Hearing set for request for declaration of death of missing Morenci brothers

Lina Portman2 days ago

0 5 minutes read

ADRIAN — With the three missing Skelton brothers now at least 18 years old, their mother is asking a court to declare them legally dead.

A hearing on Tanya Zuvers' petition is scheduled to begin July 29 in Lenawee County Probate Court. Andrew, Alexander and Tanner Skelton have been missing since Nov. 26, 2010. State law allows a person to be declared legally dead if they have not been heard from for a continuous period of five years and their absence is not explained after a diligent search or investigation.

Zuvers “has prayed for someone to heal her broken heart and provide her with information about their whereabouts,” said the court filing by Zuvers’ attorney, Burke Castleberry of Onsted. “She has hoped above all that the last person to see the children alive could provide her with a plausible explanation as to where they are and what happened on Nov. 26, 2010. Unfortunately, none of that has happened. It is time to legally declare the children deceased.”

The filings blame the boys’ disappearance and presumed deaths on their father, John Skelton. Skelton pleaded not guilty in 2011 to three counts of unlawful confinement after failing to return the boys to Zuvers, who was then his ex-wife, after a Thanksgiving visit. At the time, Skelton was living at the family home in Morenci, and Zuvers was living with relatives a few houses away, according to the petition. The boys were 5, 7 and 9 at the time.

Skelton’s sentence is set to end on Nov. 29, 2025, when he will be released from prison, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Kyle Kaminski said in an email. He was sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison — the maximum sentence under state law for unlawful imprisonment — in September 2011.

More: Skelton's Missing Persons Timeline

Skelton’s last parole hearing is in the summer of 2023 and he won’t have another one until he’s released from prison, Kaminski said. Last year, he was denied parole because the parole board “deemed him a risk to the community and ordered an extension (a denial) to his maximum prison sentence.”

At the hearing, the key witness is expected to be a Michigan State Police detective who will testify about the overall investigation into the boys’ disappearance, including the “wild and unfathomable stories John Skelton told authorities, leading authorities on one chase after another,” according to the trial filing. “Despite his incarceration … John Skelton chose to exploit every piece of information he had about his children to get better treatment and took great pleasure in sending authorities here and there to track down his latest outlandish tale.”

“John Skelton has done nothing to assist authorities, his family or his ex-wife's family in what has become an exhaustive search for his three sons since their disappearance in 2010,” the petition says, calling for the boys to be declared deceased.

During the investigation, detectives used Skelton's cellphone data to track him about 30 miles into Ohio around 4:30 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving, according to the filing. The cellphone tracking then went blank, indicating the phone had been turned off, and then when it was turned back on, it showed he was back at his home in Morenci around 6 a.m.

“Over the next few hours, John's behavior completely contradicts the story he began to tell his wife and authorities,” the petition states.

A few hours after the phone was turned back on, he went to a relative's house in the neighborhood and asked to be taken to the hospital because of a broken ankle. The boys were not with him. It was later determined that Skelton had injured his ankle when he attempted suicide by hanging himself in his residence.

“John was taken to the hospital and soon received phone calls from Tanya asking when he would bring the boys back to her,” the petition reads. “John’s first lie came when he stated that the boys were with a friend of his and that the friend would bring them back to her. He then lied again and stated that he didn’t know where the boys were because he wasn’t sure who had them. Due to the multiple lies and bizarre circumstances that led to John having these conversations with Tanya while he was in the hospital after his suicide attempt, Tanya called the authorities and informed them that the boys were missing. John was quickly taken into custody.”

While in custody, Skelton told investigators that he had given the boys to an underground group to protect them from Zuvers. He also told investigators that he had given the boys to a woman named Joanne Taylor and that he had a vision of the boys being dumped in a dumpster in an area of Ohio. Police also received hundreds of tips from around the country. None of them led to police finding the boys.

Subscribe now: For all the latest local developments, breaking news and high school and college sports content.

“When authorities attempted to speak to John in prison, he never mentioned the fate of his missing sons,” the petition states. “All of John’s phone calls and written correspondence in prison were closely monitored and John or anyone he communicated with never mentioned the welfare or fate of his children. There was never any question of when the boys would be returned. John never showed any emotion when his missing sons were mentioned in conversation.”

Skelton later gave investigators the name of a man in the Amish community who could help find the boys. Investigators found the man, who had never heard of Skelton or the missing boys. They brought him to the jail where Skelton was being held, and when Skelton saw the man's face, “he immediately became visibly disturbed and acted as if he was going to be sick,” the petition states.

Investigators told Skelton they had brought the man to the jail to help find the boys. Skelton told them he only knew the man's name. The man spoke to Skelton for several minutes trying to glean information about a connection between the investigation and the Amish community, but Skelton provided no further information.

It turned out that Skelton had been transferred from solitary confinement to protective custody and was allowed to watch television, according to the petition. The Amish man was on a reality TV show that Skelton was able to watch. Skelton later said the story about the Amish man was another lie.

“All information provided by the last person to see the boys, John Skelton, leads investigators to believe that John Skelton killed his sons,” the petition states. “At this time, all three boys would be over 18 years old. If they were alive, they would have reached the age where they would be adults today. If John Skelton’s lies were true, the boys should now be able to be reintegrated into society. However, this has not been the case and authorities have received no form of cooperation from John Skelton.”

— Contact journalist David Panian at [email protected] or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.

Lina Portman

Related Articles

US lifts 10-year arms ban on Ukraine's controversial Azov Brigade, which Russia calls 'neo-Nazis', as Kharkiv considers 'calm' with US arms | World News

Dallas County Sheriff's Report, May 24

The Philippines is sounding the alarm over a “worrying” increase in the sale of children's advertisements online, amid fears of exploitation.

Plano woman accused of hate crimes against 4 American Indians sentenced to 40 days in jail