Sheriff on United flight spots SOS on Guanella Pass in 1982, decades later the rescued man s charged in a double murder Matt Jablow
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Two young women disappeared from the Breckenridge area on the evening of Jan. 6, 1982. Both were last seen hitchhiking and their bodies were eventually found months apart.
On that very same night, a rescuer saved a man at the top of Guanella Pass who had been caught in a snowstorm. The two events remained seemingly unconnected for decades. That is until earlier this year.
Dave Montoya still remembers the day vividly. He was a fire chief in Clear Creek County in 1982.
Credit: KUSA
Dave Montoya sits down for an interview with reporter Matt Jablow.
“I thought it was the craziest thing I ever heard of,” Montoya said during a recent interview with 9Wants to Know.
About 15 minutes after he got the call, Montoya made his way to the top of Guanella Pass, where he found the driver, 30-year-old Alan Phillips, stuck in a snowdrift.
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“Sure as heck, there he was in his little pickup, and he saw me and said, ‘Oh, God, I’m saved,’” Montoya said. “He said he got drunk and decided to drive home. And I said, ‘You came up over the pass? And he said, well, it seemed like a good idea.’ I thought, how in the heck did this guy get so lucky, for all the stuff to fall into place?”
Colorado cold case: How a mountain rescue is tied to murder 9news.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from 9news.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Oberholtzer
Schnee
Within a year of the Jan. 6, 1982 murders of Barbara Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer (nee: Burns), a 29-year-old Racine native who had moved to Colorado with her husband, and Annette Schnee, a popular 21-year-old working at a local hotel, seemingly every suspect had been exonerated and the new evidence wasnât coming forward.
The first-ever DNA-based conviction wouldnât come along for another eight years, and the suspected killerâs DNA (identified within the past week as Alan Lee Phillips) wouldnât even be put into CODIS â the FBI s Combined DNA Index System containing forensic profiles of nearly 20 million people â until the late 1990s or early 2000s.
Alan Lee Phillips is accused in the 1982 murders of Annette Schnee, 21, and Barbara Oberholtzer, 29. Author: Caitlin Hendee Updated: 1:54 PM MST March 5, 2021
PARK COUNTY, Colo. The man accused of murdering two women last seen hitchhiking near Breckenridge appeared in a Park County courtroom Friday where the judge ruled that investigative documents be made available to his defense team.
Alan Lee Phillips, 70, was arrested Feb. 24 on the following charges in two crimes committed on Jan. 6, 1982:
Kidnapping
Murder after deliberation
Phillips is accused in the 1982 killings of Annette Schnee, 21, and Barbara Oberholtzer, 29.
Schnee was last seen about 4:45 p.m. on Jan. 6, 1982, according to the cold case database from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Her body was found about six months later on July 3, 1982, in rural Park County, about 20 miles south of Breckenridge.