A former Las Vegas youth pastor has been charged with murder and insurance fraud nearly 20 years after his wife fell some 1,200 feet to her death from a spot in Zion National Park, court records show.Limited time: Save 25% on NBC News subscriptionGet exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading.David Vander Meer was arrested by U.S.Marshals on Monday in connection with the August 22, 2006, death of Bernadette Vander Meer at the park in Utah.“At the time, due to a lack of evidence, and limited investigation, Bernadette Vander Meer’s fall was ruled an accident and the case was closed — although investigators felt the circumstances were suspicious,” a probable cause affidavit filed in the Fifth District Court, Washington County, states.The investigation was relaunched in 2025, according to the affidavit, after the senior pastor, Barry Diamond, of a church where Vander Meer had worked told Washington County Attorney’s Office investigators that “he believed the death was not an accident and that David pushed Bernadette.”The affidavit states that Vander Meer had previously said he increased his and his wife’s life insurance policies from $150,000 to $600,000 shortly before Bernadette Vander Meer died.There is no explanation in the available court papers why that did not spark a more serious investigation into whether Vander Meer killed his wife.
According to the affidavit, Vander Meer receieved a life insurance payout of more than $567,000 in 2007.As of Wednesday, Vander Meer was still listed as an inmate at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas and the available court records did not detail whether he had a lawyer.NBC News has reached out to the Washington County Attorney’s Office for more details on when they plan to extradite Vander Meer to Utah.In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Bernadette Vander Meer’s father said he long suspected her death was no accident.“I did a lot of hiking with her,” Richard Gudenkau...