Florida father accused of killing entire family cries on stand as he blames his wife
The father accused of murdering his entire family inside their luxury home, located just outside of the Walt Disney World resort, cried in a Florida courtroom as he testified his wife was to blame for the grisly slayings.
Anthony Todt is facing multiple counts of homicide for the 2019 slayings of Megan Todt, and their three children — 3-year-old Alek, 11-year-old Tyler and 4-year-old Zoe. Police said he also killed the family dog, Breezy. Todt, a 46-year-old physical therapist from Connecticut, had been living with the bodies for weeks before authorities discovered them inside the rental home in the gated community.
Officers were preparing to arrest Todt on fraud charges when they made the gruesome discovery in January 2020. The Orange-Osceola County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded the four victims were killed by “unspecified violence” combined with overdoses of Benadryl.
On Wednesday, Todt took the stand during his murder trial in Osceola County Courthouse in Kissimmee. He told jurors his wife had been suffering with depression and other health issues, including Lyme’s disease, after enduring several miscarriages, WESH reported. Her struggles prompted her to pick up a Hinduism-based religion with an afterlife component.
“My wife — she was a yoga teacher in addition to physical therapist — she went from a very strong vibrant woman to barely holding on at 90 pounds,” he said through tears. “She went from a mom who provided for everything…to a person who could barely walk stairs on certain days.”
Todt testified that his wife was the one who murdered their children and that he came home one day to find her with blood on her shirt. He added that Megan then killed herself and that he was trying to cover for his wife in the weeks after.
His appearance on the stand comes a day after jurors heard a recording of Todt confessing to the murders. In the clips, he admits to suffocating his daughter Zoe, suffocating and stabbing his two sons Aleks and Tyler, as well as suffocating his wife after he says she stabbed herself.
Todt added that he and Megan planned the deaths together after watching videos about the afterlife.
“We had salvation in mind,” he said in the video. “We love our kids.”
Todt added that he attempted to take his own life on 10 different occasions, but that he ultimately “chickened out.”
