The trial for a man accused of killing two women near Breckenridge in 1982 can go forward, a Park County district court judge ruled Tuesday morning.

Alan Lee Phillips, 70, was arrested last winter and charged with the killings of Barbara Jo Oberholtzer, 29, and Annette Schnee, 21. Both women disappeared the night of Jan. 6, 1982.

Oberholtzer had last been seen leaving the Village Pub shortly before 8 p.m. after having drinks with friends, planning to hitchhike home. Her body was found the next day down an embankment of snow off the highway to Hoosier Pass. She had bled out from gunshot wounds.

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.

Judge Stephen Groome said the prosecution has strong evidence against Phillips for Oberholtzer’s death, including his DNA on a bloody glove found in the general area where her body was discovered. But he said Phillips’ link to Schnee’s murder is more tenuous, based on circumstantial evidence.

In the preliminary hearing lasting through Monday and into Tuesday morning, Phillips’ defense attorneys sought to raise questions about the strength of evidence appearing to link him to the murders.

Former Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Jim Hardtke said Monday an orange bootie sock found at each scene appeared to be from the same pair and seemed to definitively link the two cases together. But public defender Daniel Zettler argued even that connection is shaky, saying there is uncertainty about where it was collected and it also appears to have been lost once collected for eight-and-a-half years.

“That really, arguably, is the only connection [between] the two cases, and the testimony has been quite clear that the collection of that bootie is very muddy,” he said.

Zettler pointed out DNA on the glove couldn’t be conclusively determined to be Oberholtzer’s, nor could investigators definitively link her DNA to a tissue also found containing Phillips’ DNA.

CBI forensic investigator and DNA analyst Yvonne Woods said in testimony for Phillips’ defense she couldn’t conclusively determine that DNA on Oberholtzer’s clothing belonged to her. She explained the CBI has a newly established practice for evidence collected before 2006 of generally not testing for traces of DNA that someone could have left on an object purely from touching or being in close contact with it, because the body of knowledge about that type of DNA is more recent. Woods said as a result, much evidence collection before 2006 happened without proper personal protective gear to avoid tainting it.

Zettler added Phillips’ DNA was not found on any items on Oberholtzer’s body or directly tied to the scene where her body was found.

He also sought to shed doubt on the significance of the revelation that a passenger flight in the area rescued Phillips — reportedly with a head wound — from the top of the snow-covered Guanella Pass the same night of the killings. The prosecution wasn’t able to conclusively establish Phillips would have had enough time to kill the two women and make it to the pass based on when he sent a distress signal using his headlights, Zettler said.

In issuing his decision Monday, Groome said the similarities between the killings tie them together: Two women in their 20s hitchhiking out of Breckenridge, shot to death the same night.

Groome also denied the defense attorneys’ request to release Phillips on bail. The court was required to hold a proof-evident presumption-great hearing to keep Phillips in custody on first-degree murder charges without granting bail.