Between Christmas and New year, 2019, nestled within reach of the world of Disney, was a small and picturesque town called Celebration. But it tainted the illusion of perfection with the discovery of a slain family called the Todts.
Mum, Meghan aged 41, along with their three children, Alex aged 13, Tyler aged 11 and Zoe, a babe at the tender age of 4 and the family dog called Breezy.
The father, Anthony, arrested and confessed to the murders. Sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Police uncovered during the investigation, a story which didn’t fit the external paradigm of the Todt family, it didn’t prepare the world what was to come. The harmony of the Todt household was obscured by lies and deception.
Let’s dive in.
Anthony and Megan were both physiotherapist, Megan also was a practicing yoga instructor. The couple met and dated for eight years while running a successful practice in Colchester, Connecticut before getting married.
After Megan fell pregnant, she became an-at-home-mom, focussing all of her time on raising the children, leaving Anthony to run the business. Well known throughout the family’s neighbourhoods with warmth and friendless. The Todts lived the perfect family life. School, after-school clubs and activities on the weekend. Anthony, who went by the shortened name Tony to his friends, would volunteer and coach the little league soccer. They attended well the children with music and arts clubs and an array of sports clubs.
The family went to Florida to live in the sunshine state. After finding the dream home in a Disney inspired and developed town called Celebration, costing the family $5000 per month. The town was very close to the America dream. Wide open spaces, lush green parkland, long perfectly manicured lawns with expansive front porches to give that warm American feel to the place.
What Disney failed to address was the stressful life of the 21st century. People aren’t that peoply anymore. Homeowners from Celebration, like any town across the developed world, pull into their drive, walk through the side door to spend the entire weekend pretending they weren’t home.
The town is located in central Florida and doesn't have seasons. They trucked leaves in during the fall and fake snow drifted on the sidewalks and parklands around Christmas. Even the parks had birdsong echoing through the trees via speakers hidden in the undergrowth.
People came from all over, but rarely found peace. Often the trouble they were running from had the habit of following them, and the Todt family was no exception. Pretty soon after the move, cracks in the façade showed.
Megan contracted Lyme disease after being bitten by a mosquito prior to the move. Then, followed bouts of depression, she withdrew from public life. Becoming insular and absent from her usual circle of friends, which for Megan was very out of character. It didn’t take long for Anthony to follow suit. The phone stopped ringing after a while. Anthony had confided in a friend stating Megan, wrongly diagnosed and by the time doctors had figured Megan’s diagnosis out, something was very wrong with her, something about her liver. The move to Florida was motivated by this.
Anthony carried on his business in Connecticut, traveling each week to and from Florida, keeping the family in the rented house.
The father of three was stressed. He had gained significant weight and, with all the stress and the extra pounds, diabetes reared its ugly head.
The Todt’s had many problems, including the stress of Anthonys commute.
In the April, the authorities began investigating the clinic Anthony and Megan owned. It had become clear Anthony was billing patient insurance companies for appointments and treatments when the patient had been long discharged.
Authorities had contacted patients to discover Anthony had discharged them from his care, but carried on invoicing the insurance companies.
Two financial intuitions had filed lawsuits naming Anthony as the primary defendant.
When special agents from the FBI came to the clinic and shut it down, they showed the staff the door. The money the Todts owed the staff was in the hands of the FBI. Anthony played the whole thing down. Laughing and joking with the staff and the investigators, cracking open cans of beer. The behaviour seemed odd; some staff had seen the writing on the wall with Anthony’s increased erratic behaviour. Missing appointments cancelled appointments at the last minute. The patients and families of the children who loved attending Anthony’s clinic had been complaining for some months prior to the FBI arriving at the clinic.
On this day, after all the staff left the building, Anthony admitted the fraud to the agents from the FBI. He mitigated Megan from the crime, stating his wife and children knew nothing about the crime, as they were living in Florida. Anthony stated he had overreached his line of credit and lying to the insurance companies was easy, like taking candy from a child. He didn't have a way of paying back the $100,000 he owed.
As Anthony had admitted to the fraud, it satisfied agents Anthony would comply with any conditions set. With thanksgiving around the corner, they allowed Anthony to travel back to Florida and spend some time with his family. He agreed to return to Connecticut on December 8th, he needed to take on the services of an attorney but he never showed.
The evidence was damning and what happened in the family home was up for debate.
The family would return to Connecticut for Christmas to enjoy the snow and have friends and family over. In 2019, after the investigators had raided the clinic, the family opted to stay in Florida. The Todts absence at Christmas was noted.
Police were called several times to conduct a welfare check on the Todt family after Christmas. With no sign of disturbance, without the right court appointed warrants, police were powerless to do anything. The calls kept coming into the local Sheriff’s office to do a welfare check. Apart from driving to the house, knocking on the door and walk around the property, there was little else the police could do.
Police had kept tabs on the house, regularly driving to the house to check it out. A notice appeared on the front door. It was an eviction notice from the landlord. Police made enquires and interviewed the owner of the property. Anthony had not paid the monthly rent for some time and now owed the landlord a significant sum of money. The landlord had no choice but to evict the family due to desperation.
The house appeared abandoned as the mail piled up by the front door. On the morning of January 13th, weird text messages were dropping into people’s inboxes from Anthony.
Agents from the FBI parked outside of the house, unaware of the repeated welfare checks the local sheriff had been conducting. Anthony Todt, by some stroke of luck, appeared on the porch, which surprised the officers in the car. They thought the house was empty. Anthony looked a little unkept, he appeared to be shaking. The police went back to the landlord and got a key. With the permission of the landlord, the police allowed a lawful entry into the property. Seasoned officers knew immediately something was up in the house. The stench permeating the property told officers there was a body in the property.
The officers raced through the house, trying to locate the children. Anthony appeared at the top of the stairs still shaking but saying nothing.
Police discovered Megan, stabbed to death, clutching a crucifix. The bodies of the children would be found soon. Zoe, because of her age, had decomposed at such a rate, it was difficult to determine her body and the cause of death. Police also discovered the family dog, Breezy, also dead.
They had discovered large amounts of Benadryl in a toxicology report in the children’s bodies. Multiple stab wounds in the abdomen with tissue beneath their fingernails showing they put up a struggle, the children not dying quickly were eventually smothered and died of asphyxiation. There was only one suspect.
In 2022, Todt was convicted of the murders and given whole life sentences for the murder of his family.
Todt at the police interview had changed his story so many times, it was difficult to decided what was truthful or not.
Familicide, where a family is slain by another member of the family nothing new. History is littered with families killed by a close family member. Something often centres around money and infidelity—with the Todts, mental health, money issues with the criminal element to the cash may have given them no option but to make way for an exit far too early in life.
Stress and mental health issues played a big part in the killings. I support the idea Megan knew about the crimes. Depressed after her Lyme disease infection and mismanagement of the diagnosis. They were close, loved each other. A husband myself who loves my wife deeply, there are no secrets. I couldn't keep this from my wife if I stole money. Megan must have known the house they were living in Florida was costing the earth and there was going to be a point the money would run out. Anthony’s weight gain and obvious stress, along with a diabetes diagnosis, must have opened and line of conversation between husband and wife.
With the clutching of crucifixes, I believe the family reckoned of a meeting in the afterlife, which has been widely reported. I believe the Todts had entered some perverted suicide pact. Anthony killing Megan, sparing his wife from the torment of seeing her children die. He drugged the kids and then systematically stabbing them and smothering them to death. But even this notion is a tough concept to swallow. Megan was a committed mother. She loved her children without question and to her friends, although in the distance, they saw no change in Megan; not the level Antony was declaring.
Anthony had taken dose after dose of Benadryl, with little effect. The cold light of day and his own selfish preservation prevented him from pursuing his own suicide. A broken man, despair would have set in while his family slowly rotted around him, knowing at some point police were going to enter the property.
After being sentenced, Anthony wrote to his father. Most of the text was written in capitols with some passages underlined of a story which had completely changed.
Initially, in the police interviews, Anthony stated he was looking for a piece of jewellery for his daughter, Zoe, in the family condo up the road. He fell asleep in the condo while leaving the back door to the family home open. When he woke in the morning and entered the property, he came across Megan; she had killed the children, all slain in their beds. In the letter to his father, the story he told authorities had changed completely.
He blamed the deaths on his children at the hands of their mother. Megan, because of her mental illness, in a fit of despair, killed the children and then committed suicide. She begged Anthony to not call the police and soon she would join them. Anthony didn’t wax lyrical about the children in the way a genuine father would be grieving. He mentioned about cleaning them and laying them to rest on his bed where Megan was now laying. She stabbed herself in the abdomen multiple times. While her life was slowly ebbing away, she tried to use Anthony’s hand to smother herself.
This story isn’t even plausible. When someone is dying from stab wound to the abdomen, pain would be intolerable even with high doses of opiates. It would take some time before massive blood loss had taken its toll. Pain would have consumed Megan.
When a corner investigates a death, they’re not just looking for causation, but methods which the person had died. Megan died of multiple stab wounds. Receiving the wounds via a violent and frenzied attack which were at an angle where it would have been impossible for Megan to do herself.
Anthony mentioned previously that he wished to honour his wife Megan and keep her soul alive inside of him, yet this rambling piece of drivel runs her into the ground. Blaming her for a whole variety of everything wrong in Anthony’s life. She would wake in the middle of the night with a heart rate of 180 (not possible by the way, if this were the case, Megan would have been diagnosed with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, this would unlikely wake you during the night), she had contracted drug induced hepatitis (not possible, hepatitis is a blood-borne pathogen, if this was the case, they would have had a legal claim to contaminated needles). Megan had lost all of her feminine features (whatever the hell this means). Megan was in control of the finances, Anthony was unaware of the embezzlement with patient billing and yet in this letter to his father, Anthony stated Megan could do nothing. When he came home to Florida at the weekends, he would bathe her, cook all the meals for the week and provide a continuous process of physiotherapy for his wife.
What I am guessing is, Anthony is laying the groundwork for him to mitigate himself from any wrongdoing. The home invasion potential would never sway with any jury. A place such as Celebration where crime was low to have a random house invasion with nothing stolen or destroyed with a whole family, less the father murdered, is preposterous. Blaming the dead mother of his children who can’t defend herself is the thinking of a pathetic excuse of a man soiling the very nature of his wife. At some point, Anthony has to take accountability and responsibility for his actions.
To gain insight into the level of stress in Anthony’s life prior to the murders. Professionally, Anthony was a physiotherapist. In the medical world, we refer to them colloquially as physioterrorist; medical professionals who focus on skeletomuscular function. In twenty years, I have never come across an obese physio. Yet here we have a well-known practitioner who gained an alarming amount of weight. Something I know a lot about and something we need to dive deeper to understand this further.
His weight gain in a later part of his life shows to me Anthony was feeling a sense of lack. The sudden weight gain had developed into type 2 diabetes, which is unusual for someone who had been fit for most of their life. His wife had withdrawn, was depressed. He missed her. He said this to a friend, ‘I miss my bubbly wife.’ This lack in his life would have left a hole. Some people would turn to another for comfort, love, and nurturing. Men, through time immemorial, have done this when their wife’s attention is focussed on bringing up his children. The abandonment Anthony felt with the mounting money worries. Is it any wonder he turned to food to find some kind of self-soothing?
His eating would have become something consuming. His level of toxic shame would have been obvious to him each time he passed a mirror or shop window. Every ounce of weight is an ounce of pain, right? The bottom of this sliding scale of mental health is suicide ideation. I know this because it’s where I skirt each day. The level of self-loathing every time I look in the mirror, when I walk past a shop window, when the negative self-talk gains momentum and I am sat there still eating. The only thing left, well, you know?
Anthony had attempted suicide eight times; a medical professional who was using Benadryl. This would be the equivalent of cutting your wrist with a blunted butter knife. There are so many failures in Anthony, and I won’t give him the dignity of harmonising with his suicide attempts. I call b******t on them. I know he wanted to die, and I kind of support the suicide pact. When there is no hope, what else is there when mental health concerns are at play? What Anthony failed to do was kill himself after he killed the family.
Antony, in his letter to his father, also mentioned about a book. Prison guards suggested Anthony pen a book when he got out of prison, something thankfully, Anthony Todt will never do.
And for me, as awful, this sordid, gruesome tale of murder has taken a family away from friends and loved ones who are still missed; but the one thing you must never do is kill the dog, Anthony!
As a writer, the one thing I would never do is kill the dog in any of my stories. This piece of s**t killed their dog. If there is a place on the other side for a******s like Anthony Todt, who murdered their family, killing the dog requires another level of damnation.
I was pleased to read the judge gave him another year tagged on the end of his whole life sentence, that ones for Breezy.
Next week, I have a doozy for you.
David Fuller, murderer and necrophile. It will be stomach churningly gripping.
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And remember.
Stay frosty.
Jon
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