David Vander Meer fatally injured himself at Las Vegas’s Clark County Detention Center earlier on Thursday

The former youth pastor has killed himself in jail three days after he was charged with his wife’s murder at Zion National Park, twenty years ago

His suicide was announced ahead of a planned extradition hearing that sought to move him from Nevada to Utah to face charges

Vander Meer, 49, was charged on Monday with the murder of his wife Bernadette, on August 22, 2006

Bernadette, 28, fell to her death from a cliff during a trip to the iconic Utah beauty spot, her death was initially considered an accident and the case was closed due to a lack of evidence

However, a warrant was issued for Vander Meer’s arrest this week for Bernadette’s murder after new information came in that implicated him

Youth pastor David Vander Meer, [photo], killed himself in jail on Thursday, three days after he was charged with murdering his wife Bernadette during a trip to Zion National Park on Aug. 22, 2006 

A former youth pastor from Utah, has killed himself in jail three days after he was charged with his wife’s 2006 murder at Zion National Park.
David Vander Meer fatally injured himself at Las Vegas’s Clark County Detention Center earlier on Thursday.
His suicide was announced ahead of a planned extradition hearing that sought to move him from Nevada to Utah to face charges. 
David Vander Meer, 49, was charged on Monday with the August 2006 murder of his wife Bernadette. 
When 28-year-old Bernadette Vander Meer fell to her death from a cliff during a trip to the iconic Utah beauty spot, her death was initially thought to have been an accident. The case was then closed due to a lack of evidence. 
In a later development, a warrant was issued this week by the Washington County District Attorney’s Office for the arrest of Vander Meer for the murder of his wife, after newly emerging information implicated him. 
The Las Vegas resident, was charged and taken into custody on Monday, June 22, by a fugitive task force from the Washington County Attorney’s Office with the help of the U.S. Marshals Service and booked into Clark County Detention Center on an out-of-state warrant.

Bernadette Vander Meer, [photo], was on a hike in Utah’s Zion National Park with her youth pastor husband, David, in 2006 when she fell off a cliff to her death, at the time believed to be an accident – until recent information pointed to her hiking companion – her husband

When he was informed that he had hung himself, Barry Diamond, the former senior pastor of the church where Vander Meer had previously worked as a youth pastor, said ‘There are no winners here. 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.’  
Bernadette’s death was ruled an accident decades ago, but ‘investigators felt that circumstances were suspicious,’ according to a probable cause affidavit. 
Her heartbroken parents, Laura and Richard Gudenkauf, have said they long suspected that Vander Meer played a role in their daughter’s death. 
‘I did a lot of hiking with her.’ ‘She was a mountain goat. For her to fall off a cliff? No,’ her dad Richard Gudenkauf said.
The bereaved parents couple said they later found out that their son-in-law allegedly, was having an affair with a younger woman. Furthermore, that he increased his and Bernadette’s life insurance policies just before her death.  
Bernadette was preparing to leave her husband at this time, her mother Laura revealed. 
‘She was getting ready to leave him. She told him if he didn’t change, she was going to divorce him because he kept spending all this time with the other woman.’  

Bernadette Vander Meer , 28, fell to her death from a cliff during a trip to Zion National Park, an iconic Utah beauty spot twenty years ago

Her heartbroken parents, Laura Gudenkauf [left], and Richard Gudenkauf [center], said they long suspected that Vander Meer played a role in their daughter’s death

According to reports at the time of Bernadette’s death, she and her then-husband set out for a hike on the Angels Landing trail around 6.30am on August 22, 2006, before she fell 1,200ft to her death. 
The then 29-year-old pastor said she had fallen while he was trying to take a picture of her near the trail’s edge, court documents previously stated. 
Investigators opened the case back up in 2022, after receiving word from a former youth group member that Vander Meer used his position at New Song church to ‘groom kids.’
Officials said he had been involved in an ‘inappropriate sexual relationship’ with an underage member of the youth ministry, and that he allegedly told the girl that they could be together if his wife was ‘not alive,’ the report stated. 
An affidavit alleged that Vander Meer began having a close relationship with a young girl when she was 16. He was her youth pastor.
The girl, who has only been identified as ‘SH’ in court documents, and Vander Meer would have sex at the church and hotels for years after they met around 2002, according to the report. 

At the same time of Bernadette’s death, her husband was having an affair with a 14-year-old teenager in his youth ministry. Bernadette suspected her husband was cheating. According to Bernadette’s mother Laura, her daughter was preparing to leave Vander Meer

On April 6, 2022, investigators “received a tip” from a person identified in the affidavit as a “previous youth group member,” who accused Vander Meer of “using his position of special trust to groom kids,” the document says.
SH, who had been a member of the youth group, claimed she had been in an ongoing sexual relationship with Vander Meer that started when she was 16. She broke it off the night before Vander Meer left for Zion National Park with his wife because she “felt it was wrong,” she said in her interview with a detective.
The sheriff’s detective indicated “further follow-up and investigation was needed,” according to the affidavit.
However, there was no follow-up until last year, when Jessica Bate of Washington County Attorney’s Office in Utah, who led the investigations, re-interviewed SH.
During the interview, SH said that she recalled Vander Meer’s telling her that “the only way they could be together is if Bernadette was not alive” and that his wife suspected he was cheating on her.
The pair resumed their sexual relationship and eventually got married in 2008, “so David could be on SH’s health insurance,” according to the affidavit.
Vander Meer had been fired for “throwing parties for the underage members of his church” at his house, where there were liquor and gambling, the affidavit says.
Diamond said they hired Vander Meer back after his wife died and was not aware of his relationship with SH at the time.
“We felt for David,” he said. “He’d been through a tragedy. Bernadette had been a part of our church. We cared for her very much. Whatever we could do for David we wanted to do.”
Vander Meer and SH divorced in 2014, and Vander Meer since married two other times.
Judge Eric Goodman, who was supposed to preside over Vander Meer’s extradition hearing in in Las Vegas Justice Court, informed reporters of his death at the start of his hearing on Thursday. 
‘That is all the information that I have,’ Goodman told the court.
‘That’s all I know, he’s not here, he’s deceased, so let’s take it off camera.’