ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A man admitted to killing and burying his parents eight years ago in the backyard of their upstate New York home during a television interview this week, then was arrested as he left the studio.
The stunning on-camera confession from Lorenz Kraus, 53, came Thursday, a day after police say they recovered two bodies from the home in Albany as part of an investigation that found Kraus’ parents, Franz and Theresia Kraus, were still receiving Social Security payments despite not having been seen or heard from in years.
Lorenz Kraus contacted local news outlet CBS6, and sat for a half-hour interview, in which he described the deaths as mercy killings for two aging and ailing parents.
“They knew that this was it for them, that they were perishing at your hand?” news anchor Greg Floyd asked Kraus.
“Yes,” said Kraus. “And it was so quick.”
Kraus was initially reluctant to directly say he had killed the couple, but made the admission after several minutes of questioning from Floyd. Kraus said his parents didn’t explicitly ask to be killed but “they knew they were going downhill.”
“I did my duty to my parents,” Kraus said in the interview. “My concern for their misery was paramount.”
Kraus was arrested moments after he left the television studio and has been charged with two counts of murder. A public defender entered a not guilty plea during a brief court appearance Friday. Kraus did not speak during the hearing.
Stone Grissom, the TV station’s news director, told The Times-Union newspaper that the interview came about when Kraus emailed a two-page statement to the station and other news outlets that included his phone number. Grissom said he called Kraus to verify his identity and said Kraus told him on the phone that he had buried his parents in his yard.
“When I asked if he killed them, he said, ‘I plead the Fifth,’” Grissom said.
Grissom said he promised to post Kraus’ statement on the station’s website if Kraus agreed to come to the station for an interview. To his surprise, Kraus agreed and arrived within the hour, and Grissom said he personally frisked Kraus upon his arrival to ensure he was unarmed.
A plainclothes police officer was also in the secured front lobby, where the interview was conducted, Grissom said. He added that Floyd had just 10 minutes to prepare for the interview.
“I went in with no notes, so I was just reacting to what he was saying,” Floyd told the outlet.
Albany County Assistant Public Defender Rebekah Sokol, who represented Kraus at Friday’s hearing, said she would be looking into how the interview came about because “if the media was essentially an agent of police in this matter, that could raise questions about whether (Kraus’) comments in the interview would be legally admissible at trial.”
The discovery of the bodies in the yard on a street of close-together small homes was the culmination of the financial crimes investigation which police say found Kraus had been collecting his parents’ benefits and using the funds for his own personal use.
The bodies are believed to be those of Franz Kraus, 92, and Theresia Kraus, 83, but authorities said Friday that positive identifications were still being determined.
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