A man admitted to killing and burying his parents in the backyard of their New York home in 2017 during a TV interview.
Police arrested the man as left the studio.
The man, 53-year-old Lorenz Kraus, confessed about his crimes on Thursday, just a day after authorities recovered two bodies from the upstate New York home.
Police stumbled upon the bodies while investigating Kraus’s parents, Theresia and Franz, who had continued receiving Social Security payments despite not being seen or heard from in years.
In a half-hour interview with a local news outlet, Kraus admitted to killing his elderly parents, claiming it was an act of mercy as they had grown increasingly frail.
News anchor Greg Floyd asked Kraus whether his parents understood “this was it for them,” that they were “perishing at his hand.” Kraus admitted they did, adding that the act was quick.
At first, Kraus hesitated to say outright that he had killed his parents. But after several minutes of questioning, he confessed.
He explained that while his parents never asked to die, they allegedly knew “they were going downhill.”
Kraus claimed he had simply “done [his] duty” and said his “concern for their misery was paramount.”
Expanding on this, Kraus noted his elderly mother had recently been injured in a fall, while his father could no longer drive after cataract surgery.
Still, neither was suffering from a terminal illness.
Moments after leaving the TV studio, Kraus was arrested and charged with two counts of murder. During a brief court appearance Friday, he entered a not guilty plea.
Kraus himself remained silent throughout the hearing.
The Interview
The station’s news director, Stone Grissom, said the interview took place after Kraus emailed a two-page statement to several outlets that included his contact details.
Grissom eventually contacted Kraus, who admitted he had killed and buried his elderly parents in the backyard.
When asked directly if he had committed the murders, Kraus invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Grissom recalled that he promised to publish Kraus’s statement on their website if he agreed to an on-camera interview.
To his surprise, Kraus quickly accepted, showing up at the studio within an hour.
Staff confirmed he was unarmed before leading him into the studio, while a plainclothes officer waited in the front lobby.
During the interview, Kraus repeatedly refused to explain how his parents had died. After pressing him with questions, Floyd finally got him to admit that he had suffocated them.
For Floyd, the exchange was unlike any interview he had conducted in his four-decade career. He found himself thinking about the couple – ages 83 and 92 – both survivors of World War II in Germany.
