Chinle Pair Get Time Served for Hiding Navajo Man's Murder After 16 Months Locked Up

A federal judge sentenced two Chinle, Arizona residents to time already served after they spent more than 16 months in custody for helping conceal the murder of a Navajo man. U.S. District Judge Michael T. Liburdi handed down the sentences to 45-year-old Marlin Leon Nez and 36-year-old Megan Ashley Yarber on Monday, closing out a case rooted in a 2024 killing that sent the victim's family searching for weeks before his body was ever found.

According to FBI Phoenix, the sentencing followed guilty pleas from both defendants to federal misprision of a felony. Court filings released by the U.S. Department of Justice lay out what happened after Wendell Draper shot and killed the victim inside Nez's residence on July 11, 2024: Nez helped wrap the victim's body and load it into his own car, Draper then buried the body in a shallow grave and set the vehicle on fire, and Yarber drove Draper back to the residence afterward.

Judge Liburdi also ordered Nez and Yarber to pay restitution to the victim's family, covering costs the family incurred while searching for their missing relative in the weeks before his body was recovered, the department's account notes.

Why the Shooter Never Faced Trial

Draper, identified as the primary gunman, was never prosecuted alongside Nez and Yarber. He was shot and killed by law enforcement officers after allegedly pointing a firearm at officers who were attempting to arrest him for the homicide, per the same account. That left Nez and Yarber as the only two people brought before a federal court for their roles in concealing the crime.

Court records reviewed by the Navajo Times show Draper had prior involvement in Phoenix federal court proceedings tied to a 2008 homicide investigation on the Navajo Nation in Nazlini, Arizona, though the outcome of that earlier matter is not detailed in available records.

The Legal Standard Behind the Charges

The misprision of a felony charge that Nez and Yarber admitted to carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison under 18 U.S.C. § 4. As explained by Eisner Gorin LLP, prosecutors must prove a defendant knew a federal felony occurred, failed to notify authorities, and took affirmative steps to conceal it — active concealment, not merely staying silent.

The investigation that led to the sentencing was conducted jointly by the Gallup Resident Agency of the FBI Phoenix Division and the Navajo Police Department, with prosecution handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona. Because major felonies committed on the Navajo Nation fall under federal jurisdiction, cases like this one routinely move through federal rather than tribal courts.

A Familiar Pattern in Tribal Homicide Cases

This is not the first time federal prosecutors in Arizona have pursued misprision charges tied to a homicide cover-up on Navajo land. In a comparable case from November 2018, four co-defendants received prison terms ranging from 27 to 97 months for accessory and misprision charges after cleaning blood and wrapping a victim's body in a rug to conceal a murder, according to the Justice Department. Federal sentences of that kind carry no possibility of parole.

The case also lands against a broader backdrop of missing and murdered Indigenous persons cases across the region. As of July 2025, the Navajo Police Department reported 68 active missing persons cases across the Navajo Nation, including seven open cases in the Chinle District, where the July 2024 murder occurred. Regional statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in September 2022 identified more than 170 Native Americans verified as missing across New Mexico and the Navajo Nation, with median missing durations for Indigenous men exceeding 800 days.

Joint federal-tribal investigations like the one that unraveled Nez and Yarber's cover-up rely in part on the FBI's Safe Trails Task Forces, an initiative established in 1994 alongside the Navajo Department of Law Enforcement that now includes 30 specialized units nationwide addressing violent crime across Indian Country.

Hoodline has covered several related prosecutions tied to homicide concealment on the Navajo Nation, including a body-burning case that drew a 20-year term handed down in June.