{"id":502655,"date":"2026-10-20T22:08:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T22:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/502655\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T22:08:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T22:08:06","slug":"missing-sexually-violent-predator-found-dead-in-san-diego-riverbed-after-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/502655\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing sexually violent predator found dead in San Diego riverbed after search"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SAN DIEGO, CA \u2014 The San Diego County Sheriff&#8217;s Office has called off the search for Merle Wakefield, a sexually violent predator, after he was found dead in San Diego.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, October 19, just after 9:30 a.m., the San Diego Police Department responded to a call of a human body discovered in a riverbed near the 4800 block of Fairmount Avenue.<\/p>\n<p>The San Diego County Medical Examiner&#8217;s Office responded and later positively identified the body as Wakefield. The Medical Examiner&#8217;s Office will perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death.<\/p>\n<p>On September 25, authorities say Wakefield <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.10news.com\/news\/local-news\/sexually-violent-predator-removes-gps-monitor-disappears-while-working-in-rancho-bernardo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">removed his GPS device while at work <\/a>in Rancho Bernardo and left the area.<\/p>\n<p>Personnel with Liberty Healthcare, which was in charge of supervising Wakefield as part of the state&#8217;s Conditional Release Program, notified the authorities when Wakefield could not be located. <\/p>\n<p>All law enforcement agencies in the region were alerted, as well as the public and media.<\/p>\n<p>Since Wakefield&#8217;s disappearance, the San Diego Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement (SAFE) Task Force worked diligently investigating the case and followed all tips and leads.<\/p>\n<p>No other details have been released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO, CA \u2014 The San Diego County Sheriff&#8217;s Office has called off the search for Merle Wakefield,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-502655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}