He Was Rescued from a Snowstorm the Night 2 Women Were Killed — Decades Later, the Chilling Truth About Him Emerged By Christina Coulter

On the same night two women were killed near Breckenridge, Colo., in January 1982, rescuers pulled a miner from a snowdrift during a blinding storm. Decades later, DNA evidence showed that the stranded driver, Alan Lee Phillips, was the man who killed them, according to CBS’ 48 Hours.

On Jan. 6, 1982, both women were hitchhiking separately after work in the busy ski town, according to 48 Hours. Annette Schnee, 21, was last seen around 4:45 p.m. leaving a Breckenridge drugstore with medication. At 6:21 p.m., Barbara “Bobbie Jo” Oberholtzer, 29, called her husband from a pub to say she had a ride. She was seen again at about 7:50 p.m. before she disappeared.

By the next day, friends and searchers began finding Oberholtzer’s belongings along the roadside near Hoosier Pass — her distinctive blue backpack, a bloody glove and a tissue — and, that afternoon around 3 p.m., her body was discovered in a snowbank. She had been shot, and zip ties were on one wrist, according to 48 Hours.

Investigators also recovered a brass key ring her husband had made for her to defend herself, along with a single orange bootie sock — which at the time had no obvious connection to anything.

“It was just one of those mysterious things that you pick up at a crime scene that you keep until you know what it is, or never will find out,” former CBI agent Jim Hardtke said of the stray sock, per 48 Hours.

Authorities didn’t realize Schnee was missing until two days later, when a co-worker reported she hadn’t shown up for shifts. On July 3, 1982, a young boy fishing discovered Schnee’s body face-down in a stream about 20 miles south of Breckenridge. Forensics showed she had been shot in the back; her clothing was in disarray.

During the autopsy, a medical examiner noted an orange bootie sock on Schnee’s foot — matching the one from Oberholtzer’s scene — formally linking the cases, according to the state cold-case database and 48 Hours.

Schnee’s sister Cindy French recalled, “Mom would just say, ‘I just wanna know why, how.’ And nobody can give it to me. Nobody knows why or how.”

Hours after Oberholtzer and Schnee were murdered, that same night, rescuers responded to a pickup stuck in a snowdrift on a mountain pass outside Breckenridge. The driver was Alan Lee Phillips, according to 48 Hours.

He’d used his truck’s headlights to signal SOS in Morse code, which a sheriff aboard a commercial flight spotted and radioed down. Local fire chief Dave Montoya pulled him out and noted a prominent bruise on his face. Phillips initially said he’d fallen while wandering in the snow, according to CBS — though investigators later concluded Oberholtzer likely struck him with the brass key ring as she fought back.

For decades in between, however, the trail ran cold. Until early 2020, when Park County Det. Sgt. Wendy Kipple turned to genetic genealogy, submitting DNA from Oberholtzer’s bloodied items to United Data Connect, according to 48 Hours.

A genealogist pointed detectives to two brothers with the Phillips surname; only Phillips lived in Colorado. Detectives covertly collected his DNA from discarded trash — including saliva on a napkin in a Sonic Drive-In bag — and matched it to blood recovered with Oberholtzer’s belongings.

Later testing on the orange bootie sock reinforced the link between both victims, 48 Hours reported.

Phillips was arrested on Feb. 24, 2021. A jury convicted him on Sept. 15, 2022, after roughly five hours of deliberation, and he was sentenced on Nov. 7, 2022, to two life terms to be served consecutively.

Phillips died by suicide at Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in Ordway, Colo., according to CBS News Colorado.