Violent rapist who went on the run after slipping off monitoring device was found dead, cops say

A violent criminal who had been convicted of rape and was on the run was found dead in San Diego, police say.

Merle Wakefield, 69, was being supervised on California’s conditional release program when officials got a tamper notice from his monitoring device on Sept. 25.

‘As long as the state keeps releasing sexually violent predators into our neighborhoods, families are one tampered ankle monitor away from this. These people don’t belong anywhere near our communities.’

When the officials arrived at his workplace in Rancho Bernardo, they found the GPS device, but Wakefield was gone.

Nearly a month later on Monday at about 9:30 a.m., San Diego police responded to a report of a dead body and found human remains in a riverbed in San Diego.

The San Diego County