The Florida father who massacred his wife, three children and the family dog inside their Disney vacation could be executed if found guilty.
A grand jury indicted Anthony Todt on four counts of first-degree murder on Tuesday, and he could be sentenced to death after the State’s Attorney elected to bring back the death penalty, three years after vowing she would no longer seek that form of punishment.
Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayayla announced her decision to reinstate the death penalty in a press conference on Tuesday.
“Despite my position on the death penalty, my death penalty review board, they move forward, they charge on, they have unanimously voted to seek death in this case,” Ayayla told reporters.
Todt, 45, told police that murdered his family and their dog Breezy, for which he faces an additional count of animal cruelty.
He had entered a plea of not guilty to the previous charges of second-degree murder, which the State’s Attorney charged him with to keep him behind bars while a grand jury deliberated the case.
A number of officers report that when they entered the Disney vacation home on January 13 to arrest Todt on a separate charge, he was found just a few feet away from the marital bedroom.
That is where he had stacked the decaying bodies of all four family members.
Police later found Megan Todt lying in her marital bed with her three-year-old daughter wrapped in blankets at her feet, and the two boys, 11 and 13, on a matres on the floor.
The boys and Megan were also covered with blankets.
“Upon entry to the residence, a male voice could be heard from the second floor of the residence, a foul odor emitting from inside the residence ( decomposing body) and Agents continued making announcements,” wrote Deputy Encarnacion of the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office in his report.
“A heavy set white male later identified as Anthony Todt was observed holding onto the railings of the second floor of the residence attempting to walk down the stairway. Anthony slowly walked down the stairway with the assistance of the Agents. Anthony was asked who else is in the residence which he stated his wife Meghan was upstairs and believes she is sleeping.”
He later noted that once in the ambulance, Todt told the EMTs “he took an unknown amount of medication (Benadryl) in an attempt to commit suicide.”
The Sun obtained records from the Office of the Medical Examiner last month that revealed Megan was stabbed twice while Aleksander and Tyler were each stabbed once, then left to rot for weeks inside the home.
Daughter Zoe was not stabbed.
It will not be known how the four were killed by the family patriarch until toxicology reports are released until later this year.
The reports do reveal however that all four victims had skin slippage and their skin had begun to brown, signs that the bodies had been laying dead for at least three weeks by the time they were discovered by police.
At the same time, new court records reveal that Anthony piled the bodies of his family members and their dog into a second floor bedroom, and told his arresting officer that Megan was asleep upstairs.
Megan, whose body was only tentatively identified, had been stabbed twice in the upper abdomen according to the report.
One of those wounds was 3.2 x 1.1 cm wound in the area of the body that houses the liver, right kidney, gallbladder, pancreas, and large and small intestine.
Her body was in a state of putrefactive decomposition, and she was wearing pants, a shirt and socks.
Aleksander, 13, and Tyler, 11, were both identified by records provided by their dentist.
The older brother was only wearing his underwear and had a single stab wound measuring 5.9 x 3 cm on his left abdomen.
Tyler, who was wearing pants, a shirt and underwear, had a 10.7 x 2.1 cm wound on the upper abdomen.
The youngest member of the family, 4-year-old Zoe, had no visible signs of injury and was only tentatively identified.
Medical examiners will now have to wait for the results of other tests before they can announce a cause of death for each person in the quadruple homicide.
It seems that the brutal massacre may have been fuelled by Anthony’s own financial ruin.
In court papers, he claims to have just $1500 in assets, coupled with debts totalling $200,000.
Anthony shared this for the first time last week in a bid to secure himself a public defender ahead of his upcoming trial.
Anthony’s money troubles started to amplify one year prior when he was evicted from one of his Connecticut offices.
He received an eviction notice for another Connecticut office on January 6 for his physical therapy practice.
Anthony also learned in November that the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, had began investigating him since April.
That investigation discovered he had filed multiple fraudulent claims to insurers and Medicare, which he admitted too when confronted with the findings of that probe.
He told federal agents that his wife was unaware and promised to cooperate with the investigation, but then stopped returning their calls.
Those agents and many of Anthony’s employees said they had not seen him for over a month at the time of the murders
Anthony had continued to work in Connecticut despite his wife Meghan and their three children relocating to their property in Florida.
The couple bought a home in Celebration back in 2005, a few years before they welcomed their first child.
Records show that they struggled at times to cover their mortgage and community fees at the gated community, located just one mile away from the Walt Disney World theme parks.
Liens were placed on their property on three occasions but in each instance the situation seemed to remedy itself a short while later.
Anthony began taking out loans around the same time as that first lien back in 2009, and at the time of the murders owned money to over 20 different companies and creditors.
There were also new financial troubles for the family around the time of the murder.
Anthony and Meghan were being evicted from a rental home in that same gated community, which they had signed a lease for one year prior.
That home, which boasted a large pool and separate apartment over the garage, was located just 500 feet from the property the couple had owned for 15 years.
A final eviction notice had been served on December 27 and posted at the rental property.
Court papers obtained by The Sun show that the electricity was cut at the property on that same date.
