David Vander Meer denied killing his former wife in what police said was a suicide note written before he took his own life in jail.
The Metropolitan Police Department released a photocopy of the letter Friday after previously denying requests for it, citing privacy concerns.
“I didn’t kill her,” Vander Meer wrote. “I never thought it would lead to an arrest. The additional allegations I have heard about are largely false, but not entirely.”
He added: “They paint a picture that can’t be escaped. They spell conviction.”
Vander Meer was accused of intentionally pushing his former wife off a cliff at Zion National Park in 2006. Authorities said the former youth pastor was motivated by an affair with a girl in a group he led and began pursuing when she was 14.
He was arrested outside a Summerlin yoga studio on June 22.
Two days later, he was found face down and unresponsive in his cell at the Clark County Detention Center, where he had been put in solitary confinement because the case was high profile, police said.
Vander Meer, also a former counselor for Somerset Academy Lone Mountain, died the next day.
The Clark County coroner has not officially released his cause of death, but a Metropolitan Police Department report said he left behind a suicide note and will.
Vander Meer “left a handwritten suicide letter and a handwritten will in his cell, which has been photographed and impounded,” the report said.
Letter mostly redacted
Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill previously said that Vander Meer’s death was being investigated thoroughly.
He said that Vander Meer had “strangulated himself in a unique and novel way.”
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.”
Still, he said, he would comply with state public records laws.
“I asked that the family be notified, and obviously within the rules of public records, there’s a number of things that will have to be redacted in that note,” the sheriff added.
The note released Friday consisted of three pages, including a page-long letter with half of its contents redacted, another letter that appeared to be addressed to “(redacted) and family,” which was mostly redacted, and a third page that was completely redacted.
Like in the first letter, Vander Meer said in the second that most of the allegations in his arrest affidavit were untrue. He wrote that he believed they were accusations he could not overcome.
“I don’t deserve the financial sacrifices of (redacted) to try to fight this,” Vander Meer wrote at the end of the letter. “I love you all.”
If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, help is available 24/7 by calling or texting the Lifeline network at 988. Live chat is available at 988lifeline.org.
Contact Akiya Dillon at adillon@reviewjournal.com.
