Dead body found in rural Sebastopol

The body has not yet been identified

A dead body has been found on a property in rural Sebastopol, Sonoma County Sheriff Public Information Officer Rob Dillion confirmed today. The body, which was discovered on Saturday, Oct. 14, is awaiting identification.

“We did receive a service call that turned out to be human remains,” Dillion said.

Asked if the body in question is that of missing Sebastopol resident, Mark Sullivan, who was last seen in downtown Sebastopol on August 24, Dillion demurred.

“There's no indication at this point that this was a missing person simply because we can't do an ID,” he said. “It's gonna take more resources than just a quick glance because the body was in pretty significant decay. So it's going to take some investigation from our coroner's office to determine an identification.”

Dillion said he couldn’t speculate on how long the identification process could take.

Asked if this is being considered a suspicious death, Dillion said, “It is.” He noted that most calls like this are considered suspicious until proven otherwise.

“I don't have a lot of information simply because this is a relatively new investigation to us,” he said, “So we're picking up the pieces and running as fast as we can.”