Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Decker Sisters Deaths - Bags on Heads, Hands Zip tied, Bloody Handprint!

Episode Date: August 31, 2025

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 Highlights00:00.88 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    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Moore. Travel recommendation. If you have never seen the Cascades, get it on your list. You got to 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 in the midst of it. You can be miles and miles and miles. 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 passed, I guess it's at Mount Hood, I think, coming in over this thing, and I'd never seen anything like it in my life. It's amazing.

And essentially, they're snow-capped, dormant, volcano. but it's all the little hills that surround it as well and those beautiful lush evergreen forest that go on like a carpet forever off into the distance it is certainly a beautiful place

and it has a particular smell about it when you're there underneath that canopy of evergreens it's sometimes you can almost catch a hint of Christmas even in the summertime it's the pine It's the Cedars.

But today, I want to talk about something that has come to my attention in the last three days across my desk, actually the last two days. And it's the 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. I'm talking about the murders of three precious little angels the Decker Sisters I'm Joseph Scott Morgan

and this is body bags Dave I think the thing that so amazes me about the cascades and I know that geography nerds out there and probably people 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 got two, well, several, not just two. We've got major metropolitan centers along there. You know, people, you know, trying to earn a buck. They get away. They head east, head toward the Cascade.

and go camping. And our subject today, relative to the Decker sisters, revolves around their little family and dad who was known to camp, camp with some frequency. And this is up in Washington State, up toward the north in the Cascade Range. And Travis. went off into the forest and never came back out alive. Well, all right. Travis Decker, first of all, he's a 32-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 longer than that. He was in it for 10, 12 years and then transfers over the National Guard. but he's got these girls who's got an ex-wife and he has yet to find solid footing for himself i don't know a better way to say it um as he and his wife ex-wife dealt with custodial issues over the girls 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 10,

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 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 to the point where he did not get the kind of visitation that he wanted and it had kind of devolved into that so when he comes to pick the girls up may 30th was a planned visitation and I don't know you know we don't know all the ends in us we don't

know everything that happened we only know what cards he showed and he did pick up the girls for a planned visitation they were supposed to go to watch to appear to 5K run you know the a lot of times they'll have a 5k run in your community and it's a whole day event where you know uh you 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 and when Travis decker did not show up with the girls um we're talking about Peyton decker is nine evelyn is eight and Olivia is five these are some very very very active ages.

A five-year-old can keep you busy. Yeah. A five-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a nine-year-old can make you shave your head because of the bald patches you're pulling out. So 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 supposed to have them for a week. and they waited 10 days. Okay, it wasn't like that, Joe. He picks them up, May the 30th. Within 48 hours, there's an all-point 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 start with in this case. They did find a campsite. where Travis Decker took his girls I've seen pictures of this campsite Joe and full disclosure Joe was talking to me about this last night because you've done some appearances

on networks that you've delved into this and you have some information about what took place the pictures showed a 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 24 hour period of time but over weeks so they've tracked him to this area that he was camping with the girls his homeless shelter if you want to call it that and they

found bags in like a i use dollar general as an example because if you live in the south i guess it's a southern thing, I don't know, but we got a dollar general every, every, every quarter mile. I think you have to have one. It's a law next to the Alexander Shinar lawyer signs, you know, call me Alabama. There's even a postseason college football bowl named the Dollar General. 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. other things that just didn't seem to have a lot of value in a camping area if you were camping. Now, if you're living, it's a different matter altogether. When you're camping,

you take stuff in your, you have a bundle, you have a backpack, you have a bed roll, 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, Joe, or trying to 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, maybe.

Yeah. 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 the house and see them at specific times, you know, but, 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, you know, that are, yeah, very sadly. that 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 a two-way street, too. I know I've got good 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 to pay the price for it. But, you know, their effort to get help hinged heartily upon the amount of 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, that he has been diagnosed with, which I think from an overarching standpoint, the diagnosis 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 those meds if he's seeking the treatment. You know, if you want to go get other treatment outside the VA, fine, 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. 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, well, actually, really two days of looking. and on June the 2nd, they found his campsite. And what they found was beyond anything, anybody thought they were going to find. Worst case scenario showed up in their face. Yeah, it did. And this is the way 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 wasn't just evidence that Travis Decker had indwelled that location.

It looked as though Satan itself had paid a visit. where that's the biggest question when 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 the responses I get from families when they're notified of deaths. Contrary to what people think, they don't ask what happened most of the time, most of the people, 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 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 from Missouri. You got to show me. Oh, you 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 it with their eyes. And so therefore, you know, what happened is kind of down the list 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. Some people might just sit there and say, oh, okay, well, that happened. The line share people are not going to do that. They want to verify everything for themselves.

And look, I understand. I understand completely. I know, in a matter of fact, families want to touch the bodies. Isn't that something? It's almost like if you've ever seen a mama, a dog where she loses a pup out of a litter in order, and other animals do this too, they'll nuzzle the deceased animal, the deceased pup or calf or whatever, just to verify it's a tactile thing where they're verifying that this child is no more. And the same 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 2025 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. 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 I, boy, I do not want 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, they're searching for the girls. They did give me the girls, do what you.

you're a grown man when on june second they go to the campsite they find where they knew where he'd been and they find the girls joe they don't find Travis decker and that's 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 here and the girls are gone. The girls are dead. So tell me

because the search is still ongoing. We still don't have traffic. I mean, this, you're thinking about a country that, you know, to be honest with you, the government's 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 commercials today for axe handles.

So how does that? is a person, a 32-year-old man, who is having mental issues, how does he stay gone like this? How does he stay hidden? Walks away from everything. 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've spent the night in my car before. Now, I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a car for a protracted period of time. There are people that do it. They do it all the time. All you got to do is go to L.A. and drive them down the road. You'll see them parked up on, pull up on sidewalk, those 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, New Hampshire. That monster had her. Harmony Montgomery. Yeah, Harmony. That monster had her and the other sibling and the girlfriend. I think three siblings or two. I can't remember. But that little baby was living in a a Chrysler-Seabring, which are convertibles 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 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 angelic little darlings, you know, there in that forest. You know what else was left behind, Dave? You talk about a dichotomy.

His dog was left. Really? The dog is alive. Now, if we were to put that on scales, okay? The lives of your children. children that you couldn't have on a regular basis. 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 Karen with a C comment there. You know, Karen Stark, our friend, a 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 you spare the dog. I don't really get that. I don't understand it. I think that probably one of the 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. There was actually blood, bloody handprints that were found on, I think it was the tailgate of that truck. 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.

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 when he saw what was going on with the girls the dogs are not stupid and that maybe the dog was problematic for him maybe the dog was not allowing him to do what he was trying to do and maybe he did something he 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. All manner of things.

I've got a newly acquired part chihuahua that Kim and I, Kim and I rescue dogs. That's our thing. 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 Frenchie. And she's part chihuahua. And every 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 to things. She sees things. And, you know, she'll crawl back up in Kim's lap. Meanwhile, I've got, you know, a 40-pound lab that crawls up into my lap. And I sit there and pet her. But dogs are interesting that way. And they're part of, you know, dogs are part of families.

And that's an interesting idea that you put forward there. Did the dog, you know, did the dog run away? Did he shoe 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 handprints, which by the by, DNA testing turned out that this is his blood and typing in DNA. Well, wait a minute.

It was Travis Decker's blood? I think it was, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we've got, we know we have three children, five, eight, and nine who are dead. Yeah. 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 we know how he killed? We do. Or wait a minute, allegedly killed the girls. He's a suspect. He's not convicted.

He hasn't gone to torture. Right. He is a suspect at this point in time. And as a matter of fact. The police are actually stating he is the sole 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 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 people in the military that are, you know, doing dynamic entries and all this 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, gee Morgan, that's kind of obvious. Thanks for the insight. No, that's important when you begin to think about the causal effects of these babies' deaths, because, Dave, their deaths have been ruled as a suffocation deaths. And we've got to go back to the Dollar General bags that you mentioned, not that these are Dollar General bags, but some facsimile thereof, if you're talking about, you know, some bag that they got at Rouse 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 them away? Well, that's, there's a lot of stuff I don't agree with that comes out from various medical journals and all. That's

want to happen 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 believe it or not dave were dry cleaning bags because kid could put their whole body in these things all right oh wow um and they're not most of the time they're not permeable that means that they don't they don't breathe is what i'm saying so you're not going to, it's not like, not that this would be great, but it's not like it's a burlap sack over your head, 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 they, 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-backed over their heads. A third one was triple-backed. What? Yeah, triple-backed. So 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, they're good for about one from moving your groceries from the trunk of your car

from the bed of your truck into the house. And after that, the structural continuity of these things breaks down really quick. So I, you know, and I was giving us some thought, you know, before, before you and I were going to chat today, brother. And I was thinking he was kind of, if he is the one that did this, he's kind of triple checking everything, checking the boxes. This goes to intent, right? He's got these things he's doing more. 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 depravent event. So when you enclose anybody into a small space like that, and it's sealed, and, yeah, a bag is a small space. There's very little room in there 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 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, of 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 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, Dave, they would have an awareness because their primal brain kicks in and you begin struggling, you begin fighting. And let's just, let's just talk about this just for a second, as 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 the item off of your face, all right? You get, I don't know, you get jelly on your beard, you're 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. 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 wrist, and very tiny wrist, 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 the deceased well you don't you restrain them what what type of person Dave what type of person looks into the eyes of their child and says give me your wrist

put your hands behind your back and you hear that very distinctive sound of that zip-tie being clicked, click, click, click, 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 him to do it? I don't know, but I do know this. Based upon the information the police have just released, it seems that more and more the evidence is pointing toward Daddy.

Most of the time when we think about homicides, 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 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 later, you know, down in Australia. And that's kind of a passive homicide's poisoning. We've had other poisons that we've covered. but Dave I submit 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 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. Joe, I'm curious as to the planning that went into this from Decker's standpoint. 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 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 30th 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 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 9, 8, and 5. And that means to me that he went out,

the whole thing was planned ahead of time. I don't know 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, 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 not easy. You have to bind them in a interview. Yeah. Can I take you back just for a moment, because I know that he is an Army veteran and I'm still unclear.

I've heard people make comments and 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 Montauk boat death 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, a POW situation, they put a bag over your head, and they bind you, 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 at Bragg, they go through Robin Sage,

which is part of their training. They have to negotiate and all those sorts of things, learning how to do that. And the special operators also have to go through sear training, which is 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 don't know where sounds 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 life. But I submit to you that he's at least aware of that. And that he chose this and chose allegedly, you know, if he is. perpetrator found you know left them out in those woods um i don't know that that's part of it you know that i was thinking about all along because i don't know what his level of training let me help you understand that then his military training when you go into social media and you see other people that he was in the service with and the the commonality that they have um decker had advanced infantry combat training um he was an airborne paratron

troop who earned his elite ranger tab that means he has elite wilderness evasion training and survival skills um those are a couple of the things that let you know uh he also had different um profiles that he talked about being a qualified instructor in other issues of warfare being training out and 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 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 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 I mean I don't know the first things the first things I thought of you know it's kind of like the shunned lover, 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 why, why exactly would he go after the girls and not after them? Right. Would little girls have more of an ability to suffocate quickly or would it take them longer to

Well, they've got less, they've got less, less lung capacity, man. And plus you've got a, you've got a, you've got a, you've got a, 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 he secure the bags? Because this is kind of ghastly. If you put those bags over their heads, you can secure them on the neck. You can do it with tape. You can do it with another zip tie.

You can hold it in place. And if you can't move your hands to remove the bag, the 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 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 forth and so or did he kill them in front of one another i know it your mind can go to all these different places another thing that you would have evidence of uh would be in their own little way there would be a mighty struggle so you would see evidence on the ground of not just these kind of scuffed footprints where they're resisting you can see marks on the ground where they would struggle with their entire body kind of rolling in somebody that's a trained observer of these kinds of things certainly wouldn't be me they I've had them pointed out to me at scenes 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 marks on the crown it's amazing that that may have taken place there and you know that soil if you've ever been in to the cascade range that soil is very loamy. 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 those trees. And the 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 obviously larger than these babies. What about the DNA, Joe? Where did they find it? Where do they find DNA from the girls? Here's the other piece to this, Dave, 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. If you've got one in 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. It's kind of 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 tab 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 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 I don't think this is a passive thing, okay? I think that there's a probability that, well, a couple of things.

We know that the bloody handprints, 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 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 that approximates the size of human head. I don't know like a vase. I'm sorry for all my fancy friends out there of us. 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 and then you'll take it and maybe tie it or put something else around it to secure it. I think his DNA could potentially be on the exterior 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 that they found on. The blood thing is still a mystery. You know, 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. There's a lot of unanswered questions. I think, and this is kind of even more hopeless if this thing 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 and done any number of things out there. And I don't, and this place is so fast. Now, I'm not saying nobody misconstrued what I'm saying. I'm not saying this is the actual location where this happened. But all we got to do is think about D.B. Cooper. Right. D.B. Cooper came out of that airplane and no one saw hiding her hair of him.

And we know that he had parachute. You know, he had all that cash. They think they found some of the cash embedded in a riverbed. I don't know if that was a Columbia or wherever it was. But you're still talking about the same kind of forested area like this. you know the earth just swallows things how long joe i mean look you've you actually have mentioned to me um we have had a common character in our world uh eric robert rudolph uh the olympic park bomber in atlanta who also bombed an abortion clinic in birmingham and

you know he stayed gone for a long time there was thoughts that maybe he hit off himself somewhere and things like that but he actually was caught uh while he was in the midst of of staying gone. How did he caught? How did they track him? 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 any grand insight into anything, you know, my focus was on the victim who happened to be a school teacher that was, you know, there in Olympic Park that night to hear the concert as Jack Mack and the heart attack. I'll never forget it. 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 blasts. 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 describe if you've never been in the military,

but an anti-personnel mine called a Claymore 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 carry back in my day. It's called an Alice pack. And so he had packed it with all manner stuff, you know, bits of concrete. There were roofing nails, 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. It traveled, you know, to the back of her brain. and 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 Jewell, the fed's pointed 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 Clintiest would movie about Richard Jule.

He was a very nice man. I met him a couple occasions before he finally died. And, you know, 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 reorienting. And the blast kind of went up instead of out. If that bag had stayed in its original position, I think that we 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 Rudolph, he was, he had headed out for, you know, for North. North Georgia and the North Carolina, the western North Carolina mountains made his way up there.

And Dave, it was, I can't remember the exact amount of time, but I know that the U.S. Marshals poured their resources into it, the FBI. I'd even heard rumors at one point in time that certain elements were deployed from military to aid and search. And these are people that are 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 7-Eleven in the middle of the night in this little town that's just right over the Georgia-North Carolina border up into the mountains in North Carolina dumpster diving and deputy that night was on patrol

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 i'm eric rudolph you imagine i mean everybody the most skilled people in the world have been looking for this guy coming to 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 And you never know what's going to happen with Travis Decker. I don't know that he will ever be found.

I know that they have, and 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 maybe he was going to try to cross border into Canada through Idaho. and that little sliver up there that 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 these three precious little souls. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body bags.