In June 2026, David Vander Meer was arrested in Nevada after a Utah grand jury indicted him on a murder charge in the 2006 death of his wife, Bernadette Vander Meer, 29. Prosecutors also charged him with insurance fraud tied to a $600,000 life insurance policy on Bernadette that he collected after she died.
A few days later, while he was waiting to be sent to Utah, Vander Meer died from self-inflicted injuries, according to People. In a suicide note, he said he was innocent and that he did not fear the case against him because he “didn’t kill her.”
The indictment came after police and the Washington County Attorney’s Office said they learned he had carried on a years-long affair with a former high school student before Bernadette’s death. That information led officials to reclassify a death that had been called an accident for two decades.
New charges followed a long-closed park investigation
On August 22, 2006, Vander Meer called 911 and said Bernadette had fallen from Angels Landing, a 5,770-foot rock formation in Zion National Park. A National Park Service incident report obtained by People said he then walked down the trail and met hikers going the other way.
One hiker later told park rangers that Vander Meer said a “man’s wife fell off the cliff” and did not say the woman was his wife. Another woman who saw him farther down the trail told rangers she noticed a scratch on the inside of his left forearm that looked like a “rug burn.”
The first hiker he met reportedly ended up collecting Vander Meer’s camera and other gear after he left those items behind and kept walking. Suspicious behavior in domestic violence cases can take many forms, such as when a Florida woman dubbed the Black Widow allegedly spiked a man’s drink with anxiety medication.
In an interview with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, the county attorney’s office, and a park ranger, Vander Meer gave a consistent account. He said the couple left their hotel and reached the park at 3:30 a.m., parked, rode bikes, and got to the trail around 4:20 a.m.
He said he had hiked the route once before and that it was Bernadette’s first time. They reached the summit around 6:10 a.m., he said. After they missed the sunrise shot they wanted, he said they tried to photograph her in silhouette.
He said he turned to move their backpacks out of the picture, heard a scream, and found she was gone. After about a month of work, investigators said they found no proof of a crime. Because his account stayed the same, the death was ruled accidental.
A probable cause affidavit obtained by PEOPLE later said that two days before the hike, the woman with whom Vander Meer was having an affair told him she wanted to end the relationship. The affidavit also said Bernadette had been excited that the trip would be just the two of them and not a youth-group outing. Violence can follow personal betrayals, as in a case where a pregnant woman met her ex-husband at a Texas Roadhouse and later woke up after being shot six times.
Authorities said Vander Meer first met that girl through his church youth group when she was 14. In her interview with investigators, she said the affair started in 2004, when she was 16. The affidavit said that after Bernadette died, the same woman drove from California to Las Vegas to sit shiva with Vander Meer.
Published: Sep 22, 2026 08:30 am