After murdering his wife, three children, and pet dog in 2019, Anthony Todt lived in the family’s house with their decaying bodies for weeks.
Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions and/or images of violent, disturbing, or otherwise potentially distressing events.
HandoutThe Todt family, starting from top left: Anthony, Megan, Alek, Zoe, Tyler, and Breezy.
Police suspected Anthony Todt was up to something. Todt was a physical therapist, but for several years, it seemed as if he had been billing insurance companies for treatments that he never provided. Federal agents were closing in on him — but no one could have anticipated the horrific scene they would find at the Todt family home.
When authorities arrived at the Todts’ idyllic house in Celebration, Florida on Jan. 13, 2020, the first thing they noticed was a strong, foul odor. Inside, they discovered the corpses of Megan Todt and her three children — Alek, Tyler, and Zoe — in various stages of decay. The family dog, Breezy, was also found dead.
Anthony Todt, however, was alive. Investigations would soon reveal that Todt’s wife and children had been dead for weeks by the time authorities found them — and that Anthony Todt had been living with their decaying bodies ever since.
While Todt initially confessed to murdering his family, he later retracted his confession, instead claiming that his wife, Megan, had killed their children and then died by suicide. His bizarre, rapidly evolving stories also included claims of wanting to save his family’s souls in the face of an impending “apocalypse,” and his wife’s alleged obsession with reincarnation.
So, what really happened to the Todt family?
How Anthony Todt Went From “Disney Dad” To Wanted Man
The Todt family appeared to be leading a picturesque life. In 2017, the family had moved from Connecticut to Celebration, Florida, a community developed by The Walt Disney Company. Anthony Todt worked as a physical therapist. His wife, Megan Todt, was a stay-at-home mother who homeschooled their three young children: Alek, Tyler, and Zoe.
Megan Todt/FacebookAnthony Todt biking with Alek, Zoe, and Tyler.
Based on their social media posts, the Todt family seemed to be happy, close, and active in their local community. Unfortunately, things weren’t quite as perfect as they seemed from the outside.
While Anthony Todt’s physical therapy business seemed to be successful, it was in truth mostly fraudulent. For years, Todt had been billing Medicaid and private health insurance companies for hundreds of hours of care that he never actually provided.
Contributed photoMegan Todt with her children.
In total, Todt received roughly $130,000 from fraudulent bills — and soon caught the attention of federal investigators. In November 2019, federal agents interviewed Todt and searched his office. At the time, he told them he intended to plead guilty and would find an attorney, as WESH reported back in 2020. But by December, Anthony Todt had cut off communication with investigators.
Then, concerned relatives contacted authorities to report that they hadn’t heard from the Todts, either. The last they’d heard, the family had gotten sick with the flu around Christmastime.
“I’m wondering if somebody can do a wellness check on my brother and his family,” Anthony Todt’s sister, Chrissy Caplet, told dispatchers, according to a 2022 Orlando Sentinel article. “They’ve been really sick for probably like the past week and a half, and I can’t seem to get a hold of them.”
After fielding these calls, authorities reportedly stopped by the Todt family’s home multiple times to check on them. No one came to the door. It wasn’t until mid-January that they finally forced their way inside.
The Gruesome Scene Investigators Found At The Todt Family Home
Authorities visited the Todts’ home on Jan. 13, 2020 to serve Anthony Todt an arrest warrant for fraud. There, they found the door unlocked — and a foul smell in the air.
When Anthony Todt came to the stairs to meet them, he appeared weak and shaken. He told the police that his wife was upstairs sleeping, and even called out her name. But she wasn’t sleeping at all.
Megan Todt, her three children, and the family’s dog were lying in the master bedroom, wrapped in blankets. They were dead.
“The bodies were discolored,” said federal law enforcement officer Michael Phelps. “Black and blue.”
Orlando Police DepartmentThe master bedroom of the Todt family home, where Anthony Todt kept the bodies.
A medical examiner soon determined that the Todts had already been dead for “at least a couple weeks” when they were discovered, according to WESH. They had toxic levels of Benadryl in their systems, and Alek, Tyler, and Megan all had stab wounds. They were so severely decomposed that officials could not determine their exact cause of death.
Anthony Todt, meanwhile, admitted to having taken Benadryl himself and made comments about harming himself, leading authorities to commit him for treatment.
He also confessed to the murders — and painted a clear picture of how he’d done it.
Anthony Todt’s Confession
In a taped interview with detectives in January 2020, Anthony Todt claimed he and his wife had recently become obsessed with achieving “salvation” after watching videos predicting an impending apocalypse. According to Todt, he and Megan had made a pact to kill their entire family and then die by suicide in order to save their souls.
“The defendant, in his interview, says that Megan Todt and himself had an agreement that everybody needed to die in order to pass over to the other side together,” state attorney Danielle Pinnell said during Todt’s trial, WESH reported.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Todt also claimed that when he and his wife spoke to their children about the need to cross to the “other side,” his children said, “We don’t want you to die. We want to die with you.”
In his taped confession, Todt described how he killed his youngest child, four-year-old Zoe, first. He went into her room while she was sleeping, sat with her for a time, and then rolled on top of her to suffocate her.
“I needed to save her soul,” he told detectives. “I wanted her to be with us.”
He then turned to his son Alek, suffocating and stabbing him, before moving into the playroom where Tyler was sleeping and doing the same to him.
Osceola County CorrectionsTodt claimed he killed his family to save them from the “apocalypse.”
Anthony Todt claimed Megan stabbed herself, but couldn’t go through with actually ending her own life — so Anthony suffocated her with a pillow. He also killed the family dog, Breezy.
Once Anthony Todt finished killing his family, he moved them into the master bedroom, where he proceeded to live with their rotting corpses for weeks.
Todt told detectives that he attempted suicide in a variety of ways after his family was dead, but that he had “chickened out” of using a knife. But before long, Todt would completely change his story, pinning the blame for the murders solely on his wife, Megan.
The Todt Family Murder Trial
During his trail, Anthony Todt told jurors he had no recollection of his interviews with detectives.
“My testimony today is the fact that Megan killed her kids and killed herself,” he declared. He claimed that Megan had been struggling with Lyme disease and had become severely depressed after suffering multiple miscarriages. She was supposedly so sick that she could barely walk upstairs or care for herself.
She had also allegedly become obsessed with reincarnation. In her weakened state, Todt claimed, Megan had hoped to die with her family and be reincarnated into a better life.
According to Todt’s new story, he had come home one day in December to find that Megan had killed their children. After he rushed to check on them and confirmed that they were dead, he claimed, he watched as Megan stabbed herself and died right in front of him.
Orlando Police DepartmentA knife Anthony Todt allegedly used in the murder of his family.
However, relatives claimed that Megan had seemed happy and healthy the last time they had seen her. They had no knowledge of her being ill or obsessed with the apocalypse.
“She was very sick ten years ago but she was treated and she was fine and she recovered,” Megan Todt’s uncle, Stewart Peil, said in a 2022 interview with the Hartford Courant. “Every time I saw her she was fine. There was never any indication that she was frail or weak. This whole story that she was an invalid that he had to take care of, wasn’t true with me.”
What’s more, if Megan had truly been that weak, how had she managed to kill all three of her children, and then stab herself to death?
“We woke up that morning, she was pain-free. Everything was good,” Anthony Todt claimed in court. “That’s the biggest thing that affects me. I didn’t see this coming.”
“Destroyer Of Worlds”
During the trial, prosecutors showed the jury Anthony Todt’s taped confession as evidence that he had committed the murders himself. They alleged that Anthony Todt had “wanted control over the lives of his kids and over the life of Megan.”
Prosecutors called attention to the fact that Todt had been living with the corpses for weeks. They also claimed that in the days after his family had died, Todt had used their phones to text relatives that they were feeling sick — likely to avoid any suspicion when they couldn’t be reached.
Orlando Police DepartmentEmpty Benadryl (and generic variant) bottles found in the trash outside the Todt family home.
Peil believed that Todt, dealing with financial difficulties and facing an investigation for fraud, had turned to drastic measures.
“I think he blamed his family for a lifestyle that he couldn’t maintain,” Peil said. “I wish he had gone to them and told them that they would need to live within their means… His solution was, instead, to end everything.”
The jury ultimately felt similarly. In April 2022, they found Anthony Todt guilty of first-degree murder in the killings of his wife and three children. Calling Todt a “destroyer of worlds,” Judge Keith Carsten sentenced him to four consecutive life terms in prison for the murders, plus another year for animal cruelty.
Anthony Todt, however, continued to profess his innocence.
“I loved my wife. I loved my kids,” he told the judge. “They were first and foremost in my life. I did not do this. I provided for my wife. I provided for kids. I did everything I could.”
After reading about the gruesome Todt family murders, read about Christian Longo, the man who murdered his entire family to hide his life of lies. Or, read about David Camm, the man wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and children.
If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or use their 24/7 Lifeline Crisis Chat.
