TRAVERSE CITY — Testimony Tuesday in the trial for the murder of Linda Meteer painted a picture of what police believe was her final day.
Six witnesses were called to testify before the Grand Traverse County Circuit Court jury in the case against Steven Koon, 64, of Suttons Bay.
The prosecution called those witnesses to place Koon and the 41-year-old Meteer at the same bar on the night of the murder, then to walk the jury through the initial investigation and lay the groundwork for technical forensic experts who will testify later this week.
During cross-examination, defense attorney Mattias Johnson highlighted the unknowns in the case and pushed the idea that Meteer’s boyfriend at the time, Charles “Chuck” Manville, should have been investigated more closely by police.
According to testimony, Meteer spent the evening of April 19, 1989, out at the bar with her good friend Sally Horton of Traverse City. Horton said she and Meteer were drinking at Chumley’s Bar (located at Chum’s Corner) while Manville, who was there with his dad, played a claw game with her daughter.
Horton described Meteer as a very social person who “never met a stranger” and liked to go out and party. Meteer had five children, some of whom were grown and others who had been staying with her mother at the time of her death.
Just before 9 p.m. that evening, the two women decided to go down the road to Spike’s Peak where line dancing was taught on Wednesday nights, Horton said. Manville did not go with them.
Horton said Manville and Meteer had a “difficult” relationship, but said they loved each other. She said she had seen bruises on Meteer in the past and, at least once, saw Manville pull her out of a bar by her hair.
“They just fought like two little old birds and then they’d get back together,” she said.
Tracy Smith, Manville’s cousin, was at the bar that night and testified that Manville “told the girls to have fun” as they left that evening.
By the time Horton and Meteer arrived at Spike’s Peak, the dance lesson had already ended but the two decided to stay and have a few drinks, Horton said.
Koon told now-retired Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office detective Steve Galloup that he was at Spike’s Peak at that time, but did not talk to Meteer that night.
Galloup testified that he told Koon during an interview in the days after Meteer’s body was found that “I had three separate people that saw him leave the bar with Linda Meteer.”
Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Noelle Moeggenberg asked what Koon’s response was to that statement and Galloup said, “He said he remembers doing no such thing.”
Horton said she was ready to leave Spike’s Peak around midnight, but that Meteer wanted to stay at the bar. She recalled looking over her left shoulder while walking out and catching her last view of Meteer, walking toward the bar.
Horton said she has never forgotten Meteer and she has visited her burial site “many days” with flowers and has seen notes from her children. “They had to put them on her headstone.”
Horton said she felt “relieved” that the case has been brought to trial “to get some answers.”
She added, “Never, I’ve never forgotten her.”
The investigation
Meteer’s body was found April 27, 1989, by a mushroom hunter. Galloup and John Jensen both testified about responding to the report of the body being found and the investigation in the immediate days and weeks after.
Jensen was working as a road patrol deputy for the Grand Traverse Sheriff’s Office, but, with his experience working as a detective, he was asked to assist with the evidence collection. The primary officer in charge of evidence collection was Michael Imhoff, who died in 2023.
Jensen showed the jury where Meteer’s body was found in Hoosier Valley, along the edge of a clump of trees, many still without leaves, in an otherwise open field. She was found wearing only one sock with a dead tree and a living, leafless tree that was believed to have been placed over her body.
Meteer’s body had been there for “several days at least,” he said.
Jensen helped collect evidence from the scene and a secondary scene where it was believed a car was pulled over on a dirt road and her body dragged to that place where the body was found.
Dead grass had collapsed in the direction toward where Meteer’s body was found.
The initial investigation focused on Koon and Manville. Both officers said that Manville and Koon cooperated with investigators and voluntarily consented to searches of their homes and cars.
Testimony indicated both men had familiarity with the Hoosier Valley area.
Manville did not report Meteer’s disappearance, but his boss testified that Manville had mentioned to him before this incident that Meteer sometimes just “takes off.”
Manville contacted police after hearing a detail on the radio at work about the body being found that made him think it might be Meteer. Manville’s boss, who drove him to call police that day, said Manville “was pretty shook.”
Evidence that was collected from Manville’s house including some cloth found in the crawlspace, a dresser drawer and some trim with some staining. The stain later tested negative for blood by a Michigan State Police lab, but no mention was made about testing the other items.
Jensen also noted newly waxed floors in Manville’s house.
Galloup interviewed Koon on April 29, 1989, and said Koon initially told him he wasn’t at Spike’s Peak then later said he was there.
Koon told Galloup he did not remember seeing any women at the bar and didn’t talk to any women at the bar.
Koon also told him he had drunk quite a bit that night before getting to Spike’s Peak: Two 12-packs of beer, a pint of schnapps and several more beers from two other bars.
Galloup asked him what he was driving that night and Koon told him it was a 1976 brown Cadillac.
Galloup asked him where the vehicle was because it wasn’t in the driveway and Koon told him it was at his father’s house in Honor.
Koon told him he was driving it “illegally” and that’s why he switched to riding his motorcycle.
Galloup added that the motorcycle was “also illegally plated.”
Galloup testified that he believed Koon moved the car to his dad’s place on April 22, 1989, and moved it again to the back area of the property on April 28, 1989.
The car was not in great condition, he said, noting that the exterior passenger door of Koon’s car had been wiped clean between the window and the center chrome strip. He said all the glass looked freshly cleaned.
Galloup told defense attorney Johnson that there were no photographs of it.
Jensen helped to process the car for evidence and testified that “you could smell cleaning solution” when the doors were opened. He said they looked for fingerprints, but there were “no fingerprints left on the interior of the car at all.”
He and Imhoff vacuumed the interior of the car by sections and then went through the collected debris with magnifying glasses and tweezers to create glass slides for preservation and examination.
This evidence was sitting in the evidence room “untouched, undisturbed since 1989,” said Detective Jason Polzien, who was asked to look at the evidence in December 2023.
That’s when he and others gathered, organized, digitized and reviewed the case.
Fibers and hairs that had been collected from the scene and from Koon’s car were sent out for further testing starting in 2024, Polzien said.
The results of those tests will be explained and discussed by investigative experts during their testimony later this week.