Overview of Linda Muegge
Linda Muegge was a 55-year-old resident of Fredericksburg and business owner of The Peasant Kitchen, a catering business. She was a very spirited person well-liked by many who also felt she had a giving heart. In her spare time, Linda raised horses, goats, and sheep. “She was just a unique individual with a finely-tuned sense of right and wrong,” Shannon Ramsey, Linda’s surviving sister, has recalled to journalists. “She was a photographer, she was a dancer, she had a spot secured in the Houston City Ballet when she was 19.”
In the years before the murder, a few strange incidents impacted Linda. First, in September of 2003, Linda called 911 when Frank, a man whom Linda met through a mutual friend, had followed her home. The initial reports detail that Frank was acting suspiciously on her property, and Linda did not feel comfortable with him there.
Then in February 2006, Linda called the police because someone shot and killed two of her bottle-feeding sheep — and the animal killer has never been found.
The night Linda was murdered in 2007, she was just returning home at 5:30pm from a local yoga class. Just before 8:00pm, neighbors called the fire department because Linda’s house was on fire. When the fire department arrived, the police were soon dispatched because they found Linda’s body partially burned, and could clearly see that she was attacked and killed.
Once the autopsy was completed, the medical examiner determined Linda's cause of death was attributed to the stab wounds and blunt force injuries on her head and neck — all of which happened before the fire in the home was set. The manner of death is determined to be homicide.
The investigation turns to Linda’s ex-husband of 30-years, Fred Muegge. The night Linda was killed, Fred says that he was nearly 100 miles away in Austin, and credit card receipts put him at a yoga studio — but no one was able to confirm that it was him who swiped the card. Additionally, officers processing the scene find Fred’s DNA at the house. Moreover, Fred fails two polygraph tests during the course of their investigation.
Where the case stands today. Linda’s case remains unsolved. In 2010, the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) released an alert for Linda's case, pushing out a new flier and adding the ViCAP investigators onto the case. To that end, there haven’t been any updates or public-facing movement.
If you have any information regarding the 2007 murder of Linda Muegge, please contact Lt. Terry Weed of the Fredericksburg Police Department at (830)-997-7585 or reach out to the FBI Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) Unit working on the case at (800)-634-4097.
