The area of the rural Cascades near Leavenworth, Washington, is so majestic, they call it the Enchantments. Cold, clear water from the wilderness lakes flows into Icicle Creek, where it rushes over sparkling rocks. But the tranquil beauty that draws campers and hikers from across the country was shattered a month ago by the killings of three little girls just yards from the creek.
“I truly hope that the legacy of the girls’ lives in everyone’s heart forever. They were incredible,”saidtheir mother, Whitney Decker, at a public memorial service last weekend.
Travis Decker, the father of 5-year-old Olivia, 8-year-old Evelyn and 9-year-old Paityn, is charged with murdering his daughters by suffocating them with plastic bags near a makeshift campsite not long after he picked them up from their mother.
What was supposed to be a three-hour joint custody visit on May 30 morphed into the discovery of a horrifying crime scene and frustrating manhunt that has now stretched for nearly a month.
“There is nowhere that he’s going to be able to go that we don’t have units waiting for him,” Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrisonsaidin a news conference when the manhunt was still in its first week. “Eventually he’s going to tire. He’s going to make a mistake.”
But as days have turned to weeks, the roar of helicopter engines is a much less frequent sound over the natural serenity of Icicle Creek, and fewer people are scouring the woods for signs of Decker.
“At this time, there is no certain evidence that Decker remains alive or in this area,” the Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office, which is assisting in the manhunt, said in astatement. “Seemingly strong early leads gave way to less convincing proofs over the last two weeks of searching.”
The lack of progress in the massive manhunt is painful for law enforcement, but especially wounding for Decker’s ex-wife, Whitney, the mother of the children.
“I can say with all degrees of certainty that both Whitney and myself are very frustrated with the fact that Travis hasn’t been found,” Whitney Decker’s attorney, Arianna Cozart, told CNN.
While officials are quick to say they have not given up on their efforts to find Decker, dead or alive, the combination of natural roadblocks and Decker’s own history of spartan living have resulted in an extraordinarily difficult challenge for officers seeking justice for the three little girls.
Investigators never thought the search for Decker – an Army veteran with survival training – would be an easy one. By June 2, federal authorities were already being brought into the manhunt.
Decker “frequently engaged in hiking, camping, survival skill practice, hunting and even lived off the grid in the backwoods for approximately 2.5 months on one occasion,” a deputy US Marshal said in a court affidavit.
From his time serving in the military – including a tour in Afghanistan – Decker had “training in navigation, woodland/mountainous terrain, long distance movements, survival and numerous other disciplines needed to be able to flee from the Eastern District of Washington,” the affidavit added.
Despite frequently being homeless with movements that were increasingly hard to track, Decker did leave a few electronic breadcrumbs, Whitney Decker told investigators.
His Google searches turned up queries for “how does a person move to Canada” and similar phrases, four days before the kidnapping, the US Marshals said in their court filing. Marshals noted that Decker’s campsite was less than a dozen miles from the Pacific Crest Trail, which “leads directly to Canada,” the affidavit notes.
“We worked with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Morrison told CNN. “They were doing some follow-up on some leads we had up in Canada.”
Back in Chelan County, Morrison said both tips and the resources needed for an intense physical search have waned in the past week.
“Other agencies that have come out to assist, which we appreciated, clearly have to go back to their home jurisdictions and continue to do what their taxpayers and citizens are requiring of them,” the sheriff said.
The Marshals Service is now in charge of the manhunt while local and state authorities focus on examining the evidence they’ve been able to collect, an arrangement that Whitney Decker believes is not ideal, according to her attorney.
One has to ask what law enforcement agencies are most familiar with the surrounding woods and mountains? Certainly not the US Marshals Service,” said Cozart.
It’s not the first time questions have been raised about how the case has been pursued. The Wenatchee Police Department – the first agencycontactedby Whitney Decker – provided information to the Washington State Patrol about Travis Decker’s failure to return the girls and the potential for an Amber Alert. The patrol declined to issue one because “there was no current evidence to believe the children were at risk of serious bodily injury or death,” according to the police affidavit.
The following day, when Decker and the girls did not show up to a running event scheduled at a local park, the Washington State Patrol issued an Endangered Missing Person Alert. That placed information about their disappearance on astate website– but did not send a push notification to the public the way an Amber Alert would.
The wilderness beauty that draws more than a million visitors to the area each year also makes for an incredibly arduous search. Nearly 90% of the land in Chelan County ispublicly owned, and much of that is not directly accessible by road.
It is not the first time the dense Okanogan–Wenatchee National Foresthas provided cover for a fleeing murder suspect. Five summers ago, Jorge Alcantara Gonzalez was on the run for 23 days – law enforcement officers frequently just minutes behind him in a foot chase – before he was found about 50 miles south of where Decker was last seen.
A man walking his dog in the area spotted Alcantara in an empty house, the Seattle Timesreported. He wassentencedto 96 months in prison on lesser charges in a plea agreement and remains in state custody.
That kind of stroke of fortune is often what solves a missing fugitive case. A Kentucky man accused of shooting at cars on Interstate 75 from a nearby ledge evaded capture for more than a week in the Daniel Boone National Forest. A local couple – Fred and Sheila McCoy – joined the search for Joseph Couch on a whim.
“That started off as a date night, and turned into a six-day journey,” Fred McCoy told CNN.
As theylivestreamedtheir search, calling out Couch’s name, the McCoys eventually found his decomposed body deep in the woods. He had killed himself.
“Sheila and I don’t believe in luck,” McCoy said. “We believe in being blessed.”
The McCoys received a $35,000 reward for finding Couch’s remains last fall and said they briefly considered joining the search for Decker, but decided the cross-country trip to an area they are unfamiliar with would not be productive.
Like the man they were hunting, the McCoys say they would be surprised if Decker allowed himself to be captured alive.
“Him not being seen in so long makes me think he’s no longer with us,” Fred McCoy said.
A trail gone cold in a wooded area is not always a sign that the fugitive has completely given up. In one of the most prominent domestic terrorism cases in American history, it was only a sign of further determination.
Eric Robert Rudolph, an anti-abortion extremist and White supremacist responsible for four deadly bombings over three years, managed to evade from a massive manhunt for five years byholing upin the woods of western North Carolina near where he grew up.
With no bank account, investigatorssaidRudolph foraged at night for survival, taking cover in darkness andstealing vehiclesto bring whatever provisions he could back to his isolated campsite. He also hid 250 pounds of nitroglycerine dynamite.
“Until last week, a part of western North Carolina was literally a hidden minefield,” then-US Attorney David Nahmiassaidat a news conference after Rudolph’s capture.
The FBI said Rudolph also managed to survive on his own by finding caves and unoccupied cabins he could use for temporary shelter.
“I think it is very likely that he not only had campsites and caves, but he was also spending some time in those cabins,”saidChris Swecker, former special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Charlotte. “He knew exactly which cabins he could go into. He had them scouted out way ahead of time.”
The capture of Rudolph was another case that turned on being in the right place at the right time. After unsuccessful searches of the woods that involved upwards of 200 agents, a police officer in Murphy, North Carolina, with less than a year on the forcespottedRudolph rummaging through garbage outside a grocery store and stopped him, thinking he had spotted someone planning an ordinary break-in. He gave up without a fight.
After being caught, Rudolphconfessedto the crimes that killed two people in a plea bargain that took the death penalty off the table. He is serving four life sentences at the “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado.
Federal investigators never saw evidence that Rudolph was getting help during his crimes or his disappearance, and local authorities say there’s no sign that anyone has been working with Travis Decker.
“If there was evidence to show there were additional people there or an unknown subject, we would have known about it, and right now what we’re getting back is not showing anything like that,” Morrison said. “All evidence continues to point to Travis.”
But now, with reliable clues pointing to his whereabouts drying up, nearby trails that had been closed for safetyreopenedand fewer options for intensive searches, investigators hope that someone in the area will have their own unexpected encounter that could end a mystery they’ve been trying to solve for weeks.
“We’ll continue to follow up on every lead that we’re getting regarding travels,” said Morrison.”
For Whitney Decker, the little girls’ mother, getting those answers is critical to her effort to rebuild her life, her attorney said, especially if Travis is still on the run.
“The only message we have for Travis is please do the right thing and turn yourself in,” said Cozart. “Whitney deserves peace.”