Merle Wakefield, Convicted Sex Offender Who Fled GPS Monitoring, Found Dead After Month-Long California Manhunt

 

Convicted Sex Offender Merle Wakefield Found Dead After Month-Long California Manhunt

On October 19, 2026, Merle Wakefield, 69, a convicted sex offender designated by California as a sexually violent predator, was found dead in a San Diego riverbed.

He had been missing for nearly a month after allegedly removing his GPS monitoring device and fleeing supervision.

Wakefield had been under supervised release since November 2024 through California's Conditional Release Program, which monitors certain high-risk sex offenders living outside secure facilities.

On September 25, 2026, his GPS device triggered a tampering alert around 3:30 a.m.

Authorities later discovered the monitoring device, along with his ankle monitor and left shoe, at his workplace, an Amazon processing facility in Rancho Bernardo.

Wakefield was gone.

A felony warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to comply with sex offender registration requirements.

For nearly a month, authorities searched for him.

Then, on October 19, police responded to reports of a body in a brushy riverbed near Fairmount Avenue in San Diego's Talmadge neighborhood.

The following day, the Medical Examiner's Office confirmed that the remains belonged to Wakefield.

His cause of death has not been publicly released, and investigators have not established how long he had been dead before his body was discovered.

Wakefield's death ended the search, but questions remain about how someone under court-ordered supervision was able to disappear after allegedly tampering with his monitoring equipment.

A GPS monitor is supposed to help authorities track someone considered dangerous. In this case, the device was found abandoned, and the man wearing it was missing for nearly a month.

The search is over. The questions about supervision and public safety aren't.