Anthony Todt Case Analysis | Todt Family Murders

this is dr grande today's question is can i analyze the tot family murders just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoyed this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so first i'll look at the background in this case i'll move to the timeline of the alleged crimes then i'll offer my analysis this case involves the tot family i'll start with looking at anthony tot and then move to the point where he has a family and then that takes us to the alleged crimes in march of 1980 anthony tott was four years old and lived with his family in bensalem pennsylvania a person came into their home and shot his mother loretta anthony witnessed the crime anthony's father robert was charged with hiring a student of his to murder his wife robert was a teacher robert apparently was having a number of extramarital affairs he was having trouble balancing everything and for whatever reason this led to him deciding to commit murder robert was convicted even though loretta testified on his behalf he still denies that he was involved after recovering from being shot loretta moved with anthony from pennsylvania to connecticut she also changed her mind about that whole attempted murder situation she realized that robert was guilty she divorced him and remarried in connecticut anthony struggled with nightmares about what he had witnessed he received mental health counseling for many years his father had been sentenced to 10 to 20 years but managed to get his sentence reduced on appeal down to 5 to 10. after being released he started his own consulting company i'd be curious what type of company that was how to hire somebody to murder someone else and go to prison i guess there's a demand for every type of service these days robert stayed away from his family for many years but in 2010 he connected with anthony on facebook the two would meet in person twice that same year by this time anthony was married and had two children after this anthony had decided to cut all ties with his father this takes us to 2019. so here we see the tot family has anthony tot he's 44 years old his wife megan 42 years old and by this point they had three children alec who was 13 tyler age 11 and zoe who was 4 years old in recent years the family had moved to a rental house in celebration florida anthony and megan owned a condominium less than half a mile away anthony was traveling back and forth between florida and connecticut attempting to salvage his failing physical therapy practice in connecticut on november 21 2019 anthony met with federal investigators he was the focus of a health care fraud scheme investigation allegedly he had charged medicaid and private insurance companies for physical therapy services he never delivered investigators said anthony confessed to his crimes anthony's sister who lived in connecticut became concerned she didn't hear from any member of the family since either december 23 or december 24. on december 29 2019 she called the local sheriff's office near where anthony lived and asked them if they would do a welfare check on her brother and his family the police conducted a welfare check that same day no one answered the door but the police didn't find this suspicious they left without doing anything they did not investigate any further at that point there were a few text messages going out to family members all the way up until january 6 from devices owned by anthony and megan anthony's phone was recovered in a starbucks in sarasota florida it was turned over to the police an individual who lived near the condominium said that she had texted megan on january 6 and told her there was an eviction notice on the front door of the condominium a reply from mega's phone read okay thanks family members and friends repeatedly called the police in florida making additional requests for them to check on the family on january 10 at 5 pm two officers drove out to celebration florida and visited both of the taught residences the rental house and the condominium they found an eviction notice in the mailbox of the rental house and the eviction notice on the door at the condominium they also found the family's honda odyssey parked nearby on january 11 the police returned and noticed the van had not been moved as all this was going on the police were looking for anthony they wanted to arrest him for that whole fraud situation on january 13 he was seen by the police entering the rental house the police and federal agents moved in they knocked on the door but no one answered as it turns out the front door was unlocked so they just walked in they immediately smelled a strong foul odor which they thought might be from a decomposing body the police encountered anthony walking down the steps from the second floor of the residence when asked where his family was he said that his children might be at a friend's house for a sleepover and his wife was upstairs sleeping he then yelled her name but there was no response the police went upstairs and found the bodies of a woman and three children on the bed and on the floor their bodies were covered with blankets and appeared to have been dead some time the investigators would later come to believe that anthony had used antihistamines two hunting knives and perhaps suffocation to kill the members of his family the murders occurred before christmas anthony was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of animal cruelty the last charge was because he allegedly killed the family dog after anthony was placed in custody we see that he makes a number of unusual statements including those in a 27-page letter some found his assertions hard to believe anthony told a relative they had no recollection of the weeks following the alleged murders he said that he had always loved honored and obeyed his wife through everything he claimed that there would be a lot of things coming out that he can't talk about right now he insisted he would protect the dignity of his wife until the very end he told the police that he tried to take a lethal dose of benadryl in january but the investigation found that the dose he took was far from lethal investigators reported that he confessed to the murders but it appears as though he changed his story after that now telling the police that he wasn't home when his family members died the story seems to be that his wife killed the children before bringing an end to her own life he said that she had attempted to commit the murders multiple times before anthony said that he was ten thousand percent innocent if that's any indication of his mathematical abilities the origin of his financial problems is starting to come into focus at the time making this video anthony todd is awaiting trial now moving to my analysis as far as the mental health factors nothing has been released in relation to anthony's mental health the only thing we know is that the state of florida said they were not pursuing the death penalty due to his mental health anthony claimed that his wife megan had depression but there's no information about her mental health from any credible source anthony of course has the presumption of innocence but for the sake of this analysis i will run under the assumption that he is guilty which of course is consistent with a confession that was made to the police one of the theories in this case is that the traumatic experience that anthony had at age four when his mother was almost killed somehow contributed to the development of a personality and attitudes which made anthony capable of wiping out his family perhaps when he saw his father those two times in 2010 this reactivated those memories legitimized his father's methods for dealing with the conundrum with the affairs and made homicide seem like an option this is an interesting theory certainly the fact that it's alleged that anthony committed murders doesn't seem like a coincidence but i don't know if his trauma has sufficient explanatory value as far as the homicides here's what i think could have happened i don't know what happened this is just a theory as anthony's family grew he hoped his career would grow as well he was enjoying some success as a physical therapist in connecticut he was well respected in the community he viewed himself as pro-social he wanted a good life for himself and for his family the problem for anthony is that he wasn't good with money he overspent significantly simply buying whatever he wanted without worrying about paying for it it's not clear if the spending behavior was woven in with any type of mental health issue but regardless anthony made an unusual decision in order to fund his extravagant spending he started to take out short-term high-interest loans it was reported by investigators that he had more than 20 such loans at the time he was being investigated for the insurance fraud at some point the family moved to florida anthony was traveling back and forth to connecticut he comes up with this idea of billing insurance companies for services that were never provided in order to make payments on the high interest loans maybe he thinks he won't get caught perhaps he believed that if he could just get enough money to pay the loans off he could get out of trouble as all this was going on he doesn't tell his wife about his financial decisions and financial problems anthony told the fraud investigators that his wife had no idea what was going on anthony is unable to regulate his fraud activity his crimes become overwhelmingly obvious one day when investigators had one of anthony's physical therapy locations under surveillance no patients entered the entire day for therapy but anthony's records indicated he had performed 36 hours of therapy that day so either he was committing blatant fraud or had a time machine in his office after being interviewed by investigators about the fraud anthony realizes that he will be going to prison there were indications he might have known that before he was interviewed for example he let his physical therapy license expire in september of 2019. while in florida he tells family members not to worry if they don't hear from the family for a while he said they were going on a trip anthony takes benadryl and puts it in some type of food product that his wife and children would normally consume he was probably hoping it would be sufficient to kill them but he had to resort to using other means to finish with his plan after this he stays in the same house with the decomposing bodies for three weeks it's not really clear if he was going to make any type of effort to escape it was like he didn't have a plan to cover anything after committing homicide when the police make entry into the residence he comes up with an obvious lie that was surely not going to stall them for long when he was in custody he confessed but then changed his mind later it's like this half-hearted attempt to escape responsibility he does not have a cohesive strategy eventually he comes up with this idea to blame everything that happened on his wife megan while trying to make it seem like he's the hero for protecting her he claimed that megan prevented him from seeking health care and from telling people about his financial problems he was forced to move away and not allowed to talk to family or friends he was trying to take care of her but she was depressed and had other problems he pretends that she committed the murders but admits that he's the one who moved the bodies into the bedroom and placed them into sleeping positions he thought would be warm and protected in addition anthony blames the media and the police i think the motive for the murders again assuming that anthony is guilty is that he didn't want to face his own failures he didn't want his wife and children to see him go to prison he wanted their last image of him to be positive after this anthony decides to try to play the hero to the public like he was a devoted husband who tried to care for his ailing wife he was so loyal that even after she committed these terrible crimes he would protect her memory he will sacrifice himself to preserve her perfect image it's a ridiculous premise but i don't know if he had any other cards to play in order to protect his ego he was running out of options he was running out of excuses that could make him look good in any way this is one of those cases where the victims had no good way to figure out what was going on or to defend themselves even if they did megan would have had the best chance of everybody in executing some type of escape or contacting the authorities but she may not have known anything was going on she probably thought that anthony had everything under control financially and of course she most likely assumed he was not homicidal i think one lesson learned in a case like this is that serious crimes often start with less serious crises like financial problems sometimes when people can't cope with the shame of their crimes they turn to the unusual solution of wiping out the people who are watching them they believe that they won't experience shame if there's no one left to be ashamed of them those are my thoughts on the murder of the tot family please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 207,823

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Id: W86y8J_DxKc

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021