Travis Decker - Manhunt /// Part 1 /// 850

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Let's talk some true crime.

It's now been more than two weeks since Travis Decker disappeared.

The father is accused of kidnapping and killing his three young daughters you see here on your screen.

And as the search for him continues, we're hearing his voice for the first time.

Your Honor, I think it's important that these girls get the opportunity to be with their dad.

I also think that it's important for them to understand a little bit about the world.

That audio was recorded from a custody hearing in September of last year.

Now during that hearing, Decker was fighting to keep custody of the girls on weekends.

He also claimed he never did anything unsafe with them.

Now yesterday, lawmakers, community members, and advocates gathered in Seattle to hold a moment of silence for Peyton, Olivia, and Evelyn and called for stronger child safety laws and changes in how Amber alerts are issued.

Kathy Sherlock's seven-year-old daughter Caden was murdered by her father during a court-ordered unsupervised parenting visit seven years ago.

And despite her efforts, an Amber alert was not issued in her daughter's case.

She's since created Caden's Law Federal Act to keep children safe from family violence.

It's now in 10 states, but not here in Washington.

Maybe if I was here to show up to the Olympia state capitol that maybe these little girls

would be here.

My heart is broken for the Decker family.

I send my love to Whitney and everyone involved.

The mom, I know what it's like to lose a child this way.

I don't want any other mother to have to feel this suffering again.

Their calls for change come as the Kittitas County Sheriff's Office is urging people headed into the woods this Father's Day weekend to be vigilant and alert to anything unusual, especially in and around the Tianaway Valley and Bluet Pass.

The Chilean County Sheriff's Office handed off the search for Decker to U.S.

Border Patrol and U.S.

Marshals.

Investigators advise anybody who sees Decker to call 911, but if you have anything else to report, you can also call the number that you see on your screen right here.

The United States Marshal Service is offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading directly to Travis Decker's arrest.

The public, meantime, is invited to honor Peyton,

Evelyn, and Olivia.

At a memorial planned next Friday at Rocky Reach Park in Wenatchee, organizers are encouraging everybody to wear pink, purple, and green because those were the girls' favorite colors.

We're going out to Washington State to the city of Wenatchee, aka the Apple capital of the world.

This is a little more than 35,000 people, but factor in the total population of the very nearby communities, all encompassing, we're talking well over 100,000 people.

This is right on the Columbia River and right next door to the Cascade Mountains.

Lots of orchards and some really great wineries in this area as well.

We will start this week's true crime story, kicking things off just a few weeks back.

So let's go back to Friday, May 30th, 2025 at approximately 9:30 p.m.

We have 35-year-old mother of three Whitney Decker, who arrived at the Wenatchee Police Department.

The woman appeared to be very distraught, and she had clearly been crying for some time,

but had no visible signs of having been attacked or injured in any manner.

Once in the lobby for the department building, she requested a patrol officer so she may file a civil complaint.

Give me the gist of your situation, ma'am, the officer asked the sobbing woman.

She told told the officer that her ex-husband, his name is Travis Caleb Decker, was expected to return their three children to her at 8 p.m.

that night, but had not done so.

And she cannot reach him via cell phone.

And this was in violation of their agreed upon and court-ordered parenting plan.

All right, let's set the table here.

Just a bit, just so everyone will know what is going on.

Whitney Decker and Travis Decker at one time were married.

They had three beautiful little girls together, and then they split and got a divorce.

At the time that Whitney is filing this complaint, the two had been separated for several years.

Along with that divorce, they had a parenting plan in place.

This is court-ordered, but sounds like the parents had some say-so in this, or at least some suggestions for the court on how that this may work out the best for all involved with the three kids, of course, being of,

and should be, of the utmost concern for all parties.

In September of last year, 2024, a judge signed off and issued the current parenting plan under which these two,

mom and dad, Whitney and Travis, were to operate.

Under this judge-issued plan, the mother Whitney has full custody of the three girls.

With Dad Travis, he has a visitation that is allowed every other weekend with specific hours of visitation set for Fridays between the hours of 5 a.m.

to 8 p.m.,

Saturdays from 11 a.m.

to 7 p.m., and then Sundays from 9 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

I will say this is from an affidavit that was filed with the court.

So

I have to go when you have a court document like this,

you cannot say 100% that every word, every

period, everything in this document is 100% factual.

But

you will get more facts in a court document than you will in any online article out there.

So this is, I feel very strongly about the information that

was, that I was able to review in this affidavit.

I will say this, though, Captain, before we march on any further, I have seen other documentation that seems just as legit that says that the visitation on Sundays was only allowable between the hours of 9 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

Now, note the cutoff time for all three of those days, there's no overnight stays for the girls that are set out by this plan that a judge issued in September of last year.

So every other weekend for Travis's time with his daughters, and that does include a Friday option with the visitation times following during the time windows provided by the court.

And this has to be

local.

This is not, you know, he has to keep the kids in the local area.

Travis is not to take the kids outside of the Wenatchee Valley area.

This court order also specifies that he has no overnight privileges.

So on this Friday night, May 30th, the kids, and this is the three daughters, little girls that we are talking about, they were to be returned by 8 p.m.

that night, no later.

Now, this has not happened.

So, this is why mom, Mother Whitney, is at the police department because the kids have not been returned and she cannot get in touch with her ex-husband.

Yeah, one of the things that are difficult in custody cases is every state is different.

So, you don't know what process they went through.

Did they have to get a guardian ad litem involved?

But somebody has found him to be unfit to have his daughters stay with him overnight that there has to be a reason now travis decker is 32 years old at the time he's a former u.s army infantry man he served from uh 2013 to 2021 he was deployed to afghanistan in 2014 i think because of his his service to this country you can applaud somebody for that but

there was there was concerns by his ex-wife, Whitney.

I know she had petitioned the court.

Now, again,

these custody battles, they could go on for years.

And if you have a guardian ad lidem, there could be multiple visitations and interviews, and it's a very long process.

But the process continues until they're of 18 years of age, where they can then make their own decisions.

But she had some concerns because she thought he was mentally unstable with

possibly borderline personality disorder or possibly PTSD from his service.

The girls' names and their ages are Peyton,

who is nine, Evelyn, who is eight, and Olivia, who is five.

Their father, Travis, did not return them at the scheduled time that evening.

And therefore, Whitney is now talking with the police trying to resolve the situation.

Whitney stated that Travis picked up the three daughters from her home right around 5 p.m.

that night.

When he didn't return with the daughters by 8 p.m., she started calling his phone.

She tried to reach him several times.

She reported that when she called Travis's cell phone, the call, all these calls are going straight to voicemail, typically an indicator that the phone is either A, shut off or B, without service at that time.

But Whitney's concerns do not end there.

She also reported that Travis has been experiencing some problems lately.

And this is to echo some of what the captain has already presented.

Whitney is saying that Travis is having some mental health issues.

She said he didn't have a stable residence, and he is basically homeless at this time, but had been staying on and off at motels and campgrounds.

Because of his lack of a place to live, she didn't have any real

great idea about where to start looking for the girls.

So, if Travis does not answer his phone,

or for some reason, cannot answer his phone, the only real viable options here is that Mama Whitney is driving around aimlessly looking for them and/or getting the police and other people involved.

All right, so this is not good, but as a parent, look, it's still early on,

and you're hoping that there is some kind of mix-up or that some non-threatening event has slowed them down from getting home.

But then you have no,

this is where my mind and heart would be racing.

You have no, zero, no communication, thus signaling that there is very likely something very, very wrong.

Travis has not called me.

I can't get a hold of him.

I know it's early on, but I understand

her level of concern here.

We should also mention here, Captain, that Whitney told the officer that this was not typical.

Travis has never done this before.

He has always returned the girls on time.

So this seems to be out of character or at least out of character per their arrangement thus far.

Do we have any idea of how long he's been without a home?

That's a good question.

And it's been reported several different ways.

Going to some of the court documents and documents that have been filed by different law enforcement agencies in this case.

It appears that this was an ongoing situation.

It

wasn't very recent and may have been going on as long as the latter part of last year, of 2024.

Now, I don't have, I do want to be clear here to the listeners that I don't have a great idea of exactly when

he was without a stable residence or consistent residence.

But that would be concerning.

I mean, you were married to somebody.

They spent time serving this country.

He doesn't have a place to stay.

I mean, even if you, there's a lot of people that get married and it doesn't work out, but they don't hate the person.

They don't want to see them suffer.

They don't want to see the individual without a home.

Especially when you have children with this person.

I mean,

it's easy to cut ties when you don't have ties,

right?

And the ties that bind are these three children, whether your heart has a space for this man or not.

Yes, it appears that she does have concern for him, even without the children being involved.

He does have regular work, though.

He has a job.

I know that.

Now,

is it seasonal?

I can't say.

I don't know exactly what he was doing for a living during the time that they've been split up, but the reports are all consistent that he was working.

So let's go back to the police station here on that Friday night.

We have Wenatche police officer.

This is Corporal Gonzalez.

Corporal Gonzalez has the information, took the report from Whitney.

Now, this is your first thing, right?

A woman comes in distraught.

She's crying.

You very quickly have to sort out: Is this lady just some rando person in here that's crazy reporting something that's not even real?

Or,

or do I need to jump into action right away?

So, the very first thing you can do is you call the cell phone number that she provides to you that she says belongs to Travis.

So, Corporal Gonzalez calls Travis's cell phone.

As Whitney said, the phone goes straight to voicemail.

The outgoing message on the phone, It is a message identifying the phone as Travis's.

So,

very likely a message that says something of of the nature of, you know, you've reached Travis or you've reached Travis Decker's phone.

Please leave a message or I'm not available at this time.

The officer immediately can identify that the number that she says that belongs to her ex-husband, Travis Decker, the outgoing message confirms that.

From an investigator standpoint, this is pretty easy stuff, right?

You now know that this missing person's report is very likely legit.

So missing persons report times three or times four, if you wish, if you want to include Travis in that.

But the three you are concerned about due to the ages

are the children.

But due to their ages, most likely if you're going to find them, you're going to find them together.

Most likely, you're going to find them with their father unless something terrible has happened.

So you're looking for Travis.

That's your first move as an investigator.

And what do we always want, Captain?

We want that breadcrumb trail.

When you don't have a crime scene, which we don't have one here, where are you going to find that first little piece of the breadcrumb trail, that first breadcrumb to start your trail to where you need to go?

Simple.

Digital footprint and or paper trail.

We have identified his phone,

so we've got perhaps the best lead on a digital footprint, especially given the circumstances that Whitney has described with Travis's living situation.

His phone is likely what he is using most, like most of us, but due to his situation, it's not a big leap to say this may be his only device that he was using at the time.

Can't say for sure, but I feel confident saying this is his primary device.

So, digital identified,

we will start to follow.

Now, let's see if we can get a paper trail going here.

What do we know from her story?

He picked the girls up on that Friday evening.

What was he driving?

Whitney told the officer that Travis drives a white pickup truck, but she was unsure of the make and model.

Now, a quick records check identified Travis's vehicle to be a white

2017 GMC Sierra.

It's Washington plate D20165C.

Now we know his truck and plate information.

And again, we've said it a million times.

It's easier to find a vehicle than it is to find a person.

Easier to find a phone than to find a person as well.

Using this, what's going to be our next method?

Let's go to the flock cameras.

We talked about flock cameras quite a bit in our killing for chaos episodes.

That's the Nikita Kassap case out of Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Nailed it.

Teenager Nikita is accused of killing his parents in order to fund some bizarre, half-baked plan to overthrow the U.S.

government.

Those episodes are 8.39 and 8.40 on your garage radio dial.

You know, I love the technology, Captain.

I love the technology that's helping us catch criminals and helping us locate people and save people.

So it's the eye in the sky time, Captain.

Shout out to Alan Parsons.

A quick aside here, Flocks are automatic license plate reader cameras.

They are somewhat common, especially in more populated areas.

Data, this is how we find people.

This is how we catch criminals.

The physical evidence, data can become physical evidence, which is very important in all of these cases.

So we're going to go to the Flock cameras.

Flock cameras capture images of vehicle license plates and other details such as make, model, and color.

And in some of the more advanced, sophisticated types, they can detect noises and sounds.

These images and data are stored and can be accessed by law enforcement to help investigate crimes, locate stolen vehicles, or wanted individuals.

Flock safety provides this technology to various entities, including, but not limited to, police departments.

The law enforcement folks got hits in the Nikita Kassap manhunt.

And boom goes the dynamite.

We get a hit here as well on Travis Decker's truck.

Boom.

Officer Gonzalez is checking all of the right boxes.

So checks Travis Decker's vehicle registration through Flock Safety.

and gets a hit.

The vehicle slash plate last registered an automatic read on the Wenatchee Bridge.

So, for locals, I've never been to the great state of Washington.

I've wanted to go there for quite some time now.

Going to make it out there one day, God willing.

But for the locals,

you will know that this is right at North Wenatchee Avenue and Horse Lake Road.

Okay, so this location and the timestamp gives us some information and possibly some clues.

So, this was from 5:41 p.m.

Friday evening.

So this has got to be shortly after picking up the kids.

The officers reviewing this believe that this is an indicator that Travis may be heading to a motel, hotel, or campground

in the North End.

So WPD will start checking with hotels in the city.

as well as a place called Confluence State Park.

They're checking to see if Travis and or his truck are registered or listed at any one of these.

The short of it is, unfortunately, no.

We get no hits on locating Travis as being at any of these establishments or at the Confluence State Park.

We do have a situation, too, that after they take this report and after they're able to confirm the authenticity of some of the statements given by the mother,

they did contact the Wenatchee Police Department.

They did contact the missing persons unit.

And while

they agreed that there should be concern and that the girl should be considered missing and possibly endangered,

they decided not to issue an Amber alert.

And this is always a sticky situation because

people get in a big uproar about, well, why wasn't there an Amber alert issued?

Especially when you can look in the rear view mirror, objects are closer than

they are, and you go with hindsight, the powers of hindsight, you say, well, why didn't you do this?

Why didn't you do everything you possibly can do?

Well, there are specific parameters for issuing an Amber Alert, and that does vary by jurisdiction.

We've gone through, I don't want to go through the list again.

There's a pretty general list of

the parameters for issuing this report or this alert, I should say.

But again, it does vary depending on the state and/or jurisdiction within that state.

Now, I get that people get in an uproar, but I've also been sitting with people and an Amber alert goes off on their phones.

You know, that loud, man, you get one of those things at three in the morning, you're popping up right out of bed, right?

You're popping up.

What's going on?

Every time I hear it at three in the morning, I assume there's some kind of tornado hitting the area.

But I've sat with people who could, who could give a shit.

They disregard it right away.

So I don't know if these are the same people that are up in arms that when Amber Alerts are not issued.

If it were up to me, Captain, we would issue them more often, but that also takes away from the level of concern by the masses if you're getting hit with these things with a high frequency.

Yeah, but a couple things.

When you have the wife and her story checks out, and I know there's a lot of because the police get called about a lot of custody issues, and there could be a situation where the ex-husband is supposed to have the kids all weekend, but they made other arrangements.

Somehow, the ex gets mad at

the other ex, so he doesn't return the kids, but he legally doesn't have to because he's supposed to have them all weekend.

But that's not the case.

The case is this guy does not have privileges to have his daughters overnight.

He is not known

to not return the kids on time.

So he's known to be somewhat responsible,

but also

PTSD, also maybe some other mental instabilities.

So these kids then could be in danger just in general.

Yeah.

Or they could be in danger from their own father because he possibly has these mental issues.

Yeah.

And I won't circle around this for too long because I don't have a great opinion on this matter.

You know, we've, again, it goes back to what is the criteria.

So in some of the cases we've reviewed where you and I thought that an Amber alert should have gone out, they didn't send one out because in some jurisdictions you need like suspect information, right?

You need

description.

You need a vehicle information.

If it's some kid that was pulled off the street, snatched off the street, they want vehicle information.

In other jurisdictions, you don't need the suspect description or vehicle description.

Here,

obviously, if you want to say that the ex-husband should be a suspect, at least

it's very easy to say that he is the one responsible for returning them and has not done so.

You clearly have his information, so that's not the hiccup here.

Apparently, here, the hiccup was that when they reviewed this with the missing persons unit,

so and this is a different outfit too.

The missing persons unit that they contacted, the Wenatchee Police Department, they contacted the state police

because I'm guessing that in Washington, it's the state police that would issue the Amber Alert.

And in many states, it is the state that the state police that do this.

So the state police,

from my understanding, not trying to throw anybody or any particular outfit under the bus.

From my understanding, it was the state police that said, Well,

we don't want to issue one because we don't have obvious and clear evidence that suggests that they are in danger.

But it's weird because at the same time, you have the information coming out that they are

immediately listed as missing with possible

endangerment.

And

I don't know,

no great way to.

I love that we have the Amber Alert system, and I would never go back from not having it.

But it, like many other things we do,

is still flawed and there's still room for improvement.

And I hope that each state will review this and continue to improve on the Amber Alert.

Now, we do need to point out here that by Saturday morning, Travis has still not returned the three girls home to their mother.

There has been zero communication from him.

No one can reach him.

No one can locate him or the children.

We have no additional hits on his truck at that time.

One of the kids had an event scheduled for that morning.

She was not back in time for this event.

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all right we are back cheers mates thanks for listening thanks for telling your friends Cheers to you, Colonel.

Yeah, cheers to you, Captain.

Thanks to all of you listeners that tune in each and every week, joining us here here in the garage.

It is

straight up our pleasure to have you here with us each and every week.

Now, our timeline where we left off before the beer break was up to about Saturday afternoon.

Now, I do want to circle back to this court order.

Okay.

We have a court order here, Captain, and this is how it is going to go.

All right.

Travis failed to return the girls by the Friday,

May 30th, 8 p.m.

cutoff.

Then,

moving our timeline forward, he failed to return the girls by Saturday, May 31st, 7 p.m.

deadline.

And then again for a third time, Sunday, June 1st.

And now this

report states that the cutoff for that would be 5 p.m.

The mandatory return time was 5 p.m.

on Sundays.

This brings us to Monday, June 2nd here, Captain.

At 9 a.m., Travis Decker did not show up for his job, did not show up to work.

Police are now speaking with Travis's boss.

The boss noted some mental health concerns, not specific, but kind of backing up what Mother Whitney was telling the police.

And then we have all weekend long, the phone is going straight to voicemail.

And then this is true for Monday morning as well.

And thus, we get a probable cause arrest warrant requested and granted by Judge Robert Jordan for the arrest of Travis Decker for three counts of custodial interference in the first degree.

But like I was saying, these custody issues,

they get difficult because not everybody that is involved in a custody battle or custody issue, are they always honest with the court system?

So you have somebody in Whitney's situation saying, hey, look, for the most part, he's responsible, but I can't trust him to have the girls overnight, or I think there's some mental issues that I think he needs to address.

And then maybe the

custody situation can change or the custody schedule can change.

But these courts hear so many lies that you have to go through every claim and there has to be a checks and balance system.

And that doesn't serve the people that are trying to be honest with the court system.

Well, and I do want to point out here, too, as well, Captain, that this situation, the way that I understand it between Travis Decker and his ex-wife, Whitney Decker, this is not a

Betty Broderick, Daniel Broderick type split up custody battle situation where you have mom or dad calling the police once a week with allegations and trying to get the kids and all that.

It wasn't this super volatile, highly, you know, incredibly messy situation.

It seemed to be going along pretty swimmingly up until this point.

Now, again, there are concerns with Travis from several parties, but it seems to be the

court-issued parenting plan seemed to be working out.

Right.

Now, later that day, so we're at Monday morning here, but later that day, we get some very,

some very sad news.

This is just before 4 p.m.

on Monday, June 2nd in Shalane County.

We have a deputy finds, locates Travis Decker's truck.

So finds the truck unoccupied in the area of Rock Island Campground in Leavenworth, Washington.

This is off of Icicle Road.

This is approximately 50 minutes, 5-0 minutes drive from where the girls live.

Now, I want to be very clear.

That's very approximate.

This area is quite complicated to look at and to

convey from a storyteller's perspective.

Now, I want to go to the affidavit for this next bit of information directly from the affidavit because there's a lot of reports out there.

And

this is a story that is catching a lot of eyeballs, a lot of earballs all around the nation.

And when there's a rush to report, you got to be concerned about the reporting.

I've seen a lot of great reporting on this case, but there's also some stuff that you have to sift through because there is speculation, especially with the early reports coming out, not criticizing because when you come to the garage, you get a heavy dose of speculation.

Yeah.

Look,

it's a simple problem that we have.

People trying to be first as opposed to trying to be right.

Yeah, let's be right, not first.

Captain and I are striving to improve every day ourselves.

All right, here we go.

We're trying to be right and last.

Right and last.

And buried in the garage.

Okay, this is directly from the affidavit.

So this is directly from law enforcement.

Law enforcement personnel from the Tulane County Sheriff's Office and Wenatchee Police Department along helicopter along with helicopter support from Homeland Security Investigations converged into the area, the area that we just mentioned, that Rock Island campground off of Icicle Road.

Think of what the first part of this affidavit says.

The sheriff's office, the police department.

Now, the sheriff's office makes sense because they're going to have better resources than the Wenatchee Police Department, but the Wenatchee Police Department is the one that took the initial report from the mother.

But we also get helicopter support from Homeland Security Investigations.

So they're not taking this lightly.

And there's lots of persons and a lot of resources being pulled in very quickly to try to locate these three girls.

The report states that approximately 75 to 100 yards beyond where the vehicle, where Travis Decker's truck was located,

this is down a small embankment.

The sheriff's office deputies located the bodies of three school-aged children.

And the affidavit goes on to state: due to the current safety concerns and the scene preservation, the bodies have yet to be approached, but there are some clear signs of lividity.

Each have plastic bags over their head or a plastic bag over the head,

based on the totality of the circumstances, including the proximity to the vehicle and visible attire of the bodies, which is consistent with the clothing the children were wearing when they were transferred

from Whitney to Travis for visitation.

Look, from what they're saying is from afar, we're not approaching

these victims because

they're obviously have passed by this time.

And

we're limiting the, they probably sent personnel.

My guess would be one person in there to confirm this.

Because in case they could be helped or could be saved, you got to send somebody in there.

But you're sending limited personnel in there whether it be one two or three persons i wouldn't send any more than three because you don't want to contaminate this area and we've already talked about on many cases especially delphi amy mihalovic and several other cases the complications with an outdoor crime scene this is now an outdoor crime scene this is a public area this is nature mother nature is always in control we're just the weak little small people that live uh by under her rule well you're law enforcement don't you think you have to be concerned like you said we we found his truck, but then a distance away from the truck, we see this tent.

From our vantage point, we can see some items or some clothing that's connected to a child, and that's the same clothing that was described to law enforcement.

But one, you have to be worried, like you said, about contaminating the scene.

It's a indoor.

It's an outdoor case, but in some ways, this is good for law enforcement because all the stuff should be contained with inside that tent.

But I would think that you'd have to have some concern as law enforcement of this guy served in the military for quite a long time.

Where is he at?

We don't see him in the truck.

From our vantage point, we don't see him in the tent.

But we don't know if he's perched somewhere and waiting for people to show up.

And we don't know what this guy is capable of.

You nailed it.

That's got to be a concern.

And just

you say perched, that's spot on because from that vantage point, he would have an advantage over any of the officers if he were elevated above them.

And given the description of where the bodies were found,

it's down a hill or down into this ravine area.

And you have to applaud law enforcement, any of the law enforcement officers that were willing to take that chance to see if any of these victims possibly were not dead yet and that maybe they could help.

You have to applaud them for taking that risk.

Yeah, and the

concern here, too, is obvious, right?

They know, based off of everything that they're seeing, that the three kids they were looking for, unfortunately, they believe they found them.

They found them in a way that nobody wanted to find them.

But for

the purpose of this document, this document is being filed and requested to be granted at 9 a.m.

the following morning.

So this is less than 24 hours after the discovery of the truck and these three bodies.

So you have to be factual when you are asking for

a judge to sign off on something, and they're just simply giving them the facts as they understand them at the time of this filing.

So they're going to do their due diligence later to confirm, which would probably be taking place that night and early in the morning on June 3rd to confirm that the three victims are who they think they are.

And unfortunately,

it turns out to be just that.

Now, what is the purpose of this filing?

Well, they're filing another arrest

warrant.

They're seeking another arrest warrant for Travis Decker upon finding the truck and the bodies

because

they're now seeking a murder, a triple homicide arrest warrant, as opposed to the

child custody interference warrant that they already had from Monday morning.

It's so

sad to think Travis Decker serves his country, goes to war.

Anybody that wants to protect my freedoms is a hero.

Something happened.

Something snaps.

Something's not right

mentally,

or

I keep telling people the more we do the show, the more I realize there's just evil in this world and there's good, and sometimes it doesn't seem like the good is winning out.

But you have three daughters,

nine years old, eight years old, and five years old, and we find them zip-tied and suffocated with bags on their head.

This is,

you can't imagine what the hell is going on

in this guy's head.

Yeah, there's nothing about this story that is good at all.

And it's one of those,

man, that's the tightrope that I was walking all week long looking into this because, like you said, somebody that protects our freedom, somebody that serves the country, somebody that goes overseas and does something that none of us really truly want to have to do, defend our lives, defend our countries, defend our families, but would do when called upon.

But it's also one of those things, man.

It's hero status is earned, but it can be taken away.

Yeah.

You can lose hero status.

And I will say that the one thing that I found to be

compelling and to be insightful

was the sheriff of

Shillane County who says this is sheriff, I believe his name is Michael Morrison.

And he said that

we went through the definition of a soldier multiple times in our coverage, Hate American Made,

when we got to Timothy McVeigh.

And one of the parts of being a U.S.

soldier, an American soldier

in any branch of our military is to serve with honor.

And the sheriff points out, Sheriff Mike Morrison points out that nothing that this man is accused of is honorable in any form or fashion.

And so he has a hard time referring to him as a soldier because he thinks he, as he stated,

it completely takes away from what all of those other soldiers have done for our country and for each and every one of us.

And I can't even begin to imagine what Whitney is feeling through all this.

I mean,

purely, this is simply

innocent lives that didn't need to be lost

we talk regularly we regularly cover senseless murders and senseless killings this

goes beyond the definition of that this is

incomprehensible so continuing on in the affidavit here captain it says uh decker's travis decker's location is currently unknown and there is currently a coordinated effort to search the immediate area if not further, for him, so the scene we have can be searched.

Around the vehicle along the way to where the children were located, officers slash deputies located zip ties and plastic bags strewn throughout the area.

The tailgate of the pickup truck also has what appears to be two handprints of blood.

Yeah.

on them.

The truck has personal items to include.

So like you pointed out, tent find some items in the tent.

They find some of these items strewn about the area.

But we're also going to have the inside of the truck that's going to contain some personal items as well.

And the items that they chose to list here for the purpose of this document were blankets, car seats, food, miscellaneous items, a wallet.

And they state that the wallet was found on the center console.

I'm not seeing it,

and we'll continue on here, but the

I've seen several reports that his cell phone was found inside the truck.

Yeah.

Seems like he has taken off, but

how much did he take off with?

I mean, you would probably have to assume because he was a soldier that he owns firearms.

So did he take off in the woods with a backpack with a bunch of supplies and guns or that that I i think that becomes a difficult thing for law enforcement is what his his motivation for taking off and somebody could be listening to this and going

captain are you stupid he just killed his children that's his motivation for taking off

but i'd say it's not that simple because his motivation for taking off could be to take his own life it might not necessarily just be like i'm running to freedom yeah right his motivation could be to get to a certain location and to take his own life.

Or again, if you're law enforcement, is he trying to flee or is he trying to have a standoff somewhere?

Well, and there's some psychology in there, too, that is above my pay grade.

But when we reviewed...

Hey, I pay you good money to be a doctor.

Yeah, the captain pays me weekly, very weekly.

A buck 75.

We reviewed in short, we kind of did a short version of the Bradford Bishop case, a man who's never been located who murdered his entire family and left them up in the Smoky Mountains where they were later recovered.

And we've never reviewed the John List case,

which is famous for being solved by the good people over at America's Most Wanted.

When I say solved,

their programming led to

locating John List, who killed his mother and I believe it was his mother and his entire family.

Bishop did about pretty much the same thing.

Killed his mother and or her mother and the rest of the family.

Now, when I say there's some psychology involved there, persons that were interviewed to review those case that are doctors

have stated that

the thought is,

okay, this man,

husband-father sets out to do this plan of leaving his family or killing his family and then leaving because he killed them.

But it's without crawling inside the ear and up into the brain of this demented person.

There's no way to know what was the first goal.

What was the first

seed?

What was the idea here that I'm going to leave them?

And because I'm leaving them, I'm going to eliminate them or I'm eliminating them and then I have to leave for my own preservation.

Let me know if you agree with this.

All week, my feelings on this case, it feels the same as like Chris Watts

or even Scott Peterson in the sense of like,

you could just bowed out.

You know, you could have just said, I don't want to be a dad.

And List and Bishop could have done the exact same thing.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

Like, it's this feeling of like, okay, like in the Chris Watts case, okay, you got a girlfriend, fine, whatever.

Let your child be born.

And if you're just not involved in their life, if you disappear, so what?

You know,

it doesn't make any sense.

And so your solution is to kill your children.

It's beyond bizarre.

Yeah, you don't have to tell me.

I'm a child of the 80s and the 90s.

And, you know, it was few and far between, but and not to make light of it, but

there were a couple,

a couple kids I knew, a couple friends I had that

it was the old cliche.

Dad left one day to go out and pick up a pack of cigarettes and he never came home.

Yeah.

You know,

and then sometimes in the 70s and 80s,

you find out that the father lived like three blocks over

and the kids never knew.

But hey.

Had another family the entire time.

Say what you will, but that's on the low totem pole of pieces of shit.

I mean, you want to be the king of pieces of shit.

You know, yeah, that's a dingleberry compared to a full giant turd here.

And yeah,

so with Peterson, that guy angers me to no end because he is, he's a walking

five foot ten lie.

His whole life is a lie.

Everything about him is a lie.

He's, he's a facade.

He's, he's, he's hollow inside.

There's no soul, no guts, no, no, nothing.

He doesn't care anything about anybody.

He didn't want to have kids, never wanted to have kids, I believe.

Never really wanted to be tied down in a marriage.

And that's why he did his despicable acts.

And Chris Watts,

I don't know.

if he never wanted to have kids.

I think that he probably did because he had several of them and was in this marriage for a considerable time compared to Peterson.

but he's a monster because he just

wiped out my family for a secret love interest.

And then with Bishop and List, you have two completely different scenarios where

I think that it is more in line with this scenario because Travis doesn't seem to have or doesn't appear to have, he doesn't need to eliminate any family member because he's having some secret relationship.

He's He's not in a marriage anymore.

And with List and with Bishop,

their lives were failing.

Their lives were failing.

And Travis's life is failing.

He's flawed and he's a failed man.

If he's got ailments, I apologize,

but I'm not going to apologize for what he did.

He's still despicable.

And so I think it's more in line with Bishop and with List.

And there is, again, some psychology of, well, I'm going to hit the reset button.

And it's better for you all that I get rid of you before I do hit the reset button because

I can't save you, because I can't take care of you, because I didn't do my duty to you as a father, as a husband, as a protector, as a provider, then I'm going to hit the reset button.

You guys won't be included.

I think that really, truly, there's a lot more.

Let's take the psychology out of it and let's take

the potential psychosis out of it in all all of these situations that we just discussed and it's it's the most incredible incredibly selfish act that i've ever seen ever heard of in in my entire life yeah and i it'd be interesting to know

was

was travis uh decker the type of individual that kept on trying to get a second chance or was

i've not heard any statements about that, but you just wonder if that maybe is part of the motivation that he couldn't ever put Humpty Dumpty back together again, and this is

the result or the solution to his problems that he created in his mentally unstable head.

Because

whether or not he's being diagnosed with anything, you have to be mentally unstable to kill your nine-year-old, your eight-year-old, and your five-year-old daughter.

That's, that's,

it's, I was watching this thing the other day and they're talking about, you know, there, there's no crime in history that has been known as like a sacrifice or a ritual or whatever, you know, this whole satanic panic.

But if these things aren't evil by nature, then I don't know what they are.

No, yeah, there's no other way to describe them, especially if you're, if you're forced into a box to do,

give a description with just one simple word.

I'll continue on this this affidavit here.

It says during the search of the area, an abandoned camp was located nearby with signs of recent activity.

The camp consists of a fire pit, tent, cooler, and within a short walk from where the vehicle and bodies were located.

Let's go to the cell phone record information that is listed here.

It says that Travis Deckard's cell phone information

showed that he likely traveled to the area.

So to this specific area where his truck and the bodies were found, that he had traveled there on Thursday, May 29th in the evening.

So, that was approximately, let's say, 24 hours before he picked up his children.

He traveled to this area.

Now, we do know that he's staying.

He may have just been simply staying there.

This may not have been to scout it out or

to pre-plan anything.

But his cell phone information says that he was there or his phone was there the previous evening.

And it also says that he returned

to that location Friday morning.

The document continues.

Under the totality of the situation, it appears that Travis Decker drove through the area the night prior and returned the next day with the children.

Preliminary examination suggests the likely cause of death was asphyxiation.

Their wrist, their children, wrists were also zip-tied or showed signs of being zip-tied.

They were also positively identified.

So we now know that they were very quickly identified as

the victims that we thought they were.

And it states that this is probable cause to arrest Travis Caleb Decker for three counts of murder in the first degree and three counts of kidnapping in the first degree.

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Stick around for part two.

And until then, be good, be kind, and don't litter.

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