June 25, 2026
Former Youth Pastor Charged With Wife’s Murder 20 Years After Deadly Hike
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RSS Feed Authorities have arrested and charged former Vegas youth pastor David Vander Meer with first degree murder for the 2006 death of his wife Bernadette. According to police, David and Bernadette were on a sunrise anniversary hike in Zion National Park when Bernadette fell 1200 feet to her death. It was initially ruled an accident, but now prosecutors say they have evidence that Vander Meer pushed his wife off that cliff to be with one of his youth group members and collect nearly $600,000 from a newly purchased life insurance policy.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks, it is Thursday, June twenty fifth. Stop me when you heard this one before. Man goes on a hike with his wife, she falls to her death. He claims it was an accident. He gets arrested for murder later. However, there are a bunch of twists and turns in this story that make it like one you have never heard before. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Let's start with the fact that this was twenty years ago and this is the damn youth pastor we're talking about Ropes.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just you laid that out perfectly, because yes, it is, unfortunately a stereotypical murder, but this is not like the others.
00:00:43
Speaker 3: That is true.
00:00:44
Speaker 2: David VanderMeer, Yes, he was a former youth pastor out of Las Vegas. In two thousand and six, he and his twenty nine year old wife are celebrating a wedding anniversary. What better way to celebrate your wedding anniversary and to go on a sunset hike on one of the most dangerous hiking trails in the United States of America.
00:01:08
Speaker 3: That was the choice.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: And again, they live out in that area, so to take up this. They're from the Vegas area, so this was in Utah. That's right where.
00:01:17
Speaker 2: Yes, it's Zion National Park. It's all around this area. I've told you I've been on this hike because this hike was the most This was the scariest hike I think, definitely I've ever been on in the United States.
00:01:30
Speaker 3: It's called Angels Landing.
00:01:31
Speaker 2: If you don't know about it, I encourage all of you google it, look at the pictures. It is a steep thousand foot plus climb where you are literally holding onto chains and for your dear life. And they decide to do this in the dark with headlamps so that they can make it to the top to the peak at sunrise. I get the idea, and they want to get a picture ceiling their wedding anniversary. They've just gotten up to the top of this dangerous hike and they have the picture to prove it right.
00:02:02
Speaker 1: Twenty nine years old going for a hike, young couple, youth pastor. This is something they assume hikers. You don't just start hiking and take on this one.
00:02:11
Speaker 3: She's an avid hiker.
00:02:12
Speaker 1: This is so yes, so far, so good, no problem, But then tragedy strikes.
00:02:18
Speaker 2: Yes, So here is his story, initially to the police because obviously they needed to talk to him. So he's telling them, Yes, we went on a sunrise hike. We were wearing headlamps, no one was around. I went to go set up the camera to take a pick. He said that his wife, Bernadette, was standing near the edge. He went to go move the backpacks out of the shot, and when he turned around, she was gone. He told authorities that he heard her screaming as she fell. That might be the only true part of his statement, according to Pope, but.
00:02:51
Speaker 1: That sounds horrific. So you take this into account. Roads, it's dark out there. They're the only two out there. There are no witnesses. This guy's a trusted member the community, is he not? This is a youth pastor correct question his story. So that was his story. He was sticking to it, and it seemed like that story worked for about twenty years.
00:03:09
Speaker 2: Yes and so yes, and investigators did say they did know that they were suspicious at the time, but they had no other reason they thought to go any further, so they ruled her death an accident case closed okay until last year, where the investigation was relaunched. Why was the investigation relaunched because a senior pastor at the very church where VanderMeer I say worked in the past, tense and we'll get into that, called investigators. He called police and he said I believe the death of Bernadette was not an accident and that David pushed her, and that got police looking into the case once again.
00:03:53
Speaker 1: So it is weird how it came about. It took almost twenty years, fifteen sixty, seventeen. I'm trying to do the numbers, but they got it tip in two thousand and twenty, that right, and then twenty twenty two, twenty twenty five.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: Correct.
00:04:06
Speaker 1: Don't know if those two folks who called in these tips were in any way connected or anything like that, but could very well have been independent. Now, why after so much time did they decide they wanted to call what new information they had? I don't know, but Robes the police were done with it. They weren't looking, they weren't asking, and their phone starts ringing.
00:04:26
Speaker 3: It's so true, and so it's interesting.
00:04:27
Speaker 2: The official investigation was, as you pointed out, launched last year because of that senior pastor. But yes, in twenty twenty two. They also got a tip from one of David Vandermeer's ex wives. But before she was his ex wife, she was a youth group member of his.
00:04:46
Speaker 1: And this is where things given get even a little uglier in this whole case Robes, the backstory on him is not just Robes potentially a murderer, potentially a guy who killed his own wife. This is a youth pastor who is now being accused and suggests he was up to a bunch of criminal activity before this.
00:05:10
Speaker 2: Yes, that he was grooming members of his own youth group, so young women and so one of these now older women told police that, yes, before, when she was sixteen, she was having a sexual relationship with him while he was married to Bernadette.
00:05:30
Speaker 3: And it just so happens that she.
00:05:32
Speaker 2: Decided to break off their relationship the night before the fatal hike.
00:05:39
Speaker 1: Just a coincidence. I'm sure his defense attorney will.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: Say, yes, so we will get into that backstory because it is a doozy and it is pretty remarkable.
00:05:49
Speaker 3: She is claiming.
00:05:53
Speaker 2: That he told her when she broke it off, the only way they could be together is if Bernadette was not a live.
00:06:00
Speaker 3: And that his wife did suspect him of cheating on her.
00:06:03
Speaker 2: So I just when police hear that. So now you've got a motive, right, Okay, You've got a woman saying that, underage she was having a sexual relationship with him.
00:06:14
Speaker 3: She broke it off with him.
00:06:16
Speaker 2: The next day his wife dies in a fatal hiking accident, and.
00:06:23
Speaker 3: She claims that.
00:06:23
Speaker 2: He told her that the only way they could be together was if his wife died.
00:06:28
Speaker 3: Well, guess what.
00:06:29
Speaker 2: They resumed their sexual relationship after his wife died and eventually got married. So more to come on that, But here's another caveat that also was incredibly puzzling to me that police just looked over this. But Vandermere increased his wife's life insurance from one hundred and fifty thousand to six hundred thousand shortly before her death. We watch a lot of crime stories and a lot of crime specials.
00:06:56
Speaker 3: This is the biggest red flag very.
00:07:00
Speaker 1: This is stupid. What I'm saying is ropes. You piece it together, I guess, I guess. We know you still have to have evidence, you still have to build a case. But every single thing here is something you've heard before he went through. This is the exact roads. This might be the most classic spouse killing of a spouse story ever. It's how classic can you get? He's having an affair with a younger person, he gets life insurance, the mistress says it's over, we can't do this, and the wife is dead on a hike, and he collects insurance money ropes. This is just at some point, Okay, yes, this could be the one. This could be the one. Robes that all this stuff can be explained. Otherwise, this is kind of a done deal, kind of a thing. Okay, we've seen this story.
00:07:57
Speaker 3: Before, so yes, I guess.
00:08:00
Speaker 2: I'm just curious why it took twenty years, why it took two different people to call in when this would not I wouldn't imagine have taken a lot of detective work to put together.
00:08:11
Speaker 1: Okay, but it makes perfect sense to we're sitting here putting it together. They have to, in some evidentiary way put it together. I don't know what can they prove now they just have Maybe they were say he confessed to me, there has ropes. There is not like some evidence just appeared short of a witness statement. What could there be? We found what in his home? We found some pictures that suggest this, we fought. No, they've done all that before.
00:08:39
Speaker 3: Maybe it is.
00:08:39
Speaker 1: Maybe these are folks who say he confessed short of that robes. They're going to have a hard time prove in this camp.
00:08:45
Speaker 2: I guess you'd make a good point. This is all circumstantial. It seems obvious. Yes, and yet you still have to prove it. And how can you prove in this again, there's so many similar cases. This reminds me of the situation with Mango with the father son. The son is on a hike with his father. Yes, he had motive. His father was changing his will. His father was going to basically give all of his billions of dollars away to charity and not to his three children. And so his eldest son his in his the guy who stood to gain the most, or perhaps lose the most if his father in fact changed the will. His father's slips.
00:09:24
Speaker 3: On a hiking track during a hike prove it.
00:09:26
Speaker 2: There's no one to prove otherwise, there's no witnesses to say anything different.
00:09:31
Speaker 1: We got the case in in Hawaii, the doctor out there. The reason he got convicted is because she survived. You're so he tried to beat her and uh and she had, He was bloodied and fought back and survived, and now he got convicted ropes had she gone over?
00:09:50
Speaker 2: Who would have thought some physician, some doctor, someone with an MD behind his name, could possibly do that to his wife?
00:09:58
Speaker 1: Right, what we're saying, we've seen this story so many times before in Rose. There's circumstantial evidence. You can convict on that. For a reason, because this story is a really big duh. If you're on the jury, this is a circ Yes, it's circumstantial, but yes, enough circumstances can make you convince beyond a reasonable doubt that the guy did what their suggesting he did. Bro this is this is madness, the life insurance, the hike. Yes, let's go in the dark on the most dangerous hike that we can find.
00:10:34
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:10:34
Speaker 2: Agree, And speaking of when we come back, we're going to tell you a little bit about this hike. We're also going to tell you about what Bernadotte's own father has had to say about this and the senior pastor. Why did David VanderMeer get fired as a youth pastor and what made his senior pastor call police? And welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ. We are talking about a former youth pastor out of Las Vegas charged with his wife's murder twenty years after the fact. Police say, yes, Bernadette Vandermere did not slip and fall on a wedding anniversary hike at Angel's Landing. No, they believe that David Vandermeir, her own husband, pushed her off the cliff so A he could collect a ton of life insurance money and B he could be with his young lover who had been a member of his youth group.
00:11:35
Speaker 1: All I hear in my head right now is people Bryson singing a tale the oldest time. It's so story, right, I got insurance, killed my wife so I could be with the mistress.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it really is sadly so so stereotypical. But yeah, this hike that he chose, this is, I said, one of the most deadly dangerous hikes in the United States. Eighteen people have died. Records began and look just two months ago someone slipped and fell. This happens sadly a lot. This is almost a fifteen hundred foot rock formation, straight up, chains, narrows, steep, even on a perfectly bright, brilliant day, and holding on to the chains. People still slip and fall.
00:12:20
Speaker 1: Well, it happens. The context for the numbers, So you said, since the records have been out, But did I not see that in the past fifty years forty five fifty years? I say, only five. That's a lot. But this isn't an incredibly frequent thing that takes place that people are just falling off this clip.
00:12:38
Speaker 3: No, it just so happened.
00:12:39
Speaker 2: The day that I hiked seventy years ago, someone had fallen to their death the day before.
00:12:43
Speaker 3: So this look it's rare, but it happened. This is happened. This is a climb hike at your own risks type of a hike.
00:12:52
Speaker 2: This is a hike you go to to be thrilling. Your heart will be pounding. This is a frightening hike. So I'm just saying to take it at night or to do it when it's dark is like an insane thing. I'm a pretty risky person in the sense that I like to push myself. I wouldn't do that hike at night. So it's pretty remarkable. But her own father, he spoke to reporters once the arrest of his former son in law was made known, and he said he long suspected her death was not an accident. He said, I did a lot of hiking with her. She was a mountain goat. For her to fall off a cliff, no, and look, I've stood at that cliff, I've taken a picture. It seems highly unlikely that you would just fall off the cliff like it wasn't while like she fell while she was hiking, she was standing.
00:13:42
Speaker 3: Why would she fall off the cliff?
00:13:45
Speaker 1: Well, I know, accidents happen, they can happen, they do happen, and Rose doesn't happen that frequently, and it's a chance that she could have been one of those unfortunate accidents. The part that makes it more unlikely is that she just happened to be a rare case of somebody falling. And this rare case just happens to also be the case that her husband that was with her when she fell, took out five hundred thousand in life insurance the year before and happens to be having a year's long affair with someone. That makes it a.
00:14:16
Speaker 3: Little it's likely.
00:14:17
Speaker 1: That's a lot of stuff ro agreed to come together.
00:14:20
Speaker 2: And then the the brazenness of David VanderMeer if again he is in fact guilty of this. He resumes his relationship with this young woman immediately after his wife's death. They marry in two thousand and eight, so I guess, you know, within a year and a half or so.
00:14:39
Speaker 1: I wonder how that went.
00:14:40
Speaker 2: They divorced in twenty fourteen, and he was married to other times, so he he at least divorced his other wives and didn't they didn't meet a different fate. But his senior pastor who ended up calling in this last tip last year that alerted police. He had to to fire David VanderMeer eventually because he said he was throwing parties for all of the underage members of his church, including liquor gambling. So he was behaving in horrific behavior with underage members of his own youth group, clearly continuing a pattern of behavior that this young woman describes having started a sexual relationship with him at sixteen. And look, I can I'm imagining this trial with her testifying, with the senior pastor testifying, with maybe perhaps his other wives testifying. This is going to be a spectacle because right now he is still maintaining his innocence as of Wednesday, yesterday, he was still in a Vegas jail.
00:15:46
Speaker 3: He will be.
00:15:46
Speaker 2: Extradited to Utah ultimately to face these charges. But he is facing first degree murder and insurance fraud and this will be a hell of a trial twenty years in the making.
00:15:59
Speaker 3: But I am imagine.
00:16:00
Speaker 2: Her father feels a little sleeping a little better after his arrest.
00:16:06
Speaker 1: Just imagine those moments when we've covered I mean, the Hawaii story recently was was one we called just to hear that woman be able to report the horror of the moment. That's what we don't get. We don't nobody needs to describe how it ends. And just to be able to push somebody to the death like that, and just we we got an insight into how those final moments go because we never get it, and we got it from a survivor and Rose, it's just terrifying, how to you. There's a lot of ways to go, man, but that is just to push somebody off of cliff.
00:16:40
Speaker 3: I cannot even imagine.
00:16:42
Speaker 2: Yes, And to hear her tell the story the doctor's wife were and then to hear him try to turn it around on her that she was trying to kill him when her face was completely blooded and he had like.
00:16:53
Speaker 3: A scratch on him.
00:16:54
Speaker 2: It's amazing to hear people trying to defend the indefensible. So yeah, we will hopefully see David Vandermere's day in court sometime soon. But in the meantime, thank you as always for listening to us. I'm Amy Roebuck alongside T. J.
00:17:09
Speaker 3: Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks, it is Thursday, June twenty fifth. Stop me when you heard this one before. Man goes on a hike with his wife, she falls to her death. He claims it was an accident. He gets arrested for murder later. However, there are a bunch of twists and turns in this story that make it like one you have never heard before. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Let's start with the fact that this was twenty years ago and this is the damn youth pastor we're talking about Ropes.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just you laid that out perfectly, because yes, it is, unfortunately a stereotypical murder, but this is not like the others.
00:00:43
Speaker 3: That is true.
00:00:44
Speaker 2: David VanderMeer, Yes, he was a former youth pastor out of Las Vegas. In two thousand and six, he and his twenty nine year old wife are celebrating a wedding anniversary. What better way to celebrate your wedding anniversary and to go on a sunset hike on one of the most dangerous hiking trails in the United States of America.
00:01:08
Speaker 3: That was the choice.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: And again, they live out in that area, so to take up this. They're from the Vegas area, so this was in Utah. That's right where.
00:01:17
Speaker 2: Yes, it's Zion National Park. It's all around this area. I've told you I've been on this hike because this hike was the most This was the scariest hike I think, definitely I've ever been on in the United States.
00:01:30
Speaker 3: It's called Angels Landing.
00:01:31
Speaker 2: If you don't know about it, I encourage all of you google it, look at the pictures. It is a steep thousand foot plus climb where you are literally holding onto chains and for your dear life. And they decide to do this in the dark with headlamps so that they can make it to the top to the peak at sunrise. I get the idea, and they want to get a picture ceiling their wedding anniversary. They've just gotten up to the top of this dangerous hike and they have the picture to prove it right.
00:02:02
Speaker 1: Twenty nine years old going for a hike, young couple, youth pastor. This is something they assume hikers. You don't just start hiking and take on this one.
00:02:11
Speaker 3: She's an avid hiker.
00:02:12
Speaker 1: This is so yes, so far, so good, no problem, But then tragedy strikes.
00:02:18
Speaker 2: Yes, So here is his story, initially to the police because obviously they needed to talk to him. So he's telling them, Yes, we went on a sunrise hike. We were wearing headlamps, no one was around. I went to go set up the camera to take a pick. He said that his wife, Bernadette, was standing near the edge. He went to go move the backpacks out of the shot, and when he turned around, she was gone. He told authorities that he heard her screaming as she fell. That might be the only true part of his statement, according to Pope, but.
00:02:51
Speaker 1: That sounds horrific. So you take this into account. Roads, it's dark out there. They're the only two out there. There are no witnesses. This guy's a trusted member the community, is he not? This is a youth pastor correct question his story. So that was his story. He was sticking to it, and it seemed like that story worked for about twenty years.
00:03:09
Speaker 2: Yes and so yes, and investigators did say they did know that they were suspicious at the time, but they had no other reason they thought to go any further, so they ruled her death an accident case closed okay until last year, where the investigation was relaunched. Why was the investigation relaunched because a senior pastor at the very church where VanderMeer I say worked in the past, tense and we'll get into that, called investigators. He called police and he said I believe the death of Bernadette was not an accident and that David pushed her, and that got police looking into the case once again.
00:03:53
Speaker 1: So it is weird how it came about. It took almost twenty years, fifteen sixty, seventeen. I'm trying to do the numbers, but they got it tip in two thousand and twenty, that right, and then twenty twenty two, twenty twenty five.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: Correct.
00:04:06
Speaker 1: Don't know if those two folks who called in these tips were in any way connected or anything like that, but could very well have been independent. Now, why after so much time did they decide they wanted to call what new information they had? I don't know, but Robes the police were done with it. They weren't looking, they weren't asking, and their phone starts ringing.
00:04:26
Speaker 3: It's so true, and so it's interesting.
00:04:27
Speaker 2: The official investigation was, as you pointed out, launched last year because of that senior pastor. But yes, in twenty twenty two. They also got a tip from one of David Vandermeer's ex wives. But before she was his ex wife, she was a youth group member of his.
00:04:46
Speaker 1: And this is where things given get even a little uglier in this whole case Robes, the backstory on him is not just Robes potentially a murderer, potentially a guy who killed his own wife. This is a youth pastor who is now being accused and suggests he was up to a bunch of criminal activity before this.
00:05:10
Speaker 2: Yes, that he was grooming members of his own youth group, so young women and so one of these now older women told police that, yes, before, when she was sixteen, she was having a sexual relationship with him while he was married to Bernadette.
00:05:30
Speaker 3: And it just so happens that she.
00:05:32
Speaker 2: Decided to break off their relationship the night before the fatal hike.
00:05:39
Speaker 1: Just a coincidence. I'm sure his defense attorney will.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: Say, yes, so we will get into that backstory because it is a doozy and it is pretty remarkable.
00:05:49
Speaker 3: She is claiming.
00:05:53
Speaker 2: That he told her when she broke it off, the only way they could be together is if Bernadette was not a live.
00:06:00
Speaker 3: And that his wife did suspect him of cheating on her.
00:06:03
Speaker 2: So I just when police hear that. So now you've got a motive, right, Okay, You've got a woman saying that, underage she was having a sexual relationship with him.
00:06:14
Speaker 3: She broke it off with him.
00:06:16
Speaker 2: The next day his wife dies in a fatal hiking accident, and.
00:06:23
Speaker 3: She claims that.
00:06:23
Speaker 2: He told her that the only way they could be together was if his wife died.
00:06:28
Speaker 3: Well, guess what.
00:06:29
Speaker 2: They resumed their sexual relationship after his wife died and eventually got married. So more to come on that, But here's another caveat that also was incredibly puzzling to me that police just looked over this. But Vandermere increased his wife's life insurance from one hundred and fifty thousand to six hundred thousand shortly before her death. We watch a lot of crime stories and a lot of crime specials.
00:06:56
Speaker 3: This is the biggest red flag very.
00:07:00
Speaker 1: This is stupid. What I'm saying is ropes. You piece it together, I guess, I guess. We know you still have to have evidence, you still have to build a case. But every single thing here is something you've heard before he went through. This is the exact roads. This might be the most classic spouse killing of a spouse story ever. It's how classic can you get? He's having an affair with a younger person, he gets life insurance, the mistress says it's over, we can't do this, and the wife is dead on a hike, and he collects insurance money ropes. This is just at some point, Okay, yes, this could be the one. This could be the one. Robes that all this stuff can be explained. Otherwise, this is kind of a done deal, kind of a thing. Okay, we've seen this story.
00:07:57
Speaker 3: Before, so yes, I guess.
00:08:00
Speaker 2: I'm just curious why it took twenty years, why it took two different people to call in when this would not I wouldn't imagine have taken a lot of detective work to put together.
00:08:11
Speaker 1: Okay, but it makes perfect sense to we're sitting here putting it together. They have to, in some evidentiary way put it together. I don't know what can they prove now they just have Maybe they were say he confessed to me, there has ropes. There is not like some evidence just appeared short of a witness statement. What could there be? We found what in his home? We found some pictures that suggest this, we fought. No, they've done all that before.
00:08:39
Speaker 3: Maybe it is.
00:08:39
Speaker 1: Maybe these are folks who say he confessed short of that robes. They're going to have a hard time prove in this camp.
00:08:45
Speaker 2: I guess you'd make a good point. This is all circumstantial. It seems obvious. Yes, and yet you still have to prove it. And how can you prove in this again, there's so many similar cases. This reminds me of the situation with Mango with the father son. The son is on a hike with his father. Yes, he had motive. His father was changing his will. His father was going to basically give all of his billions of dollars away to charity and not to his three children. And so his eldest son his in his the guy who stood to gain the most, or perhaps lose the most if his father in fact changed the will. His father's slips.
00:09:24
Speaker 3: On a hiking track during a hike prove it.
00:09:26
Speaker 2: There's no one to prove otherwise, there's no witnesses to say anything different.
00:09:31
Speaker 1: We got the case in in Hawaii, the doctor out there. The reason he got convicted is because she survived. You're so he tried to beat her and uh and she had, He was bloodied and fought back and survived, and now he got convicted ropes had she gone over?
00:09:50
Speaker 2: Who would have thought some physician, some doctor, someone with an MD behind his name, could possibly do that to his wife?
00:09:58
Speaker 1: Right, what we're saying, we've seen this story so many times before in Rose. There's circumstantial evidence. You can convict on that. For a reason, because this story is a really big duh. If you're on the jury, this is a circ Yes, it's circumstantial, but yes, enough circumstances can make you convince beyond a reasonable doubt that the guy did what their suggesting he did. Bro this is this is madness, the life insurance, the hike. Yes, let's go in the dark on the most dangerous hike that we can find.
00:10:34
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:10:34
Speaker 2: Agree, And speaking of when we come back, we're going to tell you a little bit about this hike. We're also going to tell you about what Bernadotte's own father has had to say about this and the senior pastor. Why did David VanderMeer get fired as a youth pastor and what made his senior pastor call police? And welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ. We are talking about a former youth pastor out of Las Vegas charged with his wife's murder twenty years after the fact. Police say, yes, Bernadette Vandermere did not slip and fall on a wedding anniversary hike at Angel's Landing. No, they believe that David Vandermeir, her own husband, pushed her off the cliff so A he could collect a ton of life insurance money and B he could be with his young lover who had been a member of his youth group.
00:11:35
Speaker 1: All I hear in my head right now is people Bryson singing a tale the oldest time. It's so story, right, I got insurance, killed my wife so I could be with the mistress.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it really is sadly so so stereotypical. But yeah, this hike that he chose, this is, I said, one of the most deadly dangerous hikes in the United States. Eighteen people have died. Records began and look just two months ago someone slipped and fell. This happens sadly a lot. This is almost a fifteen hundred foot rock formation, straight up, chains, narrows, steep, even on a perfectly bright, brilliant day, and holding on to the chains. People still slip and fall.
00:12:20
Speaker 1: Well, it happens. The context for the numbers, So you said, since the records have been out, But did I not see that in the past fifty years forty five fifty years? I say, only five. That's a lot. But this isn't an incredibly frequent thing that takes place that people are just falling off this clip.
00:12:38
Speaker 3: No, it just so happened.
00:12:39
Speaker 2: The day that I hiked seventy years ago, someone had fallen to their death the day before.
00:12:43
Speaker 3: So this look it's rare, but it happened. This is happened. This is a climb hike at your own risks type of a hike.
00:12:52
Speaker 2: This is a hike you go to to be thrilling. Your heart will be pounding. This is a frightening hike. So I'm just saying to take it at night or to do it when it's dark is like an insane thing. I'm a pretty risky person in the sense that I like to push myself. I wouldn't do that hike at night. So it's pretty remarkable. But her own father, he spoke to reporters once the arrest of his former son in law was made known, and he said he long suspected her death was not an accident. He said, I did a lot of hiking with her. She was a mountain goat. For her to fall off a cliff, no, and look, I've stood at that cliff, I've taken a picture. It seems highly unlikely that you would just fall off the cliff like it wasn't while like she fell while she was hiking, she was standing.
00:13:42
Speaker 3: Why would she fall off the cliff?
00:13:45
Speaker 1: Well, I know, accidents happen, they can happen, they do happen, and Rose doesn't happen that frequently, and it's a chance that she could have been one of those unfortunate accidents. The part that makes it more unlikely is that she just happened to be a rare case of somebody falling. And this rare case just happens to also be the case that her husband that was with her when she fell, took out five hundred thousand in life insurance the year before and happens to be having a year's long affair with someone. That makes it a.
00:14:16
Speaker 3: Little it's likely.
00:14:17
Speaker 1: That's a lot of stuff ro agreed to come together.
00:14:20
Speaker 2: And then the the brazenness of David VanderMeer if again he is in fact guilty of this. He resumes his relationship with this young woman immediately after his wife's death. They marry in two thousand and eight, so I guess, you know, within a year and a half or so.
00:14:39
Speaker 1: I wonder how that went.
00:14:40
Speaker 2: They divorced in twenty fourteen, and he was married to other times, so he he at least divorced his other wives and didn't they didn't meet a different fate. But his senior pastor who ended up calling in this last tip last year that alerted police. He had to to fire David VanderMeer eventually because he said he was throwing parties for all of the underage members of his church, including liquor gambling. So he was behaving in horrific behavior with underage members of his own youth group, clearly continuing a pattern of behavior that this young woman describes having started a sexual relationship with him at sixteen. And look, I can I'm imagining this trial with her testifying, with the senior pastor testifying, with maybe perhaps his other wives testifying. This is going to be a spectacle because right now he is still maintaining his innocence as of Wednesday, yesterday, he was still in a Vegas jail.
00:15:46
Speaker 3: He will be.
00:15:46
Speaker 2: Extradited to Utah ultimately to face these charges. But he is facing first degree murder and insurance fraud and this will be a hell of a trial twenty years in the making.
00:15:59
Speaker 3: But I am imagine.
00:16:00
Speaker 2: Her father feels a little sleeping a little better after his arrest.
00:16:06
Speaker 1: Just imagine those moments when we've covered I mean, the Hawaii story recently was was one we called just to hear that woman be able to report the horror of the moment. That's what we don't get. We don't nobody needs to describe how it ends. And just to be able to push somebody to the death like that, and just we we got an insight into how those final moments go because we never get it, and we got it from a survivor and Rose, it's just terrifying, how to you. There's a lot of ways to go, man, but that is just to push somebody off of cliff.
00:16:40
Speaker 3: I cannot even imagine.
00:16:42
Speaker 2: Yes, And to hear her tell the story the doctor's wife were and then to hear him try to turn it around on her that she was trying to kill him when her face was completely blooded and he had like.
00:16:53
Speaker 3: A scratch on him.
00:16:54
Speaker 2: It's amazing to hear people trying to defend the indefensible. So yeah, we will hopefully see David Vandermere's day in court sometime soon. But in the meantime, thank you as always for listening to us. I'm Amy Roebuck alongside T. J.
00:17:09
Speaker 3: Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.