Anthony Todt: The Celebration Slayer
Like their adopted hometown of Celebration, Florida, the family’s perfect exterior hid some serious problems.
Celebration, Florida, was designed to be a kind of nostalgic utopia. Located on the outskirts of Orlando, the town was established by part of the Walt Disney Corp. to resemble a kind of idealized suburb of the 1950s. Its homes and neighborhoods were designed according to the principles of New Urbanism, with compact, walkable downtowns and plenty of public parks and squares. Disney’s new “town” (really a private development where only landowners can vote) would be free of the “purgatory of fast growth and fast food” and other blights plaguing big cities. Celebration would be, the slick brochures promised, happy, peaceful, and, most of all, safe.
It was probably this promise of the idyllic life that drew the Todt family to Celebration. In 2017, they sold their Colchester, Connecticut, home and relocated to the Orlando area. They rented a home in Celebration and bought a condo in a nearby suburb. Anthony would fly back to Connecticut to continue running his physical therapy practice, while his wife, Megan, stayed in Celebration with their three children: Alek, Tyler, and Zoe, along with the family’s little dog, Breezy.
For the next couple of years, things seemed to be going well for the Todt family. Social media pictures showed a happy family enjoying life at the beach, soccer games, and piano recitals. Megan, herself a licensed physical therapist, homeschooled the kids, who friends and neighbors described as happy and friendly. While it might have been challenging for Anthony to commute across the country for his job, the family seemed to be handling it well.
But like their adopted hometown of Celebration, the Todts’ happy exterior hid some ugly truths.
In November 2019, that exterior began to crumble. Anthony’s physical therapy practice was being investigated for fraudulently billing Medicaid and private insurers for services he did not provide. On one day, investigators surveilling his office saw that no patients entered or left. Yet he billed various insurers for 36 hours of physical therapy services for that day.
In looking into Anthony’s finances, they found that the Todt family spent lavishly. Besides the two homes in Florida and airfare every week, they frequently went on vacations, bought expensive clothes, and otherwise lived far beyond their means.
To keep up with his spending, Anthony had taken out 20 short-term, high-interest loans. He was over $200,000 in debt.
When investigators questioned him on Nov. 21, he confessed to the fraud. He insisted that Megan knew nothing about what he was doing and that he had been trying to keep the financial issues a secret from her — which is why he did nothing to reign in the family’s spending.
However, he was not arrested right away. So Anthony went back to Celebration to be with Megan and the kids — now 13, 11, and 4.
A month went by. Just before Christmas, Anthony told Megan’s family that the family would be going on another vacation, so they might be out of touch for a while.
But Megan’s sister felt something wasn’t right. On Dec. 29, after no one had seen or heard from them for almost a week, she contacted the sheriff’s office in Osceola County and asked them to do a welfare check.
An officer was dispatched to the Todts’ Celebration home, but when no one answered the door, he left. To police, it looked like the family was just out of town.
Text messages were still being sent out from Megan’s phone. On Jan. 6, a neighbor in the same condo building as the Todts’ texted Megan to tell her that an eviction notice had been posted on their door. Megan texted back simply, “OK, thanks.”
But Megan’s family was getting increasingly worried. They called the police again.
On Jan. 10, two officers were dispatched, one to the condo and one to the Celebration rental home. At the condo, they found the eviction notice still on the door, but nothing else suspicious.
In Celebration, they again knocked but got no answer. They found another eviction notice in the mailbox and the family’s minivan parked nearby.
But in running a background check on Anthony, they found out that he was wanted by the Feds for fraud. There was a definite possibility that he had packed up his family and fled. Investigators staked out the Todt homes.
On Jan. 13, they saw Anthony walk into his Celebration home. They knocked on the door, but he didn’t answer. Finding the door unlocked, they entered the home.
As they did, they noticed a foul smell. The officers immediately recognized it as the smell of decomposition.
Anthony came down the stairs to greet them, so officers asked him where Megan and the children were. He said the kids were probably at a sleepover at a friend’s house, and that Megan was asleep upstairs. He called up to her, as though to wake her up.
Officers arrested him on the fraud charges, then followed their noses to the master bedroom.
There, they found the decomposing bodies of Megan and the three children. The children were wrapped in blankets on a mattress on the floor, curled up as though asleep. Their beloved dog, Breezy, was lying with them, also dead.
Megan was on the bed, wrapped in blankets. The bedsheets looked as though Anthony had been sleeping in the bed with her body.
Based on the rate of decomposition, the medical examiner estimated that they had been dead for three weeks.
At autopsy, it was revealed that Megan and the boys had been stabbed to death. Zoe, it seems, had been smothered. Toxicology reports would indicate a high — but not lethal — dose of diphenhydramine (the active ingredient in Benadryl) in their systems.
Anthony told the arresting officers he had just drunk a bottle of Benadryl in an attempt to kill himself. He was rushed to the hospital and his stomach pumped. However, the amount of diphenhydramine in his system was far below lethal levels.
Under questioning, he confessed to killing his family. He said he’d tried to poison them with Benadryl, but it hadn’t worked, so he’d used a knife, and in Zoe’s case, a plastic bag, to finish the grim job.
But later, Anthony recanted his confession, now claiming that Megan was the actual killer. He now said he’d gone to his condo the night of Dec. 23 and slept in his van. He said the next morning, the van hadn’t started, so he walked home. When he went inside, he said, he saw the remains of a blueberry pie on the counter, which he said smelled bad.
He said that Megan then came down the stairs and told him she’d had a vision of the end of the world, and had killed the kids in order to “free their souls.” She then stabbed herself, he claimed, before drinking a bottle of Benadryl, then stabbing herself again. Anthony, a large man and a practicing physical therapist, was apparently unable to stop Megan, who suffered from chronic pain. He also didn’t call 911 because he left his cell phone at the condo, and he didn’t think his neighbors were home — at least according to his latest statement to police.
As of this writing, Anthony has pled not guilty to the murders of his family.
Yet he seems to follow the pattern of a specific type of family annihilator: the civil reputable type. This is the type that gets the most media attention, due to the shock value of the crimes they commit. Civil reputable killers usually put up a false front to the world — even their spouses and families — of a successful, happy life. Their very identities become entwined with their status and reputation. They usually “snap” after something happens that threatens to expose their falsehoods — such as being arrested for fraud. Other examples of this type of family annihilator are John List and Christian Longo.
However, unlike List and Longo, Todt didn’t flee and start a new life. Like Ronald Gene Simmons, he stayed with the bodies of his victims.
Since he hasn’t had his day in court, Anthony Todt is still presumed innocent. As of this writing, no trial date has been set, but I, for one, will be watching closely when it is.
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