The body of popular San Francisco radio host Jeffrey “JV” Vandergrift was identified Thursday, nearly a month after he went missing. He was 55 years old.
Authorities removed a body from san francisco bay near the popular tourist attraction Pier 39 around 5 p.m. Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
“It is with a heavy heart that we must confirm that the body found near Pier 39 on Wednesday afternoon has been identified as our dear friend, family member and colleague, JV.” Vandergrift Wild Station 94.9 he said in a social media post. “We are devastated to learn that JV is gone.”
No foul play is suspected in Vandergrift’s death.
Vandergrift and his wife, Natasha Yi, hosted “The JV Show” on Wild 94.9 in the Bay Area from 6 to 10 am weekday mornings. Vandergrift had been a mainstay of Bay Area radio since the 1990s.
He was last seen alive around 10 p.m. Feb. 23 near his home in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, authorities said, and was reported missing the next day.
Less than a week later, Yi wrote on social media. that she believed her husband was dead.
“Personal information was recently discovered that leads us to believe that JV will not be back,” he wrote. “At this time, JV remains officially missing according to the SFPD, but no crime is suspected in his disappearance.”
On one of his final shows, Vandergrift opened up about the intense pain he experienced after he was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2021.
“The body and the pain and all that, I can handle it. I could never describe to you what it is doing to my brain,” she said, before adding that she had been given few options to treat the pain.
“The amount of compassion for the physical torture that JV has been experiencing for the past 2 years has been overwhelming,” Yi wrote in his post.
