The mother of three boys who vanished under mysterious circumstances on Black Friday in 2010 acknowledged in court that she is a registered sex offender while testifying against her ex-husband, who is now accused of killing their children.
Tanya Zuvers told the court Monday that she has a felony sex-offender conviction tied to a relationship with a 14-year-old boy, which took place years before she married John Skelton.
Her admission surfaced as she described the breakdown of her relationship with Skelton, 54, who is charged with three counts of murder and tampering with evidence in the deaths of nine-year-old Andrew, seven-year-old Alexander and five-year-old Tanner Skelton.
Skelton faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted in the boys’ deaths, after previously serving a 15-year sentence for unlawful imprisonment for failing to return the children to their mother.
Investigators had long maintained that the brothers were dead and that Skelton was responsible, but because their remains were never recovered, he was initially charged with three counts of unlawful imprisonment and entered a no-contest plea in 2011.
Skelton was released from Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Michigan late last November, but he is now being held in the Lenawee County Jail on a $60 million bond after a judge formally declared the boys dead last year.
Skelton has claimed he turned the children over to the “Underground Sanctuary,” which he described as a secret group meant to protect children from dangerous situations, according to his charging affidavit, obtained by the Detroit News.
Police have said they found no evidence to support that account and noted that Skelton has given conflicting versions of who he allegedly left the boys with.
Investigators have also said Skelton fed them a long string of lies about the boys’ whereabouts and that his claims they were given to other people for their safety were false.
Tanya Zuvers, the mother of three young boys who mysteriously disappeared on Black Friday 2010, admitted in court on Monday that she is a registered sex offender
She made the startling admission as she testified at her ex husband John Skelton’s preliminary hearing. He has been charged with the murder of his three sons almost 15 years after they disappeared
Nine-year-old Andrew, seven-year-old Alexander, and five-year-old Tanner’s bodies have never been found
As the preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to bring Skelton’s case to trial began on Monday, Zuvers recounted how their marriage began to break down in September 2010.
Skelton had said at the time he wanted to move the family from their home in Morenci, Michigan to Florida, believing there were more job opportunities there.
But Zuvers said she did not want to leave her family due to how close they were, which she claimed Skelton was jealous of, and said the boys were already established in school.
She also noted that she had the felony conviction as a sex offender, and was concerned about leaving the state, Fox 2 Detroit reports.
Still, on September 13, 2010, Zuvers said she received a call from the secretary at the boys’ school saying their father had signed them out for the day, saying he did not want to take any homework and inquiring about transferring records because they were headed to Florida.
‘That had me wondering what was his thinking?’ Zuvers said. ‘You can’t just take off and go to Florida and think you can walk into any school and register them.’
The local police eventually intervened, and Skelton returned home with the boys.
But the incident left her concerned about the boys’ safety, and she said she started speaking with an attorney about what she could do to prevent Skelton from taking her sons out of state – to which the attorney advised her to file for divorce.
Zuvers had requested that the boys be declared dead last year
Authorities had always believed the three boys were dead and that Skelton was responsible
Later that day, Zuvers said Skelton stormed out of their home and drove off with the two older boys.
When they then called to wish her a happy birthday the following day, they said they were in Florida at ‘daddy’s friend’s house,’ Zuvers testified.
At that point, she said, she rushed to pick up paperwork that would give her exclusive parenting rights and drove all night with her family to Florida, where she got help from the local police to try to pick up the boys.
The couple’s relationship then worsened in the lead up to Thanksgiving, with Zuvers saying she and her then-husband got into an argument the Monday before the holiday, when her sons came home from school and asked her if she had ever been in jail.
They said Skelton had told them she had been to prison and was a sex offender, Zuvers recounted.
When she then confronted Skelton about the conversation, she said he claimed the boys overheard him talking on the phone about it.
The couple then decided to split custody of the boys for the Thanksgiving holiday, with Skelton having them Wednesday afternoon through Friday afternoon and Zuvers taking them for the weekend.
Skelton has said he handed the boys over to the ‘Underground Sanctuary,’ which he ‘claimed was a clandestine organization to keep children safe from harmful situations’
But at some time in the evening of Thanksgiving, while the boys were with Skelton, Zuvers said she had a conversation with her ex – noting that he ‘blew up her phone’ all day while she was with her family.
She testified that she made it clear to Skelton in that conversation that their marriage was over and she did not want to work on reconciling any longer.
Zuvers then called Skelton back the next morning to ask if there was any way she could pick the boys up earlier on Friday to go Black Friday shopping with some family members to buy some clothes to wear to their family football game on Saturday.
She was then left startled when Skelton said the children were not home, she testified.
‘I remember thinking that was kind of strange because, from where I was living, I could see his driveway from my kitchen window and his van was in the driveway,’ Zuvers recounted.
A short time later, she said she received a long message from a woman with the same name as Skelton’s friend who they were purportedly with.
Zuvers said she initially believed this was a woman Skelton had met while driving his truck who he helped fix a flat tire, but after reading the message, she began to believe it was actually Skelton himself.
In the long message, which faulted her for ruining her relationship with Skelton and being a bad mother, the sender told her that Skelton ‘just dropped off his sons with me and I’ll be watching them until he returns.’
As Zuvers then worked to find out when her sons would be home, she said she received a call from Skelton in which he said he ‘hasn’t been completely honest with you today.’
Skelton faces life in prison if found guilty of murder and tampering with evidence
He then claimed he was at the Fulton County Health Center because he hurt his foot, and said the boys were with a friend in Jackson, Michigan, and they would be dropped off at 3pm.
However, when Zuvers later got in touch with one of the nurses, she said she was told Skelton was being treated because he tried to hang himself earlier in the day.
When the boys were then not dropped off at 3pm as she had been expecting, Zuvers said she called 911, and an Amber Alert was issued at 11.25pm.
By the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Zuvers said she was allowed back into her marital home, where Skelton had been living, and found the house destroyed – with a glass curio cabinet he bought her smashed and the cords cut to every small appliance in the house.
Two passages in Zuvers’ Bible had also been circled and labeled with Zuvers’ name in Skelton’s handwriting – passages about a woman pleasing her husband and being bound to her husband as long as he lives.
Zuvers also found a rope tied to a banister and piled up on the floor upstairs.
‘It looked like mass destruction,’ she testified.
Also inside the home was a letter Skelton had written to Zuvers, in which he emphasized how much he loved her and apologized for hurting her again.
‘This time it was on purpose and to kill my pain of losing you,’ the letter read. ‘…Since you couldn’t say you loved me anymore I guess my actions today will guarantee you wont [sic] have to see me again or in Heaven. I pray you will forgive me.’
Skelton (pictured in court in 2011) has already served a 15-year sentence for unlawful imprisonment for failing to return the boys to their mother
As the investigation into the boys’ disappearance then continued, Zuvers said police told her they believed her sons had been murdered and that Skelton committed the crime.
She testified that it was about two to three weeks after the boys’ disappearance that police started investigating it as a homicide.
But after facing questioning by Skelton’s defense attorney, Zuvers noted that Skelton never abused his sons or hurt them, though she later claimed he once spanked the boys on their bare bottoms with a belt after they were jumping on their bed and knocked the television over.
She also said he never confessed to killing the children and that their bodies were never found.
