TRAVERSE CITY — An arrest was made Tuesday in the brutal beating death of Grand Traverse County woman Linda Marie Meteer, in a case that has been unsolved for 35 years.
A 63-year-old Leelanau County man was arrested Tuesday, Sheriff Mike Shea and Detective Cpt. Chris Clark said in a press conference.
Shea said no further details were available on the arrest, only that they would request a charge of open murder.
Shea described Meteer as a “mother to five children, a sister and a daughter.”
Meteer, 41, of Traverse City, was reported missing April 20, 1989, after leaving Spike’s Peak Bar in Chum’s Corners. Her body was found in Hoosier Valley near Vance Road a week later on the afternoon of April 27. She had been beaten to death, according to the death certificate.
A task force formed of officers from the Sheriff’s Department, Traverse City Police Department and Michigan State Police to investigate the crime in 1989, but the efforts to identify and criminally charge someone “were unsuccessful,” Shea said Tuesday.
In December, law enforcement officials requested the public’s help in the unsolved murder, and reported that students in Western Michigan University’s Cold Case program worked on the Meteer case the previous semester.
Read the full story in tomorrow’s Record-Eagle.