TRAVERSE CITY — Steven Gary Koon was sentenced to prison for the 1989 killing of Linda Meteer.
Judge Kevin Elsenheimer sentenced Koon Monday to 30-60 years for Meteer’s death, with credit for 552 days served. Koon was found guilty of second-degree murder June 9 after a five-day jury trial.
Elsenheimer said that Koon has lived in “relative peace” the last 36 years and acknowledged that given Koon’s age, 64, it was most likely a life sentence — “as it should be.”
“It is an important day because we are finally bringing someone to justice who clearly was responsible for this murder,” he said before delivering his decision. “And we’re finally, after all these years, bringing peace to a family that desperately needed peace.”
Elsenheimer called the day of Meteer’s death “a dark day” and said that the case was known to everyone who grew up in Traverse City during that time. “But even darker were the 30-plus years where this case was unresolved due to lack of evidence,” he said.
Meteer, 41, was last seen April 20, 1989, at a bar near Chum’s Corner. Seven days later, a mushroom hunter discovered her body partially concealed under tree branches in a rural area of Blair Township known as Hoosier Valley.
The official death certificate put the day of death as approximately April 20, 1989; the cause was a lacerated liver caused by a homicide. The autopsy noted that her jaw was broken on both sides, with bruising around the left ribs, indicating broken ribs and a collapsed lung, and bruising on the right side from the lacerated liver.
Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Noelle Moeggenberg asked Elsenheimer to consider the “brutality” of the injuries when making his sentencing decision and said that Koon stripped and hid the body “as if she was completely expendable.”
Koon was initially a suspect in the cold-case murder but new evidence, including MRNA from hairs and the analysis of fibers found in his car, connected Meteer to his car, with a high degree of certainty. He was arrested on Feb. 18, 2025 in Leelanau County.
Meteer had five children at the time of her death and her son, Shawn Meteer, spoke at the sentencing. He was 10 years old when his mother died and she was missing on his birthday that year.
“A day that should have been filled with happiness became the day my childhood ended,” he said.
He said that Koon didn’t just commit a crime, he destroyed their family.
“He (Koon) took every future memory I was supposed to have with her. He took the chance to hear her voice when I needed comfort. He took the chance to see her smile. And when I reached my milestones in life, he took the chance of her telling me she was proud of me,” Shawn said. “He took the moments I didn’t even know I would miss until they were gone.”
“I still think about the life I should have had. I think about the advice my mom would have given me today,” he said. “I think about what she would say if she could see me standing here today. And the hardest part is knowing I will never get to see those answers.”
Shawn said that when someone loses a parent, they don’t just lose the person, “a child loses a part of who they are supposed to become.”
He explained to the judge the impacts the loss has had on his life, namely mental health struggles and substance abuse issues.
“I was angry because I felt like my mom had been forgotten. But she wasn’t forgotten,” he said.
The case went cold sometime in the 1990s and was revived in 2024 when Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Chris Clark reopened the case.
Shawn said that the guilty verdict mattered, “not because it gave back my mother, it didn’t. Not because it erased the pain, it didn’t. But because it finally acknowledged what my family didn’t know all along — he (Koon) did this. He took her from us and he changed our lives forever.”
Mattias Johnson, Koon’s attorney, said that he told his client to limit his statement “in light of a very likely appeal.” He said that Koon has a “very short criminal background” and maintained his client’s innocence.
Elsenheimer encouraged Koon to speak with him before sentencing to explain what happened. Koon said it was a “tragic and sad thing that happened to the family, to Linda Meteer, but I had nothing to do with it.”
Meteer was a “friend to many” and “loved by her family,” Elsenheimer said. Her death was a loss that has and will impact many people for multiple generations and wondered how her children’s lives would have been different if she hadn’t been killed, if she had come home from the bar that night.
“But that, because she came into contact with you, that simply wasn’t going to happen,” he said. “Sir, you took a life, you took a life and you are responsible therefore for paying the price.”