Forty years after two young women disappeared from Breckenridge in a snowstorm, a local man has been convicted of their murders.

A jury convicted Alan Lee Phillips, 71, Thursday after a two-and-a-half week trial and five hours of deliberation. Phillips was arrested last winter and charged with the killings of Bobbi Jo Oberholtzer, 29, and Annette Schnee, 21, along with second-degree kidnapping for each. Both women disappeared the night of Jan. 6, 1982.

“Bobbi Jo was a fighter and is a hero. She fought back and because of that, we were able to get DNA evidence to convict Annette and Bobbi Jo’s killer after all this time,” said 11th Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley in a news release.

Oberholtzer had last been seen leaving the Village Pub after having drinks with friends, planning to hitchhike home. Her body was found the next day down an embankment of snow, 400 feet from the top of Hoosier Pass. She had been shot twice and bled out.

Schnee worked at the Holiday Inn in Frisco and part-time as a waitress at Flip Side, a bar. She had last left a pharmacy in Breckenridge on Jan. 6, and it was assumed she meant to hitchhike home afterward as she often did. A young boy found her body on July 3 in a creek in rural Park County while fishing. Schnee had been shot in the back.

An orange bootie found at each scene appeared to be from the same pair and seemed to link the two cases together. In a preliminary hearing last year, Park County District Court Judge Stephen Groome said although some evidence linking Phillips to the killings was circumstantial, the similarities between them were hard to ignore: Two women in their 20s hitchhiking out of Breckenridge, shot to death the same night.

Decades after the case went cold, United Data Connect linked DNA from the case evidence to two brothers, only one of whom — Phillips — had lived in Colorado, according to a news release from the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council. Phillips worked as a miner and auto mechanic and lived near where the women disappeared.

Schnee’s surviving family members include her mother, brother and two of her sisters. Oberholtzer’s family members still living include her husband, Jeff — who had been looked at as a person of interest — and her daughter. Phillips’ sentencing is set for November, and he faces life in prison.

“It is an incredible feeling to have justice after so long, and to bring some closure to the families,” said deputy district attorney Mark Hurlbert in the release.