Body of DJ Jeffrey Vandergrift found in San Francisco Bay a month after he disappeared
A month after popular Bay Area disc jockey Jeffrey Vandergrift went missing, his body was found in San Francisco Bay on Wednesday, according to the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office.
The examiner’s office issued a statement Thursday confirming Vandergrift’s death, but offered no further comment, including a cause of death. Vandergrift was 55 years old.
San Francisco’s chief medical examiner will conduct an official inquest into Vandergrift’s death, according to the coroner’s office. There was “no evidence of foul play,” the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement.
San Francisco police originally reported on Vandergrift disappeared on February 24with his last known whereabouts at his home in the Mercado Sur neighborhood of the city at 10 p.m. the previous day.
Vandergrift, known as JV, co-host of morning show “The JV Show” with his wife, model Natasha Yi, on radio station KYLD Wild 94.9 FM in the Bay Area. The duo owned a production company where they wrote, produced and edited short films, commercials, music videos and a YouTube series, according to the show’s bio on the radio station’s website.
Station confirmed Vandergrift’s death On twitter.
“We are devastated to now learn that JV is gone,” the station’s statement said. “Please keep his wife Natasha, his family and close friends of his in your thoughts and prayers.”
On March 1, Yi sent a message to fans of her morning show on social media, saying she suspected nothing in her husband’s disappearance.
“I have been in so much pain and fear and I know all of you have been so scared and worried about JV too,” he wrote on the station’s Twitter account.
“I want to inform you that personal information was recently discovered that leads us to believe that JV will not return. I tell you this with incredible pain and sadness in my heart,” she added.
On September 22, Vandergrift shared a post on Facebook titled “Lyme & Suicide” and recounted his struggles against bacterial disease. He referred to fighting Lyme disease as “daily torture” and said he had multiple infections.
“The physical symptoms are brutal, yet once these microbes cross the blood-brain barrier, what they do to the brain really cannot be put into words,” Vandergrift wrote.
Vandergrift, who grew up in Fremont, fell in love with radio in his junior year at Fremont High School and dreamed of hosting his own show, according to his Wild 94.9 biography.