LAS VEGAS (NV)
New York Times [New York NY]
June 24, 2026
By John S.W. MacDonald
David Vander Meer had claimed his wife’s death in Zion National Park had been an accident. The case was reopened in 2022, and on Monday, he was arrested in Las Vegas after being charged with murder.
A former youth pastor killed himself in custody in Las Vegas on Thursday, days after he was charged with murdering his wife 20 years ago during a hike in Zion National Park in Utah and reporting her death as an accidental fall, the authorities said.
The former pastor, David Vander Meer, was arrested on Monday in Las Vegas by a task force led by the U.S. Marshals Service and was awaiting extradition to Utah, a spokesman for the Washington County Attorney’s Office said on Wednesday.
His death was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the government of Clark County, Nev., where he was being held, and a judge announced it on Thursday morning during an extradition hearing in his case.
Mr. Vander Meer’s wife, Bernadette Vander Meer, 29, fell 1,200 feet to her death on the morning of Aug. 22, 2006, while the couple were hiking the Angels Landing Trail, one of the park’s most popular — and most dangerous — hikes, according to news reports at the time.
Mr. Vander Meer, who was 29 at the time, said she had fallen while he was trying to take a picture of her near the trail’s edge, according to later court documents. Her death was ruled an accident and the case was closed.
However on Tuesday, the Washington County Attorney’s Office in Utah announced that it had charged Mr. Vander Meer with first-degree murder in her death, saying he had pushed Ms. Vander Meer off the trail.
The pastor had been engaged for years in what an investigator for the attorney’s office described in an affidavit as an “inappropriate sexual relationship” with a member of his youth ministry that began when she was underage. Mr. Vander Meer had told her that they could be together only if his wife were “not alive,” according to the affidavit, which identified the girl only as “SH.”
The attorney’s office also charged Mr. Vander Meer, 49, with insurance fraud, alleging that he had taken out life insurance policies in 2005 for himself and his wife that eventually totaled $550,000 each.
Investigators reopened the case in 2022 after receiving a tip from a former youth group member who said Mr. Vander Meer had been using his position at his church, New Song, to “groom kids,” according to court documents.
One of those children was “SH,” who prosecutors said was a teenager when she met Mr. Vander Meer in roughly 2002, according to prosecutors. The relationship became intimate over time — the couple had sex at the church after hours and at pay-by-the-hour hotels — and continued for years, ending only two days before Ms. Vander Meer’s death in 2006, when SH, who was then 19 or 20, broke things off, according to the court documents.
Ms. Vander Meer, who worked at a Las Vegas hotel, had suspected that her husband was being unfaithful, prosecutors said.
In 2025, prosecutors received a second tip from the senior pastor of New Song at the time of Ms. Vander Meer’s death. The pastor, Barry Diamond, said “he believed the death was not an accident and that David pushed Bernadette.”
In July 2007, Mr. Vander Meer received a life insurance payment of roughly $567,000, according to the court documents.
Ms. Vander Meer was the fifth person to die on the notoriously treacherous Angels Landing Trail since 1983, according to news reports. As of 2024, at least 17 people had died on the trail all told, according to a 2025 study.
SH and Mr. Vander Meer resumed their relationship two to three months after his wife’s death, and the couple married in 2008, the same year Mr. Vander Meer was fired from his job at New Song for providing alcohol to underage members of the youth ministry, according to court documents.
Their marriage, prosecutors said, was marred by “instability, emotional distance and ongoing infidelity.” SH told prosecutors that she had come to believe that Mr. Vander Meer was having an affair after finding condoms and hotel receipts. The couple divorced in 2014.
Alexandra E. Petri contributed reporting.