{"id":238986,"date":"2025-09-19T13:19:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T13:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/238986\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T13:19:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T13:19:15","slug":"remains-of-travis-decker-wanted-in-deaths-of-daughters-believed-found-in-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/238986\/","title":{"rendered":"Remains of Travis Decker, wanted in deaths of daughters, believed found in Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

LEAVENWORTH, Wash. (AP) \u2014 Authorities say they have found remains they believe are Travis Decker, an ex-soldier wanted in the deaths of his three daughters<\/a>, in the mountains of Washington state.<\/p>\n

The Chelan County Sheriff\u2019s Office said in a statement Thursday that it was processing the site with the help of the Washington State Patrol crime scene response team. They will follow up with DNA analysis, it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile positive identification has not yet been confirmed, preliminary findings suggest the remains belong to Travis Decker,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

Decker, 32, has been wanted since June 2, when a sheriff\u2019s deputy found his truck and the bodies of his three daughters \u2014 9-year-old Paityn Decker, 8-year-old Evelyn Decker and 5-year-old Olivia Decker \u2014 at a campground outside Leavenworth.<\/p>\n

Three days earlier he failed to return the girls to their mother\u2019s home in Wenatchee, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Seattle, following a scheduled visit.<\/p>\n

Decker 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.<\/p>\n

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

Last September, Decker\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

An autopsy determined the girls\u2019 cause of death to be suffocation, the sheriff\u2019s office said. They had been bound with zip ties and had plastic bags placed over their heads. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEAVENWORTH, Wash. (AP) \u2014 Authorities say they have found remains they believe are Travis Decker, an ex-soldier wanted…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":238987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[245,4219,51344,57,4221,127947,50,127946,127945,2086,127944,61,67,132,68,2512,2057,2058,127948],"class_list":{"0":"post-238986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-children","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-general-domestic-news","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-homicide","14":"tag-leavenworth","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-olivia-decker","17":"tag-paityn-whitney-decker","18":"tag-seattle","19":"tag-travis-evelyn-decker","20":"tag-u-s-news","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-veterans","25":"tag-wa-state-wire","26":"tag-washington","27":"tag-whitney-decker"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115231166737509662","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}