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Anthony Todt Takes Stand, Says He Was Covering Up For Wife When He Confessed To Killing Kids
Anthony Todt is accused of killing his wife Megan and three children – Alek, 13, Tyler, 11, and Zoe, 4 – in 2019.
Accused family murderer Anthony Todt took the stand Wednesday, telling jurors that his wife Megan, not him, was responsible for the murder of their three children.
His testimony came a day after jurors watched video of an alleged confession he made to investigators after his arrest, during which he revealed he'd spent weeks at a home in Celebration, Florida with the decomposing bodies of his dead family, Law&Crime reports.
Todt, 46, is accused of killing his wife and their three children in the Disney-developed community of Celebration, Florida in 2019. He has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of his wife Megan, 42, and their children Alek, 13, Tyler, 11, and Zoe, 4. He also faces an animal cruelty charge for the death of the family dog, Breezy.
The police interview video appears to show the father admit that during the time of the murders until his arrest, he spent weeks living alongside the bodies while attempting to die by suicide. He said he unsuccessfully tried to kill himself by overdosing on Benadryl and stabbing himself, though he said he “chickened out,” the Orlando Sentinel reports. Todt echoed that statement during his testimony Wednesday.
“I tried other means,” he said. “I tried at least three episodes of Benadryl.”
In the video shown to jurors, Todt allegedly stated that during some of the Benadryl suicide attempts, he would sleep next to Megan’s corpse.
He also said in the video that he killed his family with his wife’s support, which is in line with prosecutors' opening statement that he said he'd made a death pact with his wife over fears of an apocalypse. In that alleged confession, he said he even killed Megan after she unsuccessfully tried to kill herself.
But when he took the stand on Wednesday, Todt claimed that it was his wife who killed the kids and that he wasn't even present.
"She had blood on her shirt and after that, after I said a few uncolored words to her, I went and discovered the kids. I went into the rooms and found them dead," he testified, WESH 2 reports. He claimed that Megan had Lyme disease and depression as a result of miscarriages.
When questioned about why he initially took responsibility for murdering his entire family, he said he was trying to cover for his wife. Todt, who has pleaded not guilty to the slayings, also previously wrote in a letter to his father that his wife killed their kids before killing herself, the Sentinel reported last year. Notorious family annihilator Chris Watts, who murdered his wife and two daughters in Colorado in 2019, also infamously tried to blame the murders of their children on his wife, but later admitted to killing them all.
Todt was already under investigation by the FBI and agents with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for health care fraud when his family was found dead. Todt, who ran his own physical therapy practice with Megan, allegedly billed insurance companies for physical therapy services he never performed, Click Orlando reported. Their practice, Family Physical Therapy in Colchester, Connecticut, was raided a month before the murders and Todt allegedly admitted to falsely billing Medicaid, saying neither his wife nor his employees were aware of the fraud, CNN reported. An eviction notice had also recently been filed in a Florida court for the home where the bodies were found, according to NBC Connecticut.
