CHELAN COUNTY — The spot where authorities on Thursday found human remains believed to belong to Travis Decker was less than a mile from where the bodies of his three young daughters were discovered in early June near the Rock Island Campground, south of Leavenworth.
Though geographically close, thick vegetation, dense woods and the steep slopes of Grindstone Mountain stood between the two sites, according to Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison.
The human remains found Thursday — part of a spinal column, a femur and feet — were decomposed and scattered, likely by animals, said Morrison. Searchers also found a shirt, shorts and a bracelet that matched what Decker was last seen wearing, along with a can of chewing tobacco, which Decker was known to use, he said.
Morrison said they will wait for results to come back from the Washington State Patrol crime lab for confirmation, but he was very confident the remains belonged to Decker.
State Patrol spokesperson Chris Loftis anticipates the DNA testing is being expedited, and results could arrive next week.
Federal and local law enforcement crews were conducting their fourth grid and drone search of rough terrain around the campground when the remains were discovered in an area that had not been previously searched, Morrison said Friday. Crews rappelled from a Spokane County sheriff’s helicopter to the site, which is about three-quarters of a mile away and 2,000 feet in elevation above where the bodies of Olivia, Evelyn and Paityn Decker were discovered June 2.
The Rock Island Campground is nearly 17 miles down Icicle Road from Leavenworth.
On Friday morning, a thin haze sank between the layers of peaked mountains above a camp of law enforcement vehicles on the way up Icicle Road.
A dog barked from the back of a K-9 police vehicle as officers from local and federal agencies milled about the camp, some gathering under the shade of a tent outside a Douglas County sheriff’s trailer.
Behind the vehicles, crews loaded equipment into a helicopter between its flights up the mountain and a crew member zipped up in a bright orange flight suit.
The Decker sisters, ages 5, 8 and 9, were reported missing May 30 after their father failed to return them to their mother’s Wenatchee home per a court-ordered custody agreement. The girls were found a couple days later, fatally suffocated with their wrists bound, near Decker’s 2017 GMC Sierra pickup.
The discovery of the girls’ bodies kicked off a summerlong search for Decker, an Army veteran and skilled outdoorsman who was charged with three counts of aggravated first-degree murder and three counts of first-degree kidnapping.
A week after the girls’ bodies were found, a tip from a hiking party about a lone person ill-prepared for trail conditions intensified the search for Decker in the Enchantments area. Tracking teams spotted an off-trail hiker who ran from a helicopter flying near Colchuck Lake. More searchers and a police K-9 unit were called in and tracked a man believed to be Decker many miles away to the Ingalls Creek trailhead, south of the unincorporated community of Peshastin, off Highway 97.
Despite the assistance of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, Decker remained elusive, and authorities did not know if he was alive or dead. The FBI closed multiple campgrounds, hiking trails and roads in the Leavenworth area as part of the search, and repeatedly sought the public’s help to find him.
The search for Decker had cost more than $2 million within the first week. Morrison, the Chelan County sheriff, said Friday the county would have gone bankrupt if not for the assistance of federal agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service and Border Patrol. Chelan County covers nearly 3,000 square miles, and 87% of it is inaccessible by roads, so even with the extra help, there weren’t enough resources to look everywhere, he said.
It’s unknown how long the remains had been out there. There was no clear indication of the cause of death, and Morrison didn’t say whether any weapons were found near the remains.
In downtown Wenatchee, ribbons — green for Olivia, pink for Evelyn and purple for Paityn — still adorned the trees planted along the sidewalks more than two months after they first appeared when the community held a June 20 celebration of life for the Decker sisters.
The tree outside The Bloom Flowery is decorated with a pink ribbon tied in a bow, and is a reminder to owner Cindy Gonzalez of her brief meeting with Evelyn Decker and her mother, Whitney, who came into her flower and gift shop two weeks before the sisters disappeared.
In the days after the girls’ bodies were found, Gonzalez and other business owners started a fundraiser, collecting thousands of dollars in donations for Whitney Decker.
Gonzalez is skeptical whether the remains found Thursday in fact belong to Travis Decker and is waiting with the rest of Wenatchee for confirmation of his apparent death. If it comes, she hopes it will bring the family peace, “knowing he’s not out there somewhere.”
“We still remember them,” Gonzalez said of the Decker sisters, with a nod to the ribbons on the trees outside her store. “We have not forgotten.”
