The remains of three children discovered in the shed of a Montana home last year are not connected to three missing brothers from Michigan.
A forensic examination of the bone fragments found they are over 99 years old, according to the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office.
“Anthropologists were conclusively able to exclude the remains of the aforementioned children,” the sheriff’s office said on Friday.
The Skelton brothers — Tanner, 5, Alexander, 7, and Andrew, 9 — were last seen on November 26, 2010, in front of father John Skelton’s Morenci home. After Skelton didn’t return the boys to the house of their mother, from whom he was separated, he told police “he gave the boys to unknown individuals,” a claim police did not find credible.
He is currently serving 10 to 15 years in prison after pleading no contest to three counts of unlawful imprisonment in September 2011.
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When bone fragments were found in September, authorities launched an investigation to see if they were connected to the Skelton brothers. The Sheriff’s Office sent the remains to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.
The boys’ mother, Tanya Zuvers, has continued to buy Christmas, Birthday and Easter gifts for her sons in the hope they would one day come home, according to the Detroit News.
Recently, Skelton gave an interview with local 4 TV news saying he gave his sons to a man and two women driving a light-colored van to live on a farm in Ohio, near the Indiana border.
He told the boys they would have a better life with a new family, who would buy them the farm boots they’d been asking for and would let them ride on a tractor whenever they wanted.
Skelton said in the interview that he was a good dad and “would never hurt my boys or anyone.”
He said that on the last night he was with them, he made their favorite meal of fried chicken and cake to celebrate Andrew’s birthday and watched a karate movie at home with them.
He added, “I miss their voices.”
The boys’ mother, Tanya Zuvers, responded to Skelton’s interview, telling PEOPLE, “My initial thought is what he is saying is still more lies.”
Zuvers added, “He’s had six years to perfect his story before agreeing to meet with a reporter.”
It is unknown where the boys are or if they’re still alive.
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