A former youth pastor charged with murdering his wife on a Utah hiking trail 20 years after her death was ruled an accident killed himself in his jail cell Thursday — closing a case that exposes two decades of institutional indifference to a dead woman and the girl groomed in her shadow.
David Vander Meer, 48, died of what authorities called "self-sustaining injuries" in custody, just three days after his arrest on murder charges, according to the New York Post. His death ends a saga that should have ended at the beginning: when a 29-year-old woman plunged from Angels Landing in Zion National Park on her wedding anniversary and every red flag around her husband was ignored.
Bernadette Vander Meer fell thousands of feet to her death on August 22, 2006. Her husband, then a youth pastor, told investigators he had walked away to set up a camera for sunrise photos and heard her scream. Despite suspicious circumstances, the case was ruled an accident and closed.
What authorities chose not to see at the time is staggering. Vander Meer had been carrying on a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl in his youth group, according to court documents. He told the girl they could only be together if his wife was "not alive." The underage mistress ended the affair the day before the Zion trip. He had also increased his wife's life insurance from $150,000 to $600,000 shortly before her death. He collected a $567,439 payout in 2007 and, according to the Guardian, lived "lavishly" afterward.
A coworker of Bernadette's at the New York New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas had raised concerns. Vander Meer's own church boss later told investigators the death "was not an accident" and that "David had pushed" his wife. None of it was enough to move the needle.
Within a year or two of his wife's death, Vander Meer was axed from the church — not for murder, but for throwing booze-filled parties for underage members, the Post reported. He was never charged with any crime related to his sexual relationship with a minor. Two years after Bernadette died, he married the girl he had groomed. They divorced in 2014 over allegations of infidelity.
It wasn't until 2022 — 16 years after Bernadette's death — that investigators reopened the case after receiving new information about the grooming, according to the Guardian. The woman, now an adult, told investigators what Vander Meer had said about his wife needing to be "not alive."
Bernadette's mother said her daughter was finally "vindicated" after the arrest. Her father, Richard Gudenkauf, told 8 News Now: "We've been waiting on the Lord for this day."
The 2006 obituary for Bernadette said she was survived by "her adoring husband, David" — the man now accused of pushing her off a cliff, collecting the insurance, and marrying the teenager he was sleeping with.
Vander Meer was also facing an insurance fraud charge at the time of his death. Now he'll never face a jury. The institutions that should have asked questions — law enforcement, the church, the insurance company — didn't. A dead woman waited 20 years for someone to care. Now the only man who could have been forced to answer for it in open court is gone.
