An airplane detected his SOS call and rescued him in 1982. Forty years later, they discovered that the same night he had killed two women.

One night in January 1982, as the plane I was traveling in was flying over the mountains of Colorado, Harold E. Bray He looked out the window and noticed flashes of light in a dark passage below: three short, three long, then three more short.

Was a SOS call “Bay, a local sheriff realized, and quickly alerted the captain of the plane.

When ground-level rescuers scaled the 3,000-meter-high mountain pass in sub-zero temperatures, they discovered Alan lee phillips, 30 years old, trapped in a drift of snow. His astonishing rescue story would even make national headlines.

Yet now, nearly four decades later, it seems Phillips wasn’t an innocent motorist trying to get home in the middle of a night in bad weather … In fact, according to police, a few hours earlier he had killed two young women who were hitchhiking.

The use of genealogical DNA evidence at the crime scene led authorities in Park County, Colo., To arrest Phillips earlier this month, who is now 70 years old. He was charged with the murder of two women, as well as kidnapping and assault.

“He’s avoided it all these years, but now he’s gonna have to face it“said to KUSA Charlie McCormick, a former Denver homicide detective who spent years investigating the case. He was the first to report on possible links between the 1982 rescue and the two murders.

The two victims disappeared on January 6, 1982. Annette Snow, 22 years old, and Barbara jo oberholtzer, 29, were reported missing after allegedly hitchhiking – each of their own – near Breckenridge, Colo., Where they both worked.

Oberholtzer was last seen that night shortly before 8 p.m., when she went out for a few drinks with her colleagues. The next day, his family found his lifeless body 17 kilometers south of Breckenridge, on a snow slope 20 miles from the nearest freeway, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation reported. Police said they shot him in the chest. When they found her, she was face down on the ground. They also found some of his belongings nearby.

Schnee, meanwhile, was last seen the same day around 4:45 p.m. Boy found body six months later in Park County. According to CBIShe was fully dressed with her hair disheveled. He was also face down, next to a stream, and with a gunshot wound in the back.

McCormick, the former Denver detective, had been obsessed with the case for decades. It started in 1989, when Schnee’s family hired him as a private investigator. I loaded the family alone $ 1 per year. A decade later, he volunteered to join the district attorney’s task force investigating the case, he said. KUSA.

The case finally saw a significant development with the help of the genetic genealogy. However, it took years to connect the dots with the suspect.

At the start of this 2021, almost forty years after the affair, the team’s genetic tester called McCormick to break the news: DNA had been permanently linked to Phillips.

“I said ‘We have it.’ It was phenomenal. I thought it would never happenMcCormick said KUSA.

On March 3, police announced that they had approached Phillips at a traffic stop and had arrested him. He has three children and has lived in Dumont, Colorado.

The news made national headlines and Phillips’ name and image appeared on television. It was then that Dave Montoya, former Fire Chief of Clear Creek County, Colo., Recognized the suspect as the man he had rescued decades earlier, during a snowy night.

“We literally saved the guy from hell“Said Montoya KUSA.

Montoya was working on January 6, the same night Phillips got stuck on top of the Guanella Pass and the snow piled up and temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees.

Montoya saved Phillips just before midnight. He had a bruise on his face and was mildly intoxicated. The version he gave Montoya was that he had hit his head on his truck.

“He was there in his truck. When he saw me he said: ‘Oh my god I’m savedSaid Montoya.

“I thought how the hell did this guy get so lucky?” Montoya added.

According to a report by United Press International, After the rescue, Phillips said he was driving home after visiting a friend in Bailey, Colo.

After returning Phillips to his trailer that night, Montoya never saw him again, at least until recently, when he learned it was linked to the deaths of Schnee and Oberholtzer.

“His life was saved, he didn’t die there, but he did bad things before that and he has to pay for them.Said Montoya.

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