The Albany Police Department in New York charged a local man with the 2017 murder of his parents after he confessed to the act on Albany TV station WRGB-TV.
On Tuesday, the police executed a search warrant at the home of suspect Lorenz Kraus, 53, for a separate financial crimes investigation. The search turned up evidence, and police accused Mr. Kraus of collecting the Social Security payments due to his parents Franz and Theresia Kraus, who had not been seen for several years, and using the money for his own purposes.
Mr. Kraus told investigators and neighbors in his parents’ neighborhood that the elderly couple moved to Germany according to the Albany-area Times Union newspaper. If they were still alive today, the suspect’s father would be 92 and his mother would be 83.
On Wednesday, local and state law enforcement and Social Security investigators uncovered two dead bodies in the backyard of Mr. Kraus’ house. Mr. Kraus then confessed to killing his parents in an interview with WRGB-TV after setting up the interview by emailing the station.
“I called him to verify who he was. 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,’” WRBG-TV news director Stone Grissom told the Times Union.
Mr. Kraus told WRBG-TV anchor Greg Floyd that prior to their 2017 deaths his mother was injured in a fall and his father lost his ability to drive due to cataract surgery, and said that the pair “knew that they were going downhill.”
After minutes of questioning, Mr. Kraus then told Mr. Floyd that he suffocated his father with his hand and his mother with a rope. Mr. Kraus told Mr. Floyd that “I did my duty to them as a son,” claiming that the acts he confessed to were done out of love and mercy.
As for the money, Mr. Kraus said that he did not enrich himself and said that instead he gave some or all of the money to “people who were starving in the Philippines.”
Police arrested Mr. Kraus outside the TV station after the interview ended. He appeared in court Friday and pleaded not guilty, according to WRBG-TV.
Authorities charged Mr. Kraus with two counts of murder in the second degree and two counts of concealing a human corpse.
