August 28, 2025 • 49 mins
In a mystery that has captured national attention, Washington father Travis Decker picked up his three young daughters on May 30 for a "planned visitation," and never came back. The three girls -- Paityn Decker, 9; Evelyn Decker, 8; and Olivia Decker, 5 -- were found dead near a Washington state campground on June 2. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case that has one of the most shocking crime scenes of all time. Professor Morgan explains the forensic evidence left behind inside the bags and the bloody handprint on the truck. As of today, Travis Decker is still on the run, the lone suspect in the murder of his three little girls. Officials say anyone who sees Decker or knows of his whereabouts should call 911.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.88 Introduction
02:06.17 The Murder of the Decker Sisters
05:11.48 Decker picked up his girls for visitation
10:08.63 Help is a two-way street
15:08.46 Search for Decker began June 2nd
20:04.96 Bloody handprint on tailgate of truck
24:56.48 Bags don't breathe
30:55.64 Passive Homicide
34:47.96 Decker has a decent level of training
40:04.66 Decker DNA found on the bags
45:24.15 Eric Robert Rudolph
49:27.37 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody bats. But Joseph's gotten more travel recommendation. If you
have never seen the Cascades, get it on your list.
You gotta go. You just you have to go. The
Rockies are fine, but there's something about being in the
midst of the Cascade range. You don't have to be
(00:22):
in the midst of it. You can be miles and
miles and miles and miles away from it and still
kind of be in it. You can see them from
such a great distance away. I remember the first time
that I flew into Seattle and past I guess it's
(00:44):
that mount hood, I think, coming in over this thing,
and I'd never seen anything like in my life. It's amazing.
And essentially they are snowcapped, dormant and volcanoes, but it's
all the little hills that surround it as well, and
those full, lush evergreen forest that go on like a
carpet forever off into the distance. It is certainly a
(01:10):
beautiful place, and it has a particular smell about it.
When you're there underneath that canopy of evergreens, sometimes you
can almost catch a hint of Christmas. Even in the summertime.
It's the pine seceedars But today I want to talk
(01:32):
about something that has come to my attention in the
last three days across my desk, actually the last two days,
and it's case that people have been talking about for
a while, but there was really nothing there that I
could hold forth on from a forensics perspective. Now there is.
(01:54):
I'm talking about the murders of three precious little angels,
the Decker Sisters. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is
body Bags, David. I think the thing that so amazes
me about the Cascades, and I know that geography nerds
(02:16):
out there and probably people that live adjacent to them,
that are friends of ours out there, they're going to
nail me on this, But the idea that they run
for such a long distance, you know, kind of up
the spine on the west coast, if you will, And
a lot of people use the Cascade Range to escape.
They escape for a number of reasons. You know, we
(02:38):
got to uh, well several, not just too We've got
major metropolitan centers along there. You know, people you know,
trying to earn a buck, they get away, they head
head east, head towards the Cascades and go camping. And
our subject today relative to the Decker sisters were volves
(03:00):
around their little family and dad who was known to
camp camp with some frequency. And this is up up
in Washington State, up toward the north in the Cascade Range.
And Travis went off into the forest and never came
(03:22):
back out alive.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well, all right, Travis Decker, first of all, he's a
thirty two year old guy who was in the military
for an extended period of time. Kind of look at
this and think was he really planning on making a
life career out of the military, Because he was in
it for longer than the first hitch that you do
coming out of like high school or college when you
don't know what you're going to do. He was in
(03:44):
longer than that. He was in it for ten twelve
years and then transfers over the National Guard. But he's
got these girls, who's got an ex wife, and he
has yet defined solid footing for himself. I don't know
about it way to say it. As he and his
wife ex wife dealt with custodial issues over the girls.
(04:09):
She said, it's one thing to go camping as an outing.
It's another if when you get the girls for a weekend,
you're pitching a tent in the woods because you're homeless,
and I think that is a legitimate question that has
to be answered. That is not the environment that many
(04:30):
of us would consider safe. And that was something that
had happened as this was going on. So Travis, he
was homeless, he did camp in the woods. He didn't
do it because he was an outdoorsy guy. He did
it because he had a truck, and that was it.
So when he would get the girls, he would maybe
sometimes stay in a hotel, sometimes not. And it got
(04:51):
to the point where he did not get the kind
of visitation that he wanted and it had kind of
evolved into that. So when he comes to pick the
girls up May thirtieth, was a planned visitation and I
don't know, you know, we don't know all the zenos.
We don't know everything that happened. We only know what
(05:12):
cards he showed. And he did pick up the girls
for a planned visitation. They were supposed to go to
watch to appeer to five k run. You know a
lot of times they'll have a five k run in
your community and it's a whole day event where you know,
you have cookouts and things like that, and lots of
activities and so that's what they were going to do,
a nice family fun time. But they never showed up there.
(05:36):
And when Travis Decker did not show up with the
girls we're talking about Peyton Decker is nine, Evelyn is eight,
and Olivia is five. These are some very active ages.
A five year old can keep you busy, yeah, a
five year old, an eight year old and a nine
(05:56):
year old can make you shave your head because of
the bald patches you're pulling out. So he has, he
has all three of these girls, and he doesn't bring
them back when he was supposed to as this had
been an ongoing issue. His ex wife did not tolerate it.
She was on the phone with police fairly quickly. They
did not come back. So it wasn't where he was
(06:18):
supposed to have them for a week and they waited
ten days. Okay, it wasn't like that. Joe. He picks
them up, made the thirtieth within forty eight hours. There's
an all points bulletin. We don't know where he is,
we don't know where the girls are. Have you seen
this man? Have you seen these girls? All over the
Pacific Northwest? So that's kind of the setting that we
(06:42):
start with. In this case, they did find a campsite
where Travis Decker took his girls. I've seen pictures of
his campsite, Joe and full disclosure, Joe was talking to
me about this last night because you've done some appearances
(07:06):
on networks that you've delved into this and you have
some information about what took place. The pictures showed it
fairly lived in camping area. It wasn't just a place
he pitched a tent overnight with the girls. He'd been
living in this area for a good long while. There
were signs of trash and things like that that you
don't accumulate in a twenty four hour period of time,
(07:29):
but over weeks. So they've tracked him to this area
that he was camping with the girls is homeless shelter
if you want to call it that, and they found
bags in like I use Dollar General as an example
because if you live in the South, I guess it's
(07:49):
a Southern town. I don't know, but we got a
Dollar General every quarter mile. I think you have to
have one. Is the law next to the Alexander Shannara
lawyer signs you know, call me Ala e H So.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
There's even a postseason college football bowl named the Dollar General.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I love it. And so we have these Dollar General bags.
They're just general use. And they found bags like that
all over this campsite, a lot of them, and twist
ties and other things that just didn't seem to have
a lot of value in a camping area. And if
you were camping, now, if you're living, it's a different
(08:28):
manner altogether. You know, when you're camping, you take stuff
in you you have a bundle, you have a backpack,
you have a bedroll, and you keep these things organized
because you're going to take them back home. When you're
living in the woods, not so much. It's a much
different environment. And that's what this setting was. So when
they come looking for the Girls show, or trying to
(08:49):
find Travis Decker, they had no idea what they were
going to find. They did not think the girls were
in danger of life and death. They thought that they
were in you know, with a dad who had come
a bit unhinged.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Maybe yeah, he you know, my understanding, Dave is that
it had gotten so precarious. I think with his living situation,
it's like every other weekend he got them for eight
hours unsupervised, and then I think he could come by
(09:25):
the house and see them at specific times, you know,
attle bit. You know, they had to remain at the house.
You know, where else are you going to go? I mean,
I guess you could go out to the park and look, man,
you know, different circumstances happen. We've got homeless vets all
over this country, sad that are, yeah, very sadly, that
(09:48):
are suffering from all manner of maladies. Much of it
goes right to the feet of the VA where you know,
they don't take care of our troops. They're discarded and
they don't get them the help they should. But you know,
it's two way street too. I know, I've got good
(10:09):
friends that have issues that came up, you know, during
the you know, the war footing that we were on,
and we're you know, in that situation for a long time.
They paid price for it, but you know, their effort
to get help hinge hinged heartily upon the amount of
(10:31):
pressure that they were applying and being present for, you know,
all the meetings and you know, getting your meds and
all this stuff. And look, from what I understand, Travis
Decker did have medication that he was supposed to be
on for the psychopathology that he has been diagnosed with,
which I think from an overarching standpoint of the diagnosis
(10:53):
is actually PTSD and PTSD can manifest itself in a
variety of different ways. But there were some underlying things
too that had developed, and reports are that he would
not take these medications that he had been given. But
you know, and that's on him. He has to take
(11:15):
those meds if he's seeking the treatment, you know, if
you want to go get other treatment outside the VA
find but you've got to do something to help yourself
or you're not going to be in a position where
you can be a daddy, which you know, to me
is the most esteemed position in the world. I don't
care what it is, you know, I you know, I
wouldn't trade anything for being a daddy.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So Travis Decker takes off and doesn't come back with
the girls Joe, and they find his campsite fairly quickly,
didn't take long. Three days in June, actually really two
days of looking in on June the second they found
his campsite, and what they found was beyond anything anybody
thought they were going to find. Worst case scenario showed
(11:58):
up in their face.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It did. And this is the way that that I
would envision this when you are a law enforcement officer
and you show up at a remote location like this.
The things that they saw upon their arrival and their
discovery there, it wasn't just evidence that Travis Decker had
(12:24):
endwelled that location. It looked as though Satan itself had
paid a business. Where Where That's the biggest question when
(12:50):
you've got missing children, Where are they? Where are they? We?
You want to you want to see them, You want
to be able to examine them. You want to be
able to know that they're okay. I've talked about this before,
Dave and some of our previous conversations about one of
(13:10):
the responses I get from families when they're notified of death.
Contrary to what people think, they don't ask what happened.
Most of the time, most of the people that particularly
their intimates, the first question out of their mouth is
where are they? Where are they? Even though you've told
them that they're deceased, most people cannot accept the fact
(13:34):
that someone is deceased. Their brain goes to this idea
of where, because where gives them an indication of the
location they need to go to in order to verify
it for themselves. There's part of us in our core
that are all all from Missouri. You got to show me, Oh,
(13:56):
you've got to show me. You've got to show me.
You have to demonstrate to me because you've never known
most people have never known life without those that they love,
and then when it happens, they want to be able
to verify, verify it with their eyes. And so therefore,
you know, what happened is kind of down the list
(14:18):
from that because they're not believe Even if you tell
them what happened, they're not going to believe you because
you're a total stranger. Now, some people might just sit
there and say, oh, okay, well that happened. The line's
chair people are not going to do that. They want
to verify everything for themselves. And look, I understand, I
understand completely. I know. As a matter of fact, families
want to touch the bodies. Isn't that something It's almost
(14:40):
like if you've ever seen a mama a dog where
she loses a pup out of the litter in order,
and other animals do this too. They'll nuzzle, they'll nuzzle
the ceased animal that cease pup or calf or whatever,
just to verify. It's a tactile thing where they're verified
behind that this child is no more and the same
(15:05):
as here, you know, for David. You know we're talking
about back in May is when they're last seen. As
of this taping, we're into August of twenty twenty five,
now like significantly into August. Okay, this search had gone
on for a bit, and then there's been lingering questions
ever since, ever since this horrible discovery out there.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Well, you mentioned the mountains, Joe and this guy he embedded,
you know, he was living in it. He was living
in the woods, using a truck for cover at times,
you know, but he has been There have been a
lot of spottings of him possibly being seen here or there.
But you know, it's a big forest. It's a lot
of area to cover. And boy, I do not want
(15:50):
this to come off wrong. Joe. Yeah, but they were
looking for the three girls. I mean, granted, they care
about Travis Decker, you know, but when they were in
searching for their searching for the girls, they give me
the girls. Do what you're you're a grown man. When
on June second, they go to the campsite, they find
where they knew where he had been, and they find
the girls Joe. They don't find Travis Decker, and that's
(16:14):
when the search changes. They're not looking for a man
trying to disguise three girls and set up shop somewhere
else in the country. He has murdered his daughters in
the woods. And we haven't been given the details of
what was found at the campsite other than Decker's not
(16:34):
here and the girls are gone. The girls are dead.
So tell me. Because the search is still ongoing, we
still don't have travel I mean this, you're thinking about
a country that you know. To be honest with you,
the government is probably listening to us right now. If
you and I start talking about axe handles while we
record this on our Facebook feed, we're going to see
(16:55):
commercials today for ax handles. So how does a person,
a third year old man who is having mental issues,
how does he stay gone like this? How does he
stay hidden.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Walks away from everything? Uh? You know, his vehicle was
found and him and his vehicle were essentially married together.
You know, let's face it. You know I don't know
about you. I spent the night in my car before
now I can't I can't imagine what it would be
like to live in a car for a protracted period
of time. Uh, there are people that do it, and
they do it all the time. All you gotta do
(17:27):
is go to la and drive them down the road.
You'll see them parked up on pull up on sidewalk
on the saddest things you've ever seen, you know, but people
do it. They survive that way. We think about that
little precious baby up there and where was it in
New Hampshire that that monster had her from? Yeah, harmony
had that monster had her, and uh the other sibling
(17:50):
and the girlfriend I think the three siblings or two
I can't remember, But that little baby was living in
a Chrysler seabring, which are converts up in the Northeast.
People will live in these environments. So the fact, I think,
from an investigative standpoint, Dave, is very significant that that
(18:11):
this vehicle has been left behind. And my understanding is
there was a wallet found in the vehicle. So if
you leave your wallet behind, you don't know. If he
doesn't have the means to have a home, so how
much cash could he have on him? He walks out
of this place leaving the car behind and leaving three murdered,
(18:35):
angelic little darlings. You know they're in that forest. You
know what what else was left behind? Dave, you talk
about a dichotomy. His dog was left and the dog
is alive. Now you compete if we were to put
that on scales, Okay, the lives of your children that
(18:58):
you couldn't have on the basis you see, you probably think,
you know where I'm going here, and you got the
dog that has been living with him, and that dog
is still alive. But yet you snuff out these three
precious lives of your children. That's you know, that's a
that's a Karen was see comment there. You know, Karen Stark,
(19:22):
our friend of forensic psychologist. I don't even know how
to begin to kind of unpack that. You know, how
you can dehumanize these precious souls and and you spare
the dog. I don't I don't really get that. I
don't understand it. I think that probably one of the
(19:44):
most significant pieces that's very puzzling to me about this
triple homicide of the Decker sisters is the idea that
you're trying to find evidence of maybe just maybe what
had actually happened there, and this is kind of significant.
(20:05):
There was actually blood, bloody handprints that were found on
I think it was the tailgate of that trunk.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Well, that's what you know. You mentioned he left his
vehicle behind this pickup truck which had been they said
it wasn't operational, whatever was going on with it. The
truck had died and he left it there. You know,
he didn't get it repaired. And again he's homeless for
crying out loud, but when they get there, he's gone.
You mentioned the dog is there. I was thinking, in
my weird way of thinking, I thought that the dog,
(20:36):
when he saw what was going on with the girls,
the dog. Dogs are not stupid, and that maybe the
dog was problematic for it. Maybe the dog was not
allowing him to do what he was trying to do,
and maybe he did something scared the dog away where
he ran away, and then when Decker left, he came
back like maybe to protect the girls. That sounds crazy,
but that was one of the many thoughts in my head.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
All manner of things. I've got a I've got a
newly acquired part shihaha. Kim and I we Kim and
I rescue dogs that's that's our thing. We and we
go to kill shelters to get them. And we've got
three right now. And the latest one that we have
is her name's Frenchy and she's part Shihuahua. And every
(21:23):
time I come up to the door, if she could
rip my head off, she would. But once I get
in there, she's wagging her tail, you know, she alerts
the things, she sees things, and uh, you know, and
she'll crawl back up in Kim's lap. Meanwhile, I've got,
you know, a forty pounds lab that crawls up into
my lap and I sat there and pet her. But dogs,
dogs are interesting that way, and they they're part of
(21:46):
you know, dogs are part of families. And that's an
interesting idea that you put forward there. They you know,
did the dog, you know, did the dog run away?
Did he show the dog off? You know what exactly happened?
Why would you abandon the dog? And there was also
food left behind in the vehicle, But the blood on
his hands or the bloody hand prints, which by the
(22:10):
bye DNA testing turned out that this is his blood
and typing in DNA.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Well wait, wait a minute, it was Travis Decker's blood.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I think it was.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, Okay, okay, we've got we know we have three
children five, eight, and nine who are dead, and we
know there's twist ties and zip ties and bags all
over the place. Now we've got bloody handprints. Yeah, I'm
curious as to what how did he how did he
kill the girls? Did he do? We know that? Do
(22:41):
we know how he killed?
Speaker 1 (22:43):
We do?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Oh wait a minute, allegedly killed the girls. He's a suspect.
He's not convicted, he hasn't gone to try.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Right, he is a suspect at this point in tom
And as a matter of fact, the police are actually
stating he is the soul suspect. They're not looking at
anybody else at this point, and kind of let me
break this down for you and let you know what
I think or what I know at least at this
(23:08):
point in time. These babies were found and at first
they said it was one, but apparently now it's all
of them. Dave had their little wrist bound with zip ties.
Just let that sink in just for a second. You know,
we see we see these you know, police officers and
(23:28):
people in the military that are you know, doing dynamic
entries and all that sort of thing, and they don't
have cuffs with them. They'll use zip tie cuffs and
you can fashion a zip tie cuff, kind of a
simple one, you know, just out of a couple of
zip ties, so their hands are bound. That means that
you can't use them. I know, that's GM Morgan. That's
kind of obvious. Thanks for the insight. No, that's important
(23:52):
when you begin to think about the causal effects of
these babies deaths, because Dave, They're death have been ruled
as a suffocation deaths. And you we've got to go
back to the Dollar General bags that you mentioned, not
that these are Dollar General bags, but some fact simile
(24:13):
thereof if you're talking about, you know, some bag that
they got at routs or whatever the local you know,
grocery store is or wherever they came from. You've got
these bags that have been utilized as a weapon. So
these weaponized plastic bags. What do they always tell us
as we're young parents about plastic bags and babies keep
(24:36):
them away? Well, that's there's a lot of stuff I
don't agree with that comes out comes out from various
medical journals and all. That's what I happened to agree
with you don't. You don't leave a plastic bag and
say a crib with a baby. You don't let older
you know, you don't. You don't let kids play with
plastic bags. The worst, the worst ones for years and years,
(24:57):
believe it or not, Dave were dry because kid could
put their whole body in these things, all right, oh wow,
and they're not most of the time. They're not permeable.
That means that they don't they don't breathe, It's what
I'm saying. So you're not gonna it's not like not
that this would be great, but it's not like it's
(25:18):
a burlap sack over your head, right, you know where
you've got little spaces where you might be able to
uptake a bit more oxygen. No, no, no, this is
sealed and day it wasn't. Here. Here's the other piece
that we have found out two and they haven't said
which ones yet. Two of these babies had been double
(25:44):
backed over their heads. A third one was triple backed.
What yeah, triple backed. So if if you guys know
what Dave and I are talking about with, you know,
if you go to any grocery store and they give
you plastic bags, good for about one from moving your
groceries from the trunk of your car, from the beat
(26:04):
of your truck into the house. And after that, the
structural continuity of these things breaks down really quick. So,
you know, and I was given us some thought, you know,
before before you and I were going to chat today, brother,
and I was thinking he was he was kind of
if he if he is the one that did this,
he's kind of triple checking everything, checking the boxes. This
(26:27):
goes to intent, right, he's got these things he's doing.
He knows that the bags will break, so he's got
to get more than one there. And the way this
happens is this becomes you know, i'd said suffocation. This
is truly what's referred to as an oxygen depriavant event.
So when you you enclose anybody into a small space
(26:53):
like that and it's sealed, and yeah, a bag is
a small space. There's very little room in there for
uh for for oxygen at all. As a matter of fact,
you'll have more before you stick your or have your
head stuck in it because your head, the mass of
your head displaces the oxygen that's in there, so it
(27:13):
kind of runs it out. Then you hold that bag
in place and at some point in time, and it's
pretty quickly you begin rebreathing your own expelled air, which
course is carbon dioxide, and it's lethal. We can't it's
not it's not that, it's not merely the fact that
you're absent oxygen. It's now you're uptaking carbon dioxide. And
(27:37):
it makes people very, very, very sleepy, and that sort
of thing. However, one of the problems is is that
unless these girls were drugged in some way day, they
would have an awareness because the primal brain kicks in
and you begin struggling, you begin fighting, and let's just
(27:57):
let's just talk about this just for a second. Is uncomfortable.
This makes people feel Just think anytime you've ever had
something on your face, all right, the one reaction is
not to walk over to a wall and rub rub
the item off of your face. All right. You get
I don't know, you get jelly on your beard, you're
(28:20):
eating toast, or you know, you get a fly on
your forehead, you walk through a cobweb, which unfortunately I
seem to do more than any other human on the
face of the planet, your reaction is to draw your
hands up and pull it away. Well, guess what was
done to them. They couldn't fight. Those little wrists and
(28:43):
very tiny wrists, by the way, were essentially cuffed with
these zip ties and they are restrained at this point.
That would indicate that this was not done post mortem. Okay,
why are you going to zip tie the hands of
(29:04):
the deceased? Well, you don't, you restrain them? What type
of person, Dave, What type of person looks into the
eyes of their child and says, give me a wrist,
put your hands behind your back, and you hear that
very distinctive sound of that zip tie being clicked click click,
(29:28):
click click as it becomes more and more tight around
the circumference of both of the wrist. And did he say, hey, girls,
let's play a game. Is that how he enticed them
to do it? I don't know, but I do know
this based upon the information the police have just released,
(29:49):
it seems that more and more the evidence is pointing
toward Daddy. Most of the time, when we think about homicides,
(30:11):
at least for me, even me at this stage in
my career, you automatically think of a level of violence
that's observable. You know, someone beaten to death, someone shot
to death, someone stabbed to death, someone stomped to death,
someone run over intentionally by a car, someone thrown off
(30:32):
of a house. But you know, many times homicides can
occur in very passive ways. You know, recently, Dave, you
and I covered the mushroom level, you know, down in Australia,
and that's kind of a passive homicides of poisoning. We've
had other poisonings that we've covered, but Dave, I submit
(30:53):
to you that this is it's a very passive form
with a little bit of violence kicked in at the
end because you have to if you're there while this
is going on, and the perpetrator would have had to
have been there, you're going to bear witness to struggle,
(31:13):
struggles that most of us can't even begin to imagine.
And these three little angels experience that experience that at
this very young age job.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I'm curious as to the planning that went into this
from Decker's standpoint, and the reason is he had been
abiding by the restrictions of the visitation, which was eight
hours at a time, unsupervised where he had to stay
within the town limits and then he could come over
four hours you know, at a stretch there at the
house or what have you. And he had been abiding
(31:47):
by that, he had been living by the rules, and
his ex wife said everything was fine. He seemed to
be doing well with that. But the fact that he
got them on the thirtieth and they were expecting a
return as normal and it didn't happen. But when they,
you know, went to where he had been, where they
located his campsite that he had been staying. As we
(32:07):
mentioned earlier, we're not talking a long period of time.
Wasn't like he had a plan to take the girls
and leave. He had a plan to kill the girls.
Because when they got there June second, they found three
dead little girls, ages nine to eight and five. And
that means to me that he went out. The whole
thing was planned ahead of time. They I don't know
(32:27):
how quickly he killed them. Had they been able to
determine that, had they determined did he beat them? Did
he torture them? What did he do to these girls?
I mean suffocating? Okay, that and well, cuffing their hands
all right, zip, tying their hands so they can't move.
He's binding them. I don't know how you bind three girls.
That's I mean, they're they're not easy yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Can I take you back just for a moment, because
I know that I know that he is an Army
vess and I'm still unclear. I've heard people make comments
and I have I have yet to be able to
kind of verify it for myself solidly, because people can
say any number of things. All you got to do
is look at our episode of the Montaque boat death
(33:13):
there and all kinds of crazy things get said. But
let me just throw this out to you if at
any point in time he went through survival, escape and
evasion and resistance and evasion training. One of the things
they do and they put you in a mock pow situation.
They put a bag over your head and they bind you.
(33:34):
They bind you with zip ties and that's part of
the training. Where and it's and whether or not he
went through the training or not. It's in a wilderness setting.
I know the Special Operations in the Army they brag
they go through Robin Sage, which is part of their training.
(33:58):
They have to negotiate and all those sorts of things
learning how to do that. And the Special Operators also
have to go through seer training, which is it's pretty tough.
It's some of the toughest training you have to go
through because you have to withstand interrogations and all that,
and that idea of depriving an individual of movement and
also their senses, like you, you don't know where sounds
(34:20):
are coming from. You can't see anything. Now. I don't
know if that was kind of imprinted in his brain.
Maybe he thought that that was an expeditious way to
end to end life. But I submit to you that
he's at least aware of that and that he chose
he chose this and chose allegedly, you know, if he
(34:41):
is the perpetrator found you know, left them out in
those woods. I don't know that that's part of it
that you know that I was thinking about all along,
because I don't know what his level of training.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
I mean, you understand that then his military training when
you go into social media and you see other people
that he was in service with and the commonality that
they have. Decker had advanced Infantry combat training. He was
an airborne paratroop who earned his Elite Ranger tab. That
(35:14):
means he has elite wilderness evasion training and survival skills.
Those are a couple of the things that let you
know he also had different profiles that he talked about,
being a qualified instructor in other issues of warfare, being
(35:35):
training out on alone. I guess it's kind of what
I'm after here. But we've got a guy who knows
the wilderness is living in the wilderness, you know, as
a way of life now as a homeless vet. And
he has killed his girls. Obviously allegedly killed his girls
with proper planning. It's not like he was trying to
get away with them. He took them out to the
woods to end their life and then did not take
his own. He just took off running. Is it the idea?
(35:56):
I mean, this goes back to Karen Stark and Bethany,
but you know, was it? Well, if I can't have
my girls all the time, nobody can.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I mean, I don't know the first things and the
first things I thought of. You know, it's kind of
like the shunned level if you will, you know that
comes back, and you know, they just brutalize somebody that
they perceive has rejected them or maybe did reject them,
and they're going to destroy them. Well that and and
why why exactly would he go after the girls and
(36:26):
not after the.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Right would little girls have an ability to suffocate quickly
or would it take them longer.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
To say they've got less less lung capacity?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Man?
Speaker 1 (36:37):
And plus you've got to you've got a grown ass
man with military training that probably has probably got significant
grip strength. He can and this is another thing I'm
curious about. How did how did he secure the bags
because this is kind of ghastly. If you put those
bags over their their heads, you can secure them on
(37:00):
the neck. You can do it with tape, you could
do it with another zip tie. You can hold it
in place. And if you can't move your hands to
remove the bag, situation will take care of itself momentarily.
All right, did he do that? Which they didn't say
anything about anything around the neck, They just said bags
over the head. That implies to me, Dave, that he
(37:25):
held those bags in place one by one. Now, what
was going on with the other kids that were still alive?
When the first one dies? Did he take her off
and kill her separately away from now you girls sit here,
I'm going to go off with sissy over here, Okay,
kills her there, then takes the next one so for
(37:46):
and so or did he kill them in front of
one I know your mind can go to all these
different places. Another thing that you would have evidence of
would be in their own little way, there would be
a mind struggle. So you would see evidence on the
ground of not just these kind of scuffed footprints where
(38:06):
they're resisting. You can see marks on the ground where
they would struggle with their entire body kind of rolling.
And somebody that's a trained observer of these kinds of things,
it certainly wouldn't be me. They I've had them pointed
out to me, it seems, but I'm no tracker or
anything like that. It's amazing what these people can recreate,
you know, and tell you the story by just the
(38:26):
marks of the crown. It's amazing that that may have
taken place there. And you know that soil, if you've
ever been into the Cascade Range, that soil is very lonamy.
It's you know, you're shielded from sunlight lots of times.
If you're inside that canopy, it almost looks like twilight,
you know, beneath that canopy of the trees, and the
(38:50):
ground's very soft. There might still be evidence of that
that they picked up. I'm wondering about his footprints, you know,
because they're going to be significantly out larger than these
these babies.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
By the DNA, Joe, where did they find it? Where
do they find DNA? From the girls?
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Here's the other here's the other piece. To this day,
that's so freaking disturbing. They found the DNA on the
zip ties. Okay, so that tells me that he's not
wearing gloves because if it's direct contact onto a zip tie,
and that's a very Just look at a zip tie
(39:27):
if you got one of your drawer or in your
toolbox or whatever laying around the house, just look at
the surface of it. There's not a lot of surface area,
and so intensely manipulating these things, which you would have
to do. Because I'm blind as a bat, I have
a really difficult time finding a location where you insert
it and then zip it. You know, it's kind of
(39:48):
like threading a needle many times that requires incredible concentration
and you're holding it. You tend to hold things tighter
like that, and you're trying to manipulate them. So he
would have pulled the TA when he if he's doing
this bare handily, he has to anchor with one hand,
pull with the other, pull it through and secure it down,
found that and the DNA there. There's also his DNA
(40:15):
and this is per the police. His DNA on the
bags as well. So this is going to rule out
some third party that may have had something. And I
don't think that you know, we've talked about touch DNA
in the past day, where you know that's the sloughing
of the skin cells that falls away. This isn't I
don't think this is a passive thing.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
I think that there's a probability that well, a couple
of things. We know that the bloody hand prints, Okay,
did he cut himself doing something that could transfer onto
the bag. Also there's the element of sweat. People don't
realize how DNA rich sweat is. And if you're struggling
(41:00):
with your own child as they are restrained below you,
you're having to hold that bag in place, I would
imagine he would begin to sweat somewhat. And here's the
other thing. When you grip think about if okay, let's
just say you've got something valuable that's on a table.
(41:21):
They're approximates the size of a human head. I don't know,
like a vase. I'm sorry for all my fancy friends
out there, of oz and you're trying to cover this
thing in a bag. You're not necessarily just going to
take the bag and hold it externally and pull it down.
You'll wrap your hands around the inside of it and
kind of grab it with a fist and pull it down,
(41:42):
and then you'll take it and maybe tie it or
put something else around it to secure it. Okay. I
think his DNA could potentially be on the xterior and
the interior of the back, and a lot of that's
going to be coming from the sweat that's stripping off
of his body, or maybe the blood they found on
the blood thing is still a mystery. You know that
(42:04):
we know that they had dogs out there. I don't know,
because you know, you're thinking wilderness, you're thinking blood, you're
thinking dogs. Did he have blood that trailed off after
him as he's wandering off into the forest. I don't
know that there's a lot of unanswered questions. I think,
and this is kind of even more hopeless if the
(42:26):
sin could be any more hopeless. I think that there
is a possibility that he may no longer be with us,
He may have wandered off and either if he had
a weapon with him, and he You know, this guy's
highly trained. He doesn't have to have a physical weapon
with him to end himself. He could have wandered off
(42:52):
and done any number of things out there, and I don't.
And this place is so fast. Now, I'm not saying
nobody misconstrue what I'm saying. I'm not saying this is
the actual location where this happened. But all you got
to do is think about DBE Cooper, Right, DBI Cooper
came out of that airplane and no one saw hide
in her hair of him. And we know that he
(43:12):
had parachute. You know, he had all the cash they
think they found They found some of the cash embedded
in a riverbed. I don't know if that was a
Columbia or whatever it was, but that's you're still talking
about the same kind of forested area like this. You know,
the earth just swallows things.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
How long, Joe? I mean, look, you've you actually have
mentioned to me we have had a common character in
our world. Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber in Atlanta,
who also bombed in aborsing clinic in Birmingham. And you
know he stayed gone for a long time. There was
(43:48):
thoughts that maybe he had offered himself somewhere and things
like that, but he actually was caught while he was
in the midst of staying gone. How did how is
he caught? How did they track him?
Speaker 1 (44:02):
I don't know. They had whole teams of people, and
you know, I was part of that investigation, the Olympic
Park bombing, and not that I had a grand insight
into anything. You know, My focus was on the victim,
who happened to be a school teacher. That was, you know,
there an Olympic Olympic Park that night to hear the
concerts Jack mac and the Heart Attack on Never Forget It.
(44:23):
They were performing on the band and on the stage
and when you if you go back and look at
that video, you see people the classic videos, people see
in the stage and all of a sudden they react
to the blast. They kind of look back to their
right and that's when the blast went off at that tower,
and it was constructed kind of like it's hard to
(44:43):
describe as you've never been in the military, but an
anti personnel mind kind of a clay more that kind
of spreads out in a big fan he'd used in
This really shows my age. He used a backpack that
the military used to used to carry you back in
my day. It's called an Alice pack, and so he
had packed it with all manner stuff, you know, bits
(45:06):
of concrete, there were roofing nails, metal, metal, screws, everything,
and so Alice, Alice Hawthorne was her name. I'll never
forget that she caught one of those screws in the
corner of her eye and it embedded in her cerebellum,
traveled you know, to the back of her brain, and
(45:26):
killed her right there. She also has blast injuries to
her arms. And we wanted to know, I remember back then,
we wanted to know who had done this. And immediately,
you know, in the aftermath of this, unfortunately, one of
my favorite law enforcement heroes of all time, Richard Jewel,
(45:47):
uh the Feds pointing the finger at him, and one
of the most tragic stories in modern America. And I
submit to you that he died as a result of
having to go through that trauma. Watch that movie, by
the way, if anybody's ever the clinics would movie about
Richard Jewell. He's a very nice man. I met him
a couple occasions before he finally died, and you know,
(46:10):
they wanted to point the finger at him. He actually
saved lives because he started moving people away from the device.
He saw it, Richard saw it. He was doing his job.
He was moving people away. Probably would have had more
people die and the bag got reoriented and the blast
kind of went up instead of out. If that bag
had stayed in its original position, I think that we
(46:34):
could have had hundreds we had and people forget about
all the folks that were damaged that night too. There
are people that still are dealing with scars and maladies
that arose from that evening. But anyway back to you know,
to Eric Rudolf, he was he had headed out for
you know, for North Georgia and the North Carolina, the
(46:57):
western North Carolina Mountains, made his way up there and
David was I can't remember the exact amount of time,
but I know that the US Marshalls poured their resources
into it, the FBI. I'd even heard rumors at one
point time that certain elements were deployed from the military
to aid and search. And these are people that are
(47:20):
highly trained and they could never turn anything up. And
it just goes to show you you never know how
life is going to work out because he was found
in the back. I think it was like a seven
eleven in the middle of the night in this little
town that's just right over the Georgia North Carolina border
(47:41):
up into the mountains in North Carolina, dumpster diving, and
deputy that night was on patrol. It was I think
it was a Sunday night, pitch black, and he sees
this guy in the back of the dumpster and I
might be getting story all messed up at this point
in time, it's been so many years. But he he
confronts this guy and the guy looks at him says,
(48:04):
I'm Eric Rudolf. You imagine. I mean, everybody, the most
skilled people in the world have been looking for this
guy coming to the mountains, and this deputy in this
little town up there, you know, happens to come across
this guy. You never know what's going to happen. You
never know what's going to happen with Travis Decker. I
don't know that he will ever be found. I know
(48:25):
that they have in this sadly, I know that the
government has pulled back some of the resources at this point.
I don't know what that's an indication of some thought
that he was headed over into Idaho and was going
to try to cross the border. People have thought that
(48:45):
maybe he was going to try to cross the border
into Canada through Idaho and that little sliver up there
that you know runs that distance on our common border there.
I don't know that we will ever find him, but
I can tell you this. The world, I can almost
assuredly tell you, is a much much darker place absent
(49:11):
these three precious little souls. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and
this is body Backs.
Quody bats. But Joseph's gotten more travel recommendation. If you
have never seen the Cascades, get it on your list.
You gotta go. You just you have to go. The
Rockies are fine, but there's something about being in the
midst of the Cascade range. You don't have to be
(00:22):
in the midst of it. You can be miles and
miles and miles and miles away from it and still
kind of be in it. You can see them from
such a great distance away. I remember the first time
that I flew into Seattle and past I guess it's
(00:44):
that mount hood, I think, coming in over this thing,
and I'd never seen anything like in my life. It's amazing.
And essentially they are snowcapped, dormant and volcanoes, but it's
all the little hills that surround it as well, and
those full, lush evergreen forest that go on like a
carpet forever off into the distance. It is certainly a
(01:10):
beautiful place, and it has a particular smell about it.
When you're there underneath that canopy of evergreens, sometimes you
can almost catch a hint of Christmas. Even in the summertime.
It's the pine seceedars But today I want to talk
(01:32):
about something that has come to my attention in the
last three days across my desk, actually the last two days,
and it's case that people have been talking about for
a while, but there was really nothing there that I
could hold forth on from a forensics perspective. Now there is.
(01:54):
I'm talking about the murders of three precious little angels,
the Decker Sisters. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is
body Bags, David. I think the thing that so amazes
me about the Cascades, and I know that geography nerds
(02:16):
out there and probably people that live adjacent to them,
that are friends of ours out there, they're going to
nail me on this, But the idea that they run
for such a long distance, you know, kind of up
the spine on the west coast, if you will, And
a lot of people use the Cascade Range to escape.
They escape for a number of reasons. You know, we
(02:38):
got to uh, well several, not just too We've got
major metropolitan centers along there. You know, people you know,
trying to earn a buck, they get away, they head
head east, head towards the Cascades and go camping. And
our subject today relative to the Decker sisters were volves
(03:00):
around their little family and dad who was known to
camp camp with some frequency. And this is up up
in Washington State, up toward the north in the Cascade Range.
And Travis went off into the forest and never came
(03:22):
back out alive.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well, all right, Travis Decker, first of all, he's a
thirty two year old guy who was in the military
for an extended period of time. Kind of look at
this and think was he really planning on making a
life career out of the military, Because he was in
it for longer than the first hitch that you do
coming out of like high school or college when you
don't know what you're going to do. He was in
(03:44):
longer than that. He was in it for ten twelve
years and then transfers over the National Guard. But he's
got these girls, who's got an ex wife, and he
has yet defined solid footing for himself. I don't know
about it way to say it. As he and his
wife ex wife dealt with custodial issues over the girls.
(04:09):
She said, it's one thing to go camping as an outing.
It's another if when you get the girls for a weekend,
you're pitching a tent in the woods because you're homeless,
and I think that is a legitimate question that has
to be answered. That is not the environment that many
(04:30):
of us would consider safe. And that was something that
had happened as this was going on. So Travis, he
was homeless, he did camp in the woods. He didn't
do it because he was an outdoorsy guy. He did
it because he had a truck, and that was it.
So when he would get the girls, he would maybe
sometimes stay in a hotel, sometimes not. And it got
(04:51):
to the point where he did not get the kind
of visitation that he wanted and it had kind of
evolved into that. So when he comes to pick the
girls up May thirtieth, was a planned visitation and I
don't know, you know, we don't know all the zenos.
We don't know everything that happened. We only know what
(05:12):
cards he showed. And he did pick up the girls
for a planned visitation. They were supposed to go to
watch to appeer to five k run. You know a
lot of times they'll have a five k run in
your community and it's a whole day event where you know,
you have cookouts and things like that, and lots of
activities and so that's what they were going to do,
a nice family fun time. But they never showed up there.
(05:36):
And when Travis Decker did not show up with the
girls we're talking about Peyton Decker is nine, Evelyn is eight,
and Olivia is five. These are some very active ages.
A five year old can keep you busy, yeah, a
five year old, an eight year old and a nine
(05:56):
year old can make you shave your head because of
the bald patches you're pulling out. So he has, he
has all three of these girls, and he doesn't bring
them back when he was supposed to as this had
been an ongoing issue. His ex wife did not tolerate it.
She was on the phone with police fairly quickly. They
did not come back. So it wasn't where he was
(06:18):
supposed to have them for a week and they waited
ten days. Okay, it wasn't like that. Joe. He picks
them up, made the thirtieth within forty eight hours. There's
an all points bulletin. We don't know where he is,
we don't know where the girls are. Have you seen
this man? Have you seen these girls? All over the
Pacific Northwest? So that's kind of the setting that we
(06:42):
start with. In this case, they did find a campsite
where Travis Decker took his girls. I've seen pictures of
his campsite, Joe and full disclosure, Joe was talking to
me about this last night because you've done some appearances
(07:06):
on networks that you've delved into this and you have
some information about what took place. The pictures showed it
fairly lived in camping area. It wasn't just a place
he pitched a tent overnight with the girls. He'd been
living in this area for a good long while. There
were signs of trash and things like that that you
don't accumulate in a twenty four hour period of time,
(07:29):
but over weeks. So they've tracked him to this area
that he was camping with the girls is homeless shelter
if you want to call it that, and they found
bags in like I use Dollar General as an example
because if you live in the South, I guess it's
(07:49):
a Southern town. I don't know, but we got a
Dollar General every quarter mile. I think you have to
have one. Is the law next to the Alexander Shannara
lawyer signs you know, call me Ala e H So.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
There's even a postseason college football bowl named the Dollar General.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I love it. And so we have these Dollar General bags.
They're just general use. And they found bags like that
all over this campsite, a lot of them, and twist
ties and other things that just didn't seem to have
a lot of value in a camping area. And if
you were camping, now, if you're living, it's a different
(08:28):
manner altogether. You know, when you're camping, you take stuff
in you you have a bundle, you have a backpack,
you have a bedroll, and you keep these things organized
because you're going to take them back home. When you're
living in the woods, not so much. It's a much
different environment. And that's what this setting was. So when
they come looking for the Girls show, or trying to
(08:49):
find Travis Decker, they had no idea what they were
going to find. They did not think the girls were
in danger of life and death. They thought that they
were in you know, with a dad who had come
a bit unhinged.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Maybe yeah, he you know, my understanding, Dave is that
it had gotten so precarious. I think with his living situation,
it's like every other weekend he got them for eight
hours unsupervised, and then I think he could come by
(09:25):
the house and see them at specific times, you know,
attle bit. You know, they had to remain at the house.
You know, where else are you going to go? I mean,
I guess you could go out to the park and look, man,
you know, different circumstances happen. We've got homeless vets all
over this country, sad that are, yeah, very sadly, that
(09:48):
are suffering from all manner of maladies. Much of it
goes right to the feet of the VA where you know,
they don't take care of our troops. They're discarded and
they don't get them the help they should. But you know,
it's two way street too. I know, I've got good
(10:09):
friends that have issues that came up, you know, during
the you know, the war footing that we were on,
and we're you know, in that situation for a long time.
They paid price for it, but you know, their effort
to get help hinge hinged heartily upon the amount of
(10:31):
pressure that they were applying and being present for, you know,
all the meetings and you know, getting your meds and
all this stuff. And look, from what I understand, Travis
Decker did have medication that he was supposed to be
on for the psychopathology that he has been diagnosed with,
which I think from an overarching standpoint of the diagnosis
(10:53):
is actually PTSD and PTSD can manifest itself in a
variety of different ways. But there were some underlying things
too that had developed, and reports are that he would
not take these medications that he had been given. But
you know, and that's on him. He has to take
(11:15):
those meds if he's seeking the treatment, you know, if
you want to go get other treatment outside the VA
find but you've got to do something to help yourself
or you're not going to be in a position where
you can be a daddy, which you know, to me
is the most esteemed position in the world. I don't
care what it is, you know, I you know, I
wouldn't trade anything for being a daddy.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So Travis Decker takes off and doesn't come back with
the girls Joe, and they find his campsite fairly quickly,
didn't take long. Three days in June, actually really two
days of looking in on June the second they found
his campsite, and what they found was beyond anything anybody
thought they were going to find. Worst case scenario showed
(11:58):
up in their face.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It did. And this is the way that that I
would envision this when you are a law enforcement officer
and you show up at a remote location like this.
The things that they saw upon their arrival and their
discovery there, it wasn't just evidence that Travis Decker had
(12:24):
endwelled that location. It looked as though Satan itself had
paid a business. Where Where That's the biggest question when
(12:50):
you've got missing children, Where are they? Where are they? We?
You want to you want to see them, You want
to be able to examine them. You want to be
able to know that they're okay. I've talked about this before,
Dave and some of our previous conversations about one of
(13:10):
the responses I get from families when they're notified of death.
Contrary to what people think, they don't ask what happened.
Most of the time, most of the people that particularly
their intimates, the first question out of their mouth is
where are they? Where are they? Even though you've told
them that they're deceased, most people cannot accept the fact
(13:34):
that someone is deceased. Their brain goes to this idea
of where, because where gives them an indication of the
location they need to go to in order to verify
it for themselves. There's part of us in our core
that are all all from Missouri. You got to show me, Oh,
(13:56):
you've got to show me. You've got to show me.
You have to demonstrate to me because you've never known
most people have never known life without those that they love,
and then when it happens, they want to be able
to verify, verify it with their eyes. And so therefore,
you know, what happened is kind of down the list
(14:18):
from that because they're not believe Even if you tell
them what happened, they're not going to believe you because
you're a total stranger. Now, some people might just sit
there and say, oh, okay, well that happened. The line's
chair people are not going to do that. They want
to verify everything for themselves. And look, I understand, I
understand completely. I know. As a matter of fact, families
want to touch the bodies. Isn't that something It's almost
(14:40):
like if you've ever seen a mama a dog where
she loses a pup out of the litter in order,
and other animals do this too. They'll nuzzle, they'll nuzzle
the ceased animal that cease pup or calf or whatever,
just to verify. It's a tactile thing where they're verified
behind that this child is no more and the same
(15:05):
as here, you know, for David. You know we're talking
about back in May is when they're last seen. As
of this taping, we're into August of twenty twenty five,
now like significantly into August. Okay, this search had gone
on for a bit, and then there's been lingering questions
ever since, ever since this horrible discovery out there.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Well, you mentioned the mountains, Joe and this guy he embedded,
you know, he was living in it. He was living
in the woods, using a truck for cover at times,
you know, but he has been There have been a
lot of spottings of him possibly being seen here or there.
But you know, it's a big forest. It's a lot
of area to cover. And boy, I do not want
(15:50):
this to come off wrong. Joe. Yeah, but they were
looking for the three girls. I mean, granted, they care
about Travis Decker, you know, but when they were in
searching for their searching for the girls, they give me
the girls. Do what you're you're a grown man. When
on June second, they go to the campsite, they find
where they knew where he had been, and they find
the girls Joe. They don't find Travis Decker, and that's
(16:14):
when the search changes. They're not looking for a man
trying to disguise three girls and set up shop somewhere
else in the country. He has murdered his daughters in
the woods. And we haven't been given the details of
what was found at the campsite other than Decker's not
(16:34):
here and the girls are gone. The girls are dead.
So tell me. Because the search is still ongoing, we
still don't have travel I mean this, you're thinking about
a country that you know. To be honest with you,
the government is probably listening to us right now. If
you and I start talking about axe handles while we
record this on our Facebook feed, we're going to see
(16:55):
commercials today for ax handles. So how does a person,
a third year old man who is having mental issues,
how does he stay gone like this? How does he
stay hidden.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Walks away from everything? Uh? You know, his vehicle was
found and him and his vehicle were essentially married together.
You know, let's face it. You know I don't know
about you. I spent the night in my car before
now I can't I can't imagine what it would be
like to live in a car for a protracted period
of time. Uh, there are people that do it, and
they do it all the time. All you gotta do
(17:27):
is go to la and drive them down the road.
You'll see them parked up on pull up on sidewalk
on the saddest things you've ever seen, you know, but people
do it. They survive that way. We think about that
little precious baby up there and where was it in
New Hampshire that that monster had her from? Yeah, harmony
had that monster had her, and uh the other sibling
(17:50):
and the girlfriend I think the three siblings or two
I can't remember, But that little baby was living in
a Chrysler seabring, which are converts up in the Northeast.
People will live in these environments. So the fact, I think,
from an investigative standpoint, Dave, is very significant that that
(18:11):
this vehicle has been left behind. And my understanding is
there was a wallet found in the vehicle. So if
you leave your wallet behind, you don't know. If he
doesn't have the means to have a home, so how
much cash could he have on him? He walks out
of this place leaving the car behind and leaving three murdered,
(18:35):
angelic little darlings. You know they're in that forest. You
know what what else was left behind? Dave, you talk
about a dichotomy. His dog was left and the dog
is alive. Now you compete if we were to put
that on scales, Okay, the lives of your children that
(18:58):
you couldn't have on the basis you see, you probably think,
you know where I'm going here, and you got the
dog that has been living with him, and that dog
is still alive. But yet you snuff out these three
precious lives of your children. That's you know, that's a
that's a Karen was see comment there. You know, Karen Stark,
(19:22):
our friend of forensic psychologist. I don't even know how
to begin to kind of unpack that. You know, how
you can dehumanize these precious souls and and you spare
the dog. I don't I don't really get that. I
don't understand it. I think that probably one of the
(19:44):
most significant pieces that's very puzzling to me about this
triple homicide of the Decker sisters is the idea that
you're trying to find evidence of maybe just maybe what
had actually happened there, and this is kind of significant.
(20:05):
There was actually blood, bloody handprints that were found on
I think it was the tailgate of that trunk.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Well, that's what you know. You mentioned he left his
vehicle behind this pickup truck which had been they said
it wasn't operational, whatever was going on with it. The
truck had died and he left it there. You know,
he didn't get it repaired. And again he's homeless for
crying out loud, but when they get there, he's gone.
You mentioned the dog is there. I was thinking, in
my weird way of thinking, I thought that the dog,
(20:36):
when he saw what was going on with the girls,
the dog. Dogs are not stupid, and that maybe the
dog was problematic for it. Maybe the dog was not
allowing him to do what he was trying to do,
and maybe he did something scared the dog away where
he ran away, and then when Decker left, he came
back like maybe to protect the girls. That sounds crazy,
but that was one of the many thoughts in my head.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
All manner of things. I've got a I've got a
newly acquired part shihaha. Kim and I we Kim and
I rescue dogs that's that's our thing. We and we
go to kill shelters to get them. And we've got
three right now. And the latest one that we have
is her name's Frenchy and she's part Shihuahua. And every
(21:23):
time I come up to the door, if she could
rip my head off, she would. But once I get
in there, she's wagging her tail, you know, she alerts
the things, she sees things, and uh, you know, and
she'll crawl back up in Kim's lap. Meanwhile, I've got,
you know, a forty pounds lab that crawls up into
my lap and I sat there and pet her. But dogs,
dogs are interesting that way, and they they're part of
(21:46):
you know, dogs are part of families. And that's an
interesting idea that you put forward there. They you know,
did the dog, you know, did the dog run away?
Did he show the dog off? You know what exactly happened?
Why would you abandon the dog? And there was also
food left behind in the vehicle, But the blood on
his hands or the bloody hand prints, which by the
(22:10):
bye DNA testing turned out that this is his blood
and typing in DNA.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Well wait, wait a minute, it was Travis Decker's blood.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I think it was.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, Okay, okay, we've got we know we have three
children five, eight, and nine who are dead, and we
know there's twist ties and zip ties and bags all
over the place. Now we've got bloody handprints. Yeah, I'm
curious as to what how did he how did he
kill the girls? Did he do? We know that? Do
(22:41):
we know how he killed?
Speaker 1 (22:43):
We do?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Oh wait a minute, allegedly killed the girls. He's a suspect.
He's not convicted, he hasn't gone to try.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Right, he is a suspect at this point in tom
And as a matter of fact, the police are actually
stating he is the soul suspect. They're not looking at
anybody else at this point, and kind of let me
break this down for you and let you know what
I think or what I know at least at this
(23:08):
point in time. These babies were found and at first
they said it was one, but apparently now it's all
of them. Dave had their little wrist bound with zip ties.
Just let that sink in just for a second. You know,
we see we see these you know, police officers and
(23:28):
people in the military that are you know, doing dynamic
entries and all that sort of thing, and they don't
have cuffs with them. They'll use zip tie cuffs and
you can fashion a zip tie cuff, kind of a
simple one, you know, just out of a couple of
zip ties, so their hands are bound. That means that
you can't use them. I know, that's GM Morgan. That's
kind of obvious. Thanks for the insight. No, that's important
(23:52):
when you begin to think about the causal effects of
these babies deaths, because Dave, They're death have been ruled
as a suffocation deaths. And you we've got to go
back to the Dollar General bags that you mentioned, not
that these are Dollar General bags, but some fact simile
(24:13):
thereof if you're talking about, you know, some bag that
they got at routs or whatever the local you know,
grocery store is or wherever they came from. You've got
these bags that have been utilized as a weapon. So
these weaponized plastic bags. What do they always tell us
as we're young parents about plastic bags and babies keep
(24:36):
them away? Well, that's there's a lot of stuff I
don't agree with that comes out comes out from various
medical journals and all. That's what I happened to agree
with you don't. You don't leave a plastic bag and
say a crib with a baby. You don't let older
you know, you don't. You don't let kids play with
plastic bags. The worst, the worst ones for years and years,
(24:57):
believe it or not, Dave were dry because kid could
put their whole body in these things, all right, oh wow,
and they're not most of the time. They're not permeable.
That means that they don't they don't breathe, It's what
I'm saying. So you're not gonna it's not like not
that this would be great, but it's not like it's
(25:18):
a burlap sack over your head, right, you know where
you've got little spaces where you might be able to
uptake a bit more oxygen. No, no, no, this is
sealed and day it wasn't. Here. Here's the other piece
that we have found out two and they haven't said
which ones yet. Two of these babies had been double
(25:44):
backed over their heads. A third one was triple backed.
What yeah, triple backed. So if if you guys know
what Dave and I are talking about with, you know,
if you go to any grocery store and they give
you plastic bags, good for about one from moving your
groceries from the trunk of your car, from the beat
(26:04):
of your truck into the house. And after that, the
structural continuity of these things breaks down really quick. So,
you know, and I was given us some thought, you know,
before before you and I were going to chat today, brother,
and I was thinking he was he was kind of
if he if he is the one that did this,
he's kind of triple checking everything, checking the boxes. This
(26:27):
goes to intent, right, he's got these things he's doing.
He knows that the bags will break, so he's got
to get more than one there. And the way this
happens is this becomes you know, i'd said suffocation. This
is truly what's referred to as an oxygen depriavant event.
So when you you enclose anybody into a small space
(26:53):
like that and it's sealed, and yeah, a bag is
a small space. There's very little room in there for
uh for for oxygen at all. As a matter of fact,
you'll have more before you stick your or have your
head stuck in it because your head, the mass of
your head displaces the oxygen that's in there, so it
(27:13):
kind of runs it out. Then you hold that bag
in place and at some point in time, and it's
pretty quickly you begin rebreathing your own expelled air, which
course is carbon dioxide, and it's lethal. We can't it's
not it's not that, it's not merely the fact that
you're absent oxygen. It's now you're uptaking carbon dioxide. And
(27:37):
it makes people very, very, very sleepy, and that sort
of thing. However, one of the problems is is that
unless these girls were drugged in some way day, they
would have an awareness because the primal brain kicks in
and you begin struggling, you begin fighting, and let's just
(27:57):
let's just talk about this just for a second. Is uncomfortable.
This makes people feel Just think anytime you've ever had
something on your face, all right, the one reaction is
not to walk over to a wall and rub rub
the item off of your face. All right. You get
I don't know, you get jelly on your beard, you're
(28:20):
eating toast, or you know, you get a fly on
your forehead, you walk through a cobweb, which unfortunately I
seem to do more than any other human on the
face of the planet, your reaction is to draw your
hands up and pull it away. Well, guess what was
done to them. They couldn't fight. Those little wrists and
(28:43):
very tiny wrists, by the way, were essentially cuffed with
these zip ties and they are restrained at this point.
That would indicate that this was not done post mortem. Okay,
why are you going to zip tie the hands of
(29:04):
the deceased? Well, you don't, you restrain them? What type
of person, Dave, What type of person looks into the
eyes of their child and says, give me a wrist,
put your hands behind your back, and you hear that
very distinctive sound of that zip tie being clicked click click,
(29:28):
click click as it becomes more and more tight around
the circumference of both of the wrist. And did he say, hey, girls,
let's play a game. Is that how he enticed them
to do it? I don't know, but I do know
this based upon the information the police have just released,
(29:49):
it seems that more and more the evidence is pointing
toward Daddy. Most of the time, when we think about homicides,
(30:11):
at least for me, even me at this stage in
my career, you automatically think of a level of violence
that's observable. You know, someone beaten to death, someone shot
to death, someone stabbed to death, someone stomped to death,
someone run over intentionally by a car, someone thrown off
(30:32):
of a house. But you know, many times homicides can
occur in very passive ways. You know, recently, Dave, you
and I covered the mushroom level, you know, down in Australia,
and that's kind of a passive homicides of poisoning. We've
had other poisonings that we've covered, but Dave, I submit
(30:53):
to you that this is it's a very passive form
with a little bit of violence kicked in at the
end because you have to if you're there while this
is going on, and the perpetrator would have had to
have been there, you're going to bear witness to struggle,
(31:13):
struggles that most of us can't even begin to imagine.
And these three little angels experience that experience that at
this very young age job.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I'm curious as to the planning that went into this
from Decker's standpoint, and the reason is he had been
abiding by the restrictions of the visitation, which was eight
hours at a time, unsupervised where he had to stay
within the town limits and then he could come over
four hours you know, at a stretch there at the
house or what have you. And he had been abiding
(31:47):
by that, he had been living by the rules, and
his ex wife said everything was fine. He seemed to
be doing well with that. But the fact that he
got them on the thirtieth and they were expecting a
return as normal and it didn't happen. But when they,
you know, went to where he had been, where they
located his campsite that he had been staying. As we
(32:07):
mentioned earlier, we're not talking a long period of time.
Wasn't like he had a plan to take the girls
and leave. He had a plan to kill the girls.
Because when they got there June second, they found three
dead little girls, ages nine to eight and five. And
that means to me that he went out. The whole
thing was planned ahead of time. They I don't know
(32:27):
how quickly he killed them. Had they been able to
determine that, had they determined did he beat them? Did
he torture them? What did he do to these girls?
I mean suffocating? Okay, that and well, cuffing their hands
all right, zip, tying their hands so they can't move.
He's binding them. I don't know how you bind three girls.
That's I mean, they're they're not easy yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Can I take you back just for a moment, because
I know that I know that he is an Army
vess and I'm still unclear. I've heard people make comments
and I have I have yet to be able to
kind of verify it for myself solidly, because people can
say any number of things. All you got to do
is look at our episode of the Montaque boat death
(33:13):
there and all kinds of crazy things get said. But
let me just throw this out to you if at
any point in time he went through survival, escape and
evasion and resistance and evasion training. One of the things
they do and they put you in a mock pow situation.
They put a bag over your head and they bind you.
(33:34):
They bind you with zip ties and that's part of
the training. Where and it's and whether or not he
went through the training or not. It's in a wilderness setting.
I know the Special Operations in the Army they brag
they go through Robin Sage, which is part of their training.
(33:58):
They have to negotiate and all those sorts of things
learning how to do that. And the Special Operators also
have to go through seer training, which is it's pretty tough.
It's some of the toughest training you have to go
through because you have to withstand interrogations and all that,
and that idea of depriving an individual of movement and
also their senses, like you, you don't know where sounds
(34:20):
are coming from. You can't see anything. Now. I don't
know if that was kind of imprinted in his brain.
Maybe he thought that that was an expeditious way to
end to end life. But I submit to you that
he's at least aware of that and that he chose
he chose this and chose allegedly, you know, if he
(34:41):
is the perpetrator found you know, left them out in
those woods. I don't know that that's part of it
that you know that I was thinking about all along,
because I don't know what his level of training.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
I mean, you understand that then his military training when
you go into social media and you see other people
that he was in service with and the commonality that
they have. Decker had advanced Infantry combat training. He was
an airborne paratroop who earned his Elite Ranger tab. That
(35:14):
means he has elite wilderness evasion training and survival skills.
Those are a couple of the things that let you
know he also had different profiles that he talked about,
being a qualified instructor in other issues of warfare, being
(35:35):
training out on alone. I guess it's kind of what
I'm after here. But we've got a guy who knows
the wilderness is living in the wilderness, you know, as
a way of life now as a homeless vet. And
he has killed his girls. Obviously allegedly killed his girls
with proper planning. It's not like he was trying to
get away with them. He took them out to the
woods to end their life and then did not take
his own. He just took off running. Is it the idea?
(35:56):
I mean, this goes back to Karen Stark and Bethany,
but you know, was it? Well, if I can't have
my girls all the time, nobody can.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I mean, I don't know the first things and the
first things I thought of. You know, it's kind of
like the shunned level if you will, you know that
comes back, and you know, they just brutalize somebody that
they perceive has rejected them or maybe did reject them,
and they're going to destroy them. Well that and and
why why exactly would he go after the girls and
(36:26):
not after the.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Right would little girls have an ability to suffocate quickly
or would it take them longer.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
To say they've got less less lung capacity?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Man?
Speaker 1 (36:37):
And plus you've got to you've got a grown ass
man with military training that probably has probably got significant
grip strength. He can and this is another thing I'm
curious about. How did how did he secure the bags
because this is kind of ghastly. If you put those
bags over their their heads, you can secure them on
(37:00):
the neck. You can do it with tape, you could
do it with another zip tie. You can hold it
in place. And if you can't move your hands to
remove the bag, situation will take care of itself momentarily.
All right, did he do that? Which they didn't say
anything about anything around the neck, They just said bags
over the head. That implies to me, Dave, that he
(37:25):
held those bags in place one by one. Now, what
was going on with the other kids that were still alive?
When the first one dies? Did he take her off
and kill her separately away from now you girls sit here,
I'm going to go off with sissy over here, Okay,
kills her there, then takes the next one so for
(37:46):
and so or did he kill them in front of
one I know your mind can go to all these
different places. Another thing that you would have evidence of
would be in their own little way, there would be
a mind struggle. So you would see evidence on the
ground of not just these kind of scuffed footprints where
(38:06):
they're resisting. You can see marks on the ground where
they would struggle with their entire body kind of rolling.
And somebody that's a trained observer of these kinds of things,
it certainly wouldn't be me. They I've had them pointed
out to me, it seems, but I'm no tracker or
anything like that. It's amazing what these people can recreate,
you know, and tell you the story by just the
(38:26):
marks of the crown. It's amazing that that may have
taken place there. And you know that soil, if you've
ever been into the Cascade Range, that soil is very lonamy.
It's you know, you're shielded from sunlight lots of times.
If you're inside that canopy, it almost looks like twilight,
you know, beneath that canopy of the trees, and the
(38:50):
ground's very soft. There might still be evidence of that
that they picked up. I'm wondering about his footprints, you know,
because they're going to be significantly out larger than these
these babies.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
By the DNA, Joe, where did they find it? Where
do they find DNA? From the girls?
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Here's the other here's the other piece. To this day,
that's so freaking disturbing. They found the DNA on the
zip ties. Okay, so that tells me that he's not
wearing gloves because if it's direct contact onto a zip tie,
and that's a very Just look at a zip tie
(39:27):
if you got one of your drawer or in your
toolbox or whatever laying around the house, just look at
the surface of it. There's not a lot of surface area,
and so intensely manipulating these things, which you would have
to do. Because I'm blind as a bat, I have
a really difficult time finding a location where you insert
it and then zip it. You know, it's kind of
(39:48):
like threading a needle many times that requires incredible concentration
and you're holding it. You tend to hold things tighter
like that, and you're trying to manipulate them. So he
would have pulled the TA when he if he's doing
this bare handily, he has to anchor with one hand,
pull with the other, pull it through and secure it down,
found that and the DNA there. There's also his DNA
(40:15):
and this is per the police. His DNA on the
bags as well. So this is going to rule out
some third party that may have had something. And I
don't think that you know, we've talked about touch DNA
in the past day, where you know that's the sloughing
of the skin cells that falls away. This isn't I
don't think this is a passive thing.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
I think that there's a probability that well, a couple
of things. We know that the bloody hand prints, Okay,
did he cut himself doing something that could transfer onto
the bag. Also there's the element of sweat. People don't
realize how DNA rich sweat is. And if you're struggling
(41:00):
with your own child as they are restrained below you,
you're having to hold that bag in place, I would
imagine he would begin to sweat somewhat. And here's the
other thing. When you grip think about if okay, let's
just say you've got something valuable that's on a table.
(41:21):
They're approximates the size of a human head. I don't know,
like a vase. I'm sorry for all my fancy friends
out there, of oz and you're trying to cover this
thing in a bag. You're not necessarily just going to
take the bag and hold it externally and pull it down.
You'll wrap your hands around the inside of it and
kind of grab it with a fist and pull it down,
(41:42):
and then you'll take it and maybe tie it or
put something else around it to secure it. Okay. I
think his DNA could potentially be on the xterior and
the interior of the back, and a lot of that's
going to be coming from the sweat that's stripping off
of his body, or maybe the blood they found on
the blood thing is still a mystery. You know that
(42:04):
we know that they had dogs out there. I don't know,
because you know, you're thinking wilderness, you're thinking blood, you're
thinking dogs. Did he have blood that trailed off after
him as he's wandering off into the forest. I don't
know that there's a lot of unanswered questions. I think,
and this is kind of even more hopeless if the
(42:26):
sin could be any more hopeless. I think that there
is a possibility that he may no longer be with us,
He may have wandered off and either if he had
a weapon with him, and he You know, this guy's
highly trained. He doesn't have to have a physical weapon
with him to end himself. He could have wandered off
(42:52):
and done any number of things out there, and I don't.
And this place is so fast. Now, I'm not saying
nobody misconstrue what I'm saying. I'm not saying this is
the actual location where this happened. But all you got
to do is think about DBE Cooper, Right, DBI Cooper
came out of that airplane and no one saw hide
in her hair of him. And we know that he
(43:12):
had parachute. You know, he had all the cash they
think they found They found some of the cash embedded
in a riverbed. I don't know if that was a
Columbia or whatever it was, but that's you're still talking
about the same kind of forested area like this. You know,
the earth just swallows things.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
How long, Joe? I mean, look, you've you actually have
mentioned to me we have had a common character in
our world. Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber in Atlanta,
who also bombed in aborsing clinic in Birmingham. And you
know he stayed gone for a long time. There was
(43:48):
thoughts that maybe he had offered himself somewhere and things
like that, but he actually was caught while he was
in the midst of staying gone. How did how is
he caught? How did they track him?
Speaker 1 (44:02):
I don't know. They had whole teams of people, and
you know, I was part of that investigation, the Olympic
Park bombing, and not that I had a grand insight
into anything. You know, My focus was on the victim,
who happened to be a school teacher. That was, you know,
there an Olympic Olympic Park that night to hear the
concerts Jack mac and the Heart Attack on Never Forget It.
(44:23):
They were performing on the band and on the stage
and when you if you go back and look at
that video, you see people the classic videos, people see
in the stage and all of a sudden they react
to the blast. They kind of look back to their
right and that's when the blast went off at that tower,
and it was constructed kind of like it's hard to
(44:43):
describe as you've never been in the military, but an
anti personnel mind kind of a clay more that kind
of spreads out in a big fan he'd used in
This really shows my age. He used a backpack that
the military used to used to carry you back in
my day. It's called an Alice pack, and so he
had packed it with all manner stuff, you know, bits
(45:06):
of concrete, there were roofing nails, metal, metal, screws, everything,
and so Alice, Alice Hawthorne was her name. I'll never
forget that she caught one of those screws in the
corner of her eye and it embedded in her cerebellum,
traveled you know, to the back of her brain, and
(45:26):
killed her right there. She also has blast injuries to
her arms. And we wanted to know, I remember back then,
we wanted to know who had done this. And immediately,
you know, in the aftermath of this, unfortunately, one of
my favorite law enforcement heroes of all time, Richard Jewel,
(45:47):
uh the Feds pointing the finger at him, and one
of the most tragic stories in modern America. And I
submit to you that he died as a result of
having to go through that trauma. Watch that movie, by
the way, if anybody's ever the clinics would movie about
Richard Jewell. He's a very nice man. I met him
a couple occasions before he finally died, and you know,
(46:10):
they wanted to point the finger at him. He actually
saved lives because he started moving people away from the device.
He saw it, Richard saw it. He was doing his job.
He was moving people away. Probably would have had more
people die and the bag got reoriented and the blast
kind of went up instead of out. If that bag
had stayed in its original position, I think that we
(46:34):
could have had hundreds we had and people forget about
all the folks that were damaged that night too. There
are people that still are dealing with scars and maladies
that arose from that evening. But anyway back to you know,
to Eric Rudolf, he was he had headed out for
you know, for North Georgia and the North Carolina, the
(46:57):
western North Carolina Mountains, made his way up there and
David was I can't remember the exact amount of time,
but I know that the US Marshalls poured their resources
into it, the FBI. I'd even heard rumors at one
point time that certain elements were deployed from the military
to aid and search. And these are people that are
(47:20):
highly trained and they could never turn anything up. And
it just goes to show you you never know how
life is going to work out because he was found
in the back. I think it was like a seven
eleven in the middle of the night in this little
town that's just right over the Georgia North Carolina border
(47:41):
up into the mountains in North Carolina, dumpster diving, and
deputy that night was on patrol. It was I think
it was a Sunday night, pitch black, and he sees
this guy in the back of the dumpster and I
might be getting story all messed up at this point
in time, it's been so many years. But he he
confronts this guy and the guy looks at him says,
(48:04):
I'm Eric Rudolf. You imagine. I mean, everybody, the most
skilled people in the world have been looking for this
guy coming to the mountains, and this deputy in this
little town up there, you know, happens to come across
this guy. You never know what's going to happen. You
never know what's going to happen with Travis Decker. I
don't know that he will ever be found. I know
(48:25):
that they have in this sadly, I know that the
government has pulled back some of the resources at this point.
I don't know what that's an indication of some thought
that he was headed over into Idaho and was going
to try to cross the border. People have thought that
(48:45):
maybe he was going to try to cross the border
into Canada through Idaho and that little sliver up there
that you know runs that distance on our common border there.
I don't know that we will ever find him, but
I can tell you this. The world, I can almost
assuredly tell you, is a much much darker place absent
(49:11):
these three precious little souls. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and
this is body Backs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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