not their murder. The body was supposedly dumped here. … I know there are detectives that still care, and I know there’s a family that still wants justice. I still think there’s room to really reach a conclusion to this case 50 years later. It’s crazy.”
An old newspaper clipping provides information about Ned’s murder in 1975. (Brad Willis)
The press release said Ned was born in Georgia but moved to White Plains to pursue a college education.
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The Greenville County Sheriff’s Office’s cold-case unit has solved 11 cases since Lewis took office in 2020.
“The tireless work and innovative approach taken by our investigators has brought closure to a case that had remained a mystery for nearly five decades,” Lewis said in a statement Monday. “Their determination to seek justice for the victims and their families is truly admirable. I want to thank each member of our Cold Case Unit for their hard work and commitment.”
