David Vander Meer, 49, denied killing his former wife in what police said was a suicide note written before he took his own life in jail.
In the note written to an undisclosed person, Vander Meer wrote, “I’ve always been very selective with what I share to people about how Bernadette died, solely because I know how bad it looks.
“I was never afraid of legal action though, because I didn’t kill her, and I never thought it would lead to an arrest.”
Vander Meer went on to write that the “additional allegations I have heard about are largely false, but not entirely. They paint a picture that can’t be escaped. They spell conviction.”
A second page of the note, which was sent to a redacted name “and family,” said, “I was naive to think that, just because I didn’t kill Bernadette, that there would be no problem with the charges.
Police released a photocopy of the letter Friday.
David Vander Meer was found face down and unresponsive inside his cell at the Clark County Detention Center in Nevada at around 9:30 p.m. on June 24.
Vander Meer, 49, was rushed to the University Medical Center in Las Vegas with what police described as “self-sustained injuries.” He was pronounced dead just after 2:35 a.m.
Officers performed chest compressions on the murder suspect just half an hour after he was seen sitting upright and awake inside his cell, where he was alone because of “the nature of his case.”
Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said, “What I will tell you … is that he strangulated himself, and he did it in what I would say was a unique and novel way.”
McMahill added that longtime corrections officers had “never seen that particular method.”
Vander Meer’s death came just three days after he was booked into the detention center on murder and insurance fraud charges relating to his wife’s death.
Vander Meer “left a handwritten suicide letter and a handwritten will in his cell, which has been photographed and impounded,” the report said.
No further details about the note and the will have been released. Medical examiners have not yet revealed Vander Meer’s cause of death.
McMahill said he had weighed whether Vander Meer’s suicide note should be released. “It’s a tough thing to read an individual’s suicide note,” McMahill said. “It’s a trauma for the family.
“I know this from losing my own brother to suicide and reading his note.”
In the viral moment leading to his death,
David Vander Meer, 49, died of self-inflicted injuries at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas on June 24. Just two days before, he had been arrested and charged with the murder for the 2006 death of his wife, Bernadette Vander Meer.
Bernadette, who was 29 at the time, fell to her death under suspicious circumstances during a hike on Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park.
Bernadette Vander Meer’s death was initially considered accidental after she plunged more than 1,000 feet off the Angels Landing trail at Utah’s Zion National Park. But the nearly two-decade-old case was reopened after
a tip from the senior pastor of a church where David Vander Meer had led the youth group.
The pastor’s suspicion that the death was not an accident led investigators to interview Vander Meer’s second wife, with whom he reportedly had sex while he was married and she was a teen in the church group.
Court documents alleged that while serving as a youth pastor, Vander Meer began a sexual affair with an underage girl at his church, and told her that the only way they could be together was if his wife “were not alive.” In 2006, the same girl, who was then of legal age, broke off her 4-year relationship with David the day before the Vander Meers left for Zion National Park.
He was facing the possibility of life in prison after being charged with the murder of Bernadette, and severe financial penalties for the insurance fraud he allegedly committed when he cashed in on her life insurance policy just months after her death.
In the wake of his death, both of those charges were dropped by the Washington County Attorney’s Office.