FBI bushwhacks in Washington forest for traces of Travis Decker, wanted in deaths of 3 daughters

LEAVENWORTH, Wash. (AP) — The FBI on Monday launched an intensive two-day search for clues to the whereabouts of Travis Decker near the Washington state campground where his three young daughters were found dead in early June.

But authorities stressed that there had been no break in the case and they still haven’t determined whether Decker is still alive.

Decker, a former soldier, has been wanted since June 2, when a sheriff’s deputy found his truck and the bodies of his three daughters — 9-year-old Paityn Decker, 8-year-old Evelyn Decker and 5-year-old Olivia Decker — at the Rock Island Campground in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

The discovery came three days after he failed to return the girls to their mother’s home in Wenatchee, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Seattle, following a scheduled visit.

Authorities closed popular campgrounds and trailheads in the forest near Leavenworth as close to 100 FBI agents and other law enforcement officers bushwhacked through rugged terrain. Divers planned to again search Icicle Creek in an effort to reach areas where logjams had previously barred dive teams, they said.

During a news conference Monday, Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison and Peter Orth, the FBI’s supervisory senior resident agent in Yakima, stressed that investigators still have no evidence about whether Decker is alive or dead.

“You can’t be too thorough in a search like this,” Orth said. “It is such incredibly dense vegetation that anybody who walks down one of these trails could walk 10 meters off the trail and no one would ever know they’re there.”

Teams were conducting a grid search in a quarter-mile (0.4 km) radius around the campground, they said.

The U.S. Marshals Service is offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to Decker’s capture.