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Sept. 25, 2025, 7:43 PM EDT / Updated Sept. 25, 2025, 8:18 PM EDTBy Tim Stelloh and Joe KottkeAuthorities confirmed that remains found in a remote part of Washington state were those of Travis Decker, the U.S. Army veteran accused in the horrific murder of his three young daughters and the subject of a monthslong manhunt. Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison said Thursday that officials received DNA results from Washington State Patrol’s crime lab confirming the identity of the remains. Clothing recovered from the scene also belonged to Decker, he said.Travis Caleb Decker.U.S. Marshals ServiceMorrison apologized to the girls’ mother, Whitney Decker, for how long it took to track down Decker.”But I hope that you can rest easier at night knowing that Travis is accounted for,” Morrison said. “He is deceased. Our DNA results confirm that, and this will bring a close to our case.”He said officials are still awaiting a possible cause and time of death from the coroner.A psychologist pointed authorities to a 7,500-foot mountain east of Leavenworth, Washington, Morrison said, “and her insights and guidance led us to an important area to search where we did eventually locate Mr. Decker. Again, we couldn’t have done this by ourselves.”The announcement came after the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office said last week that the remains were found in a wooded area south of Leavenworth, nearly 120 miles east of Seattle. That area wasn’t far from the remote campsite where the bodies of Decker’s daughters — Evelyn, 8; Paityn, 9; and Olivia Decker, 5 — were found with bags over their heads on June 2.The girls had been zip-tied, according to an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant, and Decker’s abandoned pickup was found near the campsite with two bloody handprints on the tailgate.The county medical examiner said the girls died by suffocation. Decker, 32, was accused of murder and kidnapping in their deaths. He was also wanted on one federal charge — unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.Authorities have not identified a potential motive. In the affidavit, a detective noted that Decker — who was divorced from his daughters’ mother — refused to sign a parenting plan that required him to seek mental health treatment and domestic violence anger management.The girls had been with Decker for a May 30 visitation when he failed to return them, setting off an intensive search that covered hundreds of square miles across a rugged swath of the state. There were dozens and dozens of potential sightings in the weeks that followed, authorities said, including one that led investigators as far away as Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest. That sighting turned out to be false.Decker, who was described by authorities as an outdoorsman who would go “off-grid” for months, appears to have been seen only once, in an area south of Leavenworth, when tracking teams spotted an off-trail hiker who ran from their helicopter.Tim StellohTim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.Joe KottkeJoe Kottke is an assignment editor at NBC News covering domestic news, including politics, crime, natural disasters, immigration and LGBTQ issues.

- Latest News - September 26, 2025

Authorities confirmed that remains found in a remote part of Washington state were those of Travis Decker.

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Sept. 25, 2025, 5:12 PM EDTBy Evan BushWhen the Mendocino earthquake ruptured off the California coast in 2024, it shook houses off their foundations, sent a 3-inch tsunami racing toward shore and touched off a fascinating science experiment — in the server room of a local police station, of all places. More than two years before the quake, scientists installed a device called a “distributed acoustic sensing interrogator” at the Arcata Police Station near the coast. The device fires a laser through the fiber optic cables that provide the station with internet service and senses how some of that laser light quivers or bends as it returns to its source.Now, in a study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers announced that they were able to use the data from the fiber optic cable to “image” the Mendocino earthquake — determining the magnitude, location and length of the rupture.The study shows how scientists can essentially turn fiber optic cables into seismometers that return detailed data about earthquakes at the speed of light. Outside scientists said this fast-developing technology could drastically improve earthquake early-warning systems, giving people more time to seek safety, and could be key to predicting catastrophic earthquakes in the future, if that’s possible.“This is the first study that’s imaging an earthquake rupture process from an earthquake that’s this large,” said James Atterholt, a research geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey, and the first author of the new study. “This shows that there’s potential to improve earthquake early warning alerts with telecom fibers.”The study suggests that researchers could piggyback their equipment to already vast networks of telecommunications cables — which are used by Google, Amazon and AT&T, for example — to gather data where seismometers are sparse. Seafloor seismic monitoring is particularly expensive, and this could offer a more affordable option. Emily Brodsky, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the research, said “earthquake early warning could be dramatically improved tomorrow” if scientists are able to broker widespread access to existing telecommunication networks.“There’s not a technical hurdle there. That’s what the Atterholt study demonstrates,” Brodsky said in an interview. And in the more distant future, the use of this technology with fiber optic cables could help researchers determine whether some of the most catastrophic earthquakes could be predicted in advance. Scientists have noticed intriguing patterns on underwater subduction zones in recent years before some of the biggest earthquakes, like the 2014 magnitude-8.1 earthquake in Chile and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which touched off the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Both of these massive earthquakes were preceded by what are called “slow-slip” events, which release their energy slowly over weeks or months, but don’t cause perceptible shaking to humans. Scientists aren’t sure what to make of the pattern because there are only a few examples of it, and earthquakes of magnitude-8.0 and above are rare and sparsely documented with in-depth monitoring. If scientists were able to monitor seismic activity on telecommunications networks, they’d have a better chance of documenting these events closely and determining whether there’s clear evidence of a pattern that could predict future catastrophe. “What we want to know is whether faults slip slowly before they slip quickly” and produce a big quake, Brodsky said. “We keep seeing these hints from far away. And what we really need is instruments up close and personal on the fault.” Brodsky said it’s not clear whether these large subduction zone earthquakes are predictable, but the subject is the source of lots of scientific debate, which this new fiber optic technology could help settle. Researchers have been pursuing seismic monitoring through fiber optic cables for about a decade. Brodsky said this research demonstrates that the federal government, the scientific community and telecommunications providers ought to negotiate over access. “There are legitimate concerns. They’re worried about anybody sticking an instrument on an extremely valuable asset for them. They’re worried about damage to the cables or someone listening,” Brodsky said of the telecommunications companies. “However it’s pretty clear it’s also in the public safety interest to have that data, so that is a problem that needs to be solved at the regulatory level.” Atterholt said the fiber optic sensing technology would not supplant traditional seismometers, but would supplement what data already exists and would be less expensive than installing seismometers on the seafloor. Using the cables for seismic monitoring typically does not affect their core purpose of data transmission. Jiaxuan Li, an assistant professor of geophysics and seismology at the University of Houston, who was not involved in this research, said there are still technical hurdles to overcome to use distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology offshore. Right now, the technology can be used for distances up to about 90 miles. Li said similar technology is being used in Iceland to record how magma is moving in volcanoes. “We used DAS to perform early warnings for volcanic eruptions,” Li said. “It is operational now. The Iceland Meteorological Office is using this technology to issue an early warning.” The technology also helped reveal that the Mendocino quake was a rare “supershear” earthquake, when the fault’s fracture is happening faster than its seismic waves are traveling. It’s akin to a “fighter jet exceeding the speed of sound” and producing a sonic boom, Atterholt said. The new research unexpectedly revealed the pattern in Mendocino and could offer new clues to this phenomenon. “We haven’t really nailed down why some earthquakes go supershear and why some don’t,” Atterholt said. “It can alter how hazardous the earthquake is, though we don’t fully understand that relationship either.” Evan BushEvan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News.

- Latest News - September 25, 2025

Scientists were able to use the data from a fiber optic cable and a sensitive measuring device to “image” the Mendocino earthquake.

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Sept. 25, 2025, 6:12 PM EDTBy Kate Snow and Abigail BrooksNick Benz-Bushling never imagined that managing his son’s mental health care would turn into a real-life horror story.After years of struggles, 16-year-old Johnathan attempted suicide in February. Benz-Bushling 41, and his wife Misty Benz-Bushling, 39, of Stephensville, Michigan, rushed Johnathan to the emergency room, and then later took him to Forest View Hospital, an inpatient behavioral health facility in Grand Rapids that had room in its pediatric psychiatry unit. When a doctor there said Johnathan needed residential treatment, the Benz-Bushlings immediately found him a bed at Newport Academy in Washington.

- Latest News - September 25, 2025

Nick Benz-Bushling never imagined that managing his son’s mental health care would turn into a real-life horror story

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