Has one of northern Michigan’s most notorious cold cases been solved?

On Tuesday, the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office announced that it had “arrested a 63-year-old Leelanau County for Open Murder related to the 1989 death of Linda Meteer.” The arrest comes after the department redoubled its efforts at solving the case last year.

Meteer, a resident of the Traverse City area, was last seen early in the morning on April 20, 1989. She’d spent the evening of April 19 out with friends, and was never heard from again after leaving a Grand Traverse County bar called Spikes Peak Northern Lights. A week later, on Thursday, April 27, 1989, the body of an unidentified female homicide victim was found in Hoosier Valley, an area in Blair Township. The victim had suffered significant blunt force trauma, and was not able to be identified as Meteer until the following day.

Meteer was 41 at the time of her death, and was “a mother to five children,” according to the sheriff’s office.

“In 1989, an investigative task force consisting of officers from the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office, Traverse City Police Department and Michigan State Police was formed and began investigating the Homicide,” the sheriff’s office said in its Tuesday announcement. “This task force worked for many years attempting to identify and criminally charge a suspect, but was unsuccessful. The Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office has continued throughout the years to investigate this unsolved murder.”

In 2024, the sheriff’s office launched a renewed push to find Meteer’s killer. “It is believed that with the advancements in technology and forensic sciences, the continued dedication of our detectives, and information from our community, we will be able to identify the suspect in this murder and bring them to justice,” the department said of the case in a December Facebook post.

Speaking to 9&10 News last May, Captain Chris Clark of the sheriff's office said the department was also looking at the “pattern of life” for Meteer, “digging into what may have happened a year before, six months before” her murder in hopes of shedding some new light on her death. Clark also noted at the time that, since Meteer’s murder, her mother and one of her sons have passed away without knowing what really happened, adding that her surviving family deserved to know the truth.

The sheriff’s office did not share any other details about the suspect other than his age and his residency in Leelanau County, nor did the department outline any specific details about the investigation that led to the arrest.

Meteer would have turned 77 years old on Christmas Eve.