Howard Meeker arose at 5 o’clock Monday morning, ate a bowl of cereal, got dressed and walked out the front door. His wife Linda was still sleeping – soon she would wake up and get ready for work too
It was June 18, 1984 – their one-year wedding anniversary was the next day and the couple had just moved out of Linda’s parents’ house into a little place they rented off of Highway 24. They had hoped to have four children, Howard says, but she was 19, he was 20 and they needed to save money first.
Linda never showed up for work that day. Coworkers called her sister Barbara by early afternoon, concerned they hadn’t heard from her, and Barbara stopped by the house about 6 p.m.
Linda was lying dead on the bathroom floor, naked and covered in blood.
Linda and Howard were married shortly after graduating high school. She recently had started working at DuBose Steel, a far cry from picking vegetables on the family farm. The people at DuBose were professionals, made good money by Roseboro standards, and for the first time, Linda wore dresses and skirts to work. She loved it.
She usually got to work about 7:30 a.m. When she was found murdered that night, it looked like she was getting ready for work. She was naked, standing in front of the mirror, maybe applying makeup when someone came up behind her. She was choked, probably with a towel, but it was the knife that killed her. Five and a half inches long, it ripped through her chest three times, once in the heart.
Death likely came in a matter of seconds.
As friends and family mourned the country girl who “had a smile for everybody,” the medical examiner prepared the autopsy report: no sexual assault, no forced entry in the home, nothing missing from the house as far as anyone could tell.
There was, however, conclusive evidence of sexual activity; investigators say it is likely Linda had sex minutes before her death.
Within 24 hours, deputies in Bladen County picked up a deaf-mute man and brought him to Roseboro. He had a knife in his pocket, a cut on his arm and a rolled up newspaper with a picture of Linda.
Sampson County investigators questioned him, drew some blood samples and put him in jail. He agreed to be locked up, remembers former detective Landis Lee, and had nowhere else to go. But by the morning, Lee says, higher-ups at the sheriff’s office demanded the man’s release and he was set free. He wasn’t the guy, they said. Lee concedes they may have been right, but laments the man was never conclusively eliminated. Years later, Lee learned the man had died in Tennessee. He was cremated, leaving behind no DNA evidence that would implicate or exonerate him.
But many people dismiss that theory.
“Well I know when Linda, when she stayed at home by herself, her doors were always locked,” Barbara said. “If she didn’t know you, she wouldn’t open it.”
For the most part, the investigation stayed focused on people close to Linda, and police worked the case off and on for years. Her body was exhumed, physical evidence was analyzed and suspects were interviewed, including her husband and a co-worker. There was never enough evidence for an arrest.
Lee scoffs at the idea that Linda Meeker’s was the perfect murder. But the search for her killer has been plagued by questions from the outset –- questions that, 24 years later, remain unanswered. Did Linda know her killer? Is her killer the person she had sex with moments before her death? If not him, who?
Her family, and other investigators who have worked the case, all retired now, hold out hope that one day those questions will be answered.
“Have a heart,” her aunt, Pat Runion, says. “Be a human being for God’s sake. Give us some closure on this thing.”
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