Greenville County Sheriff's Office identifies man killed in decades-old case

The Greenville County Sheriff's Office announced the identification of a person killed approximately 50 years ago during an investigation into a cold case.

At a press conference Monday morning outside the Greenville County Law Enforcement Center, Sheriff Hobart Lewis announced that the Sheriff's Office had identified the body of a man discovered at 11 a.m. on April 4 January 1975.

The body was found by a hunter on Highway 20 near Blakely Road in north Greenville. The Greenville County Coroner's Office investigated the body and determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head and strangulation. When discovered, the body was found wrapped in a sheet and smoking, indicating it had been set on fire, the coroner's office said.

For years, the body was labeled as Mr.

In 1976, a man named Jackie Anderson was arrested in connection with the murder. Due to lack of sufficient evidence, the case was closed. Anderson died and Mr. X's identity was still unknown.

In July 2020, the GCSO Cold Case Unit partnered with the Greenville County Coroner's Office to exhume the body to identify the victim. The coroner's office sent the remains of the body to the National Unidentified Missing Persons System, colloquially known as NamUS.

In February, they identified Mr. X as Oscar James Nedd of White Plains, New York. Nedd was born April 19, 1951, in Georgia and moved to New York to attend college in journalism.

Investigators identified the body with the help of White Plains police. New York law enforcement said evidence related to the homicide matched what they had after investigating Nedd's 1975 missing report.

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The GCSO believes Nedd was murdered in New York and taken to South Carolina for an unknown reason. Lewis said the homicide unit has solved 11 cases since its creation in 2020.

“The identification is a step toward justice for Oscar James Nedd and brings closure to his family,” Lewis said.

New York law enforcement is investigating Nedd's murder.

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Greenville Sheriff's Office identifies body in cold case