Facing mounting financial pressure, Anthony Todt of Colchester killed his wife, three children and family dog at their house in Celebration, Florida sometime in late December 2019.

On Wednesday January 15, 2020 Anthony Todt confessed to the killing of his family and their dog.

Authorities took Todt, 44, into custody when they encountered him at the home at 202 Reserve Place Monday. He was arrested Wednesday on a warrant charging him with multiple counts of homicide and felony animal cruelty.

Todt killed his wife, Megan, 42; his sons, Alek, 13, and Tyler, 11; and his daughter, Zoe, 4. Anthony also killed the family dog, Breezy.

No one has explicitly said how Todt killed his family members, who he said are believed to have been dead at least two weeks, since the end of December.

Just before Christmas, an eviction notice was filed in a Florida court for the same address as the death investigation. The documents list Megan and Anthony Todt as living in the home at the time.

According to the documents, the Todts signed a one-year lease in May 2019 but missed a December payment of more than $4,000. The lease agreement also lists an email for Anthony Todt connected to a physical therapy practice he runs in Colchester, Family Physical Therapy.

Dec. 29: Family Member Requested Well-Being Check

They went there on Dec. 29 after they received a request from an out-of-state family member to do a well-being check. The relative said the family had the flu and she had not heard from them in two days. No one answered the door and the blinds were closed, he said, and deputies found nothing odd and left.

Gibson said deputies were at the house two other times in the last few weeks but found nothing out of the ordinary and left. As it was just a welfare check they couldn’t just break the door down as people have asked. Doesn’t work like that, they must have a warrant. Also keep in mind the family was known to go on random vacations and just up and leave. If they had broken down the door the first time, they may have found something but anything found without a warrant could potentially be thrown out in court and compromise the ongoing investigation.

Jan. 9: Federal Agents Contact Authorities in Florida

They again checked the property on Jan. 9 after federal agents told local authorities that they were trying to contact the family, but again they found nothing suspicious and left. No one in the neighborhood reported an odor.

Jan. 13: Federal Agents Have a Warrant

Deputies were at the house Monday January 13, 2020 helping federal agents who were serving an arrest warrant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which has been investigating Todt for an alleged health-care fraud scheme through his physical therapy business in Connecticut, Gibson and court records show. In an affidavit made public Wednesday, federal officials accused Todt of fraudulently billing tens of thousands of dollars worth of therapy appointments that never actually took place. This time when they conducted the safety check at the house, they found the bodies.

Todt continues to cooperate with the investigation, Gibson said. He was taken to the hospital after the bodies were discovered because he had said he wanted to harm himself and may have taken Benadryl.

In addition to the federal investigation detailed Wednesday, Anthony Todt is under investigation by Attorney General William Tong’s office under the state False Claims Act, which also addresses fraudulent medical assistance claims by providers, a spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday. His license to practice physical therapy in Connecticut also expired at the end of September due to non-renewal, state records show.

The family was being evicted from their Florida home at the time they were killed and the landlords for Family Physical Therapy’s Westchester office began the process of evicting the business from its Middletown Road location last week. In both cases, rent had not been paid for December or January.

The three children were home-schooled.

Robert Todt – “Following Footsteps”

Believe it or not, Anthony Todt has a strange and unusual past. Apparently his very own father attempted to have his mother murdered when he was a child. He was about his youngest daughters age (maybe 4) when his father asked a man to kill his mother. Robert Todt was living not a double life, but multiple lives with different women. These women probably knew nothing of each other, he intended on keeping it that way. When Robert Todt realized he couldn’t have his cake and eat it too, he knew someone had to go.

So he approached a 19-year-old named John Chairmonte, one of his former students who had significant learning disabilities, and told him about “an important assignment.

He planned to be out on a particular night, and told Chairmonte to sneak into the home’s front bedroom and kill the person lying asleep in the bed. And Chairmonte followed the instructions of his former teacher — almost.

Chairmonte was struggling with addiction, and was drunk as he walked through the Todt house. He was clumsy, and he bumped into something as he made his way to the front bedroom, waking Loretta Todt.

She sort of sat up right as he fired the gun, He fired [at] her at a little bit of a distance and the bullet went into her left eye and he took off. Chairmonte, still drunk, ran out of the house. Overwhelmed, he stopped to vomit on the front lawn.

But one thing was clear: Loretta Todt had been shot in the head. She was rushed to the hospital and survived. The bullet pierced her left eye and it lodged near her brain. “She should’ve been dead.”

Robert Todt’s plot had ensnared his oldest child, too. Four-year-old Tony heard his mother scream before she was shot in the middle of the night. The incident left young Tony Todt with scars of his own. The boy was plagued by nightmares about what he’d seen.

With a missing eye and a bullet still sitting in her skull, Loretta Todt watched the lengthy trial against her husband and remained convinced of his innocence.

The man was charming, and he had tricked everyone for so long. He’d tricked his wife, his underage girlfriend, his fiancee from the neighboring town and the priest who had planned to marry the two. His ability to even keep up with all of his lies is amazing.

Conviction

Chairmonte was 20 when he pleaded guilty to shooting Loretta Todt “in the eye” as part of the plot “orchestrated by her husband,” the newspaper reported. Loretta Todt lost her eye in the shooting. Chairmonte was Robert’s former student. The article says Chairmonte cut a deal to testify against Robert, so he got only four years, whereas Robert ended up with a conviction and prison term of 10-20 on attempted murder, criminal solicitation, and conspiracy charges.

Robert Todt’s wife, Loretta, moved away and eventually accepted the prosecution’s version of events. She started a new life — she divorced Robert Todt, remarried and raised her two young children in Connecticut. The children then grew up and started families of their own.

Today, Robert Todt, Tony Todt’s father, is still alive. In fact, he’s free, active on Facebook, remarried, and he maintains social media links with some members of the Todt family, but not Tony.

For decades, Robert Todt’s attempt to murder his wife seemed like a closed chapter, an incredibly traumatic time that the rest of the family had lived through and moved past.

Until, according to police, Tony Todt grew up to follow in his father’s footsteps.