ALBANY, NY - Authorities arrested an Albany man after he confessed to killing his parents during an interview with a local TV news station.
Lorenz Kraus has been charged with the murders of his parents, Franz and Theresia Kraus, and burying their bodies. The Albany Police Department (APD) announced his arrest on Thursday, September 25, according to FOX4. APD said the family was originally being investigated for financial crimes.
Local, state, and federal officers served a search warrant on the family home on Tuesday, September 23, and discovered that Franz and Thereisa hadn't been seen or heard from in years. Officials claim that Lorenz Kraus was still cashing in their Social Security checks. The next day, officers found the parents' bodies buried in the backyard.
On Thursday, Lorenz Kraus contacted the local CBS station in Albany, and sat down for an interview with their anchor, Greg Floyd. During the 30-minute interview, Kraus admitted to killing his parents years ago.
He told Floyd that he killed his parents in 2017 because their health was declining in their old age. When Floyd asked Kraus if his parents asked him to kill them, he replied, "implicitly, but not explicitly," while adding that he didn't think it was wrong. "You suffocated your parents," Floyd asked Kraus.
"Yeah," he replied. He said that he killed his father first, and "after he died, my mother put her head on his chest, and she was there for a few hours, then I finished her." Kraus said he spent several days figuring out what do to with his parents' bodies before deciding to bury them in the backyard.
He described the deaths as mercy killings for his aging parents, Fox News reported. "I did my duty to my parents," Kraus said. "My concern for their misery was paramount." Kraus did not say that his parents had terminal illnesses, telling Floyd that his mother had been injured after a fall while crossing the road, and that cataract surgery left his father unable to drive.
Officers reportedly arrested Kraus in the station parking lot after the interview. He has been charged with two counts of murder and two counts of concealment of a human corpse. On Friday, September 26, Kraus appeared in court and pleaded not guilty.
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Comments
2025-10-01T18:44-0400 | Comment by: Paul
POS needs to pay back every dime of the SS he ripped off. No death penalty. Let him watch his SS be used as pay back to the system. Send him a receipt.