Latest Update: An exclusive reveals a pastor allegedly murdered his wife by pushing her off a cliff after spending her money on a teenage affair and plotting to collect her insurance
David Vander Meer got his teenage mistress an apartment while she was still in high school, and used his wife’s money to pay the rent
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David and Bernadette Vander Meer.Credit : Courtesy Laura GudenKauf
Bernadette Vander Meer was often working in the final years of her marriage. Yet, somehow, her financial situation continued to get worse over time.
The talented singer and performer had managed to find work as a Betty Boop performer at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas after graduating high school, and a decade later found herself cocktail waitressing at the famed New York-New York Hotel & Casino.
In 2006, after years of hard work, Bernadette was able to switch from the graveyard shift to days, which meant more money and a more reasonable schedule.
Bernadette was not seeing that money, however — because she was turning all her paychecks and tips over to her husband David, her mother Laura Gudenkauf tells PEOPLE.
David would eventually start telling his wife she could not buy coffee or new clothes for work. All the while, he was using the money to pay for his teenage mistress’ apartment.
He was later able to buy his mistress a house, after pushing Bernadette off a mile-high mountain and collecting a payout on the life insurance policy he took out just months before his wife’s death.
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“Bernadette turned over all her tips to him, and the paycheck and everything,” Gudenkauf says.
David, who made $38,000 a year in his job as a youth pastor, according to a copy of the probable cause affidavit obtained by PEOPLE, controled all the money, according to Gudenkauf.
“He was living the high life. He always had the best of everything,” Gudenkauf says, noting that David liked to purchase “high-ticket items” such as “expensive guitars.”
She did not know, however, how much money it was costing David to fund his affair.
Over the course of its investigation, the Washington County Attorney’s Office found that David took his mistress — who was in high school at the time — to “pay by the hour hotels in Las Vegas … to have sex” for the first two years of their affair.
He also purchased her a secret phone so they could stay in contact with one another, according to the affidavit filed in the case.
Then, in 2005, David convinced his mistress to move out of her home and into an apartment, for which he paid the rent each month.
Months before Bernadette’s death, he also bought a new GMC Yukon, which the affidavit estimated to have carried a monthly payment of approximately $1,000.
Friends and former co-workers of Bernadette told prosecutors that at the same time all of this was happening, “Bernadette stops getting her nails done” and “won’t even purchase new work clothes” all because “David gets on her for spending money,” according to the affidavit.
David had another major expense: In November 2005, he increased both his own and Bernadette’s life insurance policies to $550,000.
So, just a few months before his wife’s death, David was paying the insurance premiums for two policies with a combined payout of over $1 million, monthly payments on a full-size SUV that seats up to nine people, and his mistress’ rent and phone bill.
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Then, on Aug. 22, David pushed Bernadette to her death from atop Angels Landing in Zion National Park.
By November, the death was ruled an accident, and on July 10, 2007, David received a check for $567,439, which was his payout for Bernadette’s life insurance policy.
That same year, he bought his mistress and her friend cars, took them on trips and covered all expenses, and in 2009 bought his mistress a house.
By that time, David’s mistress was his wife, with the two having married in 2008 after he was fired from his youth pastor position because of inappropriate behavior with minors.
His final gift to her with the money he received from killing Bernadette was paying off her student loans just a few months before the two divorced.
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David and his mistress-turned-wife never spoke again after the divorce, according to the affidavit, but her interviews with investigators were crucial to securing a warrant for David’s arrest.
On June 22, David was arrested and charged with Bernadette’s murder.
Three days later, he died before his first court appearance after being found with self-inflicted wounds in his jail cell.
“I think he didn’t want to face people. I think he didn’t want to face people and go to court, and he wasn’t the type of guy to live in jail,” Gudenkauf says of David.
She then adds: “I think he knew his goose was cooked.”
