Hidden True Crime - Travis Decker’s Mind EXPOSED—Psychologist Drops Bombshell Analysis

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

He was a decorated veteran and a father of three. Now he's the face of an unthinkable crime and wanted for murder. In this episode, a forensic psychologist unpacks the terrifying psyche of Travis Decker—his motives, his manipulations, and what his actions reveal about deep-rooted psychology. About Hidden True Crime: What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at ⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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wealthfront.com. Clients were paid $1,000 for their testimonials, creating a conflict of interest. Howcomes vary. 3.3% base API Y as of January 30th, 2026, is representative variable and earned on funds swept to program banks. 0.65% new client boost for three months on up to $150,000. Direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an investing account for a point 25% increase. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member FINRA SIPC, not a bank. We have covered this case since it broke, and we have more to discuss while law enforcement continue to search for Travis. Decker. So a quick backstory to catch everybody up. It was supposed to be just another weekend visit. On May 30th, 2025, Travis Decker picked up his three daughters, Peyton, Evelyn, and Olivia for a

three-hour visitation. But he never brought them back. Instead, what followed was a nightmare, one that has triggered a full-scale manhunt through the rugged wilderness of Washington State and has left an entire community shattered. The world is shattered by this crime. Travis Decker wasn't a stranger to hardship. He served for years in the U.S. Army deployed to Afghanistan and trained in survival and combat. By 2025, Travis was living out of his truck. He'd lost his job, his home, most of his relationships. And according to his ex-wife Whitney, he was spiraling, erratic and paranoid.

In court docs, she begged the judge to limit his time with their daughters. And then on May 30th, Travis picked his girls up. Two days later, Travis said, This is 2017, GMC Sierra truck was found abandoned in a forested area near Leavenworth, Washington. Inside were signs of recent life, food, kids' belongings, a wallet. And nearby, outside of the truck, something much worse. Law enforcement made a devastating discovery. At a secluded campsite, the bodies of all three girls were found.

Peyton, age nine, Evelyn, age eight, Olivia, just five. Their wrists had been zip-tight or had shown signs of being zip-tied. and they were each found with a plastic bag over their heads. They had died of asphyxiation. And their dad, Travis Decker, gone. Completely gone. And what came next has been one of the largest manhunts in the state's recent history. Over 100 officers, helicopters, thermal drones, canine units, the U.S. Marshals, and authorities

warn Travis Decker is trained in evasion and survival. He knows how to disappear. The first break came from high school. They reported seeing a man alone, avoiding people and out of place. Shortly after, a helicopter team spotted someone fleeing through the trees. Canine units were brought in and tracked his scent to a trailhead. Law enforcement said they believe it was Travis Decker. And that tip has pushed searchers deep into some of Washington State's most rugged terrain.

They also found something else, something chilling. evidence that days before the murders, Travis Decker had been researching how to flee to Canada. This wasn't spontaneous. This was planned. Family members have since spoken out. Decker's own brothers said he cut ties weeks before the murders after a failed intervention led to what he called a violent outburst. Whitney, the girl's mother, is left grieving alongside a community struggling to make sense of a man who destroyed the very people he was supposed to protect. Decker is considered armed, unstable, and dangerous, and a $20,000 reward is on the table for any information leading to his capture.

But make no mistake, this is not a man who wants to be found. In the words of the local sheriff, quote, you're going to have to be perfect every single day, Travis. We only have to be perfect one day, he said. We will not stop. We will keep going. He just has to make one mistake. And quote. While the search continues, we are.

all left wondering why. Why didn't people see what kind of father would take these precious lives? I personally wonder why Washington State refused an amber alert. Why couldn't they believe Travis was such a danger to his daughters? What sick motive lay hidden in Travis Decker? His own ex-wife, the girl's mother, Whitney, told law enforcement before her daughter's bodies were found that Travis loved his girls. So what led him to do the most horrendous act we can fathom and murder his own daughters? Why is he hiding now? And what is he hiding? Why do human beings do the unthinkable? This is hidden true crime where we delve into those hidden motives with criminal psychologist, Dr. John Matthias and me, a former broadcaster and investigative journalist. And today,

we are asking Dr. John, why? Dr. John, help me understand Travis Decker and what this crime is about. Well, we'll be exploring that. But before we do, I want to point out that Whitney, who was Travis's wife, ex-wife, they were divorced in 2022, had an intuition that things were getting worse. she said the only thing she noticed the day when May 30th when Travis picked up the girls the only thing she noticed that was different was that he was quote quieter than usual unquote but if you back up a little bit and you look at the history of this situation

you'll see that in 2024 she actually went back to court to change the parenting plan or the custody agreement and in that in her affidavit David's to the court, she was concerned. There were a lot of issues she had with some of the things Travis was doing, including living in an armory with the girls when he had them for the weekends. She talked about his mental health issues, his continued mental health issues, including, by the way, she's the one who tells us that he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and that's going to be a big part of the story. So we have these clues, but I think what's most interesting to me is that Whitney had some intuitions here that things were getting worse.

And she obviously, by going to the court and requesting a revised parenting plan, I think in her own way, she was expressing her concerns. I don't think she would have seen this ending up where it did. I think, you know, she made a statement to the media that initially before the fate of the girls was known that she wasn't concerned that he was a danger. And so, in fact, she made a statement to the effect of, let me just, let me actually read this. This is one of her first statements to the media. She said, quote, I don't personally think that he's dangerous. I think that he's impulsive. And he loves his children very much. I think that he's having a really hard time. And he just

needs something to feel better. And for him, that's the girls. unquote. So given that, I think Whitney has this conflict. She knows things are getting worse. She knows things are deteriorating. She knows that he lost his job. He's unemployed.

He's unhoused. There's all these issues going on. He's talking about getting rid of his dog. That's another thing. That's another red flag here, a warning sign, is that he's he loves this dog.

there might have been multiple dogs. I'm not clear about that. They found a dog at the campground, so I'm going to say a dog, but there were earlier statements to make to the court where they mentioned dogs plural, so I'm not clear if it's multiple pets. But let's assume there's one dog. He apparently is very close to this dog,

and he's talking about giving the dog away or, quote, getting rid of it, whatever that means. I mean, the dog ended up alive. But I think what's interesting here is you're seeing some of these warning signs. And not only is he, the term psychologists used would be decompensating or deteriorating in terms of his physical well-being, his psychological well-being, his emotional well-being, but people are picking up on this. Whitney has seen this. She's noticing that she's concerned enough to go to the courts to ask for a change of visitation

so that Travis gets less visitation and that by the way I think is going to be a big part of the story so you have the divorce in 2022 you have this revised visitation agreement in 2024 where Travis essentially refuses to go along with anything

he doesn't sign anything he's actually quite defiant in court he tells the judge He tells the court, I'm not signing that. The court orders a domestic violence assessment, which is another piece of this puzzle. Domestic violence. So we don't know. As far as we know right now, we've seen no history of domestic violence.

So we don't know that there's a history of domestic violence, but I think it's a pretty good sign. It's a pretty good indication that there might be domestic violence in this relationship when the court is ordering a domestic violence assessment. judge doesn't typically order that unless there's been potentially some history of past violence. So you have to think that there's at least a hint or suggestion of some domestic violence in this relationship. The judge orders the psychiatric assessment, which Travis refuses to agree to. He refuses to participate in. He refuses to participate in counseling. There's there's this defiance. and this is late 2024.

So you have, again, if you're putting this picture together, I think you have to look at all these elements. You have borderline personality disorder. You have a guy that's getting out of the Army. He's retiring from the Army. He's done a tour in Afghanistan in 2014. He did a tour for, I believe, five or six months. So he was deployed to Afghanistan for March to July of 2014.

He was in combat zones. There's some possibility here. And again, I don't know. We've heard rumors of PTSD, but I can't confirm that. But it's reasonable to expect that a soldier, you know, that he happened to be in the Army. He was an infantry man, meaning he was on the front lines. He was one of the first people into combat.

He's the guy that would, you know, go into, to a armed conflict first. He'd be in the front line. He'd be, you know, the people pushing in and engaging in whatever combat they needed to engage in to succeed. So this is someone who's very well trained in terms of, you know, the use of military-grade weapons, automatic rifles, hand-to-hand combat, the use of knives, every type of,

you know, every type of combat you can imagine. He's very well trained in that. And so you have all of these elements, I think, you know, when taken separately, they may not mean much. You've got borderline personality disorder. You have potentially some suggestion of a history of domestic violence in the relationship, in the marriage. You have a divorce. You have his ex-wife telling us that his mental health is declining. He's going to get rid of his dog because of his financial condition.

You have, so he's getting less visitation of his girls. You have potentially PTSD from his combat experiences. So I think all of these elements are starting, unfortunately and tragically, all of these elements are starting to coalesce. They're starting to come together. And I think eventually they end in this very tragic situation. So psychologists call. when a perpetrator murders children in a family, that's called filicide.

Now, Whitney herself has speculated that she doesn't believe Travis is still alive. So when you have a situation like that, however, the contradictory evidence to that is that hikers apparently have identified him or someone who looks like him. So it's not clear whether he is or isn't alive. But if he does, if he's not alive, let's say that he does harm himself, and obviously he's harmed his girls, then this starts crossing over into something we called familicide. So the difference between philocyte, I know this is going to get, this is going to get slightly confusing because the terms are similar,

but the difference between philicide and familicide is that in familicide, So in famililicide, typically what happens is that the famililicide usually we think of famililicide. We, I think identify that with what we called family annihilation, which is in famililicide, typically the perpetrator, which by the way, perpetrators in famililocyte are almost all men. In famililicide perpetrators that are almost all men, they not only do they harm the children, but they typically harm the partner or the spouse. And then often they harm themselves. So that's why it's called family annihilation because everyone is harmed. Everyone is hurt. Nobody in the family is left alive.

So. Yeah. And many wondered at the beginning if that's what this was. Yeah. One of my professors used to call it the elimination of the, wait, the total elimination of the family all, meaning, right, that nobody's left alive. So if Travis did harm himself, now we're starting to cross over into something that's more similar to familalicide. So the reason I mention this is because we're going to have a, we're about to have a discussion about

Billocide and Thelilocyte and some of the differences. And I think it's important to make those distinctions because they are different. However, in this case, so Billiscied. which is the murder of children, the primary type of philicide is what we call pathological philicide. And pathological philocyte is mainly committed by biological mothers. Pathological philicide is, it typically involves severe psychopathology. So that would be depression, maybe psychosis. Pathological philocyte is what we use, when we think of Philicide, when we hear about a mother murdering her kids because she's psychotic,

or we typically attribute that to, often that's attributed to postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis more commonly. So you and I have covered those cases where there's postpartum depression, which becomes more severe and it becomes postpartum psychosis. And there's some elements of, you know, some divorce from reality. Andrea Yates. Andrew Yates. Andrew Yates would be a good example, right. Andrea Yates.

The Boston woman that we talked about. Lindsay Clancy. Lindsay Clancy, right. These are women that had just given birth. They start off with some postpartum depression. it becomes worse, it becomes postpartum psychosis. They become separated from reality to some degree. There's some paranoia typically.

There's many of the elements that you expect from psychosis. And for whatever reasons, they develop this hostility or paranoia towards some of their children, and the result is fatal and horrendous. And so, again, like pathological. phylogical philicide is the most common type of philocyte. But there's another type of philocyte called retaliating philocyte. And that's less common, much less common, but it's usually committed by men. And retaliating filicide almost always involves the, it's exactly like it sounds.

The idea is that there is some type of revenge for perceived betrayal or abandonment. And in retaliating familicide, typically the underlying emotions driving that tend to be shame and rejection. It's also committed, as I said, it's committed almost exclusively by men, often in their 30s and 40s. Travis Decker was in his early 30s. So he fits that type of presentation. What about Chad Dorman? Chad Dorman is same idea. Chad Dorman, right, exactly.

We've talked about Chad Dorman. Chad Dorman is very similar that the children become pawns in this fatal game of revenge to punish the partner for betrayal or for abandonment. Before I switched to Wellfront, my APY was probably 0.1. Once I switched to Ching, with a Wellfront cash account, earn up to 4.2% APY on your cash. I can trust. Wellfront is taking care of me. Make your money earn more. Get started at Wealthfront.com.

Clients were paid $1,000 for their testimonials, creating a conflict of interest. Howcomes vary. 3.3% base API as of January 30th, 2026, is representative variable and earned on funds swept to program banks. 0.65% new client boost for three months on up to $150,000. Direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an investing account for a 0.25% increase. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA, SIPC, not a bank. And this idea of abandon, by the way, is if indeed, and I can't confirm this, but Whitney tells us, supposedly, that Travis says borderline personality disorder.

If that's accurate, then this idea of abandon becomes even more important because borderline personality disorder, one of the greatest fears of that particular personality disorder is the sphere of abandonment. So let's talk a little bit. Well, why don't I, let me just finish talking a little about. So the type of famililicide this would be would be this idea of retaliating philocyte. And retaliating philocyte overlaps a great deal with familicide. Because the most common element, and again, famililicide is almost always male, just like retaliating philocyte. The most common element of familalicide is revenge, just like retaliating philocyte. So they're actually quite similar. The only difference is that with the famililicide, you're getting, you're harming a spouse.

and you might be harming, the perpetrator might be harming himself as well. And so we don't, we don't, this, this is still an ongoing story, right? We don't, we don't know the outcome here. We don't know if he's harmed himself. Whitney has speculated that he might, she, she seems to think that he might be deceased. And so that would, that would start kind of, in terms of how we define this, that might shift this, this narrative, a little bit towards famililicide, which, and familalicide, just like in retaliating philocyte,

which is less, much less common, and familalicide, it's almost always about betrayal and revenge and abandonment. Although whether or not Whitney is correct, let's say there was self-harm that happened already, that didn't happen right away. Right. If law enforcement are accurate and they hikers saw Travis Decker on a trailhead and they haven't been able to find his body, this wasn't about doing this at the scene, which I'm going to be honest, makes me think that retaliation was one reason. Like he wanted to see the aftermath. Did he not?

I mean, let's say even if he had plans to self-harm, he's not doing it right away. You know, that to me that shows he wants to see the horrendous aftermath. of his actions. Right. That certainly suggests more premeditation. And yes, that if if the goal of retaliating philocyte

is revenge and to create suffering and pain in the surviving spouse, you're correct. Then he, that's exactly what he wants to see. He wants to see her pain. And this actually brings us into another type of phenocide. So

again, like, you know, we use these terms to help us define things, but this is, I think, this is an interesting case where the terms are going to be a little bit vague, right? This is going to be a situation where there's going to be a lot of overlap between philocyte and femilocyte. And there's a type of familicide called anomicide. And anamicide in particular, it's driven by economic and social stressors. such as unemployment, homelessness, financial issues that lead to this instability and this inability to support the family.

And so a lot of times with an homicide, the main issue is control, that these perpetrators in an homicide, which again is a type of familicide, they have this idealized picture-perfect image of the family. And then that image starts to unravel. And they start feeling like they're losing control. They're losing control of their family. They're losing control of this idealized version of their family that they try to maintain at all costs. And they also have this idea that protecting and providing for their family as the man, as the head of the household, is really important to them.

And so here you can see how this might be important to Travis Decker in the sense. that he's a proud father of three beautiful girls. He's got this job in the army that's been stable and he's been successful at it. He's been, he received a number of promotions in the army. He's able to provide for his family. He's a beautiful wife. Right. He's got a beautiful, supportive wife.

And then all of a sudden, around 2021, 2022 is when he gets divorced, all of this starts to fall apart. And he's struggling to provide for the family. He can't keep his job. He's losing control. He's experiencing a lot of shame. And so this idea of kind of the idealized family starts to deteriorate for him. He can't control it, but he desperately wants to.

And it seems like the more he tries to do that, the worse it gets. He's not working. He's going downhill. his mental health apparently is going downhill. He's living out of the armory, which is the National Guard armory outside of Seattle. He purchases an RV, but then he's not able to pay for it. Whitney talks about this in the court documents.

She talks about him getting rid of the dog. She says, quote, Travis discussed getting rid of his dog due to housing and financial concerns, including garnished wages over unpaid child support. I thought that would think about that for a minute. That part of the issue here is that he's not able to pay child support. Right? He he must feel if you if this idea of a nomicide which is this economic distress and this inability to provide for the family is is in huge is I think in

hugely in play here in the sense that this gets to the point where he can't even pay child support. right? And not only can he not pay it, not only does he feel shame over that, but I think he's angry. He's angry over the fact that a lot of his predicament, his inability to find stable employment and housing, I think he's blaming that on Whitney in the sense that she's making these demands for child support, right? She's making these financial demands on him that he can't meet. So I think that's part of his anger. It's not, it's not, it's not, just the divorce, right? That's the biggest part of this, that in 2022, he doesn't want that divorce. She's the one who files. She's the one who initiates it and falls through with it.

Because the divorce is now the beginning of the end of that perfect image of the family, right? But the other problem is that he's on the hook for child support. And he feels this immense pressure to perform him, and he's not. He's not doing well. And so I think that's part of anger here is that he just wants her to, you know, we saw this in 2024 when she went back to court. He refused to sign anything. He was super oppositional. Part of this is I think he just wants her to leave him alone. Like she did all this damage with the divorce and now she's back in court. She's making more demands. She's telling him you can't see your girls as much. He's going to lose his dog. You've got all these stressors. And this is how he's seen it. Not that

isn't okay what Whitney's doing, from his perspective and his mental health, these are stressors for him. These are elements, right, I'm trying to, right, I'm presenting his subjective view of the world and how he sees it and how this is all impacting him. Right, because he's not thinking of anyone by himself right now. Right. Right. There are, let me, let me, as long as we're talking about this revised parenting agreement, I want to read a couple of incidents that that Whitney cites that she believes are problematic in terms of Travis, you know, getting visitations or getting any type of prolonged visitation with the girls. She cites an incident from August 30th of 2023.

She tells the courts, quote, Travis, quote, didn't want the girls this weekend, even though it was his weekend. Said the girls walk on eggshells because of the, of how he reprimands the dogs. I think that's interesting, right, in the sense that he's very angry. I mean, at the very least, he's angry at these dogs. He's displacing all this anger on the dogs that he's probably feeling towards the girls and his ex-wife.

Wow. And treating the dogs poorly. Yeah. So I think this is a huge red flag. And actually, you have to wonder, I wonder if he's able to contain this just to the dogs. I wonder, and this is by the way is where the dogs is plural. So I don't know if they meant dog or dogs, but the point is that he's barely, he's not able to contain this anger to the extent that he can't avoid getting angry at the dogs, right? And so he's getting so angry at the dogs that the girls, it's affecting them.

They don't want to be around him. They're noticing this anger. It's starting to overwhelm him. It's overtaking him, right? And you have to wonder if, I mean, we know, presumably, that the court is telling us that he has, he has some history of domestic violence or they probably wouldn't get a domestic violence evaluation. I mean, I don't know for sure. We have no record of that.

If there is, it wasn't reported to the police that we know of. I mean, there might be that we don't, we haven't found those records yet. But Whitney is certainly suggesting or telling the court that she's concerned about his anger, maybe some past episodes of violence. I don't know. I don't know the details. He certainly hasn't been charged, but for anything that we're aware of at this point. And presumably Whitney hasn't reported any domestic violence,

but she certainly seems to be suggesting it to the courts. And so you have this. I agree. you have this court order to get a domestic violence assessment. I think we can infer what that means. And then you have these girls

noting that he can't control his anger with the dogs. Right? So is he hitting the dogs? I mean, how bad is this? Right? We don't know. But it's an interesting it's an interesting comment to the courts. And then there's this other episode that I think is really important and worth citing here

towards the end of December, December 19, 2023, Rittany's also writing to the court here expressing concerns. She says, Olivia facetimed her screaming and crying. Travis was nowhere in sight. Peyton had to go find him, and he was with the dogs. And Olivia was playing on the pull-down machine where she smashed her fingers. So his daughter Olivia, so is her daughter, Olivia,

So his girls are unattended in this armory and Olivia smashes her fingers on this exercise machine. Olivia and Peyton were crying uncontrollably. Here's the most important. Here's the most interesting part of this story. He, quote, he wasn't comforting her. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about run club era.

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So you have this incident where Olivia smashes her fingers. The girls are both crying uncontrollably because their fathers nowhere to be found. their left unattended in the armory. And when they do find their father, he doesn't seem to care in the least. He's not comforting them. He's not trying to resolve the problem. He's not, right?

He's not being compassionate or empathic. He's just like, so be it. Like, you guys figure it out, right? Well, and also being found with the dogs. Does that mean, again, he was taking some anger out on the dogs? Right. What was he doing with the dogs? Was he angry at the girls?

And then, you know, was he disenfranchised? placing that anger with the dogs. I mean, it seems reasonable. So these are all, these are a warning signs. These are all red flags. And as I said at the beginning of our show here, Whitney knows this. Whitney intuits this. She knows there's something here. I mean, I don't, I, I understand how a spouse is not going to want to believe that their ex is going to engage in famililicide or fillicide. whatever the case is here, I understand how most human beings aren't going to want to

imagine that possibility. It's unimaginable to any spouse that no matter whatever your problems are with your ex, you're not going to envision that they're, or picture that they're going to kill your children. Right? And so, but there are these red flags and they're adding up.

Well, it was also, it was also unimaginable to Washington State. It was also unimaginable to Washington State. who failed to put an amber alert out the moment they went missing despite leaving, you know, where they weren't supposed to go breaking the custodial agreement and fleeing, that should be enough. That is enough. That meets everything meets the criteria for an Amber Alert in Washington State clearly couldn't fathom it either because they decided he wasn't a threat. I will forever be angry about that, you know. So it's not just, it's not just her. It's, it's us,

It's human beings. We just don't think it's possible. We don't, human, we do not do, human beings do not do well in terms of predicting or envisioning a possible future. We really struggle with imagining the unimaginable. An example would be nuclear holocaust. What are you saying? I'm just saying that, I'm saying that you don't envision. the unimaginable. You don't envision that your ex, no matter how bad he or she is doing,

that they're going to harm your kids. The extreme of that would be nuclear holocaust. It's not something that human beings can envision because it's so horrendous, right? This is a much lesser version of that. Eliminating the entire human race obviously is a different issue. But here, it's a version of that, is my point, that the humans have this fundamental denial about the unimaginable. And then unfortunately, the unimaginable occurs again and again and again. And again and again.

And again, right. History repeats itself over and over and over. So I've discussed these various versions of filicide and familalicide. Let's talk a little bit about borderline personality disorder because that's a really important part of this equation as well. And again, I'm going to qualify this and say, I'm not the one making this diagnosis. This is being presented to us publicly by Whitney Decker,

who somehow knows this through medical records or through Travis. I don't know how she knows it. She could have this wrong. We might learn that maybe he doesn't have this. I don't know. But right now, based on our current information, he seems to have a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Now Whitney says,

Whitney, there is some confusion here with Whitney because she says he's not taking any medication for it, which you wouldn't typically take medication for a personality disorder in the same way you would for say schizophrenia. There's no such thing as an antipsychotic for a personality disorder. Personality disorders are much deeper and more ingrained and more habitual than typical mental health disorders like depression. So that's why we take antidepressants if we're depressed. because they work on our neural transmitter pathways

and they help rectify certain deficits in neural transmitters and chemical imbalances in the brain that would not be true of borderline personality. Personality disorders do not respond to medication. So it's not clear if Whitney knows what this is. It seems like she believes he was diagnosed with this, but no, he wouldn't take medication for this. I think she could have simply been asked to.

Okay. I think that could have been something. Do you, can you tell me some of something, you know, borderline personality disorder, someone else doesn't know what it is? Does he take medication for it? No, he doesn't. They ask and they're thinking, you know. Right, right.

You know, however, I will say this, that there are certain personality disorders that that will be given, that will be prescribed medications that can help. with some things, you know, certain type of sedative medications might help calm someone with certain, right? So it's not unreasonable that there certainly are people who prescribe medication for personality disorders. It does happen. But in terms of, you know, if antidepressants help resolve depression to some degree, that would not be true of borderline personality disorder or any personality disorder. Because medication will not solve that issue. Personality disorders begin when we're children and their

patterns and habitual ways of interacting with the world that become more permanent over time, and they begin to define who we are and are habitual ways of interacting with the world. And so personality disorders are different than mental health disorders. And I mean, a mind, going to get into PTSD, but in the background of all of this, you might have post-traumatic stress disorder as well. But I'm not going to get into that as much because I have no, there's been minimal talk. There's been some talk of that on the fringes by people who knew him, but we have not confirmed that. So, but let's talk about borderline personality disorder. So the main characteristic of borderline personality disorder is instability. Instability.

instability, typically, of mood, of a sense of self, it usually includes major shifts in mood, it includes an unstable self-image, and often it involves impulsivity. Those elements will often lead to relational problems. So borderline personality disorder people tend to have difficult relationship histories, histories of divorces, frequent breakups, histories of this inability to maintain long-term relationships because of these qualities. Another element of borderline personality that is quite common is anger. Oftentimes, borderline personality folks are prone to bouts of anger, and those bouts of anger can lead to violence and aggression.

And that's why this is relevant to our discussion today. People with borderline personality disorder often also, there's some research showing this isn't in the DSM, which is our diagnostic manual, but there's some research showing that people with borderline personality disorder are often plagued by a deep-seated sense of emptiness and loneliness. And that's important because that sense of emptiness is a hole that often can't be filled. There's this underlying sense of distress. There's this

underlying sense of emptiness that they try to fill, but they can't no matter what. Now, you can argue that most human beings have this. Maybe this is very existential. But with borderline personality disorder, think of a typical person having kind of the sense of emptiness and loneliness. Let's amplify that by 100 for borderline personality disorder. They can't. can't fill this hole. You have a dog, you have a beautiful family, you have a position in the army where you end up getting promoted a number of times to positions of authority, but you can't, you still feel like something's missing. You still feel empty. And unfortunately, when that's the case, you know, it can lead to anger. I'm going to read from an article,

research article here. It's from I don't know, you probably can't see that. It's from a journal called Psychiatry Research. This was published in 2020. Tobias Cockler is the main researcher on this article. The title is specific or transdiagnostic, question mark. The occurrence of emotions and their association with distress in the daily life of patients with borderline personality disorder

compared to clinical and healthy controls. By the way, that's one of the longest research titles I've seen in a long time. But I'm just going to cite some of their findings from this study. Quote, borderline personality disorder is associated with proneness to anger, among other altered affective experiences,

borderline personality disorder patients are angrier than patients with other personality disorders in the context of social interactions. Quote, emotional dysregulation may constitute an underlying factor that gives rise to anger, a specifically frequent and impairing occurrence of anger that could be the visible result of emotional dysregulation and borderline personality disorder. So what are they saying that their findings are essentially that what drives anger and borderline personality disorder patients or borderline personality disorder people in general is emotional dysregulation, this inability to regulate emotions, including anger.

And moreover, their finding is when compared to normal samples of non-clinical patients, that subjects with borderline personality disorder displayed significantly more. anger than other personality disorders. They had more difficulty controlling that anger, and because of that, they experienced significantly more distress. So what's interesting about this study is it's saying essentially that people with borderline personality disorder not only have anger, they have more anger than just about any other category of personality disorder.

And I think they even, they have more anger than patients with other, they say it here, other study groups with PTSD. So they do talk about how, by the way, how that anger could be a precursor to potential violence. But let's move on to another study here. The title of this study is called Borderline Personality Disorder and Violence. It's from the Journal of Australasian Psychiatry, 2019, Volume 27, page 57. quote, the commonest violence by borderline personality disorder patients is the assault of an intimate partner in the context of real or perceived threats of termination of their relationship.

Occasionally, such intimate partner violence can end in homicides. There you go. Let me, it gets even more, it gets worse. quote, finally, quote, finally, a rare form of homicidal behavior that leads to familicide, death of partner and children with often self-harming of the perpetrator has been linked to the presence of borderline personality disorder features. So, although borderline personality disorder and familalicide are rare, it occurs. There's some research supporting it. As this study suggests, it's closely aligned with intimate partner violence specifically. And even more, right, I'm going to read this again.

It's linked not only to intimate partner violence, but, quote, in the context of real or perceived threats of termination of the relationship, that's the critical issue. Because this divorce upended Travis Decker's world. It was the abandonment and the rejection and the assault on this picture of the ideal family, this picture of the perfect family that he was trying to maintain, I think that really sets this narrative in motion towards where we end up. So borderline personality disorder, divorce, the revised parenting plan, I think, was a real insult, a real injury to Travis Decker.

because not only does he have to endure this divorce, not only is he struggling with child support, but now she's going back to court. And she's saying, you're getting worse. She's embarrassing him, right? She's humiliated him. She's saying to the court, you can't pay your bills, you're getting worse, your mental health is declining.

We've got this history of domestic violence that you need to be assessed for and you need to go to treatment for. You're not paying your child support. And by the way, the very thing that that makes you happy and the very, the only positive in your life, which is your dog and your girls, you're going to lose those. So I'm going to court also to make sure that you spend less time with your girls. And again, and again, I just want to say again, how he's perceiving it. She did the right thing to do that, which you should do that.

You can't have little girls staying alone in an armory, you know, with, others there with them and strangers. So yeah, it's how he is perceiving it, thinking of only of himself. Yeah, no, I'm just trying to explain, right. This is, I'm trying to explain how, you asked why did this happen. I'm trying to explain from his viewpoint,

from his worldview, what are the elements that happened to him that came together that brought him to that point? So here's another quote. this is from the court. This is from the 2024 court docs when she took him back to revise the

custody agreement. She said, quote, his children and his dog are the two big positives in his life. Right. And so... Now they're both gone.

They're both gone. Right. And the fact that he didn't take his dog is... I think, by the way, the fact that he didn't take his dog would be potentially indicative of or contribute to Whitney's belief that perhaps he has harmed himself. Because why wouldn't he take his dog? He didn't take his dog. He didn't take his wallet. He didn't

take his truck. He didn't take anything. He basically just went full survival mode into the wilderness of the Cascades. And maybe that's part of it. Maybe he knows he can't survive. Maybe he knows that that that he could he could die in the woods right without any food without any water without any provisions without right he doesn't have the ability to make fire or maybe he does he probably does he probably has that survivor skill but sootopia two has come home to disney plus let's go get ready for a new case we're going to crack this case and prove for a decoranist partners of all time new friends you are gay destiny And your last name?

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But the point is that the things that he valued the most, he's losing. of that to him is humiliating. All of that to him is failure as a father, as a spouse, right, that he sees that. Again, I think, you know, with famililocyte, oftentimes you have this this stereotypical view of masculinity and being a father and a provider and, you know, providing for your family, and he sees himself as failing on all those fronts. Another interesting part of that, by the way, so another interesting part of a nomicide, which is this, you know, kind of shattering of this ideal picture of being a parent or father, is there's another type of finelicide called altruistic feralicide, which might have some

overlap here, and that is altruistic finilicide occurs when, the male typically, the father, believes that by eliminating the entire family, they're going to be better off because of it. Because he can't provide for them and because he's not caring for them or because his circumstances have changed so dramatically for the worse

that he believes oftentimes that by eliminating the entire group, by eliminating the entire family, that somehow they'll benefit from that and they'll be better off because he can't lead them anymore. And, you know, there do seem to be some elements of that here. That I think there's a part of them that really has the sense of entitlement. That in some ways that he kind of owns this family and he owns these girls and therefore

he's entitled to do whatever he wants. And that if he's not, if he's doing poorly, then they're doing poorly. Right. It's so narcissistic to think that way. But there is a photo that's popular of Travis Decker that police are using and we've used and have shown it. We showed it at the beginning of this video where he's wearing a WWJD bracelet. What would Jesus do?

Which also tells me he's religious. I noted it because it's despicable. You know, so for the little children to come onto me is what Jesus Christ would do. But nonetheless, he's clearly wearing it to show that he's Christian and trying to follow Christ. Right. So maybe there's some altruism there, but it may be. It's hard for me to believe, though. Like I said, I feel like this is just retaliation. But go on with your research. I have so many questions, by the way, for many of you. So we'll let John keep going. And I definitely have questions. No, I'm, I'm not saying this as an altruistic philocyte. I'm just saying that there is some, you have a femilicides where you eliminate the entire family because as the perpetrator, it's your perception. It's a self. It's a person. It's a self. skewed perception, it's a false perception, but you have the perception that somehow your family

cannot survive without you. And because you want to end your life, you then believe that taking the family with you will somehow be the right decision. So yeah, that's that's my point. So there there might be some slight overlap with that idea of altruistic phenocide. The other interesting thing. You've asked me this question many times since this happened about the manner of death with these girls. And I think that's a fascinating part of this story. I'd say fascinating from an intellectual standpoint, from an emotional standpoint, it's absolutely horrific. Yeah. I have been wondering, John, the manner. Honestly, when I first heard this story, it was so heartbreaking. It was actually really difficult for me to process. I was at a yet another Lori Valo-Davelle trial

where there are children who lost their lives. I couldn't deal with this case. And yet I, there was a part of me that said, I hope that this was fast and that he, you know, I was thinking about ways and I was hoping it was, I just didn't want to imagine the worst. And then when I learned what he had done with alleged zip ties and bags and suffocation. I know. I was, it was beyond me. I had to take a break, but I have been wondering why,

if, why would he do such a thing? Why would he do that? And he owns guns and he's an army vat and why did he choose this way to kill his girls. Yeah, it's from a forensic psychology perspective, I think

it's really interesting. And again, the research on this is not foolproof. It's not definitive. So I just want to say what I'm going to say here is some of this is my experience,

some of this is my intuition, some of it is the limited research on the way victims are harmed and what that means. There's a general belief in the criminal community that suffocation is considered to be kind of a more intimate manner of death that when you, when somebody suffocates, when you put a bag over someone's head, number one, you're in complete control.

right he's he's doing the zip ties and he's putting the bags over the head so he there's something very obviously controlling about that there's something very symbolic about how he's doing that he has complete control obviously i mean these are these are kids so it probably wouldn't take much for him to you know to gain control of any type of crime scene like this or you know at that time, any type of situation where crime is going to be committed. But suffocation tends to be, if you're struggling someone, you're in close proximity to them, and you're literally seeing them take their last breath. So there's a very intimate quality to that in the sense that not only you're controlling the oxygen that they consume,

which is essentially you're controlling life and death, but you're witnessing it firsthand. For a serial killer, for example, there's going to be maybe more personal satisfaction when you strangle someone, especially someone that, you know, you may or may not know, but if it's someone you know, you may get more, a serial killer may get more satisfaction out of that because they're the ones that are in control of life and death. They're the ones controlling that situation completely. you do control life and death with a gun, but it's not as intimate, right? It's much more violent, and you're desecrating bodies, your harming bodies,

you're, you're, there's something, here, let's put it this way, that with Decker's children, I have the sense that from his perspective, and again, I'm just saying from his perspective, I'm not saying what the reality of this is, but from his perspective, I think he sees this as a more respectful type of murder in the sense that he's not harming their bodies,

he's not desecrating their bodies, he's not creating a mess, he's allowing their mother to bury them or have services for them in a way that's more respectful, right? Like you have the option of open casket. so he's allowing more options in terms of mourning for these girls. Like this is peculiar. I think it shows me when you combine this idea of suffocation as being intimate and the fact that he doesn't want to desecrate these bodies, what that suggests to me is that the rage isn't directed towards the little girls.

The rage is directed towards the mother. If the rage was directed towards the little girls, a gunshot would have been a much more efficient and effective way of harming them. Because you have to picture. This is the part, this is the most haunting part of this entire situation to me. This is the part that I can't get over. This is the part that lingers in my brain day in and day out. And that is these three vibrant, innocent, beautiful girls with bags over their head,

and zip ties on their wrists, still alive, screaming. They're screaming for their father to help them. Because they can still scream. I mean, the irony, of course, is that the more they scream, the less oxygen they're going to have to survive. But they're screaming, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, don't, don't. Please, I can't even imagine this part. But in the twisted mind of Travis Decker, he sees that as being more compassionate than pulling out a gun and destroying the bodies, desecrating the bodies of these little girls, because he sees that as being more disrespectful.

He doesn't have rage towards these girls. He wants to harm them. He wants to kill them because he wants revenge against the mother. The rage is directed towards Whitney. that's why he suffocates them. And although suffocation is typically intimate, my guess is when he puts those bags over the girl's heads and he knows they're going to die

and they're screaming for help and they're screaming for their lives that he's walking away. So he doesn't have to hear it. He's already made that decision. But remember, this is the guy. I read you the court docs. This is the same guy.

who the girls are afraid of because he's getting so angry at the dogs. This is the same guy whose daughter Olivia smashes her fingers in a exercise equipment, in an exercise machine. She smashes her fingers. His girls are crying uncontrollably because Olivia is in pain. She's hurting. And what does he do? He doesn't, he avoids them.

He doesn't comfort them. He doesn't even say a single thing to them. trying to help them or comfort them. So you have to go back to that moment when these girls are crying and screaming for help and screaming, Daddy, Daddy, please, let me live. I go back to that moment when Olivia smashed her fingers and he's like, I don't care.

I am not going to comfort you. But having said that, I don't see this manner of death involving a huge amount of rage towards these girls. The rage is directed towards Whitney, and that's consistent with this idea of retaliating filicide. That this is a revenge murder, and it's,

because also, it's interesting, like, if he really, really wants to harm Whitney, he has every opportunity to murder her too, and he doesn't. When he picks up the girls,

he has every opportunity at that time to murder her, and he chooses not to. He knows exactly what. what he's going to do. And he knows why he's going to do it. He wants to harm her, but he's doing it because these girls are like hostages. These girls are like pawns to him. In this game of revenge, they're they're they're hostages. He's taking them hostage. He's treating them like hostages. He's putting zip ties on them. That's what you do with hostages. He's putting bags over their head. That's what you do with hostages. This is almost like,

he's dealt with hostages in Afghanistan in some capacity. And this is, he's replicating that. I mean, I don't know for sure that that's true, but it feels like that. Yeah. Okay. I understand more now. Is there anything else? I think those are my main, those are my main talking points for today.

I think I've covered most of what we know in terms of Travis Decker. Obviously, he's still on the run. He's still a huge danger to the community. You know, I would urge people to stay away from, you know, to lock their doors. Police are recommending that, but to secure their homes that live in that area. Yes. As we continue following this story, we will leave it here, but he is still on the run. And everyone should be on lookout.

And if he has done something. of harm. Nobody has found him. So we have to keep looking for him. Yeah. And if there has been self-harm, I think the community wants to know that too. Yeah. That this threat has been, that this threat has been neutralized. Yes. Yeah. Our hearts go out to Whitney. You know, I hope they do find him and and bring them to justice, because this is one of those unimaginable crimes that, you know, I remember when I saw finally the girls, when finally the endangered missing persons report

finally came down, and I thought, oh, no, I hope they're okay. And it was soon after, I think it was the next day that we learned their fate. So, yeah, we will keep following and we'll keep following this case in bringing any updates to you. Anything else you want to say, John? Yeah, just that, that, you know, there's so many levels at which this is tragic. You mentioned a couple. The way we notify the community when people go missing, right, that's important. Also, visitation guidelines. Like, should he have had visitation? And if so, maybe visitation should have been supervised.

Like somebody with this level of problems, at what point do you say, hey, I'm not going to let this guy be alone with these girls? He needs to have this supervised. I mean, that could have been a disaster too, of course. Well, let me bring up one last issue then, actually, that I want to talk to you about. One thing that I feel Whitney would do is she was having problems.

Clearly, she had to file for divorce. She had to get divorced from him. He was spiraling. She would always go back to, but he served his country. But, you know, oh, this is really hard, but he served his country. I see her inner dialogue. It's like I can understand it. She's this good Christian woman and a wonderful mother who sews her own daughter's dresses for all of their beautiful photo shoots.

And she's dealing with someone that she loved spiraling and knowing that he's not safe or as safe. But he served his country. And there's excuses after excuses that community people make, you know. But he's a good Christian. He's wearing his WWJD bracelet. He's trying. He's getting back on his feet. He loves his little girls.

He needs his little girls. He's served our country. And there's a bit of me that finds anger towards sort of this dialogue of avoiding all the red flags because of the butt. At my bank, I was literally getting pennies using Wellfront. Cheching. Meet Angela, a wealthfront cash account client since 2023. I lost my job, not having something else lined up yet. I was pregnant with my second. We had to think about how do we make our money work for us. Every month, there's this much that I'm getting an interest in I didn't have to do anything.

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Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member FINRA SIPC, not a bank. Instant withdrawal subject to conditions, fees, and eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features of the cash account. That's the third prong of this discussion. So the first two are when and how do we issue alerts to the community and how quickly, right? Like she knew pretty quickly that there was an issue. When Travis didn't deliver those kids back home by 8 p.m., he had never done that. She had concern. Never done it.

You had concerns, right? At what point do you issue an Amber Alert or a serious alert to people and say, find this guy. Something is wrong. And we know that the research on missing persons is very clear. When children go missing, if they're not found within the first three hours, typically they're deceased. If they're not found, 76% of children not found in the first three hours are deceased. 90% of children not found in the first 24 hours are deceased.

And after that, every hour after that, the numbers get worse and worse. You need to find children that are missing quickly. or they will be gone. So that Amber alerts are really important and we need to figure out a way to do that better. Secondly, visitation. Do we let a guy like Travis Decker visit his girls with all these issues alone?

Why wasn't part of that revised parenting plan? Why didn't that include some type of supervised visitation? I mean, that may not have mattered. You know, you think of somebody like, Josh Powell, his misperienced, and he, number one, he locked out the social worker. It's a good thing she wasn't murdered. She probably should have been. He probably intended to murder her, but the point is, like, that may not matter, but it does help.

It gives you another set of eyes and another person in the room who can call the authorities or call. If there's an emergency, they can hopefully, maybe not, but they can try to get help right away, right? And the third prong is, what do we do with wounded heroes? What do we do with wounded veterans? How does our system help them? Why do we, you know, why are we ignoring people like Travis Decker that need help? And maybe you'll say, well, he's refusing help. I mean, Whitney says he tried to get help and he was refused help.

I don't know the details. He's sleeping at the armory. They should be pretty, you know, pretty, you know, pretty, wear at him. But what do we do with the Travis Decker's, right? The wounded heroes that serve, that, you know, tours of duty in combat areas and, and they're coming home broken. And they don't know how to facilitate. They don't know how to continue to facilitate healthy relationships. And they struggle to build healthy families, right, because of their injuries and their psychological, right? Like, I don't know. I don't have an answer. The numbers of veterans,

and I've talked about this a little bit, people know this. I've worked, I did work for the VA for a few years. I know veterans well. I've worked with a lot of veterans with PTSD. There's no simple answer here. But the number of veterans that self-harm every day is astronomical. There's a lot of veterans out there that are broken and in pain. and they need help. And how do we address that above and beyond the VA? How do we help them? Right?

Like that's another part of this story. And is helping them giving them unsupervised visits, though? Because I feel like this is where that story went is, oh, we help him by giving him a love and allowing him to continue seeing his girls because he loves them. And just because they're a wounded veteran, I want to point out, doesn't mean that what we do to help them

is, you know, sacrifice our families. Like, they're, we need to. It goes, it goes way beyond that in terms of, right. You're not helping a veteran if you say, look, we know you're, we know you did this tremendous service for our country. So therefore, you can have unfettered access to your kids. The part of the story that's not being told is that somebody like Travis Decker may be broken, but he's also violent.

he's trained to kill. He's put in these combat zones essentially to subdue the enemy to kill people. And now he's asked to come home. I mean, I'm not the first person. You know, the movie The Hurt Locker gets into this in tremendous detail and with a lot of sensitivity. Like, it's a complex issue.

The issue isn't only that they're experiencing physical and psychological wounds and emotional traumas. It's more than that. It's also that you've got these veterans that in many ways what they know is violence. Travis Decker joined the army

when he was a teenager. That's his world. His world is, he's an infantryman. His world is combat. His world is violence. His world is, you know,

it's, it's more than just, it's more than just emotional wounds. Yeah. I will say there's one thing. I'm not, I'm not going to drop it, but you brought up Josh Powell. And Josh Powell was another Washington State case that happened in Washington State. And Washington State should have issued that Amber Alert. If they've improved things, a man alone with his children who has left the custodial area,

I you know Washington State I hope they start issuing more it's not just Washington State it's it's it should be a national dialogue yeah it was you should

but yeah decision was made all right thank you so much the irony is not lost on me that this is being recorded on Father's Day. Yeah. I know. It's heartbreaking. As I said, as a father, I just can't imagine, you know, how a father could do this. I mean, I've tried to explain how a father could. And I'm not, I'm not in those circumstances, thankfully, like, I'm not, I didn't undergo what everything that

Travis Decker underwent. So I don't know. I do think it, obviously, I think, that there were enough warning signs that this could have been prevented. Hopefully we can learn from it. But as a father, I have to say that, as I mentioned, there's so much about this case that haunts me. Thank you again. And we will continue searching for Travis Decker. At my bank, I was literally getting pennies using Welfronts.

Meet Angela, a wealthfront cash account client since 2023. I lost my job, not having something else lined up yet. I was pregnant with my second. We had to think about how do we make our money work for us. Every month there's this much that I'm getting an interest and I didn't have to do anything. My money is working hard on its own and I can trust Welfront is taking care of me. With a Welfront cash account, earn up to 4.2% APY on your cash. No account fees, no minimums and no strings attached.

Plus, free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts. Get started at Wealthfront.com. Client was paid $1,000 for their testimonial creating a conflict of interest. Outcomes vary. 3.3% base APIY as of January 30th, 2026 is representative variable and earned on funds swept to program banks. 0.65% new client boosts for three months on up to $150,000. Direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an investing account for a 0.25% increase. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member FINRA SIPC, not a bank.

Instant withdrawal subject to conditions, fees, and eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features of the cash account.