Man sentenced to two terms of life in prison after DNA linked him to 1982 killings of Colorado women

A man convicted of killing two women who disappeared near a Colorado ski resort town nearly 40 years ago after DNA testing identified him as a suspect was sentenced on Monday to two terms of life in prison after the women's relatives called for the maximum punishment for the slayings that forever changed their families.

Alan Lee Phillips, 71, was convicted in September of two counts of first-degree murder and other charges in the killings of Annette Schnee, 21, and Barbara "Bobbi Jo" Oberholtzer, 29. Authorities said the two women, whose bodies were found in the snow in separate locations, had no connection. Both were believed to have been killed while hitchhiking outside Breckenridge, about 60 miles southwest of Denver, when they disappeared on Jan. 6, 1982.

Friends and family discovered Oberholtzer's body the next day in a snow drift on the summit of 11,542-foot Hoosier Pass, near Breckenridge. Schnee's body was discovered six months later, fully clothed, by a boy fishing in a creek in rural Park County. Both women had been shot.