Anatomy of Murder - Murder in the Mountains

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

A young woman is murdered in the mountains of Breckenridge, Colorado. And the case still looms over this ski town.For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

You know, on almost any murder that happens, there's somebody out there that knows something about it. And those are the people who, when they come forward, will take a case like this that's really up in the air and solve it. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasiga Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. Hey, Anasiga. Hey, Scott.

Now, I know you like to do things on vacation, and I do think you're a skier, correct? I am. I lived in Colorado for college, so that's where I learned to ski. So let's stay in Colorado for this story, because it takes place in Breckenridge, Colorado, in 1982, January 7th to be exact. You know, can I just talk about Colorado for a little bit since- Sure, yeah. I know that area so well. Since you know, of course.

Yeah, you know, when I saw that it was Colorado and that it was Breckenridge, like all of a sudden that already gets me vested before I even know who we're talking about. You know, Colorado, people are drawn there for different reasons. And for me, the thing when I think about Colorado is that the weather.

It is blue skies and sunny so often, even in the middle of winter. But certainly when people think Colorado, they think mountains, skiing, outdoorsy. And there's all these different ski towns, and they all have different personalities. And Breckenridge, which is one of the closer ones to Denver, so a lot of people come there from all over because it's easy to get to. It's an international ski destination combined with Colorado small town feel. And when you have those things together, it really makes for a community,

even though you have all these international jet setters coming in and out. Sounds like a great place to live. It sounds like a great place to live. It sounds like a great place to visit. And in Breckenridge, Colorado, or not far from it, lived Bobbie Jo Oberholzer. She was drawn there like so many others. She was drawn to the mountains.

She was a 29-year-old woman. People described her and her family as soft-spoken. She loved animals, maybe sometimes more than people. She was often taking care of her bird. She had a horse. And she had left Wisconsin to live in the mountains and to care for those animals. And she lived there with her husband, Jeff. And January 6th of 1982, that was a big day for Bobby Joe. It was a couple that was young and they were basically just getting by. He had started a new business and she worked in an office as an administrative assistant for a local developer. And that day she got a raise. And that was a really big deal. I mean, this is a couple that she would have to scrape change together sometimes to get a special food she wanted for her bird or for her

horse. So now, completely unexpectedly, on that day, January 6, 1982, she got a raise, and so it was going to be a celebration. She called her husband that evening and said that she was going out with friends, and he last heard from her at about 6.20 that night, and she said that she was about to head home. We have a record of that phone call. It was a collect call. It was long distance. That is the voice of Charles McCormick, who is a veteran homicide detective, and he's helping us tell this story today. And as you know, Anastasia, in our line of work in telling these tragic murder cases, we always strive to highlight the very people directly involved in these cases, always honoring the victims. And for

us, that's what it's all about. I mean, I can vouch as having been a homicide prosecutor for all those years, and my friends and family will tell you that I am not known to be the most warm and fuzzy person. Oh, you're a little fuzzy. But again, it's not what people think of when they think about me. But it's when you start to learn who these cases are about and the devastation caused by their murder, you can't help but feel for the victim's family because that's what's going to give you the drive to get it done

and get it done well. So, Bobby, she went back into the bar and joined her friends. And one thing led to another. Bobby wanted to go home, evidently. She had worked all day and didn't really want to party. She'd kind of put that part of her life behind her to the extent that she and her husband were actually trying to have a baby. At about 7.45,

Bobby, she put on her coat, her gloves, and her hat, picked up her backpack, and told the bartender that she was going to hitchhike home. She was tired of waiting for her friends to give her a ride, and she left the bar. And at that point, there was a common area known as the hitchhike station.

The best we can understand, that was commonplace in Breckenridge at the time, that people could go to sort of these quasi-designated areas in town where people would just pick you up and drive you where you needed to go. I really think at the time in all sorts of places, it was much more common. I mean, here, you don't hear much about people hitchhiking and that's because people are so aware of the dangers. But back then, I certainly remember hearing it in different ways. And, you know, I will say that it always puts me on high alert the second I hear it because very similarly, you know, I had a cousin when I was nine, right around this time that she was with friends. She wanted to go home.

She hitched a ride and they found her body. So when I hear that, I know that it was much more commonplace for people to think of this as a safe mode of getting home. But so often, it just wasn't. And I think that's why people turn their heads and just don't hear much about it anymore. That's horrible, Anasika. I did not know that. That's a horrible story. Really? I never told you that. No.

Yeah, I was nine years old. And it was my cousin that I looked up to. She was 25, and she was this large in my personality. And similarly, she is out, and she's with her friends, and she wanted to go home and decided to hitch a ride. And they found her murdered, and it's really kind of something that has always stuck in my head as I have worked on these cases.

It's horrible. And at about midnight, her husband, he woke up and she was not home. According to him, he knew right away that something was wrong because she would never have done that. Even if she was angry, if they'd had a fight, she would not have done that. Even if she was angry if they'd had a fight, she would not have just not come home. He drove through Preckenridge, which is three or four blocks to the north side, and went to the Preckenridge Police Department and went in and told the officer on duty that he was looking for his wife and he knew that something had happened to her because she wasn't the type that would just not come home. And he went to the police in the middle of the night,

but, you know, she hadn't even been gone for probably 12 hours at that point. And so the police said, you know, it's the middle of the night in Colorado, the weather's bad, and your wife didn't come home and you know she's out celebrating with friends, you know, it's premature. I can only imagine him fearing the worst and hoping that she just was out with her friends and maybe put her head down somewhere after drinking. It's also the time of year. I mean, think about it. We're talking about January. We're talking about a mountain area. We're up 14,000 feet. It was a particularly cold night. I mean, it was something like 20 below zero. It was snowing. It's not like there's a lot of people

out and about, even in Colorado, late into the night. So I can only imagine from law enforcement perspective, without any indication of foul play at this point, they said, you know, we've got to let the time play out a little bit because the weather is abysmal. It's going to be near impossible to find her wherever she is right now. He drove home and just waited until about four or five o'clock. He called some friends and his brother. So a lot of people came by to see if they could be of any help. And at around 9 o'clock, Jeff gets a call. And when that phone rang, I'm sure Jeff was hoping it was his wife on the other end saying,

hey, everything is fine. But the call was not his wife and only deepened the mystery. It was actually someone he didn't even know, but it was a local rancher in the area who was calling because he had found a driver's license right near his home, and the name and photograph was Bobby Joe. Rather than putting out, you know, why I think police may have been apprehensive,

let's just go right to the source. I mean, Scott, from a police perspective, why do you think that they weren't out there looking once they got that middle-of-the-night call from Jeff? I think it comes down to the information that was in front of them. Here's someone who left the bar in her own accord, and she was of an age that she could make her own decisions

on where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do. So I don't think there's really red flags. And it sounds like the husband who went to sleep didn't really feel like this is a necessity to call out the troops to search for a woman who's that age. And weather does play into it. We all have heard when, you know, for example, when even when someone has drowned,

I mean, sometimes weather conditions are that officers can't put themselves at risk, at least for the short term. I mean, yeah, at that, those temperatures, how long could you last outside? I mean, negative 20 degrees. I mean, that's, that's crazy cold. Yeah, negative 20 degrees at 11,500 elevation.

And it's snowing. Yeah, so they're not really great conditions to be doing anything, let alone to be doing a search on foot for anybody. And for someone that they're not even sure that anything bad has happened to them. So I would absolutely understand why police were saying, let's wait until we have more evidence that foul play may be involved. But Jeff and his friends felt differently. Just before noon, the word had traveled around a small community

that one of their better-loved women residents was missing under some really dangerous circumstances. And they decided that they were going to search alongside Highway 9 and US-285 to the Hamilton Ranch. There was about 10 of them. They went to the top of the Hoosier Pass. And a group started out to walk down. And then there's a group of three men who had brought their skis because they're familiar with the terrain. Well, they got about 50 yards, and they found her body. It was a horrible scene.

She bled to death and froze to death on her back in the snow. It was a nightmare. She had been shot twice to her back and on her left wrist. She had a plastic wire tie. There was an 18-inch zip tie. I mean, Scott, what does that say to you? Clearly, you know, someone who is abducted, somebody who may have been tortured. And that's what I hear too. You know, when I look at that

and I read it, I right away, I think abduction or certainly something intentional and thought out. I mean, this just wasn't happenstance. It wasn't a argument that went bad. I mean, this is someone or people that thought it out enough to bring zip ties, to use zip ties. I mean, this is someone or people that thought it out enough to bring zip ties, to use zip ties. I mean, there's still one on her wrist. So that to me is that it is an intentional, thought out act. So let's unpack the crime scene for a second. And I say good because, you know, when we look at these things and we go through our process of diagramming a crime scene, you've got to take sort of a 10,000 foot view of everything that's around the victim and what potentially could be an item of evidence.

And clearly, you know, this snow was a fresh snow. So everything that's in the area at the time the body's located must be part of a very fresh crime scene. There was evidence that somebody was chasing her. They were able to tell in some fresh footprints in that area that she may have tried to hide in one section of the snowbank and then realized that she could be discovered. And then as she was running further away, she was then shot in the back. And that's exactly how I picture it almost, that at some point she was able to escape. And so here she is in those horrific, incredible conditions, running for her life. And they get up to her, he or she or they. And at close range, I mean,

they clearly had an agenda because they make sure to catch her. And when they do, shoot her once, twice, at close range. The next day, there were two items found in the parking lot. Just about 300 feet north of the body, they located a set of car keys. And on that key ring was sort of the self-defense key where it's sharp edged and you can imagine if you hold it for a second, hold it in your hands

and the portion of the key peeks out between your knuckles. That actually given to her by her husband, Jeff, so that if she ever did find herself in a situation that she could get out of it and how unbelievably wrong or bad that must seem to know that she had it with her and it couldn't save her.

Now, remember early on when I said that this case had some incredible twists and turns? Well, what police located next to the body will take this case in the most incredible twist I probably have ever seen. I mean, it's something so unusual. I mean, if you had a list of 10 things, well, what did they find? I guarantee you not one of you would come up with this. Bobby Joe's body had just been found, and now investigators are really combing the area. I mean, everywhere, especially all those areas in close distance to her body. And they found something.

In the parking lot was a orange, bright orange booty, like a tennis sock, a half sock. But Bobby Joe was wearing both her socks and nobody recognized that sock as belonging to her. What do you make of something like that, Scott, when you hear it right off the bat? You have a pretty much a pristine crime scene. There are some cases which we've covered where the crime scene may be somewhere in a public place where you don't know if something is out of place. You don't know if an item on a street was there for a week or a month or an hour before the crime scene. But in this case, you know, snow had fallen. The body had been there for only a specific amount of time. And then there is this out-of-place item.

Nobody knew what it meant. Didn't belong to Bobby Joe. She was fully clothed. She was not sexually assaulted. Let's go back to how she ended up there, you know, because we started to talk about hitchhiking a bit earlier. But when investigators went back and tried to figure out where she had gone or what her night had been like once she went to that bar to celebrate, they learned that a person did try to give Bobby Joe a ride. There was a man who thought that he may have seen her there at that hitchhike station.

This guy was a carpenter, and he passed this hitchhike station, and there was a woman standing there with her thumb out hitchhiking. And he pulled over and rolled down his passenger window of his truck. The woman came over, stuck her head in the car, so he got a good look at her. He said he offered her a ride, and she said, well, where are you going? And he said, well, I'm working in a construction job about five miles out of town. And she said, well, I need to go all the way home, which is 16 miles. And I just said, I don't want to be left out in the middle of nowhere.

So she declined to ride. But, you know, I think about that for myself and I try to put myself back at a time that people, hitchhiking wasn't that uncommon a thing. I mean, if some random person, a guy, someone of the opposite sex, pulls up, I'm not getting into that car. And so I know people make different decisions, and they have different comfort levels. But at least for myself, I mean, I would want someone else present because I think in general, you're safer in numbers. I mean, certainly if there was another woman there, I myself would feel more comfortable. And I mean, I'm not trying to get sexist or anything, but I just think about what the realities are about crime and who kills who. And that's something

that I would be thinking about. So I always ask myself, yes, certainly people did hitchhike and there were certain people that would get into a stranger's car, but was Bobby Joe one of them? I mean, I step back a second, Anastasia, on that and say, you know, 1982 was a different time. People didn't lock their doors. Crime really wasn't a big factor in Breckenridge, Colorado.

So I assume with accepting multiple rides before that she likely expected that this was going to be just like any other hitchhiking ride, just going to be picked up and just get home to her husband for dinner and a bottle of wine. That didn't happen. They actually started to zero in on someone. The crime suspect was, from the get-go, Jeff Overholzer. I mean, as you know, Anastasia, we always look at family members in these homicide investigations

because they're the ones who are closest to the victim. So Jeff's already on my radar right in the beginning. In fact, the license is found on the rancher's property. So Jeff had asked his brother to go pick up that driver's license. And Jeff decided to go with a friend, drive the same route. And he's in the passenger seat. And as they're driving the route, he all of a sudden notices something on the side of the road. It's a backpack.

So they stopped, and Jeff walked through the snow. He says his were the only footprints in the snow, and picked up the backpack, and he also picked up a bloody tissue and also a wool glove, a right wool glove, which looked like the pair that his wife owned. And it had blood on it. Scott, when I'm hearing this, there are so many different layers of wrong that come right to my mind. I mean, we know what Bobby Joe's doing. She's celebrating a promotion. That would have been a big deal to both of them, but Jeff wasn't with her that night. So for me, one of my

first questions is, why? When I got involved in looking through all these various incendiary reports, there was never a timeline done on Jeff as to where he was all that preceding day into that night. And then a rancher finds the ID and calls Jeff. Jeff doesn't call the police. He goes and picks it up. And then he's out and he's the one that now finds a backpack, bloody gloves. And even more than that, I mean, when police said, well, where were you? He insisted that he had been with an acquaintance, but that acquaintance could not be found.

I mean, is there anyone out there that thinks that isn't weird and suspicious when you look at those different facts? The cop in me is like saying easily, how unusual would it be to be driving on a road and just happen to spot a backpack on the side of the road and then add to that a potential contamination of the evidence, right? I mean, when I first heard about that, I was like, wait a second. So you hear about one of these things and you start to turn your head, but you can never jump conclusions because strange things do happen and it doesn't make anyone guilty of a crime. It just makes you need to look a little bit deeper. But when you start to pile things one after the other after the other, I mean, my head is doing like a full 360 at this point when I'm thinking about Jeff.

And on top of that, there was also rumors that Jeff hadn't maybe been faithful or there were certainly maybe problems in their marriage at that point. I mean, so now we're getting into if true, it's the age-old story of rather than leaving each other or trying to get a divorce, that now someone tries to get out by murder. And I think part of the investigation had to take in consideration of what Bobby Joe's family thought about the marriage. And when they broke the news to Bobby Joe's family in Wisconsin, they were both devastated and confused. So they had no suspects. And obviously they told police that to their knowledge, Bobby Joe was looking forward to starting a family with her husband. So adding that...

But, there's a but. All right. There's a but. There's always a but. Because her younger sister, when she was interviewed, she said that she had visited her sister within months before this happened. And that to her, something seemed off between them. Her sister never said a word, didn't complain about Jeff.

There was nothing that she could tell you they said or did, but that something to her seemed off. And only three months before Bobby Joe was killed, Bobby Joe's mother got remarried and Bobby Joe flew back to Wisconsin for her mom's wedding. And Jeff didn't come with her. Now he was from Wisconsin too. So the family didn't know what to make heads or tails of,

but when they're looking at it afterwards, they started to wonder, was maybe it not the blissful life that they had thought? In fact, he was so much on the radar of investigators, he went to investigators and said, Hey, I'm on your radar. I know I am. In fact, I'm even willing to take a polygraph. He eventually did. He submitted himself to his two polygraphs. Passed them both. And look, polygraphs, all of us in this line of work, it's not actually the data

that is what leads to breaks in the case. It's usually the fear factor of someone taking them, and they usually start to show as deceptive because their nerves kick in, and they usually end up talking or often do if they're not being honest. And we can't even use them in court, and with good reason, because they're not wholly reliable, and many think not reliable at all. And I'm just, I keep thinking about all these different things about Jeff. I mean, is that coincidence upon coincidence, or was he trying to clean up a scene, or is he trying to throw police off at the trail by saying, hey, look at all these things that I found.

But now he's held himself in the process. But there's still so much more to this story, because this case involves not just Bobby Joe's murder. Let's switch gears here and talk about another victim, Annette Schnee. Annette was a 21-year-old woman who was also murdered. Her personality, completely different than Bobby Joe. She's been described by all as a spitfire. She's out in Colorado because she wants to be a model.

And she lands near Breckenridge because it's close to Denver. And that she's thinking that that is a hub that's going to lead her to the job that she so wants. She wants to be a flight attendant. And she was getting really close to that goal because she was about to turn 22. So she's 21, but just really days away from getting to that year that she thought she'd finally get her big break. Now, we're obviously talking about her because she's connected to Bobby Joe, but how they're connected is so startling, you're not going to believe it.

On Friday morning, an ex-Chinese boss at the Holiday Inn in Frisco reported her missing. And that quickly led the police to know that there was a second woman who went missing on that same night. Her body wasn't found for six months. On July 3rd, 1982, a boy and his dad are walking along a creek. They come upon a body that was partially submerged. It's about 10 miles from where

Bobby Joe's body was found. And her name was Annette Schnee. Hard to say whether she was dumped there or killed there. I mean, we've talked about the condition that Bobby Joe's body's found in, right? But now we're in the middle of summer, one day before America's birthday, and they find her laying in the creek.

Her body obviously decomposed based on the time of year, and she's shot in the back. And that sent up such big red flags for investigators. Could they be connected? And not only were they connected by their data disappearance, when they examined the body further and took off her boots, guess what they found? The right booty was orange. The left booty was the booty that was located at the crime scene of Bobby Joe. It would be extremely, given the small community that this area was in those days, it would have been extremely unbelievable that there would be two different murders on two different occasions

with two different sets of people. So now you have the two Sox. These women, by all accounts, did not know each other. They go missing the same night. They're both shot. And they each have one of a pair of Sox. I mean, of course they're connected, but how? And who? And why?

Imagine the horror. Imagine the fear in that community. I talked to Charles about that, and he said it was palpable. The community at large pretty much panic, particularly the female population. You know, when we look at the crime scenes, there is a difference in them. You've got a crime scene in the middle of winter, where you introduce not only the heat of summer, but water. And processing these two crime scenes are so completely different.

Yeah, I mean, her body, you're certainly not going to get any forensics off of it after being sitting in the water for that long. I mean, the decomposition is going to really impact the body and take away any potential evidence, most likely, that would have been left. Let's talk about, Scott, the difference in these crime scenes. You know, we know Bobby Jo is found right away, you know, within hours. So that speaks to that she was killed at least near where she was found. But what do you think about Annette? I mean, she's found in the water. I mean, is she killed there? Does she float there?

Did she try to get away after she was shot? What do you think? Well, I mean, the speculation is that the body may have been dumped right there or it could have been dumped upriver. And in time, that the body would move slowly as nature would bring it closer and closer to the location of where it was found. I think she easily could have been driven there, assaulted

on the ground somewhere near where the lake is. And then as she tried to get away, once again, the victim shot in the back. But more interesting to me is that that body of water is at the bottom of an embankment that is connected to one of the same roads that was very near where Bobby Joe was found. All roads lead to the same killer here. Question is, who is it? Let's talk about the investigative timeline. So January 6th, 1982, at approximately 4.45 in the afternoon, Annette was last seen leaving a local pharmacy. But a witness saw her getting into a deep conversation with a dark-haired woman. She was a white female, slender build, just outside of a pharmacy, which also was not far from an area where hitchhikers were normally picked up. So even though she was found six months later, they already had established a pretty good timeline

because she's outside this pharmacy at 445. Police believe that Annette had actually hitchhiked in the direction of her home at about five. But when they went into her home, her uniform was still laying on the bed. And so what that said is that she never made it home or even got dressed to go to work. And so it puts her disappearance within really that two-hour window, very close in time to the disappearance of Bobby Joe. I mean, these two young women were at the prime of life. They did not deserve this.

Their lives were less than half over. They were both, by all accounts, just wonderful, beautiful people. And they were just slaughtered in a way that just doesn't make sense. So Scott, these socks, these bright orange little ankle socks, the booties that everyone was so wrapped up in. I mean, what does that say to you? Two women, they each have one of the pair of socks. What are you thinking about? How could they have been with both? I cannot think of a reason or how they could be in two different crime scenes from a crime that occurred on the same day unless the sock was removed from Annette

and brought to the murder scene of Bobby Joe. That's how the connection was made. The killer brought the evidence to the murder. But to me, did they bring it purposely or was it just a really bad mistake, right? Because we know that those socks originate with Annette. Her mom bought them for her. So we know they were hers and she's wearing one of them.

So you had to think that she was wearing both. And then at some point during all this, whoever it is that kills her ends up with that other sock, whether because they're scrambling to pick up some piece of evidence or maybe because they're trying to take her sock off and do who knows what to her. But they end up with that sock. And that maybe in the attack of Bobby Joe, which is in all likelihood just hours later at most, that this is a big screw up, that it

falls out of a pocket, that it falls out of the car. And to me, it's such an interesting clue that I almost get almost a smile, if you forgive me for that, for a second, because I, Annette, she was wearing a jacket when she was located. And as they turned her over, they reached into the jacket to determine if anything could be found in within that jacket. And they pulled out an item from that jacket that would turn this investigation on its head. Because as you're going to hear, there's another connection between Bobby Joe and Annette.

When police were going through Annette's body, clearly working in the crime scene, she had on a jacket. You know those plastic inserts that you have in wallets for photographs? That was found stuffed into the pocket of her sweatshirt. But there was a photograph of a man who looked very military, particularly for those days, very short haircut. That man, whoever he is, he's never been identified. Not even members of her family knew who this person was.

And police were trying their best to ID him. They even went to the public and showed his picture to the public, trying to get a determination of who this was. When I look at this picture of him, he has a military look about him. One of his eyes appears shut. He appears to have some scarring. And the thing about a photograph in someone's pocket, you don't carry around a photograph of someone unless they are meaningful to you. So is it someone she was in a relationship at the time or she had been or who was important in her life in some other way? Who knows?

But it is rather startling to me that they just couldn't track this person down because this person, maybe there's a reason why he didn't want to be found. Well, in the plastic insert from the wallet, there was a usual ID. But then to the surprise of there was a usual ID. But then, to the surprise of everybody, was a business card, which belonged to Jeff Oberholzer. I mean, have we given the listeners time to pick their jaw up from the ground? I mean, that's an unbelievable find. So police clearly went back to Jeff and said, hey, dude, what is with this business card found on a woman who, as it turns out, was missing on the same night as your wife and was found in the same condition, murdered, shot in the back? What do you know about this?

And clearly the one thing that was a shock to police. In the beginning, he did not know who she was. He said he didn't remember and didn't have any reason at first of why his business card would be in her pocket. Then he would have a change of heart. And it was at that point that he realized that he did know her. At some point, the pre-heating summer, I had picked her up hitchhiking. And as they parted, he took out his business card.

He was a small appliance repairman. And he gave her the card, and she evidently kept it. I really find it challenging his story to be believable, because when I hear it, all I keep thinking about is the things that we now know, that Bobby Joe's sister said that when she thinks back, something did seem to be off in their relationship.

Even though her sister never confided in her when she visited, something didn't seem right. And she said that just that same three months before, which happens to be the same three months that he said he picked up Annette that one time, that their mother, Bobby Joe's mother, got remarried and that Bobby Joe came home for the wedding, but that Jeff didn't. So I start to put these pieces together and saying, I don't know, maybe he knew Annette much better than he was willing to let on. And if that's the case, is that what not only one murder, but these two are all about? Just as these cases always unfold with forensics,

there is some forensics here that will aid in Jeff's alibi. Jeff, who gave us his DNA voluntarily, it didn't match anything. I don't know. I mean, the DNA is a big deal. You know, they didn't have the answers for so many years, but now we know it's not him. It doesn't mean to me that he is absolutely not the killer.

What it means is that he is not the source of the DNA that was found on her glove. But again, maybe there was somebody else involved. Maybe this took two people and not one. But at the same time, all this conjecture and all these theories that seem to make common sense to me, they're just that. And unless you have that evidence to bring him to the courtroom, which authorities have not had and still do not to this day, maybe they're just that. And he too is just a victim in all this.

He is an innocent who lost his wife. And now because of all these other factors that he's had to live with sideways glances on top of everything else. And that's what he's been dealing with under a cloud of suspicion where he even remained there today. And he will likely stay in that same place until a killer is caught. I mean, I'm the first one as a prosecutor to say

that it is innocent until proven guilty. And there has never been enough evidence to bring Jeff and to charge him. So that means that we have to conclude and assume at this point that he is innocent. When I got involved, the first thing we did was go through boxes and boxes and boxes of reports. And looking through that, we kept seeing this name, Tom Luther. There's a guy by the name of Thomas Edward Luther, who he is more known, not by his name, but as the Colorado Spree Killer. And yep, that's exactly what it sounds like.

He was a cab driver, and six weeks after the murder, this guy was on kind of a drunken bender, and he eventually picked up a woman who was waiting for a bus and drove her around trying to take her home but one thing led to another and he ended up attacking her and beating her almost to death with a hammer while he was in jail he admitted to some of his cellmates that he had killed these two women he served his 10 years and got out in 1993.

He then befriended this woman and he took her up in the mountains, shot her, dragged her body uphill from a highway, buried her, and we eventually got his DNA. Wasn't his either. I wouldn't jump to saying it absolutely clears him, but it makes me take a big step back. And then people might say, well, wait a second, he confessed in jail, but you know what? People do confess to things they didn't do for various reasons.

You know, there's one case I can think of back in Brooklyn that two guys were convicted after having bragged all over town that they had killed a taxi driver, and it came to light years later that they actually weren't the ones responsible. Somebody else's DNA came back, and that was the real killer. And then the explanation was, is that for their own reasons that they wanted to be big men in that area in the crime world. And so they thought that they would elevate their images by bragging about this. So maybe too, maybe Thomas Edward Luther. I mean, while we know that he did plenty of things horrible in their own right, that he is just trying to up his image as the guy

everyone else should be afraid of. And so he takes credit for these crimes too. Luther and Jeff Overholzer are probably not involved, but they're certainly not eliminated. Nobody's eliminated until we figure out who did this. The big question right now is who killed Bobby Joe and Annette? Honestly, nobody really knows the answer to that. This is still an unsolved, very active case, which is why it's even more important, I mean, crucially important,

to really dissect these two cases as best we can to see what happened and that maybe one of you out there can help. So you have to think about what's the leading theories here. I mean, if we're trying to help investigators obtain leads, what's your best theory of what happened? There is something in this that is one of the more horrible aspects in the case, but actually leads me away from Jeff on this. And that is that it does appear that both these crimes were sexually motivated. There is evidence by, you know, some of the disarray in the clothing and that investigators have that at least one of these women was sexually assaulted. And that doesn't really go along with this being Jeff.

I don't know. And I think the police still say they don't know either. This is one of the reasons I was so excited about doing this double murder, because it remains unsolved and because of the fact that you and I are always fighting for victims and the hope here is justice can be found, even so many years later. You know, Anastasia gets almost four decades, and Charlie McCormick is around 80 years old. And he's been dedicated for so long to try to bring closure to both of these cases. And he really feels he can still do it.

You know, on almost any murder that happens, there's somebody out there that knows something about it, and those are the people who, when they come forward, will take a case like this that's really up in the air and solve it. So if you know something, share it with us. He has a website, RockyMountainColdCase.com, and he is welcoming the opportunity for somebody listening to give him some information to bring closure to this important case. Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original,

a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media Production. Sumit David is executive producer.