Lawyer calls Todt motive ‘reckoning of apocalyptic nature’ as judge rules to exclude fraud allegations
An Osceola County judge ruled Tuesday that prosecutors can’t mention the federal investigation against Anthony Todt at his murder trial, after Todt’s lawyers argued there was no evidence it was tied to the killing of his family.
Osceola deputy sheriffs and federal agents found Todt inside the home with his dead wife, children and dog in January 2020 as they tried serving an arrest warrant on healthcare fraud charges through his Connecticut-based physical therapy practice. Deputies said he later confessed to the murders.
Though the details in Todt’s alleged confession have not been released in its entirety, Orange-Osceola Assistant Public Defender Peter Schmer told Circuit Judge Keith Carsten that Todt emphatically denied it being in response to that case when speaking to deputies.
“Mr. Todt went on at great length to talk about the motivation for the killings being this reckoning of an apocalyptic nature,” Schmer said. “... [The fraud allegations] had nothing to do with the killings, so the state can’t tie in the link with the allegations in Connecticut.”
Prosecutor Danielle Pinnell didn’t object to excluding the fraud allegations from the trial, saying her team never planned to tie that case to the murder.
Todt is charged with first-degree murder and animal cruelty in the killings of his 42-year-old wife Megan Todt; the couple’s children Alek, 13, Tyler, 11, and Zoe, 4; and their dog Breezy. Meanwhile, the federal case against him was dismissed in February as prosecutors await the outcome of the murder trial.
Tuesday’s nearly four-hour long hearing hoped to settle pending motions before jury selection, which is set to begin Nov. 1. Whether to include Todt’s alleged confession is still in dispute as his lawyers argue he wasn’t mentally coherent when deputies interviewed him nor was he properly advised of his rights.
Two toxicology experts were called by both sides to testify to Todt’s mental state after he overdosed on Benadryl in what records indicate was a suicide attempt. Bruce Goldberger, medical director of the UF Health Pathology Laboratories Clinical Toxicology Laboratory, said Todt seemed “unwell” in his two interviews with authorities but that his consistent statements suggest he was aware of what he was being asked.
Susan Skolly-Danziger, a clinical pharmacist and a toxicology expert who testified for prosecutors, agreed on the consistency of the statements but said his behavior were that of someone who had suffered an overdose.
“I heard delays in answering questions due to mental clouding and problems with memory,” Skolly-Danziger testified on behalf of the defense. “I heard someone who had severe dryness [in their voice], like a mouth full of marbles ... and had difficulty forming words.”
While never publicly released, court documents suggest he told deputies he strangled his family to death, though he later accused Megan Todt in a jailhouse call of drugging their children and later “stabbing and suffocating them.”
Tuesday’s hearing follows a series of granted motions from Todt’s attorneys. Earlier this month, Carsten prohibited referring to the killings as murder and the house where Todt’s family was found dead “the murder scene.”
He also allowed Todt to appear in court unshackled and forbid the mention of his last name as the German word for “dead,” but will permit the jury to see photos of the victims’ bodies despite protests from the defense.
Carsten hopes to come to a decision about Todt’s confession in the coming days but did not discard delaying the trial even further, calling next week’s trial date a “placeholder.”
