Travis Decker's Neighbor Reveals 'Weird' Encounter Before His 3 Daughters Died

By all accounts, Travis Decker was an enthusiastic “girl dad” to his trio of daughters, Paityn, 9, Evelyn, 8, and Olivia, 5, whom he shared with his ex-wife Whitney. 

The family’s longtime next-door neighbor Binh Nguyen recalls Travis taking the girls on camping trips in the Cascade Mountains near their home in Wenatchee, Wash. And when the Deckers’ marriage crumbled in 2022, Travis, 32, moved out of the house but still regularly stopped by with his dog to pick up the girls for visits.

“They loved him a lot, and he loved them too,” Nguyen tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.

Yet when Travis — a formerly clean-cut U.S. Army veteran who went on to work in construction — arrived for a pickup on Friday, May 30, Nguyen, who was watering his lawn at the time, was struck by how different his former neighbor looked. 

“He was skinny. He had long hair and a beard. I said, ‘Is that you, Travis?’ ” Nguyen recalls. As the two men chatted for 10 minutes, Travis, while polite, seemed distracted, absentmindedly asking how he’d been three times.

“It was kind of weird,” says Nguyen. “He had a sad face.” According to the Deckers’ court-approved parenting plan, Travis was to have a three-hour visitation with his daughters that evening, beginning at 5 p.m. But when the scheduled drop-off time of 8 p.m. came and went, Whitney’s initial concern turned into fear for her daughters’ safety. 

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Her calls to Travis went straight to voicemail even though her ex-husband had always been reachable, as she would later tell investigators. 

At 9:34 p.m. Whitney, 35, went to the Wenatchee Police Department to report Paityn, Evelyn and Olivia missing, setting off a frantic search for the girls, as well as their father, led by local police.

Three days later, on June 2, investigators with the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office found the girls’ bodies — with plastic bags over their heads and at least one with zip ties around her wrists — near Travis’s abandoned pickup truck at the remote Rock Island Campground. A medical examiner determined they had died of asphyxiation.

Now Travis — a combat veteran trained in survival skills who federal authorities claim searched online for “how to relocate to Canada” days before he disappeared — is the subject of a massive ongoing manhunt, wanted on suspicion of first-degree murder and kidnapping.

Born into a family that valued military service, Travis, whose father and brother were also soldiers, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2013. When he met Whitney the following year, he had recently completed an Army Rangers deployment in Afghanistan.

The couple fell in love and married in 2015; they were stationed in Italy for three years and then in Georgia for three years before settling with their girls in Washington state, where both have family. Almost from the beginning of the marriage, Travis’ mental health was a challenge, according to Whitney’s attorney, Arianna Cozart.

“He seemed to suffer from PTSD as a result of combat,” she says. “Whitney struggled to help Travis through severe paranoia, nightmares and insomnia.”

Family life became more difficult for Travis after he left the Army and joined the Washington National Guard in 2021, Cozart says: “His issues seemed to spiral once he was out of what Whitney calls the bumpers of the military that kept him in line. He tried to get help — he went to the VA, he called the Veterans Crisis Line.” But nothing seemed to change, Cozart adds. 

Two years after the Deckers legally separated, Whitney went to court to rewrite the couple’s custody agreement. Travis, who by then was living in his RV and spending nights at shelters, would no longer have overnight stays with the girls. Instead, Paityn, Evelyn and Olivia spent days with their father every other weekend, and they seemed to enjoy it. 

Meanwhile, Travis was reportedly having trouble at work and was even considering rehoming his beloved husky. But until their daughters were found on June 2, Whitney never suspected him of causing harm.

“This man never laid a hand on those girls,” says Cozart. 

As the hunt for the fugitive entered its fourth week, Whitney — who says she regrets that authorities never issued an Amber Alert about her missing daughters — will advocate to improve the alert system and provide more mental health services for veterans. But first, as Cozart says, she must “say goodbye to her babies.” 

At a memorial service in a Wenatchee park on June 20 — where mourners were asked to wear purple, pink and green — Whitney told the crowd that Evelyn would have “oohed and aahed” over their colorful outfits, and Paityn would have sought out something to compliment about each attendee. 

“I’m so thankful for the time that I had with the girls,” she said. “They were incredible.”

If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.