Man charged in family's deaths claims his wife killed their kids and then herself

ORLANDO, Fla. — Anthony Todt, the man arrested after the bodies of his wife and children were found at a Celebration home in January, blamed his wife for the killings in a recent letter — claiming she poisoned the kids with a tainted dessert, murdered them while they slept, then took her own life.

“Long story short, she gave them the Benadryl/Tylenol PM pie, separated them, woke up at 11:30 (p.m.), stabbed and then suffocated each one,” Todt wrote in a letter to his estranged father, Robert Todt. “At the news of this I ran to the bathroom and puked — I was weak.”

Todt’s claims about the deaths of his wife, 42-year-old Megan Todt, and the couple’s children — Alek, 13; Tyler, 11; and Zoe, 4 — came on page 16 of a 27-page letter dated June 19.

It was addressed to Todt’s father in Westfield, Massachusetts, but copied as evidence by the Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office, which released it to the Orlando Sentinel on Monday in response to a public record request.

The letter could shed light on Todt’s defense at trial, though in the letter he urges his father to keep the missive “in confidence.” Attorneys representing Todt for the Ninth Circuit Public Defender’s Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“I would have called a press conference months ago, but I was told by my attorneys, who happen to be some of the best in the state, that that was not the appropriate way to handle the case,” Todt wrote. “So I just sit in idle, making a list of lawsuits (for) when I get out.”

A grand jury in February indicted Anthony Todt on four counts of first-degree murder. The Sheriff’s Office has said he confessed to the killings — though the substance of his confession has not yet been made public — and State Attorney Aramis Ayala has said her office will seek the death penalty.

In his letter, Todt writes that he is “10000% INNOCENT of all these preposterous charges” and wants to “correct all inaccuracies” from “the creative writing machine,” a reference to the news media, and the Sheriff’s Office, which he says wanted “to score a big win” by arresting him.

Todt portrays himself as a doting, if flawed, husband and Megan Todt as sickly and in need of constant care, having for years suffered from a wide variety of illnesses, including Lyme disease and depression. Her illnesses prompted the family’s move to Florida from Connecticut, he wrote.

“I was determined she was going to get better, and she was, though the good days were amazing but the ‘bad days’ were even more depressing for her,” he wrote.

The day of the killings, he wrote, was a “phenomenal” day at their home on Reserve Place, as Megan Todt woke up without pain for the first time in months and the family spent time together.

Todt said he went to a nearby condo they owned after dinner to do “maintenance tasks” and retrieve a Mickey Mouse necklace that Zoe had been begging for, intending to stay the night there, but returned to the house after realizing he’d arrived at the condo without his tools.

At home, he said he found his sons playing basketball and joined them, then sent them inside when it got dark.

“They said mom was preparing dessert and was I going to join them,” he wrote. “I said ‘no’ as I was trying to lose some weight, etc.”

He said he walked back to the condo and sat in the driver’s seat of his minivan “to take a small siesta,” but slept into the morning, waking in a panic because he usually did therapy with his wife daily at 4 or 4:30 a.m. He wrote that he rushed home “fearful of the scolding.”

Inside, he wrote he found the remnants of a pie, which “looked very good, as all my wife’s desserts were, but smelled horrible” — adding, “turns out it was a Benadryl pudding pie.”

He claimed he found his wife at the top of the stairs, which is when she confessed to having killed their children. He said he discovered the kids dead in their beds with no sign of struggle, and he wiped their faces with a wash cloth and “worked to make them look more comfortable.”

As he did so, he said Megan Todt calmly checked on him, asking if he was OK.

“No … you murdered our children,” he said he replied, to which she said his wife responded, “I released their souls.”

He went on to describe a chaotic scene in which Megan Todt stabbed herself in her abdomen in their bedroom and drank a family-sized bottle of Benadryl as he begged her to let him call for help and she begged him to help her die. The letter says he couldn’t find the phones.

“I have to be with my babies,” she said, according to Anthony Todt’s account.

He wrote that he “tried CPR until I physically couldn’t anymore.”

After her death, he wrote that he moved the bodies to a bedroom and laid them “in comfortable sleeping positions,” covered them “for warmth and protection” and placed rosaries in their hands. He wrote that he later attempted suicide several times — “yet another thing I sucked at.”

He said he spent the weeks that followed in a barely remembered haze — he doesn’t say where — before Jan. 13, when federal agents and Osceola deputies came to the family home arrest him in an alleged insurance fraud scheme, leading to the discoveries of the bodies.

What drove Tony Todt to allegedly slaughter his family in Florida remains a mystery, but his father and sister look to the past for clues

Todt apparently wrote the letter in response to his father’s participation in a February report by the Hartford Courant, in which Robert “Bob” Todt discussed the traumatic impact of the 1980 shooting of Anthony Todt’s mother — which he witnessed as a 4-year-old boy.

“There’s only so much trauma a young kid can take at that point,” said Robert Todt, who as a teacher was accused of hiring a student to kill his wife, Loretta. He was convicted at trial and served time in prison.

Though Robert Todt remains adamant he had nothing to do with the crime, he told the Courant he was away from home that night due to an extramarital affair, which left his family vulnerable.

“I offer you forgiveness for not being there to protect us that night, March 19, 1980,” Anthony Todt wrote in the letter. “Although we were both not there (on) our respective nights in question, for different reasons, I cannot forgive myself if I don’t first forgive you.”

The younger Todt wrote that he plans to start a nonprofit in his family’s memory — “MATZB2019: Alive and at Peace” — to provide resources for the chronically ill. The acronym combines the first initials of Megan Todt, the children and the family’s dog Breezy, who he is also accused of killing.

“I know that I need to work on the name,” he added.

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