The Story of One of Colorado’s Coldest Cases Solved 40 Years Later

Picture this as a movie plot: A man is driving home from work and has the sudden urge to murder a woman hitchhiking in the snow, then, after disposing of the woman's body, does the same thing to another, and for 40 years, stays in the same town, undetected, even staying at the same job in the same town in which the murders took place.

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While this sounds like a plot for a gripping crime drama, this actually happened in Colorado, and the rest of the story is even more bizarre.

The 1982 Breckenridge Colorado Murders

On January 6, 1982, Summit County, Colorado, was in the grips of a major, freezing snowstorm when Alan Lee Phillips, a local miner, picked up a woman, 21-year-old Annette Schnee, in his truck. Schnee was trying to get a ride from Frisco, where she worked at a Holiday Inn, to her home in Breckenridge, but never made it.

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Later that day, Phillips picked up another woman, 29-year-old Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer, who also never made it home that day.

It was later determined that both women had been shot and killed, and although their bodies had both been recovered within the same year, the case would go cold until 2021.

The Colorado Murder Case Gets Even Weirder

On the same day that he was later found to have committed the murders, Phillips' truck became stuck in the blizzard, and after flashing his lights with the SOS Morse Code signal, a pilot noticed the flashing from above and alerted authorities, who promptly met and rescued Phillips.

The case remained cold for nearly 40 years, at which time Phillips remained in the area, even working at the same job, Henderson Mine, the entire time.

How Was the Colorado Murder Case Solved?

Early on in the case, it was discovered that an orange sock was found at each of the sites of the women's remains, linking the murders to each other.

However, it wasn't until the year 2020 that, upon hearing about recent advancements in DNA technology, Park County Detective Sgt. Wendy Kipple decided to retest the blood samples found at the crime scenes and linked the evidence to Phillips.

Phillips was arrested, charged, and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the murders, a sentence that he would not live to serve as he was found to have committed suicide in his jail cell on February 27, 2023.