Jury selection begins in Linda Meteer cold-case murder trial

Thirty-seven years after Linda Marie Meteer was found dead in Hoosier Valley, jury selection began in the cold-case murder trial that now puts Leelanau County resident Steven Gary Koon before a Grand Traverse County jury. The case, once stalled in the region’s memory, has moved into a full open-murder trial after investigators said modern technology and forensic science helped them renew a file that had sat unsolved for decades.

Meteer, 41, was first reported missing on April 20, 1989, after she was last seen leaving a bar in Chum’s Corner. Her body was discovered in Hoosier Valley in the late afternoon of Thursday, April 27, 1989, by mushroom hunter Stanley Saxton. Investigators believed she died from blunt-force trauma. The long gap between the crime and trial makes the case unusual even by cold-case standards, forcing jurors to weigh evidence collected in another era against a record rebuilt with newer forensic methods.

Grand Traverse County Sheriff Michael Shea announced the open-murder charge against Koon in February 2025, saying the renewed investigation had been helped by advances in technology and forensic science. Koon was 63 at the time of his arrest and charge. Earlier reporting said he had been interviewed several times in 1989 and denied knowing Meteer or giving her a ride home from Spike’s Peak bar the night she vanished. With the trial now underway, the central question is whether the evidence assembled across three decades can clear the legal hurdles that come with aging witnesses, old memories, and physical proof that has had to survive the passage of time.

The case also reflects a broader, slower-moving law enforcement effort in Grand Traverse County. The sheriff’s office said a task force that included deputies, Traverse City police, and Michigan State Police took on the investigation early, but could not solve it at the time. Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program, which launched in 2021 and pairs students with Michigan State Police on unsolved cases, later helped frame Meteer’s story in a wider wave of renewed cold-case work across Michigan.

For Meteer’s family and for a county that has carried this case for generations, the trial marks a rare moment when a 1989 homicide is no longer suspended in the past. Jurors will now hear how a missing-person report from April 1989 became an open murder prosecution in 2025, and whether the evidence can prove what happened in Hoosier Valley all those years ago.