Andrew, Alexander, and Tanner Skelton were aged 9, 7 and 5 when they vanished from Morenci, Michigan in November 2010. The 13th anniversary of their disappearance has just passed. The boys would be 22, 20 and 18 today.
Morenci, Michigan has a population of just over 2000 people. The Skelton family consisted of John Skelton, Tanya Skelton (maiden name Zuvers) and the three boys.
I believe Tanya has at least two other older children from previous relationship/s. I have seen that she has daughters called Courtney and Brittany. I also believe John has at least one older daughter from another relationship.
Tanya was at one time a registered sex offender; she pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct for having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old neighbor boy in 1998, when she was 32 years old.
I believe that John and Tanya met in the late 90’s and they were married in 2002. John worked as a long-haul truck driver and found it hard to keep a job. He wasn’t able to pay child support for his eldest child. Tanya and John filed for bankruptcy in 2003. John got fired from job after job, and when he got a DUI, he basically spent all of his time gaming online.
John approached Tanya about wanting to move to Florida, to be closer to his family. He told her that he felt like there would be better job prospects there. Tanya was against the move and told John that.
As of mid 2010, it seems like Tanya and John’s marriage was falling apart. In September of that year, Tanya got a call from the Morenci Elementary School, letting her know that John had arrived and taken the boys. She was told that he said he was taking them to Florida and that he wasn’t sure when they would return. He implied that they were primarily going on vacation but did indicate that the school may need to forward the boys’ records if they were to stay in Florida.
Tanya called the police after this. The police got in touch with John and managed to convince him to return the boys to Morenci.
After this incident, Tanya filed for divorce. When John found out about her plans, he was enraged. He again took off with two of the boys. The boys called Tanya the next day and said they were in Florida. Tanya managed to find out that they were in Jacksonville, Florida. She packed up her car and drove to pick up the boys.
In response to her divorce filing, John had asked the court to sever her parental rights based on her sex offender status. The judge refused to do so.
After the divorce, Tanya was granted full custody of the boys.
Initially, she was hesitant to trust John with the boys but things seemed to settle down and after a few months, the boys were seeing their father regularly.
Tanya and John were amicable enough by November 2010, that she agreed to let him have the boys for Thanksgiving. The plan was that he would have them from Wednesday, and would drop them back to Tanya on Friday so that she could take them shopping.
The boys were seen by a neighbor playing in the yard of their father’s home on Thursday November 25, 2010. This is the last time they were seen.
On Friday November 26, 2010, when it got to late afternoon, Tanya became worried when John had not returned the children. He would not reply to any texts or calls from her and she ended up driving to his home. When she arrived there, the house was empty.
She ended up discovering that John was in hospital with a broken ankle. A friend had taken him to the ER earlier on the Friday. He told doctors that he had attempted to hang himself from a second-floor bannister that day. He had apparently changed his mind and while attempting to climb back over the railing, he had slipped and fallen to the concrete floor below, injuring his ankle.
There was no sign of the boys anywhere.
Tanya called police and they rushed to John’s house to search. The house was found to be in complete chaos. It looked as if John had destroyed everything in the house. Tanya described the scene, saying, “If it could be broken, it was broken. If it could be cut, it had been cut.”
An Amber Alert was issued for the boys.
John was placed under a psychiatric hold and police began looking into his movements and cell phone records.
Police said John’s blue Dodge Caravan was on the Ohio Turnpike, along the Michigan-Ohio border, between 4:00 and 7:00 a.m. on November 26, and asked anyone who saw it to come forward.
John’s stories to police kept changing. At first, he told them that he had left the boys with friends and that they would be back soon. Then, it was that he had given them to a mystery woman because he did not want them to be in the house when he killed himself. He then said that he’d really handed the children off to an underground organization for safe keeping.
John repeated stories of the organization being an Amish one. When interviewed, members of the Amish community said that, even if the boys were with them, they would not hide them from the police or their mother.
(While the Amish do not use cars or electricity, they keep themselves aware of current events through newspapers, and the boys’ pictures/stories have been shared widely over the years.)
John told police that the group that took the kids said that they would “hibernate until they graduate.” All of the boys would now be over 18 and have never come forward.
One story where John gave alleged specifics was about giving the boys to a couple named Joann and Mark Taylor. He said he had met Joann and her husband Mark a few years ago when he had helped them with their vehicle, and he and Joann had started an online relationship through email. He told investigators that on Friday, John had contacted Joann and asked her to pick up the boys and take them to Tanya’s house. Joann had arrived in a silver van and taken Andrew, Alexander, and Tanner. John said he hadn’t heard from her since that morning.
Police couldn’t substantiate any of his claims.
They did release some information about John’s cell phone records.
“Around 4:30 a.m. [the morning of Nov.26] the phone started tracking from Morenci, going southwest into Ohio,” explained Detective Lieutenant Jeremy Brewer with the Michigan State Police. “Around 5:01 to 5:04 a.m. was the last time it pinged before being turned off, around 20 miles away from Morenci in Holiday City, Ohio. It turned back on at 6:45 am back at his house in Morenci.”
“You can get on and off the Ohio turnpike from there,” said Tanya. “It’s lots of wooded area. That became an area of interest.”
Tanya spoke about the large-scale search for the boys.
“I’ve lived in [Morenci] my whole life and the boys were well-known,” said Tanya. “The schools offered up some buses, loaded them up with volunteers, and took them out to the search sites.”
“The days ran together after that,” said Tennille McCain, the boys’ aunt and Tanya’s sister. “It was a lot of craziness, a lot of wondering what the next step was. How do you prepare for something like that?”
Police also searched John’s computer records and found that he had searched for rat poison and for info about breaking someone’s neck with your hands.
Reporter Sandra Ali would later ask John about the searches. “He said the boys asked him about a specific scene in the movie where someone slips and breaks their neck,” Sandra said. “And he said that he searched with them on the computer about this neck breaking scene and he said they had a great time, it was a beautiful memory.”
Police were unable to find any evidence of communication between John and ‘Joann Taylor’.
John made a post from his Facebook account on Wednesday, November 24th that said “I love my wife very much. May God and Tanya forgive me.”
After John was released from the hospital, on November 30, 2010 he was arrested and jailed under suicide watch. He was eventually extradited to Michigan and charged with three counts of felony parental kidnapping, three counts of kidnapping and three counts of false imprisonment.
John appeared in court at a hearing on December 16, 2010. During this appearance, he told the court that he had given the boys to a stranger in a van from an organisation. He did name an organisation at one point as United Foster Outreach and Underground Sanctuaries. Police have said they do not believe any group with that name exists.
The judge ruled that John would be held in custody indefinitely for being in contempt of court. A month later, at his contempt-of-court hearing, John once again refused to say where the boys were or who they were with.
In February 2011, police announced that the investigation was no longer a missing persons case, but that it was a homicide investigation.
Even though police believed the case was a homicide case, there was not enough evidence to charge John with murder at that time. He was charged with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment.
As part of a statement read in court, it was revealed that John had given away some of the boys’ belongings. He had given the boys’ winter coats and toothbrushes to an aunt before Thanksgiving, saying they didn’t need them anymore and that “he didn’t want Tanya to have those memories.”
John took a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded no contest to three counts of false imprisonment. The kidnapping charges were dropped. He could have faced life in prison if convicted of the original charges.
He pleaded guilty, and in September 2011, he was sentenced to 10-15 years in prison.
In 2011, Tanya checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. She said she hit rock bottom at that point.
In 2017, the remains of three children were found in a shed in Montana.
John said at the time that the remains were not the boys and he turned out to be right. This info is from CBS:
Facial bone fragments and teeth of three children found in a Montana shed last fall are more than 99 years old, ruling out any connection to recent missing children’s cases, officials said Friday. Forensic scientists believe the youngest child to be Native American.
Tests done at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification determined the remains were those of an American Indian child between 2 and 5, and two others between 5 and 9.
There is a really interesting article from 2018 by WDIV reporter Sandra Ali. She sent a letter to John. Months later, he replied.
“Dear Sandra, I am doing okay. My vision is rapidly going. As far as how I am being treated, I was put in segregation for 4 years! I never did anything wrong and it was never explained to me why they felt I needed to be in seg. When every other prison I was in I was in general population. Just recently, September 30, 2017, they let me out of segregation.”
“I’m sure you don’t want to be a real friend to me, but I wish we could. I don’t get much mail now. That’s also why it took me so long to write you, I was suffering (from) depression. As for people wanting to hear about my need to keep my boys safe, I think Tanya has the victim card and society is against me, not her. I’m the one in prison, not her. She got off the sex offender registry. Tanya has absolutely no concept of nuclear family. She destroyed ours by her selfishness. That is the biggest sore spot with me. We can talk about that more later if you want.”
He would sign his letter, “without wax.” I had to Google this. “Without wax” translates to sin cera, which over time has changed into sincere or sincerely. It’s actually an interesting origin story. Sculptors would fill in any mistakes with wax, but a perfect sculpture, one without nicks or imperfections would then be, without wax. Interesting that John seemed to imply this letter was him, authentic as can be … no cover-ups.
John also sent Sandra a recipe and seemed to be encouraging her to visit him in prison.
“You are not on my visitor list. I will put you on it. Have you filled out the application? I have not wrote you because I am still processing all the negative stories about me on the news a few weeks ago. I am not ready for an interview. Those news stories really jeopardized my safety and quite a few people no longer speak to me.
I’m glad you liked the recipe I sent. I hope you try it. I have my cinnamon roll recipe I am going to send you. They are very versatile not to mention yummy. If you send an email to the warden asking to see me you may be able to without being on my visitor list, you being a reporter. I will write again. I hope we can be friends. Any progress in getting me those transcripts I asked you for in the first letter? Thank you, John.”
We also learned in this article about some misconduct by John in prison.
May13th, 2013: John was charged with class 2 misconduct. This is for the destruction or misuse of property. Here’s the description of the violation as told by the reporting officer. He says, “While conducting a routine shakedown of cell Maple 229-L I found a stinger made from a white extension cord. This extension cord was found on the left side of the toilet on the floor inside of a toilet paper roll. This is prisoner Skelton’s area of control per the prisoner guidebook. Restitution sought for the $2.69 for the state extension cord. Prisoner ID’d by frequent contact and Maple unit count board.”
John made the case that he and his bunky, otherwise known as a bunkmate, agreed it was his, the “bunky’s,” not John’s “stinger.”
What’s a stinger? It’s prison talk for taking two wires from something that can be plugged into an outlet — in this case we believe an extension cord stripped of its protective coating to expose wires — and using the live wires to heat water. This is a dangerous and illegal practice. John had a hearing about this incident. He was found guilty and forced to pay $2.69 in restitution. His privileges were taken away for three days.
On August 18, 2016, John was charged with throwing his food tray at a guard. The short version of the story is, the officer brought John a tray of food, when John received it, he placed a tray he had from a meal before in the slot, so the officer could not close the slot, John then threw one of the trays at the guard “narrowly missing the guards leg.” The guard says prior to delivering the food, John was screaming and yelling. John and a prisoner witness refuted that allegation. John did admit to throwing the tray, but he said his throw was in the opposite direction and his reason for doing so was because the officer was very forceful when he grabbed the tray. John would be sentenced to 10 days of detention for the offense.
Sandra did end up going to the prison and recounted her visit with John.
“I walked right over to him, I shook his hand and he started sobbing. He just broke down and started sobbing. And I was completely caught off guard by that. I sat down, the chair that was available was right next to him, so we sat side-by-side the entire time and he said, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cry like this, but I haven’t shaken anyone’s hand and I haven’t had any contact — no contact visitors in many, many years.”
The meeting was at lunch time. Sandra offered to get something for John from the vending machines in the visitor’s area:
“He said, ‘Can you look and see if they have Doritos? And I said sure. And he goes, I’d also really appreciate a hamburger.”
The inmates aren’t allowed to get out of their chairs, so Sandra got up, grabbed some Doritos and microwaved John not one, but two double cheeseburgers.
“He kept saying, ‘I haven’t seen or touched a Dorito in, I can’t remember when,’ and then he’d pick up a Dorito, kinda fiddle with it and then put it back down.”
Sandra said that John spoke a lot about the boys.
“He went into great detail,” Sandra recalled. “He talked about the last meal he cooked for them, he said he made their favorite meal, which was fried chicken and they sat at the kitchen table and all ate fried chicken together and he had made a cake, a homemade cake and they sat there and ate the homemade cake and he said, what was left behind, the leftovers of that cake were in the house when police and detectives came through on Black Friday.”
John talked about handing the boys off to people from a group called the “Underground Sanctuary.” The people had been to the house three or four times, and John told the boys they were going to live on a farm with another family for a short time.
“I asked him, did you just stand there and watch this van pull away with your three boys and he said yes,” Ali recalled.
“He specifically said underground sanctuary. And I asked him several times, John who is this group? Who is this group? Who is this group? And he finally, one of the last times I asked him, he said, Sandra, I already told you. I told you their names before, it’s the Underground Sanctuary. And I said where is Underground Sanctuary, where are they from? And he said, today, they have ties to Pennsylvania, but I know they took Tanner, Alexander and Andrew to a farm on the Ohio-Indiana border.”
“So I asked him after all these years, how do you know they’re safe? You’re saying you did this to protect them, so how do you know when you give them away to complete strangers, which is his story. How do you know they’re safe? And he said, I have to have blind faith.”
Tanya has spoken to the media about the situation. “I wonder, are they scared? Are they crying for me?”
“It’s so hard to imagine them hurting for me and not being able to do anything about it,” she said.
“I will never quit looking,” said Tanya. “I will continue to fight on their behalf for justice. I hope that at the 20-year mark I’m not having to give interviews to mark that date, that we’ll have answers before then. I could not fathom sitting here, 10 years ago, still asking for answers.”
Tanya has also addressed her sex offender status in regards to the case. “That has all been investigated. My stuff was gone through. My children come first. Always have, always will. My dream job was to be a mom, and it is the greatest job in the world. But to say that I abused my sons, (that) kills me.”
John has stated his children are still alive but will never be returned as long as their mother has custody of them. His relatives don’t believe he would have harmed them. John has always maintained that he would never hurt the children.
Some articles say that Tanya also believed John would not hurt the children, but an August 2023 article from wtol.com says she believes the boys are dead.
The police have said that the case is still open and being actively worked on.
“As a police officer, you know, you’re realistic,” Lt. Detective Jeremy Brewer said. “You have to be realistic because you’ve had cases that some are solved and some are not. On a case like this, with the magnitude, with the resources we have directed towards it, I firmly believe without a doubt that we will get some type of closure on it one day.”
SOURCE LIST –
https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/95752
https://medium.com/honor-the-victims/vanished-the-disappearance-of-the-skelton-brothers-e701ee5cafb2
http://www.bitesizedcrimepod.com/episodes/episode-019-the-skelton-brothers/
https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2020/missing-brothers-what-do-they-look-like-now