The mother of three Michigan boys who vanished 14 years ago is due in court Thursday to have them declared legally dead.
The Skelton brothers — Andrew, 9, Alexander, 7, and Tanner, 5, — were last seen playing in the backyard of their father’s Morenci home on Thanksgiving 2010. Though the father, John Skelton, is serving a 10-to-15-year sentence for their unlawful imprisonment, their mother filed paperwork in December to have the boys deemed deceased as they remain unaccounted for, WJBK reported.
Zuvers had sole custody of the boys, as she and John Skelton were in the middle of a divorce. They had spent the holiday with their father, and their mother was to pick them up the next day.
READ: Twelve Years Without Answers: What Happened to the Skelton Brothers?
An investigation uncovered that John Skelton had traveled to Holiday City, Ohio, 25 miles from his home, around the time Andrew, Alexander, and Tanner Skelton were last seen alive. Authorities also found he had searched online about how to break a neck a week before his sons vanished. Around the same time, he allegedly also tried to hang himself.
John Skelton has never been charged with Tanner, Alexander, and Andrew’s presumed murders. Over the years, he has provided police with various — and inconsistent — accounts of what happened to his sons.
At one point, John Skelton told police he handed off his sons to a woman named Joann Taylor. He insisted he did not know Taylor and had met her on the side of the road when she had car trouble. Officers quickly determined the entire encounter was fabricated.
The father-of-three has since claimed he gave his sons to a group of child-protective activists to shield them from their mother, who he alleged was abusive. In February 2018, he told a local media out that he gave the boys to two women and a man who planned to take the boys to a farm in Ohio.
More than a decade later, John Skelton has not identified the organization he says has Alexander, Tanner, and Andrew — and nobody has come forward claiming to have the boys.
Last August, John Skelton was denied his final bid for parole. His release is scheduled for next year.
“This decision came after much thought and discussion with my family and friends. It did not come lightly and was definitely a difficult decision to make,” she said. “No parent wants to lose a child, but to have to have the courts step in and declare them deceased is just unfathomable.”
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[Featured image: Tanner, Andrew, and Alexander Skelton/Facebook]
