Therapist says John Skelton, father of three missing boys from Morenci, is hard to believe

(WXYZ) - In our exclusive jailhouse interviews with John Skelton he said his sons were safe and that they were with an organization.

Skelton also said he never hurt his sons and that he had done nothing wrong.

Thursday we played that conversation for Dr. Tracey Stulberg, Director of the Birmingham Family Therapy Clinic. We wanted her take on his declarations of innocence.

“It’s very hard to believe a lot of the statements that come out of his mouth,” Dr. Stulberg said.

Among the statements from Skelton that concern Dr. Stulberg, John claims his wife abused their kids, but still expresses a desire to be with her.

“At one point he’s saying (his estranged wife) is sexing the children. He married somebody with a prior sex offense. But he loves her and wants to see her. And he doesn’t understand why she won’t come to see him. Something is wrong,” Dr. Stulberg said.

And while John claims he did not “hurt” his sons, Dr. Stulberg is concerned about the interpretation of that word.

“We have plenty of people with severe mental health issues that believe those children needed to be in a better place and that he’s done them a favor by sending them wherever he sent them,” Dr. Stulberg said.

“Hurt is one of those words that you have to wonder, what do you mean by hurt.”

We also asked Dr. Stulberg about one of Skelton’s final facebook posts that he wrote just about a day before his sons vanished.

In that post Skelton said in part “may god and Tanya forgive me.”

Skelton told us in his jailhouse interview that he was “spiraling” when he posted that comment.

“That’s kind of a scary thought, isn’t it? What does spiraling mean? And if he knows what spiraling is, and it’s emotionally spiraling – than my guess is we’ve done something like this before when we’ve spiraled,” Dr. Stulberg said.