Authorities this week found bones amid the ongoing manhunt for Travis Decker, the Washington father accused of killing his three young daughters earlier this year.
Decker, a 32-year-old former soldier, has been wanted since June 2 after the bodies of his daughters — Paityn, 9; Evelyn, 8; and Olivia, 5 — were found in a remote campsite in Chelan County with their hands zip-tied and plastic bags over their heads.
On Monday, the FBI’s Seattle office announced it was intensifying the search for the triple-murder suspect by sending more than 100 personnel from multiple agencies to perform a grid search in the vicinity of the Rock Island Campground near Leavenworth, Wash.
“The mission of the search was to locate Travis Decker, discover signs of his whereabouts, or find any other evidence of the murder of his three daughters,” the FBI said Friday in an update, noting that “several items” had been recovered and are currently “being examined to determine whether they are related to the investigation.”
While the FBI did not offer details on the items that were found, Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison has since confirmed that investigators recovered bones, though it’s not yet known if they are human.
“The bones were found during the grid search by one of the 100 personnel,” Morrison told local ABC affiliate KOMO on Friday. “It was inconclusive at the time if they were animal or human, so it was sent off to Central Washington University in their anthropology department to do a confirmation.”
If the bones are confirmed to be human, investigators will conduct additional testing, Morrison said.
According to the FBI, personnel across multiple search teams were deployed on Monday “for a full two days in remote outdoor terrain while daylight was available,” as temperatures in the area neared 100 degrees.
“Despite the dense vegetation and challenging topography, personnel from the FBI Seattle field office, with the support of FBI headquarters and partner agencies, thoroughly searched and documented over 1 million square meters, or 247 acres,” the FBI said, adding that in the nearly three-month-long manhunt, it was the first time a search “of this magnitude” took place.
