Ex-Pastor Dies Days After Arrest in Wife's 2006 Death

UPDATE Jun 25, 2026 2:45 PM CDT

Former Las Vegas youth pastor David Vander Meer has died in custody, days after he was arrested and charged with murder in the 2006 death of his wife, Bernadette, who fell to her death during a hike in Utah. Ahead of an extradition hearing in Las Vegas on Thursday, the judge said Vander Meer, who was arrested Monday, had died, KSNV reports. Police confirmed that a Clark County Detention Center inmate was hospitalized Wednesday for "self-sustained injuries" and died Thursday.

• Barry Diamond, former senior pastor of a church Vander Meer worked in, tells NBC News he was informed that the suspect had hanged himself. "There are no winners here," Diamond says. "This is a tragedy for Bernadette's family, this is a tragedy for Dave's family. They're good people and he hurt them too." The investigation was reopened last year after Diamond reported his suspicions to investigators.

Jun 25, 2026 2:00 AM CDT

A 2006 fatal plunge at Zion National Park that was long treated as a tragic mishap is now at the center of a murder case, NBC News reports. Former Las Vegas youth pastor David Vander Meer has been arrested and charged with murder and insurance fraud in the death of his wife, Bernadette, who fell an estimated 1,200 feet while the couple hiked Angel's Landing during an anniversary trip, according to a Utah court affidavit. Her death was initially ruled accidental despite what investigators then considered "suspicious" circumstances, including a recent increase in the couple's life insurance coverage from $150,000 to $600,000; Vander Meer collected more than $567,000 after her death, the filing says.

The case was reopened after a senior pastor at Vander Meer's former church told authorities last year he believed Vander Meer had pushed his wife, and that Vander Meer had been fired for throwing alcohol- and gambling-fueled parties for underage church members. A former youth group member—identified as SH—told investigators she'd had a sexual relationship with Vander Meer beginning when she was 16, and recalled him saying the "only way they could be together" was if Bernadette were not alive, according to the affidavit. SH said she broke things off the night before the Zion trip. But the two later reunited, she said, marrying in 2008 and divorcing in 2014.

Bernadette's father told the Las Vegas Review-Journal his daughter was an experienced hiker and that her death never made sense to him. She was a worship leader at the church where both her husband and her brother-in-law worked as pastors, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Her parents say their daughter was preparing to leave her husband when she died, and suspected he'd been cheating on her. Vander Meer, now 49, remains jailed in Las Vegas as Utah pursues extradition.