In the cold winter of 1982, a young woman named Annette Kay Schnee, age 21, vanished without a trace in the mountain town of Breckenridge, Colorado. On January 6th, the White female was last seen hitchhiking, a common mode of transportation in the close-knit community at the time. Annette, who worked as a housekeeper, was a responsible and reliable person, and when she failed to show up for her job, concern began to grow among those who knew her.
The days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, with no sign of Annette. The scenic, snow-covered landscapes of Park County held a dark secret.
The investigation into Annette's disappearance took a grim turn on July 3, 1982, when her body was discovered in a rural, isolated area of Park County. She had been shot in the back. A peculiar and vital clue was found with her: she was wearing a single orange sock. This seemingly small detail would become the crucial link to another tragedy that had unfolded on the very same day Annette went missing. Another local woman, Bobbie Jo Oberholzer, had also been found murdered, and near her body, investigators had recovered the matching orange sock. This discovery solidified the terrifying realization that a single killer was responsible for both deaths.
For decades, the case of the 'Orange Sock Murders' haunted the community and law enforcement. Suspicion initially fell on Bobbie Jo's husband, Jeff Oberholzer, but he was eventually cleared. The trail went cold, and the families of Annette Schnee and Bobbie Jo Oberholzer were left without answers, the specter of the unsolved murders looming over them for nearly forty years. The passage of time, however, brought with it advancements in forensic technology that would ultimately break the case wide open.
In a stunning breakthrough in 2021, investigators utilized genetic genealogy to analyze DNA evidence that had been preserved from the crime scenes. This cutting-edge technique led them to a 70-year-old man named Alan Lee Phillips. The investigation revealed that on the night of the murders, Phillips himself had been rescued from a snowstorm in the mountains, a detail that had gone unnoticed for decades. Phillips was arrested and faced charges for the murders of both Annette Schnee and Bobbie Jo Oberholzer. In 2022, a jury found Alan Lee Phillips guilty of the decades-old crimes, bringing a long-awaited sense of justice to the families who had endured so much uncertainty and pain. Phillips was sentenced to life in prison, where he later died.
