Border Patrol agent Cody Bachman was scouring the steep slope of Grindstone Mountain north of the Enchantments with a four-man search crew and canine when his radio crackled with reports from a team thousands of feet below.
A green T-shirt, matching the outfit Travis Decker was last seen wearing. Army Ranger shorts. A can of chewing tobacco. A bracelet. And piles of bones.
The search for Decker, the 32-year-old ex-Army soldier from Wenatchee accused of killing his three daughters, was effectively over.
For more than 100 days, hundreds of law enforcement personnel from over a dozen government agencies searched for Decker. It took nearly $10 million, hundreds of miles searched and over 700 tips to find the significantly decayed remains of Decker three-quarters of a mile from and 1,200 feet above where his daughters — Olivia, 5; Evelyn, 8; and Paityn, 9 — were found dead outside Rock Island Campground, killed by suffocation.
Bachman, an agent who specializes in trauma and search and rescue, hurried 3,000 feet down and 2 miles over to the location of the remains.
Communities in mourning, sympathizers and crime junkies across the globe watched the search unfold.
It was one of the largest deployments of law enforcement resources in Washington state’s recent history, said Washington State Patrol spokesperson Chris Loftis. “This one will quite literally be in our history books.”
Local, state and federal law enforcement officers trekked across treacherous terrain, facilitated complex communication systems, coordinated an orchestra of agencies and combed through Decker’s psychology.
It was like “finding a needle in a haystack,” said Trisena Sharff, captain of the State Patrol's criminal investigation division.
Authorities say we may never know how Decker died, given that an autopsy cannot be done because of severe damage to the bones, and his skull and torso were never found. They also say we also may never know why Decker allegedly killed his daughters.
Yet, weeks after DNA results confirmed Decker's death, questions remain: How was Decker found so close to his daughters? And why did it take so long to find him?
The search begins
Deputy U.S. Marshal Carson Taylor raced three hours from Spokane to Leavenworth with only the clothes on his back. He wouldn’t have a chance to change for three days until he could make a Walmart run.
He’d awoken the morning of June 3 to news that the Decker girls had been killed after their mother, Whitney Decker, reported on May 30 her husband hadn't returned them as outlined in their court-ordered custody agreement. Travis Decker had picked up the girls around 5 p.m. on May 30 but failed to return them to Whitney Decker by 8 p.m. that day.
Decker, a veteran and skilled outdoorsman, had suffered from deteriorating mental health after he left the Army, Whitney Decker wrote in court paperwork when filing for divorce in 2024. Decker's borderline personality disorder and apparent narcissism had become rampant."
Decker joined the Army in 2013 and transferred to the Washington National Guard in 2021, according to the Washington Military Department.
When Taylor read about the girls' deaths, he immediately relayed the Marshals Service’s support to the Chelan County sheriff’s office.
By 3 p.m., he was at the command center. It was “controlled chaos,” he said. A confluence of agencies was setting up at a secure facility in Wenatchee Valley College. Computers and television monitors were everywhere.
Two witnesses had reported seeing Decker run toward Icicle Creek about the same time he went missing May 30, said Deputy Marshal Andrew Creese. Tan flip-flop sandals that matched a description of Decker's outfit were found stuck in the mud on the riverbank. That would be the last confirmed sign of Decker until the key fob to his truck was found in the water months later.
SWAT teams checked and secured the handful of houses and numerous campsites along Icicle Road, preparing for Decker to be alive, armed and dangerous, Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison said. Residents reported eggs being stolen from their chicken coops. Officers tracked someone sick in the woods with stomach issues. But none of the leads was credible.
Drones and helicopters went up in the skies, dogs sniffed on the ground and dive teams plunged into the river where Decker could have drowned, shocked by the cold water. The FBI expanded the search radius a quarter-mile at a time, starting from the site where the Decker girls were found.
It wouldn’t be until June 18 that Taylor was able to call his wife and two young boys on his way home. He was sleeping in a hotel in Leavenworth and staying alive on Monster energy drinks and food community members dropped off at the command center while he clocked 18- to 20-hour days.
Between operations, he wondered if Decker would be found, or if “this case was going to haunt me for my entire career.”
Tough terrain
As the search deepened, crews found out quickly that “ the terrain wasn't the most friendly,” Border Patrol agent Bachman said. A grid search with teams lining up arms’ length from one another couldn’t have been done, like in the movies.
The Border Patrol's Blaine Sector Pacific Northwest special operations detachment was called in for its expertise working in a rugged and challenging environment, the agency said.
The terrain in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest was steep and rocky with a dense canopy of trees.
Search dogs couldn’t sit down. Exposed areas posed risk of falling. The incline was so steep you could reach your arm out while standing and touch the ground ahead, searchers said. Trees were so thick you could lose sight of someone 4 feet away. Smoke from the Labor Mountain and Lower Sugarloaf wildfires made it hard to breathe. Some searchers like Bachman wore 75 pounds of gear in case Decker was armed: a helmet, armor plates, rifle, backpack, water, food, duty belt.
There were no radio towers, and mountains blocked communication between helicopters and the command center in Wenatchee, said Jon Oman, deputy Border Patrol agent in charge of Pacific Northwest special operations. He had to relay communications between search crews and the base via Starlink.
As the search progressed, tips came in by the hundreds, and crews were spread out across numerous locations, Morrison said. They were chasing every lead they could as tips poured in during the first two weeks, whether it was a sighting in town, down Highway 97, in Idaho, Montana, Texas, Canada or Mexico, or even a premonition from a psychic. Every lead had to be crossed off, no matter how unlikely.
Hikers reported seeing a man in the Enchantments who was ill-prepared for conditions and avoiding others. A family said they saw a man matching Decker's description in Idaho's Sawtooth National Forest. Neither turned out to be Decker.
The trouble was, Decker had a couple of days’ head start. Whitney Decker reported the girls missing May 30, prompting an Endangered Missing Persons Advisory, but it wouldn’t be until June 3 that the discovery of their bodies was announced. Authorities believe the girls were killed before the alert was ever issued.
Those first days of a search could have given authorities a leg up identifying places a fugitive might go before they’re gone, said Deputy Marshal William Bullock.
It was important to chase active leads, but it wasn’t until tips slowed down that search crews could refocus and systematically search the local mountainous area, said State Patrol Capt. Sharff, who helped coordinate the effort.
That’s where operational psychologist Stacy Cecchet came in.
A psychologist leads the way to Decker
Cecchet usually works in the shadows. She is one of fewer than 10 forensic and operational psychologists in the world specializing in the behavioral analysis of crimes against children, the State Patrol said.
Cecchet, who runs a private practice in Seattle and contracts far and wide with agencies like the State Patrol, was brought in originally in mid-June to provide mental health services for law enforcement.
But given her background, Cecchet was later asked to analyze Decker, explain his behavior and predict where he might have gone. She spent 18 hours poring over evidence on her first day studying the alleged killer.
As she received bits of evidence over the months, Cecchet pieced them together like a puzzle she didn’t know the picture to. She was given notes and journal entries written by Decker, interviews with proximate people and images of the crime scene, Sheriff Morrison said.
“It's really clear that (Decker) was unwell,” Cecchet said. “He was really, really unwell.”
She thought it was highly likely Decker was dead throughout the search, Cecchet said. He'd struggled for a long time and had difficulty connecting with others. He'd begun to withdraw from his loved ones, and his mental health had declined, a process she called “decompensation” where the “reality they are living in becomes very different than the reality that we live in.”
The week before authorities conducted their final search, Cecchet produced a diagram forecasting where she believed Decker went. She identified an area a couple of thousand feet up the steep slope of Grindstone Mountain.
Depending on their psychology and resources, fugitives may return to or near crime scenes, try to blend into densely populated areas, lie low or visit familiar and comforting places, Cecchet said. It was part of her job to figure out which Decker might do.
Cecchet advised search teams that Decker would attempt to go somewhere where he could observe the crime scene, said Deputy Marshal Andrew Creese, who also helped coordinate the search.
Crews placed reflective orange panels at the site where the Decker girls were found and faced them uphill while drones flew above, Creese said. Crews could see the reflective panels from the area where Decker’s bones were found later that week.
“The place that Stacy said that Decker would be, Decker was,” said State Patrol Capt. Sharff.
Remains are found
Deputy Marshal Bullock almost fell to the ground when he got a text from Creese that Decker’s remains might have been found.
Search teams had just made another push. In late August, the FBI closed numerous campgrounds and trails around Leavenworth for an intensive two-day search. When no breaks were made, a fourth coordinated search set out in mid-September.
Bullock was away at a training center in Walla Walla on Sept. 18 when he texted Creese without any serious expectation, “Hey, you find anything yet?”
“Yeah,” Creese responded.
He called Creese right away.
Border Patrol had spotted a green object across a ravine while surveying a slope in the area Cecchet had pointed to, Sheriff Morrison said. That green object would turn out to be a shirt matching the outfit Decker was last seen wearing.
After drones checked out the area, a crew aboard a Spokane County sheriff’s office helicopter lowered search teams by rope to four different locations on the mountain, said crew chief Cpl. Jeff Welton. Each had a human remains detection dog strapped to them as they descended onto the slope. The dogs needed to start at a high elevation because the steep slope would tire them out and upward winds could carry a scent, depending on the time of day.
At about 2 p.m. that Thursday, a dog named Delo with Border Patrol from Tucson, Ariz., found the remains.
Hearing the news, Bullock hopped in his car, got gas and didn’t stop until he arrived at the command center in Leavenworth. He didn’t pause to get a toothbrush or a change of pants.
When he arrived, a "weight had been lifted off of everybody for the first time in a long time,” Bullock said. It would be a week before State Patrol DNA lab tests confirmed the remains were Decker’s. But understanding that caveat, authorities were giving handshakes and hugs.
“It wasn't going to bring Paityn, Evelyn and Olivia back; it wasn't going to bring the kind of closure that I would hope I could bring for (Whitney Decker), but it might bring her some,” Sheriff Morrison said.
Search crews and investigators from the Chelan County sheriff’s office began to sweep the area for every last bit of remains, Morrison said. They photographed and cataloged, processed and packaged each bone individually before placing them in backpacks, and walked down the mountainside. The remains had been scattered across several sites, apparently by animals.
Delo, the Belgian Malinois who discovered Decker’s remains, “got many, many rewards,” agent Oman said. A Kong chew toy, a piece of a hose, a PVC pipe and a big steak back at the hotel.
Though the remains were confirmed to belong to Decker, numerous questions remain unanswered. Decker's cause of death will never be known. The reason he killed his daughters might never be known either.
Sometimes, there is "no clear line between a particular event that occurred and a particular outcome, Cecchet said. Speculation isn't healthy for anyone, especially for a grieving community.
Nevertheless, “I'm relieved Whitney doesn't have to face him in a courtroom,” Taylor said. “Travis Decker will have to face God.”
The deputy marshal eventually drove home. He hugged his wife and two young boys, and played dinosaurs and bug hunted with them before falling asleep. He slept “a lot” that night.
Material from The Seattle Times archives was used in this story.
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