Authorities said Monday that the blood found at a campsite where three young Washington sisters were discovered dead last week belonged to a male, as the search for their father, a former soldier with extensive survival skills, continued.
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 found the bodies of 9-year-old Paityn Decker, 8-year-old Evelyn Decker, and 5-year-old Olivia Decker down an embankment at a Cascade Mountains campsite.
The campsite, located west of Leavenworth, is approximately 11 miles (18 kilometers) from the Pacific Crest Trail, which connects the United States-Mexico and Canada borders.
Decker has been charged with both murder and kidnapping. According to a probable cause statement filed in Chelan County Superior Court last week, Decker’s truck was abandoned at the campsite, with two bloody handprints on the tailgate.
According to a news release issued Monday by the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office, one blood sample collected from the scene belonged to a male and another to an animal.
The sheriff’s office did not specify whether the tested samples were collected from the tailgate. The news release stated that DNA and fingerprint analyses are pending. Decker’s dog was also discovered alive at the scene and handed over to the humane society for care.
The sheriff’s office stated that, while it retains command of the criminal investigation, it has delegated control of the search efforts to federal authorities to allow its personnel to rest. Officials searched hundreds of square miles, much of it mountainous and remote, on land, water, and air.
Decker has also been charged in federal court with illegal flight to avoid prosecution. Decker, according to an affidavit filed by deputy U.S. marshal Keegan Stanley in that case, has navigation, survival, and other skills that make him “a very avid and well-versed outdoorsman.”
Decker once spent 2.5 months living off the grid in the backwoods, according to Stanley, and in the days leading up to his trip with the girls, he looked up how to relocate to and find work in Canada.
Decker served as an infantryman in the Army from March 2013 to July 2021, including a four-month deployment to Afghanistan in 2014, according to Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Ruth Castro. From 2014 to 2016, he served as an automatic rifleman with the 75th Ranger Regiment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.
In a petition to modify their parenting plan filed last September, his ex-wife, Whitney Decker, stated that his mental health issues had worsened and that he had become increasingly unstable, frequently living out of his truck. She attempted to prevent him from spending overnights with the girls until he found housing.
An autopsy on Friday determined that the cause of death was suffocation, according to the sheriff’s office. The girls were restrained with zip ties and had plastic bags placed over their heads.
Authorities have reopened popular camping and backpacking spots in the Icicle Creek area, close to where the girls were discovered. Other trails in the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area are open for day use but not camping.
