Male blood found where 3 sisters in Washington were killed, while search
for their father continues
[June 10, 2025]
LEAVENWORTH, Wash. (AP) — Blood discovered at a campsite where three
young Washington state sisters were found dead last week belonged to a
male, authorities said Monday as the search continued for their father,
a former soldier with extensive survival skills.
Investigators have been looking for Travis Caleb Decker, 32, since the
night of May 30, when he failed to return the girls to their mother's
home in Wenatchee, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Seattle,
after a scheduled visit.
Three days later, a sheriff's deputy discovered the bodies of 9-year-old
Paityn Decker, 8-year-old Evelyn Decker and 5-year-old Olivia Decker
down an embankment at a campsite in the Cascade Mountains. The campsite,
west of Leavenworth, is about 11 miles (18 km) from the Pacific Crest
Trail, which runs from the U.S.-Mexico border to the U.S.-Canada border.
Decker has been charged with murder and kidnapping. According to a
probable cause statement filed in Chelan County Superior Court last
week, Decker's truck was left at the campsite, and it had two bloody
handprints on the tailgate. In a news release Monday, the Chelan County
Sheriff's Office said tests revealed that one blood sample taken from
the scene belonged to a male, and another turned out to be from an
animal.
The sheriff's office did not say whether the tested samples had been
taken from the tailgate. DNA and fingerprint analyses are pending, the
news release said. Decker's dog was also found alive at the scene and
turned over to the humane society for care.
The sheriff's office said that while it is retaining command of the
criminal investigation, it had turned over control of the search efforts
to federal authorities to give its personnel time to rest. Officials
have searched hundreds of square miles, much of it mountainous and
remote, by land, water and air.
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This undated photo provided by Whitney Decker shows Paityn, Olivia
and Evelyn Decker. (Courtesy of Whitney Decker via AP)
Decker has also been charged in federal court with unlawful flight
to avoid prosecution. According to an affidavit filed by deputy U.S.
marshal Keegan Stanley in that case, Decker has training in
navigation, survival and other skills that make him “a very avid and
well-versed outdoorsman.”
Decker once spent 2.5 months in the backwoods living off the grid,
Stanley wrote, and in the days before he took the girls, he searched
online for how to relocate to and find a job in Canada.
Decker was an infantryman in the Army from March 2013 to July 2021
and deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2014, according to
Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Ruth Castro. From 2014 to 2016, he was an
automatic rifleman with the 75th Ranger Regiment at Joint Base
Lewis-McChord in Washington.
Last September his ex-wife, Whitney Decker, wrote in a petition to
modify their parenting plan that his mental health issues had
worsened and that he had become increasingly unstable, often living
out of his truck. She sought to restrict him from having overnight
visits with the girls until he found housing.
An autopsy on Friday determined the cause of death to be
suffocation, the sheriff's office said. The girls had been bound
with zip ties and had plastic bags placed over their heads.
Authorities have reopened popular camping and backpacking areas in
the Icicle Creek area, near where the girls were discovered. Other
trails in the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area have reopened for
day use but not camping.
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