TV Confession: Man Says He Strangled and Buried His Parents in Their Backyard
A New York man stunned viewers with an on-air admission that he killed his elderly parents and buried them behind their home. The 53-year-old, identified as Lorenz Kraus, reportedly emailed a two-page statement to news outlets before agreeing to an interview.
WRGB news director Stone Grissom said he promised to publish Kraus’s statement if he came to the station, and later said, “I called him to verify who he was,” adding, “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 showed up at the station within an hour, and Grissom said he was personally frisked while a plainclothes officer waited in the secured lobby. The news director admitted there were major concerns of “inviting someone suspected of a double murder into our station.”
Veteran broadcaster Greg Floyd had only minutes to prepare for a 31-minute sit-down in which Kraus framed the deaths as mercy killings. During the interview Floyd asked, “So did you kill your parents as a mercy killing to put them out of their misery?”
Kraus often dodged direct questions but did tell the camera, “I buried them in their property.” He said the deaths occurred around August 2017.
When pressed about consent, Kraus replied, “Implicitly, but not explicitly.” He later added, “I did my duty to my parents. My concern for their misery was paramount.”
Floyd pushed on whether the parents understood their fate, asking, “They knew that this was it for them, that they were perishing at your hand?” Kraus replied, “Yes. And it was so quick.”
On camera, Kraus confessed to strangling his parents and described how it unfolded. He said he killed his father first by using his hands, and then later spoke the chilling line, ‘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 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.”
He told the interviewer it took him two or three days to decide to bury the couple in their backyard. Investigators also allege he continued to collect the victims’ Social Security payments after they were dead.
Kraus defended his handling of the money, claiming the “government is pissed because I took the Social Security money and gave it to people in the Philippines.” He insisted the killings were “not a kill-for-money case,” and the host fired back, “Some would call that blood money.”
Kraus pushed back with a question of his own: ‘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 studio.
Albany authorities say 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. A public defender entered a not guilty plea and he is being held without bail at the county correctional facility.
The indictment accuses Kraus of assuming his father’s identity and stealing funds from the family’s estate “in excess of $50,000” 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.
Floyd later tried to interview Kraus again from jail, but the public defender abruptly stopped the session, saying, “That’s it, you’re walking out of here right now.” The defense has signaled it will investigate how the TV interview was arranged, noting that “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 is scheduled to return to court Oct. 28.
