Todt appears in court; trial date could be set in February
Anthony Todt, the Colchester physical therapist accused of killing his wife, three children and family dog in Florida, appeared in court Wednesday in Florida for a pretrial hearing.
He was brought from jail to the Osceola County Courthouse and appeared in the courtroom Wednesday afternoon with his public defender. Court officials said an order was signed Wednesday transferring the case from Judge Wayne Wooten and Felony Division 201 to Judge Keith Carsten and Felony Division 301. Divisions 201 and 301 are both in Osceola County, Fla.
His case is set for a status hearing on Feb. 5, 2021, at 8:30 a.m. before Carsten. A trial date could be set at that time.
On Tuesday, Todt’s attorney, Public Defender Robert Wesley, filed a motion for continuance of the pretrial conference because “additional time is needed in order to prepare this case for trial,” and, “The accused previously waived speedy trial.”
Todt had his initial appearance in January, a hearing in June and Wednesday's pretrial conference, and has had the majority of his court proceedings rescheduled, waived or canceled since he was arrested. Osceola County Clerk records on Wednesday showed a “credit for time served worksheet” affirming that he has been in jail for 337 days since January, when he was found inside his family's home in Celebration, Fla., with the decomposing bodies of his family after the FBI arrived to arrest him on a warrant stemming from a federal health care fraud investigation in Connecticut.
Shortly after his arrest, he confessed to killing his wife, Megan, 42, their children, Alek, 13, Tyler, 11, and Zoe, 4, and the family dog, Breezy, according to the Osceola County Sheriff's Office.
The bodies of Megan and the children were found wrapped in blankets, decomposing in a second-floor bedroom of their large family home in a quiet neighborhood, days after family members in Connecticut called police requesting welfare checks on Megan and the children, whom they said hadn't been heard from in weeks.
Todt has been charged with four counts of first-degree homicide and one count of animal cruelty and is facing the death penalty following a grand jury vote.
In January, he pleaded not guilty to the murders. He has since blamed the murder on his wife, Megan. In July, he wrote a 27-page letter to his once estranged father, Robert Todt, in which he said Megan fed their children a pie laced with Benadryl before stabbing them and then herself.
In a March phone call from jail, Anthony Todt told his sister that he couldn’t stop his family from being murdered.
“I couldn’t stop this because I wasn’t there,” he told Chrissy Caplet, who lives in Connecticut but was in Florida at the time of the call after assuming power of attorney over her older brother.
In two calls between Todt and Caplet in March and April, Todt suggested that his wife, Megan, may have tried to kill her family before.
Day Staff Writer Taylor Hartz contributed to this report.
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