1 year later, WA sheriff defends massive manhunt for Travis Decker

On May 30, it will mark 1 year since the search for Travis Decker, who was an ex-soldier wanted in the deaths of his three daughters.

The backstory:

The tragedy began when 9-year-old Paityn, 8-year-old Evelyn and 5-year-old Olivia were found dead at a campground outside Leavenworth after failing to return from a visitation. 

What followed was one of the largest manhunts in Washington state history, spanning four grueling months across treacherous mountain terrain.

The exhaustive search finally ended in September when authorities discovered remains believed to belong to Decker just a mile from the crime scene. 

Now, one year later, FOX 13 Seattle Anchor David Rose spoke with Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison about the case and the questions that still remain, including why it happened and whether more could have been done to save the three girls.

Full transcript of interview with Chelan County Mike Morrison

David Rose: Sheriff Morrison, good to see you. Thank you for your time. Good to see as well. Thanks for having me on. Well, as you reflect back, what moment has stayed with you the most here a year later?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: The initial call and just getting a heads up that the girls have been located and just kind of the details of the incident. It was a rocking moment for sure.

David Rose: You know, many sheriffs will go their entire career without the kind of spotlight that was placed on you that you endured, that you endure. Did that experience change you in any way or what did you take away from that experience?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: No, I certainly recognize that it was unique experience talking with a lot of other sheriffs and chiefs here in Washington state. I recognize that I wasn't in it alone and that it gave me an opportunity to further understand the kind of relationships we'd already established the partners that I could lean into the state, county, local and federal level. But overall, I think the one thing I took away from her to help. I never seen anything like that again. It certainly was an incident that rocked our community and devastated us. You know, we're still being with the aftermath of it. I was just talking with their grandfather. This week in one of our community events. And I understand, they're still processing through it. Our community is still processing through it, but it really highlighted the fact that Chelan County is close-knit. It is a peaceful community. And when something like this does happen, we didn't break apart, we came together.

David Rose: Well, this was the largest manhunt in our state's history. You were praised for your transparency as that search stretched on for four months over the summer. Do you think there's anything that could have been done to find his remains more quickly?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: No, I think we did absolutely everything we needed to do in regards to tracking down leads, working with our resources. And once those leads started to dwindle down, we just started to go back to what we knew as the expansion of our search pattern that we had. And we did the initial search the night of the crime scene. And then of course, we started to expand out. We processed down the I-School drainage to just check residences. But then we started getting leads, information back from our state, local, and federal partners. And we tracked those leads down and when those didn't materialize we went back to square one and we expanded out and continued to do which was the expansion of our grid search.

David Rose: You know, when you have a suspect death like this, it still leaves everybody wondering why. Because there was no trial, we may never have a definitive motive. But based on the evidence that you found in his truck and at the scene, is there anything you can share now that helps the community understand his state of mind?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: No, I believe that Stacey Chiquette, she's the operational psychologist the Washington State Patrol brought on. She really had an interesting theory, but again, it's just a theory that might have been the motivating cause for his actions. Clearly, I've stated it before, I don't think we'll ever truly know what was going through his mind, why. From what we understood before, that he was a caring father, an involved father, we actually had some of our deputies within our agencies whose kids were also doing sports with him, and he was always there, always involved, and seemed like he wanted to be as involved as possible with the girls and of course to see. This revelation and what happened certainly was outside of what we would have expected from him. But clearly, I don't think he was in his right mind at the time. No one would do this to their child. And unfortunately, we didn't get that opportunity to bring in front of our courts and get a clearer explanation of why.

David Rose: That is interesting that she says that, because on the day that Peyton, Evelyn, and Olivia went missing, I interviewed their mom. I asked her if she thought Travis was a threat to the girls or would do anything to hurt them. She told me, absolutely not, that he loved his kids. And then she and her legal team have been very vocal about the system failing them in the first 48 hours. They feel an Amber Alert should have been issued. But in retrospect, could an Amber alert have helped find them before he killed them based on the timeline of their disappearance?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: Well, based off the current policies and procedures, it did not qualify for an amber alert. That's why it went to a missing endangered person search. Again, we stand with Washington State Patrol. I know that there was an investigation that came back through and assessed the amber alert procedures. And again, I think it was properly written out and placed. Could it have been a tool that we could have utilized? We could play the what-if game all day. Clearly, we would have loved to have found them sooner. But unfortunately that's just the way the system's set up and certainly would stand behind Washington State Patrol's decision and policies regarding ambalore. We don't want it to start becoming a just kind of a blending in with the background noise. I mean if you see it over and over every single day people won't pay attention to it.

David Rose: So now when you receive an endangered missing person alert, are people more responsive? Have you changed any policies? Has this made any difference? Or does the endangered missing person alert still work the way it's supposed to?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: It's still working the way it's supposed to. We continue to see support from our community, not only just here locally, but statewide when there is a missing or endangered person alert, we have a silver alert or amber alert. You do see the community responding back to us, helping us out, providing tips and information. So I believe the system works, but of course it's not always perfect.

David Rose: You know, a year later, Wenatchee's still healing. What do you want the public to remember about the investigation? And I'm not referencing the manhunt, but about the girls and the community response.

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: Just the fact that law enforcement agencies, not only within Chelan County, across the state, across the nation, are not successful unless we have community support behind us. There's 80 plus thousand citizens within Chelon County. We have simply just 60 sworn deputies right now that's fully staffed, but if you're looking at 60 trying to cover 2,900 plus square miles and trying to police over 80,000, plus you bring in the millions of tourists, we can't do it alone. So we appreciate the fact there are communities supporting us, they're behind us, we know that's not always the case nationwide. And we don't take that for granted.

David Rose: I know you've talked about the difficulty of the search areas, but where his body was found, what was so difficult about getting to that area or searching there, since it was about a mile away from where the crime occurred?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: Absolutely, so it wasn't an established trail. It's a steep climb. Our detective unit, and I praise them time and time again, they worked very hard in this situation. They are experienced back country individuals. I mean, at times they go hunting, they're in shape, and it took them almost two hours to go half a mile. That's unique, I've never heard of anything like that. I'm also quite an outdoorsman. I like being out there, I like hiking. I've seen the terrain. It was difficult to climb up, and again, I have heard some of the critique that we've heard from individuals. Not only within our community, but across the strait saying why did it take so long? They're only 0.73 miles away. By all means, come on out, check out the terrain, hike up there and see if you can get up there any closer. Again, we did exactly what we were supposed to. We followed a format. We continued to expand out our search pattern when those leads did start to dwindle down and we eventually got the results we wanted to. We point out to several other cases across the nation how long it took them. I think the fact that we were able to do it within just a couple months was impressive. I commend our team, I commend our partners. And of course, yes, we would have loved to have found it within the first three days. But I don't see this as a failure. I saw this as perseverance. I saw our agency never giving up hope. And we owe that to the family. And of course, more importantly, we own it, the Peyton, Evelyn and Olivia make sure that we deliver the kind of effort that you saw from not only our agency, but our state partners, local partners, federal and most importantly, the community, too. They never gave up on us. They were continuing to be supportive of us. And they knew that we'd get the results they're looking for. And we did. So I appreciate Shaline County. Supporting their sheriff's office. Is there an unanswered question for you still personally? Of course, yeah, I'd like to know why this happened. But again, I'm not going to get that result. But overall, the major question was, where was he at? We found him. It was answered. And again, i just hope it never happens again.

David Rose: So you had to coordinate with federal law enforcement and a lot of local law enforcement as well. This had to be a huge drain on your county's resources. Has the county recovered financially from that? And is it, are you able to do the things you want to do currently this year with your budget or did that drain everything? Did you get some help from the feds?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: We did. I can tell you right now, and I've said it before, we couldn't have done this without Washington State Patrol, thanks to Chief Patish and his team. We couldn't done it without the U.S. Marshals, the FBI, Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations, Spokane County, King County, Snomish County, Yakima, Kittitas County. They really stepped up. And one thing I'd point out, none of them sent us a bill. I know that this cost overall was probably around $10 million. I know a lot of people have blocked that. So how could you have blown through that much money? Well, it wasn't Chelan County or the Chelan county sheriff's office that went through it as our partners coming together, pooling those resources. And it's kind of part of our mission with the resources entrusted to us. We didn't have ten million dollars that I could have taken on this search effort or the operation by ourselves. I think we're around one hundred ninety seven thousand dollars total that our county spent. Clearly, our board of county commissioners were supportive. I even give support and praise to the governor's office. He came up with three hundred thousand dollars for us to fly the National Guard Blackhawk for about a week there. To assist in the search and of course, Spokane County and Spokan Police Department coming over the drone unit. So I'm just grateful that we had partners that were willing to come up and didn't send us a bill and knew that this is for the greater good, not only for the state, but for our community. And you see partnerships like that really highlighting that importance. And I really stressed it. We do need our federal partners to work with us. We do our state partners, our local partners. We can't silo ourselves and start seeing differences like that. We have to work for what's the greater goods not only Washington state but our nation.

David Rose: You know, I keep thinking of your first responders, particularly the ones, yourself and others, who had to process the scene there where those three little girls were found. How were they doing emotionally? It had to take a toll. I don't care how hardcore, you know, law enforcement official you are. Seeing something like that had to take an emotional toll. How is everybody in your department doing who had witnessed that?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: You know, they're doing as well as can be expected. We know there are some that took it harder than others. We've sent some off to, you've got Deer Hollow and also First Responder Wellness for some of their facilities to get some treatment to kind of deal with the trauma that came with this. We brought in psychologists from across the state, really appreciated them coming in, peer support members, crisis intervention stress management teams. We made sure those resources were available. We recognize that law enforcement is unique. When you look at citizens, they see between four and six critical incidents in their life. We're looking between $900 to $1,000 for officers on average. Now Washington state's recognizing any officers that have been in law enforcement over 10 years. It's presumed to have PTSD. And that's just the reality of the profession that we signed up for. We've done the best we can to invest. You saw gym memberships that were paid for early on in my administration, along with gym equipment coming in. We brought in a peer support crisis dog as well, and then bringing our peer support teams, crisis prevention and stress management teams. Just bringing on some other like VR goggles for reset, satellites, recreate. We're doing everything possible to take care of our deputies physically, mentally, and psychologically, not only to ensure that we have them being successful at work, but also when their career comes to an end and they retire. I wish I could bring in millions more, but the amount of services we've secured, it's just to take of those individuals who saw something horrific. And many will of course not forget this throughout their lives. I'm one of them. But we do the best we can to process it, deal with it, but continue to provide the level of professional service that the community expects from us, no matter what kind of situation we face. Certainly commend our deputies for stepping up, taking that on, and really have a lot of respect for those that were dealing with some trauma and some struggles personally and professionally on this topic that they reached out to us. They allowed us to get them in touch with services they needed to get some help. So I'm very thankful. That's not easy for us in uniform. When we're having problems and you're seeing our career and also our profession just evolve and become more sophisticated and intelligent with how to deal with this and long-term success.

David Rose: You mentioned in your September press conference you wanted to show honor to Payton, Evelyn, and Olivia. How has this case changed the way your deputies view their role in the community?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: I think it just further strengthens our motto is of the people for the people. I've certainly stressed the fact that all of our deputies are members of this community or even our neighboring community over in Douglas County. And then we are for those people. A lot of these individuals are our neighbors, our friends, our family. So we certainly feel like we're part of that community. We're for the community. And it just for the strength and why, the why for our profession, the reason we took that oath, the reason, we put on the uniform, the body armor, I was just reflecting back over my career, hitting 20 years here. How many people I've known personally who have lost their lives serving their communities, more importantly, the state of Washington. This is not an easy profession, but we still continue to see people stepping up. Again, we're fortunate to be fully staffed. We actually just went over one above what we're budgeted for. That's because there's still men and women out there that want to take on this responsibility, want to respect their communities serve their communities. And I think partake in the most honorable profession one can have. And I'm very grateful that there's still people out there that wanna do it.

David Rose: Well that says a lot about Chelan County Sheriff's Office because there are some sheriff's offices here, Snohomish County, that have huge deputy deficits and they could certainly use the staffing. And finally, Sheriff, is it difficult to kind of go back and talk about this? Are you ready to sort of move forward or are you just proud of the actions and there weren't a lot of lessons learned? You just think everything was handled well?

Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison: There's always lessons learned. We certainly went back. We did our debriefs. We understand where communication could have been better, where maybe even the collection of information could have be better, but certainly proud of our deputies, proud of partners, proud of investigative unit. They have a strong criminal case established. We're ready to go to court. But overall, we just hope that this, of course, never happens again. I had a great conversation with Peyton Evelyn Olivia's grandfather this weekend when I was out at a community event, and I understand that they're doing the best they can. To heal from this, move on. They certainly have requested, of course, peace and quiet. They didn't want any major events taking place to reflect on the anniversary coming up. And I understand that and respect the fact that this is still very traumatic for them. They've done a great job dealing with it, working with us and really appreciate the fact that they were still able to show up and help us out throughout this process when they were grieving. I couldn't even imagine what that would be like personally and the fact that they're still willing to step up and help out professionally. Was admirable. Whitney is an amazing, amazing woman. The fact actually that she was just performing in some of our local theater was also really highlighting just her versatility, the kind of person she is, and the fact that she's just so full of life and vibrancy, and I'm glad there's people like that in our community.

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