Divorce records have shown a mother steadily growing worried about her children’s father’s mental well-being before, according to police, he allegedly took their lives during a “planned visitation” last weekend.
As reported by CrimeOnline, authorities are searching for 32-year-old Travis Decker after the bodies of his daughters, Paityn, 9, Evelyn, 8, and Olivia Decker, 5, were discovered on Monday afternoon close to his abandoned vehicle.
The children went with Decker late on Friday afternoon and failed to come back, leaving their mother unable to contact them. The Washington State Patrol mentioned that the situation didn’t meet the Amber Alert criteria but they did release a missing endangered person notice.
According to the documents reviewed by KIRO, Travis and Whitney Decker’s divorce had begun amicably enough in November 2022, but less than two years later, she was seeking a change in their custody agreement and asking that the children’s father be evaluated for anger management/domestic violence.
The proposed changes to the custody arrangement said that Travis Decker “neglected his parental duties towards a child” and that he “has a long-term emotional or physical problem that gets in the way of his ability to parent.”
“Since our separation, it has become increasingly clear that Travis has been struggling to maintain stability in his life,” Whitney Decker wrote in a declaration filed in September 2024. That “lack of stability” had caused a “negative impact on our children,” leaving them with “heightened emotional stress.”
“This is demonstrated through screaming/crying bouts at drop off or when they get off a phone call,” she wrote.
She asked that overnight visits be stopped, particularly after learning that Decker, a veteran, had become homeless and was staying at a National Guard Armory with the girls sleeping on mattresses. Overnight visits could resume once his homelessness was resolved.
Whitney Decker details some “outbursts where he has burst into my home against my objections and yelled for the girls” and other incidents she said that left the girls walking “on eggshells.”
“Travis just keeps getting more and more unstable,” she wrote. “He has made huge sacrifices to serve our country and loves his girls very much but he has got to get better for our girls. I do not want to keep Travis from the girls at all.”
Decker fought the changes to the custody arrangement, but the judge ordered changes anyway. He kept the every other weekend custody of the original agreement, but overnights were removed. Instead, he was to have custody from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. He was also ordered to have the anger management/domestic violence evaluation as well as a complete psychiatric evaluation.
Decker was initially charged with custodial interference when he failed to bring the girls home, and paperwork for those charges say that he refused o sign the custody modification form last year and did not seek any of the counseling ordered by the court.
Warrants for his arrest now charge him with three counts of murder. Investigators have not said how the children died.
