DETROIT (AP) — A Michigan man long blamed for the disappearance of his three sons at Thanksgiving in 2010 has been charged with their deaths, court records show.
John Skelton is facing three counts of murder and tampering with evidence in the deaths of 9-year-old Andrew, 7-year-old Alexander and 5-year-old Tanner Skelton, according to Lenawee County District Court records. They have never been found.
The charges, filed Wednesday, came just days before Skelton, 53, was due to be released from prison after a 15-year sentence for failing to return the boys to their mother, the only conviction in the saga so far.
A message seeking comment from the prosecutor's office was not immediately returned.
“This development marks a significant moment in a long and painful journey,” the boys' mother, Tanya Zuvers, said in a statement. “While I understand the public interest in this case, I ask that my family’s privacy be respected as we process this news and continue to grieve the loss of Andrew, Alexander, and Tanner.”
Zuvers praised police and prosecutors who have “worked tirelessly over the years to seek justice for my sons.”
The brothers disappeared while with their father at Thanksgiving in Morenci, a small town near the Ohio border, 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Detroit.
Skelton and Zuvers, who were married at the time, were having problems and living apart in Morenci in November 2010. The boys were supposed to return to her the day after the holiday. Instead, they were gone.
The brothers have not been found, despite countless searches of woods and water in Michigan and Ohio and tips from across the country.
Police said Skelton fed them a long string of lies about the boys’ whereabouts, sending investigators to an old schoolhouse in Kunkle, Ohio, and a dumpster in Holiday City, Ohio. Police said claims that the boys were handed to other people for their safety also turned out to be false.
A lead investigator, Michigan State Police Detective Lt. Jeremy Brewer, said in March that he had “no doubt whatsoever” that Skelton killed the brothers. He was testifying at a hearing to declare the boys legally dead.
Skelton declined to participate in that court hearing, telling a judge by videoconference from prison: “Anything I say isn’t going to make a difference."
When investigators entered Skelton's home after the boys' disappearance, they found a mess, with broken glass, severed appliance cords and a noose hanging from the second floor. A Bible was open with a verse circled.
A note apparently left for Zuvers said, “You will hate me forever and I know this,” FBI agent Corey Burras testified.
“That was his passive admission to killing the children,” Burras said.
This photo provided by Michigan Department of Corrections shows John Skelton. (Michigan Department of Corrections via AP)
FILE - Tanya Zuvers, the mother of three missing boys, leaves a courtroom on March 3, 2025, in Adrian, Mich. (Ed White/Detroit News via AP, file)
FILE - This plaque honors the missing Skelton brothers in the municipal park on the banks of Bean Creek in Morenci, Mich., on Jan. 27, 2017. (Dale G. Young/Detroit News via AP, file)
WESTMINSTER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 1, 2026--
Vantor, the leading provider of unified spatial intelligence from space to ground, has been awarded its third National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Luno contract to provide NGA and other U.S. Government agencies automated, near real-time orbital intelligence of high-interest objects in space.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260401774885/en/
Under the $2.3 million contract, Vantor will utilize its high-resolution imagery of space objects, also known as non-Earth Imagery (NEI), to deliver intelligence on priority objects in low Earth orbit, including providing alerts when anomalies are present. The analysis will be largely automated, marking a significant step forward in eliminating manual processing and accelerating timely and actionable insights for Space Domain Awareness.
“In a contested domain like space, awareness is everything,” said Susanne Hake, Executive Vice President & General Manager, U.S. Government at Vantor. “Still, it’s the one domain where exquisite visual intelligence is extremely hard to come by, creating literal and figurative blind spots. Our NEI capabilities are one of the few technologies that can provide high-resolution visual intelligence of objects in space, providing intelligence analysts and decisionmakers with a deeper understanding of the behavior and intent of high-interest space objects—a decisive edge in an increasingly complex environment.”
Vantor’s orbital intelligence capabilities can provide insights into a space object’s features, health, velocity, and movements, including whether an object is changing orbit—a situation that could endanger the safety of U.S. assets in space. Vantor satellites can capture images of other spacecraft at an industry-leading resolution of less than 10 cm from hundreds of kilometers away, making it possible to quickly characterize those space objects and determine their health and status.
This award marks the third win for Vantor under NGA’s Luno program. Vantor previously announced a Luno contract to automatically detect land use land cover change at global scale, enabling NGA to anticipate where maps and their features may require updates. And in June, Vantor was awarded a Luno contract to deliver AI/ML-generated object detection services to identify assets across air, maritime, land, and rail domains; determine counts at specified locations; detect trends and anomalies; and perform advanced spatial and temporal geospatial intelligence analysis.
“These awards reflect the core of Vantor’s mission—to deliver real-time intelligence faster than the speed of threat, from space to ground,” said Hake. “By integrating our persistent monitoring, change detection, and space-domain awareness capabilities, we’re empowering our partners to understand and act on threats across every domain, before they emerge.”
The Luno program—made up of Luno A and Luno B—is part of NGA’s ongoing efforts to execute an agile acquisition strategy that unlocks the capacity and innovation of the commercial geospatial industry.
About Vantor
Vantor is forging the new frontier of spatial intelligence to unlock a more autonomous, interoperable world. We give decision makers and operators the power to build a unified intelligence picture, delivering the clarity they need to navigate what’s happening now and shape what’s coming next. We fuse data from the world’s most capable imaging satellites with real-time sensor feeds from space, air, and ground to create an AI-ready digital twin of Earth. Our spatial intelligence platform automates every part of the cycle—from tasking to collection to production—to update and analyze this foundation at the pace of change. Our products drive deeper mission-critical insights and connect the next generation of autonomous systems across the defense, intelligence, and commercial landscape.
Vantor non-Earth image of a Chinese imaging satellite, collected under the NGA Luno B contract. The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite features a large deployable antenna that enables high-resolution radar imaging from orbit.
