Lenawee County Judge Orders John Skelton to Stand Trial in Deaths of His Three Sons

A Lenawee County judge ruled Thursday that John Skelton will stand trial for the murder of his three sons, Andrew, Alexander and Tanner, who vanished from the family's Morenci-area home around Thanksgiving in 2010 and have never been found.

District Judge Laura Schaedler said prosecutors presented enough evidence during a preliminary hearing to send the case to circuit court. Skelton, 54, faces three counts of open murder and three counts of tampering with evidence.

"I start out by saying I believe these children are dead," Schaedler said. "I don't know where they are dead. I don't know where they are buried, I don't know the circumstances of their demise, but I believe they are dead." She acknowledged the case rests largely on circumstantial evidence but said that evidence was enough to proceed. "The circumstantial evidence in this case is sufficient," she said. "Some might say it's overwhelming."

The ruling came after seven days of testimony from 23 witnesses, a hearing briefly interrupted Thursday afternoon when a tornado warning was issued for Lenawee County and the courtroom was evacuated around 3:55 p.m. Proceedings resumed roughly a half hour later.

Andrew, Alexander and Tanner Skelton were 9, 7 and 5 years old when their father reported them missing in November 2010. Skelton told investigators at the time that he had given the boys to a woman named Joann Taylor. Investigators determined no such woman existed and traced all electronic evidence about her back to Skelton's own computer.

Retired FBI agent Kelly Liberti, who worked with the bureau's Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team, testified by video about interviews she conducted with Skelton in his hospital room in late November 2010, after he attempted suicide. Liberti said she confronted Skelton directly with the evidence that Taylor did not exist. Skelton told her he remembered dressing the boys in pajamas, wrapping them in blankets, giving each a stuffed animal and buckling them into his van, but said he had no memory of what happened after that. Liberti testified that Skelton's pastor, Donna Galloway, spoke of the boys in the present tense, while Skelton consistently referred to them in the past tense, a detail investigators noted during the inquiry.

Liberti also described a dream Skelton reported having on Nov. 29, 2010, in which he stood near a dumpster outside a motel on Route 15 in Holiday City, Ohio, across from a hotel where he and the boys' mother, Tanya Zuvers, had once stayed. "In his dream he said it was like having tunnel vision, that he saw his van pull up, park beside the dumpster," Liberti testified. "He saw Joanne Taylor get out of the car, then it became him." Skelton drew investigators a diagram of the location and urged them to search it, telling them repeatedly, according to Liberti, "go get them, go get them."

A search of the dumpster turned up nothing, so investigators traced its contents to the Williams County Landfill in Ohio. Christopher Garnett, a senior team leader with the FBI's Evidence Response Team in Cleveland, testified that crews began searching the landfill around 2:30 a.m., using a bulldozer to remove trash layer by layer while searchers combed through it with rakes and shovels. Each 30-by-30-yard section took about two hours to clear, and the team repeated the process three times. "We were pretty confident there was nothing," Garnett said. Several stuffed animals recovered during the search were later shown to Zuvers for possible identification.

Jurors in the eventual trial are also expected to hear a 911 call placed by the boys on Nov. 20, 2010, in which 7-year-old Alexander told a dispatcher his father was missing, before his older brother Andrew took over the call. "I remember my teacher saying in school, 'If there is any problem, call 911,'" Andrew told the dispatcher, who reassured him he had done the right thing. Andrew told the operator he and his brothers were too scared to go upstairs, where they believed their father might be. An officer arrived, and Andrew opened the door, telling the dispatcher he had found his father upstairs.

Lenawee County Prosecutor Jackie Wyse told the court the strongest circumstantial evidence includes internet searches Skelton allegedly made about whether rat poison can kill a person without detection, searches on how to break someone's neck, and comments he reportedly made to a friend about hiding a body so it would never be found. Wyse also cited a phone call in which Skelton told his daughter, "you're the youngest Skelton now." She said the only new evidence gathered before Skelton was charged in 2025 came from an interview in which he said he immediately regretted giving the boys away and drove to Holiday City to get them back, a version of events Wyse said differs from earlier interviews in which Skelton insisted he never left the house.

Defense attorney Bill Amadeo argued there is no physical evidence linking Skelton to his sons' deaths and no proof of premeditation. "There are no bodies. There's not one shred of physical evidence," Amadeo said, questioning why prosecutors waited until 12 days before Skelton completed his 15-year sentence to file murder charges. He noted no one has ever said Skelton physically abused his children.

Skelton has already served 15 years in prison after pleading no contest to unlawful imprisonment charges tied to the boys' disappearance. He had never previously faced charges directly related to their deaths, in part because their bodies have never been recovered. A circuit court arraignment date has not yet been announced.