Albany, NY (AP) – A New York man admitted during a television interview for killing his parents and burying them in the backyard of their home in the north of the state eight years ago, then was arrested while leaving the studio.
The superb confession to the camera of Lorenz Kraus, 53, came on Thursday, one day after the police said they had recovered two bodies in a house in Albany as part of an investigation that had found the parents of Kraus, Franz and Theresia Kraus, still received social security payments despite not having been seen or heard for years.
Lorenz Kraus then contacted the local media CBS6 and sat for an interview of half an hour, in which he described death as murders of mercy for aging parents who became more fragile.
“They knew it was for them, that they perish by your hand?” The anchor of new Greg Floyd asked Kraus.
“Yes,” said Kraus. “And it was so fast.”
Kraus was initially reluctant to say directly that he had killed the couple, but admitted after several minutes of Floyd. Kraus said his parents had not asked to be killed but “they knew they were going down.”
“I did my duty to my parents,” Kraus said during the interview. “My concern for their misery was essential.”
Kraus said that his mother had recently been injured in the fall during crossing a road and that his father could no longer drive after cataract surgery.
Kraus, who did not mention that his parents suffering from terminal diseases, were arrested for a few moments after leaving the television studio and has since been accused of two murder leaders.
A public defender pleaded not guilty during a brief appearance in court on Friday. Kraus did not speak during the hearing.
The interview met quickly
Stone Grissom, director of news from the television, told Times-Union that the interview came when Kraus had sent a two-page statement to the media that included his phone number. Grissom called Kraus, who would have told him that he had buried his parents in his court.
When asked if he was the one who had killed them, Kraus said, “I pleaded the fifth.”
Grissom said he had promised to publish the Kraus Declaration on the Station’s website if Kraus had agreed to come for an interview. To his surprise, Kraus accepted and arrived within the hour. Grissom said he had checked Kraus when he arrived to make sure he was not armed.
A plainclothes police officer was also in the front hall, where the interview was conducted, said Grissom. He added that Floyd had only 10 minutes to prepare for the interview.
“I thought I was on a mission to find the truth of what happened,” Floyd told the Associated Press.
During the interview, Kraus repeatedly refused to say how his parents died. Floyd would not let go and kept going back to his most important question: “Did you kill them?” Eight minutes after the start of the interview, Kraus said he had smothered them both and described how he did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmz0Empdtiy
“I did not prepare for [the interview] Because it was pushed on us without practically no notice, “said Floyd.” And I think it worked in an advantageous way because I did not go with a set of predetermined questions. I just followed the script he exhibited. I followed what he said and reacted to that.
The interview was different from what Floyd led during his 45 -year career. But he said that he continued to think of the couple, who was 92 and 83 years old, and who were described by their son as survivors of the Second World War in Germany.
“Maybe it kept me a little anchored because going through it was a difficult thing to go through. And then you think:” Well, ok, have we at least do justice for these two people who lost their lives? “”
The investigation began as a fraud investigation
The discovery of the bodies in the courtyard in a street of small narrow houses was the culmination of the investigation into the financial crimes which, according to the police, found that Kraus had perceived the advantages of his parents and using the funds for his personal use.
Floyd said history was a complete surprise. No one had pointed out that the couple had disappeared. The neighbors thought they had returned to Germany, said Floyd.
“The public did not know anything Tuesday, when a range of police vehicles appeared on this street and began to search a house and dig in the backyard,” he said.
The assistant public defender of the county of Albany, Rebekah Sokol, who represented Kraus at the hearing on Friday, said that she would examine how the interview happened because “if the media were essentially a police officer in this case, it could raise questions about the question of whether [Kraus’] The comments in the interview would be legally eligible for the trial. »»
