Man Kills Wife, 3 Kids And Dog Because He Believed 'Apocalypse Was Coming'

A 46-year-old man in Florida was convicted Thursday of killing his wife, their three children and family dog because he thought that the “apocalypse was coming,” prosecutors said.

Anthony John Todt was found guilty on four counts of first-degree murder — for the slayings of his 42-year-old wife Megan and their kids, 4-year-old Zoe, 11-year-old Tyler and 13-year-old Aleksander — and one count of animal cruelty for the killing of the family dog, Breezy, NBC News reported.

Todt, a physical therapist originally from Connecticut, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole by Circuit Court Judge Keith Carsten as prosecutors were not seeking the death penalty.

"You, Anthony John Todt, are a destroyer of worlds," Carsten said during the sentencing.

On Jan. 13, 2020, authorities found Todt with the decomposing bodies of his wife, children and dog, all wrapped in blankets, at their home in Celebration, Florida, during an FBI raid to arrest him on federal health care fraud charges related to his physical therapy business.

Police believed the victims had been murdered sometime toward the end of December 2019.

Todt had tried to blame his wife for the deaths, claiming Megan took her own life after killing their kids inside their home.

“I was covering for my wife,” he told the jury Wednesday. “Obviously, unsuccessfully. I had no clue how my kids died.”

However, the jury was shown Todt's videotaped confession Tuesday, in which he detailed stabbing and smothering sons Alek and Tyler after first smothering daughter Zoe, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

He then “took a pillow and suffocated” Megan after she stabbed herself in the stomach as part of their death pact — one they had even discussed earlier with the kids, the trial heard.

Todt told detectives that “everybody needed to die in order to pass over to the other side together because the apocalypse was coming,” Assistant State Attorney Danielle Pinnell told the Osceola County courthouse, the report said.

After his conviction, Todt maintained his innocence and continued to claim that he had nothing to do with the slayings.

“This was a personal catastrophe in everybody’s life and my family, including myself,” Todt said to the court. “I maintain my innocence.”

Cynthia Copco, the aunt of Megan and godmother to the children, said that she may never recover from the loss of her loved ones.

"We loved Megan and the kids very, very much and all I have is pictures and memories to hold in my heart," Copco told the court. "And my parents miss them and his parents miss them and our families miss them very, very much."