Richard Gudenkauf walked his daughter down the aisle in September 1996 with a frown on his face.
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The bride, Bernadette, was a imaginative and prescient in her white gown and matching pearls, huge doe eyes peering out from behind her veil. Her mom, Laura Gudenkauf, watched her daughter glowing, comfortable to lastly be marrying the person she had met years earlier throughout a theater manufacturing at church.
From the beginning, Richard had a dangerous feeling concerning the groom, David Vander Meer. He wasn’t comfortable about David marrying his daughter, a vibrant younger performer, rooted in her religion, engaged in her group.
Bernadette had at all times been a star in Richard’s eyes. But it was at a crowded nightclub one evening that he realized simply how brilliant her mild may shine. There was a karaoke stage in the nook, the place a small viewers listened to newbie singers crooning above the din of the bigger crowd.
Bernadette bought up to carry out, and she or he was solely 4 or 5 notes in when a hush fell over the complete membership. They had been captivated.
That’s when Richard knew, she’s actually good.
Bernadette did what she may to get her voice on the market, performing in character as Betty Boop and recording demo CDs with covers from the likes of Aretha Franklin, Christina Aguilera and Patti LaBelle. She had the pipes to sustain.
Now, Bernadette was excited to proceed pursuing her desires alongside David in the Las Vegas space.
Despite Richard’s reservations, the marriage was lovely.
About 10 years later, Laura Gudenkauf was separated from Richard and dwelling with Bernadette and David, together with Bernadette’s sister, Vanessa, who had particular wants.
There had been at all times youngsters hanging out on the home, members of the youth group David led, Laura seen. Bernadette seen it, too. And there was one lady – her initials had been SH – who appeared to be rising notably shut to David. She would usually name the home.
The dazzling smile Laura had seen on her daughter’s wedding ceremony day had turned. Bernadette was feeling lonely and dissatisfied, married to a man who wouldn’t publicly specific his love to her, who handled her like nothing particular, she wrote in letters investigators would discover years later. He paid extra consideration to the youngsters in his youth group, she informed Laura.
Once, Laura noticed Bernadette come house from a evening shift waitressing at a on line casino, the place she performed the piano and sang for company on her breaks, and her ideas went straight to David. Bernadette was offended with her husband, her mother noticed, and slammed the bed room door behind her.
When Bernadette informed David she wished a divorce, the youth pastor informed her to take into account the optics.
“What would people think?” he requested his wife, Laura would inform investigators.
The couple stayed collectively. As their tenth anniversary approached, they deliberate a journey to Zion National Park in Washington County, Utah. Bernadette, an skilled hiker with a style for journey, was glad to lastly get a while alone, in nature, with her husband, her mom knew.
Before the journey, Bernadette mentioned her and David’s life insurance policy with Laura. They had just lately raised their insurance policies’ death advantages from about $150,000 to $600,000 every – cash David ensured Bernadette would assist help Laura and Vanessa if something ever occurred to the couple.
Explaining their choice, Bernadette sat down at a pc to pull up a doc for her mom. She typed in a password. It didn’t work, so she tried once more. It didn’t work.
She turned and checked out Laura: “David changed the password.”
The hike to Angel’s Landing
With headlamps lighting their manner by way of the predawn darkness, David and Bernadette set out round 4:20 a.m. on August 22, 2006, to hike in Zion National Park, David would quickly clarify.
Set in southwestern Utah, the park is thought for its awe-inspiring landscapes: the famed Virgin River operating between towering gorge partitions, steep cliffs giving manner to huge sandstone canyons and difficult mountain climbing trails beckoning adventurers into an unforgiving desert.
David and Bernadette approached the highest of Angel’s Landing, lengthy one of many park’s hottest and strenuous mountain climbing locations. Sunlight started streaming in and the couple eliminated their headlamps, David would inform detectives.
He arrange his digital camera, planning to seize Bernadette’s silhouette in opposition to the dawn as she stood shut to the sting of the sheer cliff. David snapped a few pictures of the surroundings and waited a few seconds for every to expose. Spotting their backpacks in the body, he picked them up and walked about 5 or 10 toes away, he would recall to investigators.
Then, a scream.
By the time David rotated, he would recount, Bernadette was gone.
The 911 name got here in round 6:20 a.m. David informed responders his wife had fallen whereas mountain climbing.
Bernadette, simply 29 years outdated, was pronounced lifeless.
Detectives quickly requested David if he’d ever been untrue to his wife. He had not, he informed them.
Hikers had fallen at Zion earlier than. But accidents in that portion of Angel’s Landing had been uncommon, with simply a few over the years deemed suspicious or suicides.
There had been no different witnesses to interview.
Investigators dominated Bernadette’s death an accident.
So many individuals wished to attend Bernadette’s memorial service, a particular overflow room had to be organized. At the funeral, David sat on the opposite aspect of the church from Bernadette’s mother and father with members of his youth group.
Richard and Laura had their suspicions about their daughter’s death. She was too skilled a hiker to have simply fallen, they believed, particularly with the rising solar lighting her path.
Then, there have been the slamming doorways, the calls from the teenager lady in David’s youth group, the modified password on the pc. But Laura was beside herself with grief, and she or he was nonetheless dwelling in David’s house, locked in a state of despair and worry.
Over time, Richard’s shock and disappointment turned to a sense of vengeance he may really feel in his core. He had many mates, however because the months handed, his anger turned him into one thing ugly. The mates stopped calling.
Realizing they couldn’t go on like that, Bernadette’s mother and father determined to give it to God – and did their finest to transfer ahead with their lives. Laura didn’t see David round the home very a lot anymore. Eventually, he moved out and his late wife’s household misplaced contact with him.
In 2007, David acquired a life insurance coverage payout of about $567,439 and commenced to dwell lavishly, shopping for automobiles and paying for journeys for members of his youth group, investigators later would say.
Laura, by her personal account, would by no means see a dime.
By the following 12 months, David was main a youth group at one other church, underneath Pastor Barry Diamond. Barry fired David after reviews that the youth chief had been throwing events for teenage members, providing them alcohol and letting them gamble in his house, he would inform authorities.
But years would cross earlier than it grew to become clear that the unsanctioned events barely scratched the floor of the grave allegations David would face.
In 2022, a former member of a youth group David led tipped off regulation enforcement that David had been utilizing his place to “groom” underage members, together with a lady with whom he had been sexually concerned on the time of Bernadette’s death, investigators would later state.
Investigators with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Utah referred to as the lady SH and interviewed her over the telephone, indicating in a report that additional observe up was wanted. But nobody adopted up. The case went chilly once more.
Then, final October, greater than 19 years after Bernadette’s fall, Barry Diamond, David’s outdated boss, reached out to the Washington County Attorney’s Office with a staggering accusation, investigators later described.
Bernadette’s death wasn’t an accident, the pastor mentioned. He believed David pushed her.
Lieutenant Investigator Jessica Bate with the county legal professional’s workplace bought to work. She spoke with Diamond, who had tried unsuccessfully for years to get authorities to look into David, Barry would later inform the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Barry informed the investigator concerning the former youth group members, all adults by then, who had come to him over the years with tales about David’s inappropriate conduct. Some felt traumatized, he mentioned.
“The kids,” as Diamond nonetheless referred to them, had been petrified of David then, they usually had been petrified of him now.
Jessica set out to interview them.
Again and once more, SH’s identify got here up.
In December, Bate met with SH for an interview. And the story David had informed detectives years earlier started to unravel.
A telephone, an house and an omen
SH had met David when she was 14, she informed Bate. SH defined how over time the youth group pastor, who was about 9 years her senior, had begun paying her extra consideration – a reward, a hug, a contact on the knee.
When SH was 16, David took her to a cabin in Brian Head, the place she mentioned they’d intercourse for the primary time, SH informed the investigator. It continued for years – at pay-by-the-hour motels, even on the church the place David labored, she mentioned.
The teen seen Bernadette’s suspicion. Once, SH recalled Bernadette pounding on the door to the church, on the lookout for David. He instructed SH to inform Bernadette he wasn’t there, she mentioned.
David even purchased SH a telephone she may use to name him, SH mentioned in an account Bate later would affirm with telephone data. When SH turned 18, David informed her to transfer out of her mom’s home and into an house he rented in order that they’d have someplace to have intercourse.
David by no means spoke of a future with SH – besides as soon as, when he informed her, “The only way they could be together is if Bernadette was not alive,” SH informed Bate.
It caught with SH for years.
On August 20, 2006 – a Sunday – SH met David at church and informed him she had met a boy her personal age. Their relationship wanted to finish. The subsequent day, David and Bernadette left for Zion.
After Bernadette’s fall, SH discovered herself in David’s lounge with different youth group members, sitting “shiva” – a time period often related to a Jewish mourning customized – as David had requested, she informed Bate.
Then, two to three months after Bernadette’s death, SH and David “re-engaged in a sexual relationship,” she informed the investigator. And after David was fired from his pastor job in 2008, David and SH married privately, so he may use her medical health insurance, she mentioned.
Two years later, they married publicly.
The marriage dissolved, and by 2014, the pair had divorced. Around that point, David mentioned “everything … afforded to them during the duration of their marriage came from Bernadette’s life insurance,” SH informed Bate.
As the story David informed investigators all these years earlier began cracking, Jessica Bate started accumulating extra proof: telephone data, digital and bodily notes Bernadette had written, and accounts from officers who had been at Zion National Park the day she fell.
Another officer bought to work accumulating one other form of intel from August 22, 2006. Using information from NASA and different public databases, he decided the solar rose that day round 6:54 a.m., greater than a half hour after David’s 911 name. Given the intense terrain in the park, the solar wouldn’t have been seen on Angel’s Landing till even later, the officer mentioned.
The image David had painted for detectives after Bernadette’s fall – the daylight streaming in as he and his wife reached the summit – started to darken.
Bate then met with the chief of Zion National Park to evaluate fatalities from close to Angel’s Landing relationship to the Nineteen Eighties and located that of 17 documented deaths, the one ones that occurred from round the place Bernadette fell had been deemed to be suspicious in nature or suicide.
Bate compiled her findings in an arrest affidavit, which she signed June 16, and the Washington County Attorney’s Office charged David with homicide in reference to Bernadette’s death and insurance coverage fraud. He was arrested June 22 and booked into the Clark County Detention Center.
But days later, as his extradition listening to was set to start, a choose made one more beautiful revelation to the court docket in the case of the ex-youth pastor now dealing with a pair of grave allegations:
David, the choose introduced, was lifeless.
Hours earlier than he was due in court docket, officers discovered David Vander Meer unresponsive in his cell – together with a suicide notice and a handwritten will – Las Vegas Police reported with out revealing what he wrote. David was taken for self-sustained accidents to a hospital, the place he was pronounced lifeless.
Jessica Bate mentioned she couldn’t touch upon the case till it was formally closed. But the investigator referred to as Laura Gudenkauf that day to share the information of David’s death. Laura at first felt unhappy, then relieved when she realized they might not have to face the ordeal of a lengthy court docket case.
Richard Gudenkauf skilled a mixture of feelings. He wasn’t anticipating to really feel disappointment. David’s household didn’t deserve this, he defined, they’re good folks. As for David, Richard had hoped due course of would give him time to take into consideration what occurred to Bernadette, however there’s a satisfaction in understanding he’s gone.
Barry Diamond, the previous pastor who helped relaunch the investigation, was speechless when he heard the information from Jessica. There aren’t any winners in this story, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, however he didn’t remorse coming ahead: Bernadette deserves justice.
Meanwhile, David’s official trigger and method of death had been nonetheless pending two weeks later. His household couldn’t be reached for remark.
The case Bate introduced in opposition to David gained’t consequence in a conviction, however after a gradual drip of regarding indicators over the years – a dangerous feeling on a lovely wedding ceremony day, a hand on the knee that lingered, events with youngsters and calls from a schoolgirl – Bernadette’s mother and father really feel they’ve lastly discovered readability.
They’re hopeful their late daughter’s story will convey consciousness to the patterns which are so usually missed when an grownup working with minors takes benefit of their authority.
And in the whirlwind of reports surrounding David’s death, they hope folks will bear in mind Bernadette – the sunshine she exuded from the time she was small, her dedication to her religion and all the enjoyment she unfold with her lovely voice.