TRAVERSE CITY — After remaining unsolved for 37 years, the murder of Linda Meteer, daughter, friend, and mother of five, is a closed case.
A jury on Monday found Steven Gary Koon, 64, guilty of second-degree murder in the 1989 killing, ending a mystery that devastated the victim’s family and friends and had frustrated scores of detectives.
“This has weighed on my heart all these years,” said Sally Horton, 80, who was with Meteer the night she went missing. “Now maybe I won’t cry so hard every time I think of her.”
Meteer, 41, was last seen about April 20, 1989, at a bar near Chum’s Corner when, days later, a mushroom hunter discovered her body partially concealed under tree branches in a rural area of Blair Township known as Hoosier Valley.
At trial, witnesses testified Koon and Meteer were both at Spike’s Peak the night Meteer went missing.
Koon, 64, of Grawn, was attentive and stoic throughout the trial and showed little emotion as the jury foreman read the verdict.
His family, present throughout the proceedings, declined comment.
Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Noelle Moeggenberg, who tried the case, and Capt. Chris Clark, who heads the Sheriff’s Office detective bureau that re-investigated the case, welcomed the verdict.
“It was a tough case for the jury, it was obviously hard to put together after this many years, but these guys did amazing work,” Moeggenberg said, gesturing to Clark and his team.
Including Det. Jason Polzien, a 25-year veteran of the department, who sat with Moeggenberg at the prosecution table, helped organize the exhibits and conferred on strategy.
“For me it came down to the physical evidence, the fibers and mitochondrial DNA,” Moeggenberg said, of the yarn-like fibers found in Koon’s 1976 Cadillac an expert said were a close match to Meteer’s sweater and hair tests that, with a high degree of certainty, put her in his car.
Koon’s lead attorney, Mattias Johnson, suggested there was another suspect for the crime who was not well-vetted by police — Charles Manville, Meteer’s fiancé with whom she’d been known to quarrel.
Johnson declined comment following the verdict, though in his closing argument Friday said Manville‘s DNA was never tested and the years that passed between the crime and an arrest was a hardship on the defense.
Manville, for example, suffers from medical and memory issues severe enough for 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer, who presided over the trial, to rule him an unavailable witness.
The case went cold sometime in the 1990s and was revived in 2024 when Clark began working with a team of Western Michigan University criminal justice students and their professor, Dr. Ashlyn Kuersten.
Clark said the students helped organize and digitize the evidence — some of which was sent to a specialized lab for re-testing.
“Thank you to Capt. Clark and the detectives at the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office and Prosecutor Moeggenberg for giving my students an opportunity to learn how to conduct an excellent investigation,” Kuersten said. “They helped train the next generation of law enforcement.”
Judge Elsenheimer thanked the jury before directing an officer to take Koon into custody.
“Ladies and gentleman, I am very, very grateful, and I know all of us are, for the work you performed,” Elsenheimer said. “It’s clear to me that you have been very thoughtful with your questions and your work with each other.”
A sentencing hearing has yet to be scheduled; in the meantime, Koon will remain in the county’s jail.
“This has weighed on my heart all these years, Now maybe I won’t cry so hard every time I think of her.” — Sally Horton, 80, who was with Linda Meteer the night she went missing. {related_content_uuid}562e5ee3-a76e-4f7f-a284-e138a280fd2f{/related_content_uuid}