St. Petersburg cold case cracked: Police use DNA to identify man who killed Richard ‘Juicy’ Evans

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - After 26 years, the St. Petersburg Police Department says it finally knows who killed Richard ‘Juicy’ Evans. 

According to police, Evans, who was 18 years old when he was killed in 1997, was shot to death in an alley near the 3400 block of 22nd Avenue South.

At the time, witnesses said they saw Evans arguing with a male between the ages of 15 and 20 shortly before he was shot.

According to police, the witnesses chased the suspect and saw him drop his bicycle in an alley before he escaped.

Immediately afterthe shooting , investigators lifted fingerprints from the bicycles, but they didn’t come back with a match and there was no touch DNA at the time. 

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Witnesses described the suspect as a Black male who was six feet tall with a thin build, light skin and short hair. However, detectives couldn’t identify any potential suspects at the time. 

In 2022, cold case detective Wally Pavelski, who was a new patrol officer at the time of the shooting and one of the first officers on the scene reviewed the case again and was able to identify the fingerprint from the bicycle as that belonging to a dead man who would have been 15 when Evans was killed. 

The description given by witnesses matched the suspect and he had a history of violence. 

Pavelski said the suspect, who passed away in November 2022 at the age of 41, and Evans knew each other. 

‘I’m very grateful. Justice has been served for my family," stated Catherine Clarkson, Evans’ mother.