Mother wants her sons declared deceased
Mar. 4, 2025 PLYMOUTH VOICE.
Plymouth Michigan News
Tanya Zuvers, mother of the three young Skelton brothers who mysteriously disappeared in 2010 is certain they will never be found alive.
Yesterday, 15-years later, she appeared before Judge Catherine Sala in the Lenawee County Probate Court. She said she wants her boys to be declared legally dead so she can place a date on their headstones and acquire death certificates.
The boys went missing after their father, John Skelton, took them away from their mother on Thanksgiving Day in 2010, in the middle of a divorce and custody battle. Since that time there has been no trace of the boys – nine-year-old Andrew, Alexander, 7, and Tanner, 5, were last seen alive playing in the backyard of their father’s home in Morenci.
In court on Monday afternoon the former Morenci police Chief Larry Weeks testified that the boy’s father John Skelton told Zuvers the boys were staying with a women named Joann Taylor. The police were never able to find Joann Taylor nor any clues as to what happened to the children. The widely publicized an intensely investigated case involved many state and local police agencies in Michigan and Ohio.
Skelton, now 53, was charged with 3 counts of Unlawful Imprisonment and sentenced in Sept. 2011 and ordered to serve 15 years for each of his boys (sentence to run concurrently).
Skelton appeared in court Tuesday during the hearing via video. He is now imprisoned in the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia. Now nearing the end of his sentence Skelton set to be released on Nov. 29, 2025.
Judge Sala will make her ruling Wednesday.
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