Authorities say Anthony Todt, 50, murdered his wife, three children, and family dog at their Florida vacation home, then lived with their decomposing bodies for several weeks before he was arrested.
Investigators discovered the crime on January 13, 2020, when agents from the Department of Health and Human Services entered the home in Celebration, Florida, to arrest Todt on federal health-care fraud charges.
Highlights
- Anthony Todt murdered his wife, three children, and family dog at their Florida vacation home and lived with the decomposing bodies for weeks.
- Authorities found Todt disoriented and mumbling upstairs, unaware his wife and children were dead and decomposed in the home.
- The victims’ bodies were mummified and blackened due to decomposition, with the youngest child's body was initially missed on first search.
The community, located near Walt Disney World, is known for its quiet suburban atmosphere, a sharp contrast to the horror found inside the home.
Antony Todt was found living with the decomposing bodies of his wife, three children, and their dog
Image credits: Osceola County Sheriff's office
FBI agents said they had been watching the house for hours when Todt appeared briefly on the porch before going back inside.
When they entered the residence, they found him disoriented and weak. They also found the home to be in a bad state, and having a pungent odor.
The agents said they could “hear mumbling from inside the house” once they entered the home, and it “sounded like it was from the top of the stairs,” agent Melissa O’Neal said.
They found Todt in just a shirt and underwear, looking down at them from the second floor.
“He was still mumbling and needing a lot of assistance to get down, but saying don’t touch him because he would fall,” O’Neal said about Todt.
It took Todt some time to get down the stairs. Then, the agents asked him where his wife and three children were.
“He said Megan was upstairs sleeping and he also called for her, like she was alive,” O’Neal recalled.
“We asked where are the children? And he said, ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember if they went to a sleepover last night.’”
Agent Michael Phelps then stayed with Todt and O'Neal, and agent Jim Nguyen went to look for his family.
“We went upstairs to check for Megan and the children because we had called for her too and obviously there was no answer,” O'Neal said.
They found the door to the master bedroom to be open, and inside the room, agents discovered the bodies of his wife, 42-year-old Megan Todt, and their children, 13-year-old Aleksander and 11-year-old Tyler.
The family dog, Breezy, was also found dead.
FBI agents described the bodies as ‘black as leather’
“I could see feet, and you could tell it was somebody who was deceased. You could see the buttocks of another person,” O’Neal recalled.
Initially, the agents could not find four-year-old Zoe in the room, but they found her when they went back a second time.
O’Neal recalled her body being so badly decomposed that the agents could not see her during their initial search.
“We went back in the master bedroom, and she’s so little. She’s only like three or four. There's another little blanket at the foot of the bed...” O'Neal said.
She further said the bodies were all “black as leather.”
Reports from People magazine indicate that the victims’ bodies were mummified due to the length of time they had been there.
According to the Orange County Medical Examiner, Todt drugged his wife and two sons with Benadryl before stabbing them.
The children likely died from strangulation or suffocation, but the exact cause could not be confirmed because of the decomposition.
Todt initially confessed to the killings, claiming that he was saving his family from an impending apocalypse. Later, he changed his story, blaming his wife for the deaths.
In a letter from jail, he alleged that Megan killed the children by giving them “Benadryl pudding pie” when he was not home, and then took her own life by drinking a bottle of Benadryl and stabbing herself in the stomach.
Todt said Megan had found a new religious fervor, which led her to believe she was saving her family from the apocalypse, and propelled her to kill them. He claimed his initial confession was to protect her.
Todt was having financial challenges before he murdered his family
However, there was evidence that Todt’s financial troubles may have motivated the murders. Court records show that the family faced eviction a year before the murders and was $200,000 in debt.
Todt was under investigation for filing fraudulent insurance claims through his physical therapy business in Connecticut.
At the time, Todt had told them his wife was unaware of his alleged crime and assured them he would cooperate with their investigation.
They decided to arrest him when they did not hear from him again.
Just weeks before their deaths, the Todt boys performed in a school holiday concert, smiling as they accepted music awards. Those photos became the last public images of the children alive.
Image credits: Aleksander Memorial
After his arrest, Todt was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of animal cruelty. A Florida jury later found him guilty on all charges.
He is serving a life sentence.