DNA testing underway on remains believed to be Travis Decker, wanted in killings of his girls

This undated photo provided by the Wenatchee Police Department shows Travis Caleb Decker, who is wanted in connection with the deaths of his three daughters. (Wenatchee Police Department via AP)

LEAVENWORTH, Wash. — Authorities were using DNA testing on Friday to determine whether have they found the skeletal remains of Travis Decker, an ex-soldier wanted in the deaths of his three daughters, in the mountains of Washington state.

The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday that preliminary findings suggest the remains belong to Decker. They said they hope to have results of the forensic testing soon.

“While positive identification has not yet been confirmed, preliminary findings suggest the remains belong to Travis Decker,” the statement said.

The remains were found near Grindstone Mountain, the sheriff’s office said Friday. That’s close to where a sheriff’s deputy on June 2 found Decker’s truck and the bodies of his three daughters -- nine-year-old Paityn Decker, eight-year-old Evelyn Decker and five-year-old Olivia Decker -- at a campground outside Leavenworth.

Three days earlier he failed to return the girls to their mother’s home in Wenatchee, about 100 miles (160 kilometres) east of Seattle, following a scheduled visit.

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 US$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.

An autopsy determined the girls’ cause of death to be suffocation, the sheriff’s office said. They had been bound with zip ties and had plastic bags placed over their heads.

The Associated Press