On a January night in 1982, Alan Lee Phillips was found shivering in his pickup, stuck in a snowdrift on a treacherous mountain pass in central Colorado. A rescue worker tracked him down after Mr. Phillips, then 30, used his headlights to blink the Morse code signal for SOS and caught the attention of a passenger on a plane flying overhead. Asked what he had been thinking, taking such a dangerous road in subzero temperatures, Mr. Phillips, looking dazed, said he was coming back from a bar, according to the police. “You find out how lonely it is really quick,” Mr. Phillips later said, according to a newspaper article from the time. The authorities say he had just shot two young women and left them to die near the mountain town of Breckenridge.

Source: New York Times May 27, 2021 12:07 UTC