Travis Decker: Why we may never know how military veteran accused of daughters’ murders died

As authorities resort to DNA testing to determine whether have they found the skeletal remains of Travis Decker, wanted over the deaths of his three young daughters, police say we may never know how he died.

In a bombshell update nearly four months after the 32-year-old military veteran went missing, authorities revealed on Thursday local time that they believed they had found his body.

Police say he was responsible for the gruesome deaths of his daughters, Paityn, 9, Evelyn, 8, and Olivia, 5, whose bodies were discovered at a Washington campground with plastic bags over their heads and zip ties around their wrists.

Decker had collected the girls for a scheduled visit on May 30, but when he failed to return them at the agreed time, their mother, Whitney, raised the alarm.

A search for the girls ended in tragedy three days later when they were found at a campground close to their father’s white 2017 GMC Sierra truck.

The remains believed to belong to Decker were found near Grindstone Mountain, close to where a sheriff’s deputy on June 2 found Decker’s truck and girls’ bodies.

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison told People that determining his cause of death, or even when he had died would be hard.

“I’ve heard that the probability of doing it will be difficult,” he said.

“Based off the condition of the body. We may never know, according to our coroner. They are still doing the processing, so we’ll see. But unless something’s obvious, it could be difficult for them.

“We have our subject matter experts on the ground assessing the remains and seeing what we have as a potential cause of death, if they can determine that at all.”

“Even the coroner and the medical examiner said they’re not willing to make an estimate yet,” he saidys. “They want to assess what they have because it really does depend on the environment, conditions, exposure, and other factors that clearly are more in their wheelhouse than mine.”

At a press conference it was revealed that a shirt belonging to Decker was discovered with the use of AI powered drones less than a mile from where his daughter’s bodies were found. Army Ranger shorts, a bracelet belonging to Decker and his preferred brand of chewing tobacco were also found.

“I am confirming the shirt that we saw on scene is a match for what Travis was last seen wearing,” Sheriff Morrison said at a news conference.

“We found additional body parts today to include two feet, some femurs, and also some vertebrates.”

Authorities blamed the “extremely complex” terrain for the delay in finding the remains, even though they were found close to the crime scene. The search for Decker was the largest in the county’s history.

Decker, 32, was an infantryman in the Army from March 2013 to July 2021 and deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2014. He had training in navigation, survival and other skills, authorities said, and once spent more than two months living in the backwoods off the grid.

More than 100 officials with an array of state and federal agencies searched hundreds of square miles, much of it mountainous and remote, by land, water and air during the on and off search. The U.S. Marshals Service offered a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to his capture.

A dive team searching several hundred yards of Icicle Creek found a key fob “consistent with the key fob that would belong to Decker’s truck,” according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

Last September, Decker’s 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. He was often living out of his truck, and she sought to restrict him from having overnight visits with their daughters until he found housing.

— with AP