Pensacola, Fl
A man accused of killing his family at their home in Florida claimed that it was his wife who then killed her three children.
The Orlando Sentinel newspaper reported Monday that 44-year-old Anthony Todd claimed in a 27-page letter written from Osceola County Prison to his father in Massachusetts. Todd has been imprisoned since his arrest in January. Prosecutors copied the letter as evidence and released it to the newspaper in response to a request for public records.
In the letter, Todd claimed that his 13-year-old wife, Megan, put Alec, 11-year-old Tyler, and 4-year-old Zoe to sleep with desserts contaminated with pandadryl, then stabbed and choked them. He said he learned of the deaths after returning home from doing maintenance work in a nearby residence they own.
“In news of that, I ran to the bathroom and played down – I was weak,” Todd wrote.
Todd said his wife was still alive when he returned home and confessed to killing the children before drinking a Benadryl bottle and stabbing herself in the stomach. The bodies were found on January 13, when federal agents and representatives went to the home to file an arrest warrant for healthcare fraud in Connecticut. Todd had a physiotherapy practice in Connecticut that he would travel to during the work week, and return to Florida to be with his family on the weekend at their home in Celebration near Walt Disney World.
Todd said he barely remembered the weeks between killing and arresting him.
Prosecutors said they intended to seek the death penalty for Todd, who was charged with four counts of first-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty. Defense attorneys have not spoken publicly of the claim that Todd’s wife was the real killer.
