That time-perspective made me understand why I was told so many times about not joining a cult as a kid in the early 80s. It took me until the 2020s to realise like, oh. Jonestown was closer to them then than 9/11 is to me now. Oh.
Sheriff Lewis of Greeneville, SC, Austen Avery (Deceased), White Plains, NY and Mr. Willis the TV journalist and podcaster did an incredible job in this case. It would have faded into obscurity.
The medical examiner and the DNA techs did another great job identifying someone.
Austin Avery, the police officer who never stopped trying to solve Oscar's case, seemed like a really good man.
He knew Joshua Fluellen was the murderer back in the 70's.
An interview with Mr. Avery from 2005.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/nyregion/a-retired-officer-haunted-by-a-30yearold-search.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/nyregion/a-retired-officer-haunted-by-a-30yearold-search.html)
A great man who was persistent in pursuing justice. Thanks for sharing that article. And for those who won't read the article:
And not just in the 1970s - he suspected Oscar's nephew Fluellen was responsible for his murder within weeks of the crime and wanted to travel to New Mexico to interrogate him 6 weeks after his disappearance, but was denied permission to travel there "saying it wasn't worth the trip because a body had not been recovered and the suspect would end up in prison on robbery charges anyway."
By then Avery knew:
* A witness saw Fluellen struggling to carry a large rug that appeared to contain a body down a staircase, then put the rug in a car trunk and drive off.
* Authorities in New Mexico had arrested Fluellen after armed robberies there and in Arizona. When he was arrested, Fluellen identified himself as Oscar Nedd and was driving Mr. Nedd's 1972 Dodge.
Oscar's sister spoke with him via phone on the day the witness saw Fluellen carrying the rug. By then Fluellen was living with Oscar in his boarding house room. His sister told him Fluellen had escaped jail in Georgia the month prior, had shot someone in Georgia, and that Oscar needed to get him out of his room.
Also from the article:
>Meanwhile, Mr. Avery was spending his retirement searching for Mr. Nedd's remains and desperately trying to build a case against Mr. Fluellen. At one point, in 1995, he said, he visited Mr. Fluellen in prison to tell him that he knew he had killed Mr. Nedd and wanted to know what he had done with the body. "He never denied it," Mr. Avery said. "All he said was, 'You can't prove it.' "
>Mr. Fluellen disputes that account and insists he is innocent. Reached by telephone at the Federal Correctional Institution in Jesup, Ga., where he is serving time for five armed bank robberies, Mr. Fluellen said that he and Mr. Nedd drove to California for a vacation in January 1975 and that he left Mr. Nedd there.
>He said he never saw him again and has "no idea what happened to him." Nor did he know why there were blood stains in Mr. Nedd's room or why a neighbor claimed to have seen him removing a body.
A quick search of Fluellen and, presumably, his kin, shows that this should have been open and shut. Apple didn't fall far from the tree in that guy's bloodline.
I've only been to Greenville a handful of times (I live in Charlotte), but it seems like it's growing a lot in the past decade or so. Maybe that'll drag along law enforcement as a result. But historically, I remember even in the early 00's, Western SC was considered dicey and I can't imagine what it was like in 1975.
This is a simple case of Occam's razor. His nephew Joshua Fluellen was likely involved after reading the link in the write up and doing a simple search of his name... and when I say likely, I mean 99.9% he was involved. I didn't see in the news articles any information regarding if Fluellen is still alive, dead or incarcerated.
How heartbreaking… a young man on the verge of getting his career going, having his life cut short and then going unidentified for 50 years. He should have been enjoying his retirement now, not having his long-dead body identified 😔
Wow so 1 murder a week in Greenville SC in 1975, I guess that could help explain why not much happened with the investigation there, LE must have been swamped, but the NY end, I'd have to think more could have been done in 50 years.
I'm glad he finally got his name back.
Seems like they would have had a lot
Of evidence in the 1970s against Fluellen.. but I guess no body no crime at that time, and I’m sure the victim and suspect being black didn’t help.
The investigating officer, Austin Avery, spent a lot of time on this case, including after his retirement, so that's an unfair accusation, at least as far as Avery is concerned.
BUT:
"Mr. Avery, who was white, told The Times in 2005 that he thought the department had little interest in Mr. Nedd’s disappearance because he was Black and from a poor family in rural Georgia. The police commissioner at the time, John Dolce, denied Mr. Avery’s allegations."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/us/south-carolina-cold-case-mr-x-podcast.html
So you're probably not wrong.
Unfortunately, without a body or other hard evidence, his superiors refused to let him travel to interview the suspect, as they didn't believe he would provide sufficient evidence to successfully prosecute.
A comprehensive comment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/1dj91rg/comment/l9au1v6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Edit: typo
From the 2024 NY Times article OP linked to:
>Sheriff Lewis said that the initial investigation of Mr. X’s death began on Jan. 4, 1975, after a hunter found the body.
All excerpts below are from [this 2005 NY Times article](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/nyregion/a-retired-officer-haunted-by-a-30yearold-search.html).
>Ms. Rumph said she last spoke with her brother on Jan. 1, 1975, in a tense telephone conversation about his new roommate.
>When a week went by with no word from Oscar, relatives reported him missing, and Detective Avery, assigned to the case, showed up at the rented room in downtown White Plains, only a few blocks from the police headquarters.
So it seems Oscar's body was found about 4 days before he was reported missing. And he was almost certainly killed the last day he was seen - 3 days before his body was found.
>He found no sign of either man, just blood splattered across the room and a witness who claimed, in a sworn statement, that he had seen Mr. Fluellen struggling to carry a large rug that appeared to contain a body down a staircase. The witness, a neighbor, said he had seen Mr. Fluellen put the rug in a car trunk and drive off.
Aspiring journalist doesn't necessarily mean that he had a career yet at the time of his disappearance... unless I missed something in the write up.
I assume the nephew would be a person of interest if he was last seen carrying a large bag away from the apartment.
> Aspiring journalist doesn't necessarily mean that he had a career yet at the time of his disappearance
Correct. Consider the situational influence of the January 1975 time frame. Journalists were responsible for the Watergate investigation that changed American history. It was the dominant topic of 1973 and 1974. Journalism schools became flooded with new applicants and people already in school were changing their major to journalism. Many young professionals who hadn't studied journalism in school were determined to make the switch. Heading to a major market to begin a journalism career was the time frame parallel to aspiring actresses flocking to Hollywood.
The nephew was on the run from the police because he was wanted for shooting someone. Nedd’s sister told him that the nephew was on the run and that Nedd should kick him out. Nedd was upset and going to confront him then was never heard from again.
He also stole the Nedd’s car and claimed to be Nedd when he was apprehended for police after a series of armed robberies.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he did have a job for a paper, but it was a simple section like obituaries, job ads, finding a spot to throw in the comics. Hell, he could’ve just been the coffee runner. Probably just put his foot in the door before he got killed unfortunately
I mean is everyone just guessing things? It said he was studying to be a journalist not working as one so all we can assume from the info at hand is that.
People do tend to create speculative backstories on this sub Reddit without any facts. It's one thing to create a scenario based on the little evidence we get from LE in articles & press conferences, but people on here tend to write short stories out of thin air in many of the threads that I read. I'm probably guilty of it at times as well.
Where do you see studying?? The write up says “aspiring journalist” and “to pursue his dream of becoming a journalist”. It doesn’t say studying. And many places offer internships so he could’ve just as well had one of those.
You kind of have to guess things when there’s hardly any info on these cases to begin with. How do you think detectives work on these cases? They don’t just sit back and wait for info to come to them. They need to speculate things all the time and then question and test if it is true or at least a strong possibility. Obviously we don’t have the means to actually find out the truth on a lot of this stuff for all these cases, but as long as we aren’t going around making accusations against someone that could hurt them, that’s just how it goes.
You don’t have to “guess”. You can speculate, of course, making considerations for the fact that some speculations have more merit than others, and then follow up with research and investigation, and withhold making judgements until you have all the information necessary. Some seem to jump from “could’ve possibly been”, to “probably was” and then soon it can become some commonly held misconception among those who follow these kinds of subs.
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Everyone knows that Mr X was made by the umbrella corporation...
Seriously though, good writeup! Very interesting case and glad to know his family now has closure.
Wonderful to see his name back. I hadn’t heard of this one at all. Thank you for sharing this. Lots of strange details here. I’d like to think they already have a good idea who’d done it but likely lack an excess of physical evidence after all this time. I hope they can pin the guy.
Not really related at all, but does anyone remember a case that this reminds me of in the most maddening way? A woman driven some distance through the Carolinas and I believe Florida and some aspects of time of death were gleaned from her body showing she had been laying in what-have-you position on the bed of the truck for x amount of time ‘and therefore’ she must have come -this- far down s highway? I’m almost certain it’s a Doe case. It all seemed too specific to not have some kind of finger on it.
This is amazing! Hope to see more of these cold cases solved in the future. Keep up the good investigative work and efforts to raising awareness everybody!
Wow -- that's quite a way to transport a body. I hope they can make more progress on the case now. Thanks for writing the update!
Oh wow, I live in Greenville and I’ve never heard of this case!
Same! Haven’t seen the finding reported anywhere here either.
Had to look up how long the drive would take since I’m not American - 12 hours!
How dare you correctly say that January 1975 is almost 50 years ago.
I was told that 1938 was the same amount of time from when I was born as then til now when I was half asleep, I said No and went back to sleep.
OMG. I am crushed. I did the math for me and this was a super uncool thing to learn.
For a second I thought this was some neat math trick, and then I realized, no we were just born in the same year.
That time-perspective made me understand why I was told so many times about not joining a cult as a kid in the early 80s. It took me until the 2020s to realise like, oh. Jonestown was closer to them then than 9/11 is to me now. Oh.
Jonestown was 1978. 9/11 was 2001.
Yes? I said that they were closer to jonestown than I am to 9/11. That's exactly my point.
It’s ok I think much of us here got what you meant
I was pointing out how vastly different 2 years and 23 years are.
The moment kids I teach started wearing the 80s as an "older decade" to dress vintage for is when it hit me.
Sheriff Lewis of Greeneville, SC, Austen Avery (Deceased), White Plains, NY and Mr. Willis the TV journalist and podcaster did an incredible job in this case. It would have faded into obscurity. The medical examiner and the DNA techs did another great job identifying someone.
Austin Avery, the police officer who never stopped trying to solve Oscar's case, seemed like a really good man. He knew Joshua Fluellen was the murderer back in the 70's. An interview with Mr. Avery from 2005. [https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/nyregion/a-retired-officer-haunted-by-a-30yearold-search.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/nyregion/a-retired-officer-haunted-by-a-30yearold-search.html)
A great man who was persistent in pursuing justice. Thanks for sharing that article. And for those who won't read the article: And not just in the 1970s - he suspected Oscar's nephew Fluellen was responsible for his murder within weeks of the crime and wanted to travel to New Mexico to interrogate him 6 weeks after his disappearance, but was denied permission to travel there "saying it wasn't worth the trip because a body had not been recovered and the suspect would end up in prison on robbery charges anyway." By then Avery knew: * A witness saw Fluellen struggling to carry a large rug that appeared to contain a body down a staircase, then put the rug in a car trunk and drive off. * Authorities in New Mexico had arrested Fluellen after armed robberies there and in Arizona. When he was arrested, Fluellen identified himself as Oscar Nedd and was driving Mr. Nedd's 1972 Dodge. Oscar's sister spoke with him via phone on the day the witness saw Fluellen carrying the rug. By then Fluellen was living with Oscar in his boarding house room. His sister told him Fluellen had escaped jail in Georgia the month prior, had shot someone in Georgia, and that Oscar needed to get him out of his room. Also from the article: >Meanwhile, Mr. Avery was spending his retirement searching for Mr. Nedd's remains and desperately trying to build a case against Mr. Fluellen. At one point, in 1995, he said, he visited Mr. Fluellen in prison to tell him that he knew he had killed Mr. Nedd and wanted to know what he had done with the body. "He never denied it," Mr. Avery said. "All he said was, 'You can't prove it.' " >Mr. Fluellen disputes that account and insists he is innocent. Reached by telephone at the Federal Correctional Institution in Jesup, Ga., where he is serving time for five armed bank robberies, Mr. Fluellen said that he and Mr. Nedd drove to California for a vacation in January 1975 and that he left Mr. Nedd there. >He said he never saw him again and has "no idea what happened to him." Nor did he know why there were blood stains in Mr. Nedd's room or why a neighbor claimed to have seen him removing a body.
Can't, not won't.
A quick search of Fluellen and, presumably, his kin, shows that this should have been open and shut. Apple didn't fall far from the tree in that guy's bloodline.
As someone who lives in Greenville... the idea that the police let something this open and shut go unsolved is not a surprise.
I've only been to Greenville a handful of times (I live in Charlotte), but it seems like it's growing a lot in the past decade or so. Maybe that'll drag along law enforcement as a result. But historically, I remember even in the early 00's, Western SC was considered dicey and I can't imagine what it was like in 1975.
This is a simple case of Occam's razor. His nephew Joshua Fluellen was likely involved after reading the link in the write up and doing a simple search of his name... and when I say likely, I mean 99.9% he was involved. I didn't see in the news articles any information regarding if Fluellen is still alive, dead or incarcerated.
from memory, he was released in 2015.
I wonder if he's a transient now, and that's why they haven't arrested him. Can't find the guy.
How heartbreaking… a young man on the verge of getting his career going, having his life cut short and then going unidentified for 50 years. He should have been enjoying his retirement now, not having his long-dead body identified 😔
same feeling here :( what a waste
Wow so 1 murder a week in Greenville SC in 1975, I guess that could help explain why not much happened with the investigation there, LE must have been swamped, but the NY end, I'd have to think more could have been done in 50 years. I'm glad he finally got his name back.
I remember this story. His nephew was the suspect very sad
>50 years No rush guys
Seems like they would have had a lot Of evidence in the 1970s against Fluellen.. but I guess no body no crime at that time, and I’m sure the victim and suspect being black didn’t help.
The investigating officer, Austin Avery, spent a lot of time on this case, including after his retirement, so that's an unfair accusation, at least as far as Avery is concerned. BUT: "Mr. Avery, who was white, told The Times in 2005 that he thought the department had little interest in Mr. Nedd’s disappearance because he was Black and from a poor family in rural Georgia. The police commissioner at the time, John Dolce, denied Mr. Avery’s allegations." https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/us/south-carolina-cold-case-mr-x-podcast.html So you're probably not wrong. Unfortunately, without a body or other hard evidence, his superiors refused to let him travel to interview the suspect, as they didn't believe he would provide sufficient evidence to successfully prosecute. A comprehensive comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/1dj91rg/comment/l9au1v6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button Edit: typo
Wonder how many days there were between him being reported missing and that body turning up.
From the 2024 NY Times article OP linked to: >Sheriff Lewis said that the initial investigation of Mr. X’s death began on Jan. 4, 1975, after a hunter found the body. All excerpts below are from [this 2005 NY Times article](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/nyregion/a-retired-officer-haunted-by-a-30yearold-search.html). >Ms. Rumph said she last spoke with her brother on Jan. 1, 1975, in a tense telephone conversation about his new roommate. >When a week went by with no word from Oscar, relatives reported him missing, and Detective Avery, assigned to the case, showed up at the rented room in downtown White Plains, only a few blocks from the police headquarters. So it seems Oscar's body was found about 4 days before he was reported missing. And he was almost certainly killed the last day he was seen - 3 days before his body was found. >He found no sign of either man, just blood splattered across the room and a witness who claimed, in a sworn statement, that he had seen Mr. Fluellen struggling to carry a large rug that appeared to contain a body down a staircase. The witness, a neighbor, said he had seen Mr. Fluellen put the rug in a car trunk and drive off.
Makes you wonder if they had found his body a few days later, after he had been reported missing, if this would have been solved at the time.
As he was a journalist, first question is what may he have been investigating? If he was that kind of journo. Any more info on his nephew?
Aspiring journalist doesn't necessarily mean that he had a career yet at the time of his disappearance... unless I missed something in the write up. I assume the nephew would be a person of interest if he was last seen carrying a large bag away from the apartment.
> Aspiring journalist doesn't necessarily mean that he had a career yet at the time of his disappearance Correct. Consider the situational influence of the January 1975 time frame. Journalists were responsible for the Watergate investigation that changed American history. It was the dominant topic of 1973 and 1974. Journalism schools became flooded with new applicants and people already in school were changing their major to journalism. Many young professionals who hadn't studied journalism in school were determined to make the switch. Heading to a major market to begin a journalism career was the time frame parallel to aspiring actresses flocking to Hollywood.
The nephew was on the run from the police because he was wanted for shooting someone. Nedd’s sister told him that the nephew was on the run and that Nedd should kick him out. Nedd was upset and going to confront him then was never heard from again. He also stole the Nedd’s car and claimed to be Nedd when he was apprehended for police after a series of armed robberies.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he did have a job for a paper, but it was a simple section like obituaries, job ads, finding a spot to throw in the comics. Hell, he could’ve just been the coffee runner. Probably just put his foot in the door before he got killed unfortunately
I mean is everyone just guessing things? It said he was studying to be a journalist not working as one so all we can assume from the info at hand is that.
People do tend to create speculative backstories on this sub Reddit without any facts. It's one thing to create a scenario based on the little evidence we get from LE in articles & press conferences, but people on here tend to write short stories out of thin air in many of the threads that I read. I'm probably guilty of it at times as well.
Where do you see studying?? The write up says “aspiring journalist” and “to pursue his dream of becoming a journalist”. It doesn’t say studying. And many places offer internships so he could’ve just as well had one of those. You kind of have to guess things when there’s hardly any info on these cases to begin with. How do you think detectives work on these cases? They don’t just sit back and wait for info to come to them. They need to speculate things all the time and then question and test if it is true or at least a strong possibility. Obviously we don’t have the means to actually find out the truth on a lot of this stuff for all these cases, but as long as we aren’t going around making accusations against someone that could hurt them, that’s just how it goes.
You don’t have to “guess”. You can speculate, of course, making considerations for the fact that some speculations have more merit than others, and then follow up with research and investigation, and withhold making judgements until you have all the information necessary. Some seem to jump from “could’ve possibly been”, to “probably was” and then soon it can become some commonly held misconception among those who follow these kinds of subs.
Exactly. I’ve seen many misconceptions in posts on this sub and others like it that are being spread around as facts confusing people.
Agree 100%
"Guessing" and "Making Up Long Back Stories" are two different things.
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Everyone knows that Mr X was made by the umbrella corporation... Seriously though, good writeup! Very interesting case and glad to know his family now has closure.
Hey, hey, let us not forget Mr. X who gave Fox Mulder all of that help ruining the Cigarette Smoking Man's day.
Or Mr X the comic book
Wonderful to see his name back. I hadn’t heard of this one at all. Thank you for sharing this. Lots of strange details here. I’d like to think they already have a good idea who’d done it but likely lack an excess of physical evidence after all this time. I hope they can pin the guy. Not really related at all, but does anyone remember a case that this reminds me of in the most maddening way? A woman driven some distance through the Carolinas and I believe Florida and some aspects of time of death were gleaned from her body showing she had been laying in what-have-you position on the bed of the truck for x amount of time ‘and therefore’ she must have come -this- far down s highway? I’m almost certain it’s a Doe case. It all seemed too specific to not have some kind of finger on it.
This is amazing! Hope to see more of these cold cases solved in the future. Keep up the good investigative work and efforts to raising awareness everybody!
Oh man I thought I was in the Resident Evil subreddit for a second.