IONIA, Mich. – Nearly 15 years after Andrew, Alexander and Tanner Skelton went missing, their father has been charged with murder.
The charges come roughly two weeks before John Skelton was scheduled to be released.
To this day, the Skelton brothers have never been found, and their whereabouts remain unknown.
A judge declared the boys dead in March of this year, but stated there wasn’t enough evidence to prove they were murdered at the time.
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Charges, sentence, new charges
John Skelton was sentenced in 2010 to 10-15 years for unlawful imprisonment. The earliest time he could have been paroled was 2020. He was denied.
He was initially scheduled to be released from the Michigan Department of Corrections on Nov. 29, 2025, almost exactly 15 years since the boys were last seen.
On Wednesday, Nov. 12, Skelton was charged with three counts of open murder and three counts of tampering with evidence.
He remains incarcerated at Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan, located roughly halfway between Lansing and Grand Rapids.
If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in jail.
Disappearance amid custody dispute
The three boys were 9, 7 and 5 years old when they disappeared from Lenawee County in November 2010. The boys were last seen with their father.
John Skelton had spent time with the boys over the Thanksgiving holiday amid a divorce and custody dispute with their mother, Tanya Zuvers.
He was supposed to return them to their mother on Black Friday, Nov. 26, 2010.
Police said they tracked John Skelton’s phone leaving his Morenci home and traveling about 25 miles southwest into Ohio before returning to Morenci.
When he failed to return the boys and did not provide clear information about their whereabouts, Zuvers called the police.
For more than a decade, there have been more questions than answers in the disappearance of the three Skelton brothers.
John Skelton claimed he gave the boys to an underground group to protect them from their mother, alleging abuse by Zuvers, who denies the claims. Over the years, Skelton’s story has changed, sometimes mentioning the Amish as the group, but no such group has been identified or come forward.
Anyone with information about the case or the boys’ whereabouts is asked to call Michigan State Police at 1-517-636-0689 or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.