A New York man made a bone-chilling on-air television confession to killing his parents and burying them in their backyard.
Last month, 53-year-old Lorenz Kraus reportedly emailed a two-page statement to news outlets regarding a shocking admission.
‘After he died, my mother put her head on his chest — and she was there for a few hours, then I finished her.’
Stone Grissom, WRGB-TV’s news director, told the Times-Union that he promised Kraus to publish his statement on WRGB’s news site if he came to the station for an interview.
“I called him to verify who he was,” Grissom said. “On the phone, he told me he buried his parents in his yard. When I asked if he killed them, he said, ‘I plead the Fifth.’”
Kraus reportedly arrived at the news station within an hour.
Grissom admitted there were major concerns of “inviting someone suspected of a double murder into our station.”
Grissom noted that he personally frisked Kraus upon his arrival and that a plainclothes police officer was in the news station’s secured front lobby.
Greg Floyd — a broadcaster since 1979 — had only 10 minutes to prepare for the eyebrow-raising interview.
During the jarring 31-minute sit-down, Kraus described the deaths of his aging parents as mercy killings to stop their suffering from multiple maladies.
Floyd asked Kraus, “So did you kill your parents as a mercy killing to put them out of their misery?”
Kraus avoided the question.
‘What was I supposed to do with this money?’
After Floyd pressed Kraus about what he did to his parents, Kraus responded, “I buried them in their property.”
Kraus said his parents died around August 2017.
Floyd asked Kraus if his parents asked him to take their lives, and Kraus responded, “Implicitly, but not explicitly.”
Kraus added during the interview, “I did my duty to my parents. My concern for their misery was paramount.”
Kraus did not mention if his parents had terminal illnesses.
In the stunning on-camera confession, Floyd pushed Kraus on whether he murdered his parents — 92-year-old Franz Kraus and 83-year-old Theresia Kraus.
Floyd — a six-time Emmy award-winning broadcaster — asked Kraus, “They knew that this was it for them, that they were perishing at your hand?”
Kraus replied, “Yes. And it was so quick.”
Kraus said he was “shocked” at how his father “died surprisingly quickly.”
Kraus confessed he strangled his parents to death. He admitted that he killed his father first by strangling him with his hands.
“After he died, my mother put her head on his chest — and she was there for a few hours, then I finished her,” Kraus stated.
Kraus confessed that he killed his mother by strangling her with a rope.
When asked what was going through his head as he killed his parents, Kraus said, “Not thoughts — action, make sure it’s done, not fool around, not make a mistake. But you know, the police would say what an incompetent idiot I am.”
Kraus said it took him two or three days to decide to bury his parents in the backyard of their property in Albany.
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Kraus also is accused of stealing his parents’ Social Security payments after they died.
Floyd asked Kraus if he knew there were financial benefits to killing his parents.
Kraus claimed the “government is pissed because I took the Social Security money and gave it to people in the Philippines.”
Kraus said his parents’ murders were “not a kill-for-money case.”
Floyd fired back, “Some would call that blood money.”
Kraus responded, “What was I supposed to do with this money?”
Video posted online by WRGB shows police arresting Kraus in the station’s parking lot on Sept. 25, just moments after he left the television studio.
Albany County District Attorney Lee C. Kindlon on Monday announced that Kraus has been charged with murder in the first degree, two counts of murder in the second degree, two counts of concealment of a human corpse, grand larceny in the second degree, and identity theft in the first degree.
‘Cadaver dogs picked up on a scent, and a subsequent excavation in the backyard turned up the couple’s bodies.’
A public defender entered a not guilty plea during a Monday court appearance.
Kraus is being detained without bail at the Albany County Correctional Facility.
Floyd interviewed Kraus a second time from jail. However, Kraus’ public defender allegedly shut down the interview.
According to Floyd, after six or seven questions, the public defender said, “That’s it, you’re walking out of here right now.”
The Associated Press reported that Albany County Assistant Public Defender Rebekah Sokol — who represented Kraus at a hearing last Friday — said she would be investigating 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.”
Kraus’ parents were never reported missing, and soon “federal agents started investigating suspicious Social Security payments in their names,” WJLA-TV reported.
The indictment accused Kraus of assuming the identity of his father and stealing funds from the family’s estate “in excess of $50,000” sometime between Aug. 30, 2017, and May 27, 2025.
On Sept. 23, 2025, “Cadaver dogs picked up on a scent, and a subsequent excavation in the backyard turned up the couple’s bodies,” Albany authorities stated.
Kraus is scheduled to return to court Oct. 28, WRGB reported.
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