Authorities confirmed that remains found in a remote part of Washington state were those of Travis Decker, the U.S. Army veteran accused in the horrific murder of his three young daughters and the subject of a monthslong manhunt.
Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison said Thursday that officials received DNA results from Washington State Patrol’s crime lab confirming the identity of the remains.
Clothing recovered from the scene also belonged to Decker, he said.
Morrison apologized to the girls’ mother, Whitney Decker, for how long it took to track down Decker.
“But I hope that you can rest easier at night knowing that Travis is accounted for,” Morrison said. “He is deceased. Our DNA results confirm that, and this will bring a close to our case.”
He said officials are still awaiting a possible cause and time of death from the coroner.
A psychologist pointed authorities to a 7,500-foot mountain east of Leavenworth, Washington, Morrison said, “and her insights and guidance led us to an important area to search where we did eventually locate Mr. Decker. Again, we couldn’t have done this by ourselves.”
The announcement came after the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office said last week that the remains were found in a wooded area south of Leavenworth, nearly 120 miles east of Seattle.
That area wasn’t far from the remote campsite where the bodies of Decker’s daughters — Evelyn, 8; Paityn, 9; and Olivia Decker, 5 — were found with bags over their heads on June 2.
The girls had been zip-tied, according to an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant, and Decker’s abandoned pickup was found near the campsite with two bloody handprints on the tailgate.
The county medical examiner said the girls died by suffocation. Decker, 32, was accused of murder and kidnapping in their deaths. He was also wanted on one federal charge — unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Authorities have not identified a potential motive. In the affidavit, a detective noted that Decker — who was divorced from his daughters’ mother — refused to sign a parenting plan that required him to seek mental health treatment and domestic violence anger management.
The girls had been with Decker for a May 30 visitation when he failed to return them, setting off an intensive search that covered hundreds of square miles across a rugged swath of the state.
There were dozens and dozens of potential sightings in the weeks that followed, authorities said, including one that led investigators as far away as Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest. That sighting turned out to be false.
Decker, who was described by authorities as an outdoorsman who would go “off-grid” for months, appears to have been seen only once, in an area south of Leavenworth, when tracking teams spotted an off-trail hiker who ran from their helicopter.
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