Weeks before Bernadette Vander Meer died in a suspicious fall from a Utah mountaintop, she confided in a close friend that she believed her husband, former pastor David Vander Meer, was having an affair.
Kathy Page, a longtime friend of Bernadette and a former youth group leader, recalled their final in-person conversation: a lunch about a month before Bernadette’s 2006 death at Zion National Park.
David Vander Meer was arrested and charged with his wife’s murder 20 years after her death. Three days later, he died by suicide in his jail cell.
Bernadette fell 1,200 feet from Angels Landing, the famous and treacherous peak inside the Utah park where hikers, particularly those with little experience, have been known to lose their footing and fall.
Friends, however, said Bernadette was not a novice hiker.
“It was just us just talking like friends, old friends. I was asking about her job because she was now working as a cocktail server and it was weird. The conversation was a good time, good girlfriends getting together, but I felt like she was holding back on some of the things,” Page told PEOPLE.
“Then she mentioned that she thought that David was cheating on her,” Page added.
Page did not say whether she believed Bernadette had confronted her husband about those suspicions.
Page said she didn’t want to pry, and couldn’t remember if Bernadette had told her the name of her husband’s mistress, whom she said later turned up at the funeral.
READ MORE: Unmasking the Church: Hugh Jackman's Faith and Emily Watson's Chilling Accusations
“I got there to the funeral, and [the mistress] was sitting near David and I was just appalled,” she said.
Page said she suspected David’s involvement in Bernadette’s death from the start, as she was a strong climber.
“She used to go up there… It was like every weekend or something, but she loved to hike, and she was outdoorsy, and she was smart,” she said.
Page described how her initial relief and happiness at David’s arrest changed when she learned he had taken his own life while awaiting his first court appearance, which she put down to his guilt.
“I thought, ‘This is going to be one trial that I’m going to be following. I’m going to sit in the courtroom and stare at him,’” she said.
“That was my intention. And then getting up the next morning and hearing that he killed himself, I was like, ‘Oh, well, I guess he didn’t want to go through a trial,’” Page went on.
“When I had heard that he was married three times after Bernie, all I could think of is you’ve been walking around with this guilt eating at you, and you did stuff to distract,” she said.
“You became a yoga instructor so that you could breathe in and think happy namaste thoughts and clear out your bad juju inside of you. You married other people to distract from what you did. That’s how I felt,” she went on.
David was rushed to a hospital “to be treated for self-sustained injuries,” where he was pronounced dead, the Las Vegas Police Department said in a news release.
His exact cause of death will be determined by the Clark County Coroner’s Office, according to police.
