Alexandra Foster, David Britton, David Meza, documentaries, Fatal Destination, Investigation Discovery, Jake Merendino, Jessica Biel, Jose Correa, Lori Hinton, Mexico, Michelle Hart, reviews, Taylor Langston, true crime, TV
November 22, 2025
by Carla Hay
Culture Representation: The documentary series “Fatal Destination” features a predominantly white group of people (with some Latin people, African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Vacation trips in dreamy locations turn into real-life nightmares where people get murdered.
Culture Audience: “Fatal Destination” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching true crime documentaries about romances that became criminally dangerous.
Neither great nor terrible, “Fatal Destination” adequately presents true crime cases that took place in popular vacation cities. Jessica Biel is an executive producer and the off-camera narrator of this series. Her narration is somewhat generic.
“Fatal Destination” is produced for Investigation Discovery by Iron Ocean and Propagate Content. Each episode covers a separate case. Investigation Discovery did not make all episodes from the show’s first season available for review in advance of the series premiere, so this review will cover the first episode of “Fatal Destination,” titled “Baja Noir.” This series premiere episode (which has some language in Spanish) is about the brutal murder of an affluent 51-year-old American named Jake Merendino, who was found stabbed to death near a ravine about 15 miles from Rosarito, Mexico, on the night of May 2, 2015.
What was particularly gruesome about this murder was Merendino was nearly decapitated and he was disemboweled—his stomach was sliced open, and some of his intestines were discarded nearby. Merendino’s abandoned Range Rover was at the crime scene, with the car’s lights on. He was reportedly stabbed 24 times, which is an overkill stabbing that suggests the murder was committed for very personal reasons.
Merendino was an openly gay retiree who lived off of a few million dollars that he inherited when his mother died. He was an adopted only child who was originally from Texas, but Merendino owned a condominium in Rosarito, where he would vacation with his boyfriend David Enrique Meza, who was 23 at the time of Merendino’s death. At the time, Meza was a part-time fitness instructor who told the couple’s friends that he graduated from nursing school. That nursing school degree turned out to be a lie.
At the time of Merendino’s death, Merendino was staying at a hotel in Rosarito called Bobby’s by the Sea. It’s an indication that something must have happened for Merendino to be sleeping at a hotel instead of his own home. David Britton, a friend of Merendino’s, is interviewed in this episode and says that it was suspicious that Merendino’s Range Rover was found near Merendino’s body because Merendino didn’t like to drive at night. Britton and Lori Hinton (another Merendino friend who is interviewed) describe Merendino as a generous and loving person who liked to make people happy.
In the beginning of the investigation only clue that investigators had was an eyewitness account of a man on a motorcycle visiting Merendino at the hotel and leaving around 11 p.m. on the night of the murder. After the murder is believed to have happened, the man came back to the hotel to retrieve what he said were some of his own possessions. The man was identified as Meza, who owned a motorcycle and had no alibi for the time that Merendino was believed to be killed. Meza denied anything to do with the murder.
Meza owned a motorcycle and had no alibi for the time that Merendino was believed to have been killed. You know where all of this is going, especially when investigators found out that Meza tried to claim he was the sole heir of Merendino’s estate, based on a suspicious-looking hand-written statement on hotel stationery that Meza says was written by Merendino. The so-called “will” was dated December 2, 2014.
The “Baja Noir” episode then unfolds exactly like you think it will. Meza ended up having more secrets and lies that were eventually exposed, including a double life in San Diego with a fiancée named Taylor Langston, who was pregnant at the time of Merendino’s murder. Meza, who dabbled in sex work such as doing gay porn and escort work, didn’t seem to have a steady job and was living mainly off of Merendino’s money. The episode details the case’s outcome, including if Langston was somehow involved.
Other people interviewed in this episode are José Correa, a sergeant with Mexico’s Alfredo Corona Municipal Police, who was one of the investigators at the crime scene; FBI special agent Michelle Hart; and Alexandra Foster, assistant district attorney for the Southern District of California. Unlike many true crime documentaries, “Fatal Destination” does not have re-enactments. “Fatal Destination” is a series that sticks to a basic true crime format, without any frills or tabloid-like sensationalism. “Fatal Destination” is not a series that stands out from the pack, but it’s sufficient enough for any viewer looking for a true crime series covering murder cases that have gotten media coverage elsewhere but haven’t been overexposed.
Investigation Discovery premiered “Fatal Destination” on June 3, 2025.