Nampa police just made arrest in 2015 killing. He was interviewed a decade ago
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- Nampa police arrested Mark Neal in June in the decade-old shooting of Akrian Evans.
- Ballistics and DNA testing linked Neal to bullet and hat found at the scene, police said.
- He faces a murder charge and could receive a life sentence — or the death penalty.
Weeks after Akrian Evans was shot to death in 2015, investigators zeroed in on a person of interest — dubbed the “Pallet Guy” — and released a sketch of a middle-age man law enforcement believed was seen at the Nampa resident’s home just before he was killed.
Despite several leads, no one was arrested for more than a decade.
Then on June 10, the Nampa Police Department announced that a suspect was in custody: 54-year-old Mark Neal.
Court records obtained by the Idaho Statesman showed that officers interviewed Neal within days of the composite sketch’s release 10 years ago. It’s unclear whether Neal was considered a suspect or was just one of the nearly 100 people law enforcement talked to in the weeks and years after the shooting.
Carmen Boeger, a police spokesperson, said in a news release that the arrest was the result of investigators’ “tireless work,” along with advancements in DNA and ballistics testing. The Nampa Police Department declined to answer several additional questions about the investigation, including one asking when Neal was considered a suspect.
“Investigators don’t want to compromise the ongoing investigation, so we won’t be releasing any additional information,” Boeger wrote to the Statesman in a Thursday email.
Officers responded to Evans’ home just before 9:30 p.m. on March 14, 2015, after receiving a call about a man bleeding from his head in his fifth-wheel trailer behind Garrity Boulevard in Nampa, according to a probable cause affidavit. Five minutes later, officers found the 26-year-old dead with a gunshot wound.
Earlier that day, Evans’ family was celebrating his daughter’s 9th birthday. Then, at about 8 p.m., he got a call from someone saying they wanted to meet to buy some wooden pallets, his father, Richard Evans, told Idaho News 6 (KIVI-TV). His family got a call hours later from law enforcement saying he’d been shot to death.
“When he was at a customer’s house, he always left as their friend, instead of them just being another customer,” his father said at the time. “He’d do anything for a person. He’d give you the shirt off his back.”
Neal denies killing Evans in police interview, affidavit details
It was only four days after the shooting when law enforcement began asking for the public’s help finding the culprit.
The Nampa Police Department initially released a description of a white man who they believed to be in his 30s or 40s, with long, dark and wiry hair, a scruffy face, and who might have been interested in purchasing wooden pallets, the Statesman previously reported. Two weeks later, police publicized a composite sketch of the suspect.
On April 7, 2015 — three weeks after the homicide — Neal and his then-girlfriend were brought into the Nampa Police Department for interviews, according to the affidavit, after phone records showed that Neal called Evans on his cellphone in the days before the homicide.
Two women at Evans’ trailer the night he was killed went to a convenience store at around 9:07 p.m., and they told officers they had to drive around the “pallet guy’s” truck after a man came by asking to buy wooden pallets, according to the affidavit.
When they arrived at the store, they tried calling Evans several times for the PIN number on his debit card, but he didn’t answer, the affidavit said. Less than 20 minutes later, the guy’s truck was gone, and they found Evans bleeding from his head.
Neal admitted to buying pallets from Evans, according to the affidavit. But he told officers that he didn’t remember exactly when he bought them that evening. Despite Neal telling police that he picked up the pallets before it got dark, cell tower records pulled by one of the initial investigators indicated he wasn’t in the area of Evans’ house until later.
He said in 2015 that “he had no reason to kill Akrian, as he did not even know him,” Nampa Police Detective Steven Ament wrote in the affidavit.
New ballistic testing confirms Neal’s gun was used
Officers also searched Neal’s Nampa home in 2015, where they located miscellaneous drug paraphernalia and “more notably” a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson gun, according to the affidavit. Neal and his girlfriend denied owning a gun.
Years later, when Ament took over the case, he reached out to the Idaho State Police Forensic Services to see whether there was any new technology to compare the firearm found in Neal’s house to the bullet retrieved from Evans’ head, the affidavit said. Investigators initially were not able to run ballistics testing because the firearm was damaged.
The gun and projectile were sent to the state lab in December 2023, the affidavit said, and two months later, microscopic testing of the bullet confirmed that it was fired from the handgun found at Neal’s home.
Ament then sent off a camouflage hat, which law enforcement believed Evans was wearing before he was killed, to Pure Gold Forensics, a laboratory in Redlands, California, to be tested for DNA. It’s unclear whether law enforcement was aware of the DNA on the hat until recently; police declined to answer questions seeking clarity.
Testing showed four individuals’ DNA samples were found on the hat, including Neal’s, the affidavit said.
Neal sentenced to 13 years on unrelated conviction
The latest murder arrest wasn’t Neal’s first run-in with the law. In fact, he was expected to spend at least the next three years in prison after recent felony convictions.
His extensive criminal history dates back to the 1990s, but he also had over half a dozen convictions in Owyhee and Canyon counties after the homicide. The most recent felony charges — possession of a controlled substance, unlawful possession of a firearm and a persistent violator enhancement — came in 2025 when the Nampa Police Department arrested Neal after he violated his parole.
During that Jan. 13 arrest, he was interviewed about Evans’ homicide, according to the affidavit. It’s unclear when investigators matched Neal’s DNA to the ball cap, but his sample was sent to Pure Gold Forensics sometime after early January, the affidavit showed.
Neal was held on a $250,000 bond at the Canyon County Jail until he pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm and a persistent violator enhancement as part of a plea deal in April. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison, with the possibility of parole in three, court records showed.
Before he could be transferred to the Idaho Department of Correction’s custody, however, Neal was arrested in Evans’ killing. Canyon County Deputy Prosecutor Enrique Gutierrez charged Neal with first-degree murder on June 10, alleging that he “willfully” and “unlawfully” killed Evans by shooting him in the head, according to a criminal complaint.
Neal could face up to life in prison, or even the death penalty, if he’s convicted. The Canyon County Prosecutor’s Office will have 60 days to announce whether it intends to seek the death penalty against him after he enters a plea.
His next hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Aug. 18 at the Canyon County Courthouse.
