Dead In The Water: Bodies start showing up in the water off the Florida Coast. The police fear they might have a serial killer. They're right.
In God’s Hands: Two seemingly unrelated murders, 750 miles apart, are linked by DNA. The killer will never face justice. He has a third victim. Himself.
The Coldest Case: It was the oldest unsolved homicide on the department’s books. But even a 57-year-old case is no match for DNA.
Hell Awaits: Colleen was getting on with her life, leaving her abusive husband, Ron, behind her. There’s only one problem. Ron’s not ready to let her go.
Concerned Citizen: The murder looked likely to go unsolved. Then a letter arrived from a ‘Concerned Citizen, a letter containing a striking level of detail.
Heartless: A chance discovery in a cemetery sends an author on a quest to solve a murder. What she finds is stunning.
Zombie Hunter: He was a local celebrity with an odd claim to fame. He was also a murder suspect and, most likely, a serial killer.
Cold Cases: Solved! Volume 14
Storm Warning
The weather in Colorado gets pretty brutal in the winter, especially at higher altitudes. Yet, even to those who had lived through multiple winters in the Rockies, January 6, 1982, stood out. This was a day of negative 20-degree temperatures; of driving blizzard-like winds; of massive snowdrifts. Anyone caught outside in these conditions was likely to be in big trouble, and, as it turns out, somebody was.
His name was Alan Lee Phillips, and he worked at a mine near the popular ski resort town of Breckenridge. Phillips had miscalculated when he’d set out in his truck that evening. Now he was caught out in a raging snowstorm on unpassable roads. He would surely have died out there but for a moment of ingenuity and a spectacular piece of luck.
Caught in the storm with the temperature in the cab of his truck rapidly dropping, Phillips had struck upon the idea of flashing an SOS in Morse code with his headlights. In the most incredible case of good fortune, a commercial jetliner was passing overhead at that time. On board was a sheriff who was looking out into the dark when he picked up the flashing lights and realized what they meant. He alerted the crew, who radioed down to the local authorities.
The call was picked up by Fire Chief Dave Montoya, who set off in a vehicle properly equipped for the conditions. To his surprise, the stranded traveler turned out to be someone he knew. He and Alan Phillips had once been co-workers at the mine. Phillips had a prominent bruise on his face when Montoya found him. He said that he’d suffered a fall while wandering around in the snow.
Alan Lee Phillips had survived a close encounter with death that January night. Not everyone was so lucky. Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer had been at a pub with friends and had called her husband, Jeff, just after 6:20, telling him that she’d be home soon. Jeff asked if she wanted him to pick her up, but Bobbie Jo said there was no need. She had a ride. Jeff then stretched out on the couch to watch some TV and soon dozed off. When he awoke just after midnight, he was alarmed to find that his wife still wasn’t home.
The storm had spent much of its fury by now, but conditions were still far from favorable. None of that mattered to Jeff. He hit the darkened streets, looking for Bobbi Jo. Finding no sign of her, he stopped at the Sheriff’s station and tried to report his wife missing. He was told he’d have to wait 24 hours. Jeff then returned home, praying that Bobbi Jo would be there. She wasn’t. When his phone rang just after dawn, he snatched it off the cradle, hoping it would be her.
But it wasn’t Bobbi Jo. It was a local rancher who told Jeff that he’d found Bobbie Jo’s driver’s license lying in the snow on his property. Jeff told him to hold onto it and rushed right over. He was driving along the road at speeds that were dangerous for the conditions when he spotted something at the roadside. It was Bobbie Jo’s distinctive blue backpack. Jeff stood on the brakes, scrambled from the cab, and went to collect it. Then he spotted two items that sent a chill up his spine that had nothing to do with the weather. One was Bobbie Jo’s right glove. The other was a wadded-up tissue. Both had traces of blood on them.
With the police still sitting out their 24-hour waiting period, Jeff and several of Bobbie Jo’s friends formed their own search party and went out on skis to look for the missing woman. At around 3 p.m. that afternoon, one of them had the misfortune of finding her. Bobby Jo was sprawled out in a snowbank, a patch of blood staining the back of her coat, shot to death.
Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer was fully clothed and had a pair of zip ties pulled around one of her wrists. Nearby lay a special key chain her husband had made for her, a defensive weapon of sorts. It could be positioned between the fingers and used to strike an attacker. In this case, it had not saved her.
No sign of sexual assault was found during the autopsy. However, the zip ties suggested that this had been the killer’s intention. Bobbie Jo had likely used her key chain weapon to strike out while he was trying to secure her wrists. That had given her the chance to make a run for it, only to be gunned down as she fled. One other clue was found at the scene, an enigmatic one. Lying near the body was a single orange sock. It did not belong to the victim. No one knew if it had any connection to the crime scene.
Two days after the disappearance of Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer, police in Frisco, Colorado received a report of another missing woman. Annette Schnee was a housekeeper at a local Holiday Inn. On the afternoon of January 6, she’d left work early to visit her doctor. She’d then hitchhiked to a drug store in Breckenridge to pick up a prescription. After that, she vanished, failing to show up at work on the 7th and 8th. That was when one of her co-workers decided to call the police.
Six months passed with the murder of Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer and the disappearance of Annette Schnee both unsolved. These were difficult months for Jeff Oberholtzer. Not only had he lost his beloved wife, but he would soon find himself a suspect in her murder. It is not unusual for the surviving spouse to come under suspicion in a case like this. Jeff was put through several interrogations but ultimately cleared. However, he remained a suspect in the court of public opinion. Many believed that he had killed his wife and gotten away with it. His status as a pariah would endure for years to come.
On July 3, 1982, nearly six months after Annette Schnee vanished, a young boy was fishing a stream about 23 miles from Breckenridge when he spotted something floating in the water. That turned out to be Annette’s body. The autopsy showed that she’d died from a single bullet to the back. The slug was never recovered, but the angle of entry suggested that she was running downhill toward the stream when she was shot, likely trying to escape her attacker. Investigators believed that she’d been sexually assaulted, but the time she’d been in the water made it impossible to say for sure.
None of this was the most remarkable piece of evidence found on the victim, though. The most remarkable thing was a single sock on her left foot, an orange sock, the twin of the one recovered from the Oberholtzer crime scene. No one had linked the two cases up to this point. Now, with the discovery of the sock, it seemed obvious. The man who’d killed Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer was the same man who had murdered Annette Schnee.
Piecing the timeline of events together, investigators theorized that this individual had been cruising the backroads on that snowy day, looking for a victim. He’d picked up Annette first, assaulting her in his truck. Then Annette had jumped from the vehicle and fled, losing her orange sock in the process. She did not make it far before she was gunned down.
Most killers would have sated their bloodlust by now, but not this man. He was still trawling. Later that day, he picked up Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer. Bobbie Jo had told a little white lie to her husband, Jeff. She did not have a ride home. She just did not see the point in bothering him when it was just as easy to hitch a ride. She was standing at the roadside with her thumb in the air when the killer stopped for her. His previous victim had nearly gotten away from him. This time, he was taking no chances. He attacked Bobbie Jo and tried to secure her hands with cable ties. But Bobbie Jo fought back, hitting him in the face and trying to flee, dislodging the orange sock from the cab as she ran. She was stopped by a bullet in the back.
That explained the how of the murders, and police already knew the why. The man they were hunting was a sex fiend. What they didn’t know was his name. That would remain an unfathomable secret until technology caught up.
In early 2020, Park County Detective Sgt. Wendy Kipple was reading an article about the successful use of genetic genealogy in solving cases that had long been considered “uncrackable”. Kipple was fascinated and wondered if the technique might he used to unravel Park County’s coldest cases, the murders of Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer and Annette Schnee.
This was a perfect candidate for DNA processing, of course, since the police had the bloody tissue and glove found at the Oberholtzer crime scene. The items were sent to United Data Connect, a genetic genealogy company located in Denver. On January 9, 2021, Kipple got a call. A genealogist from UDC was on the line, offering up the names of two siblings – Bruce Phillips and Alan Lee Phillips.
It was easy for the police to decide where to focus their attention. Bruce Phillips lived out of state and had never visited Colorado as far as they knew. Alan Phillips, on the other hand, had lived in Breckenridge since the 70s. In fact, the police knew that he’d been out on the road on the night of January 6, 1982, the night that two women were murdered. The story of his miraculous rescue had been covered by the local newspaper.
Phillips still lived in the area, running an auto repair shop. He was arrested at his place of work in February 2021, nearly four decades after the murders. Subsequent DNA tests removed any doubt that he was the man responsible. On November 7, 2022, Phillips was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
No one was more pleased by this outcome than Jeff Oberholtzer. Jeff had continued to live in the area after his wife was murdered, continued to be a figure of disparagement, shunned by former friends and associates. “It was very painful,” he said in an interview. “Being under suspicion from not only the authorities, but also being tried in the court of public opinion. People didn’t want a suspected murderer in their house.” Now, those people had humble apologies to make. All these years, they had been persecuting an innocent man.
FOOTNOTE:
Alan Lee Phillips would serve barely three months of his life sentence. On February 27, 2023, he was found dead in his cell, the victim of an apparent suicide.
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