A deranged Albany man who made a chilling on-air confession to killing his elderly parents and burying them in his backyard is now facing charges for the heinous crimes.
Lorenz Kraus, 53, pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of concealment of a human corpse for the slaughter of his parents, Franz and Theresia Kraus — who disappeared without a trace eight years ago — during a court appearance Friday.
Kraus, who was a motormouth during a jaw-dropping exclusive interview with CBS6 on Thursday, was tight-lipped during the hearing.
“You buried them in the back of your house in Albany?” CBS6’s Greg Floyd asked during the interview.
“Yes.” Kraus, 53, chillingly answered.
The twisted son described the deaths of his ailing parents as mercy killings.
His mother was injured crossing a road, and his father could no longer drive after cataract surgery, Kraus recalled.
“You suffocated them? You suffocated your parents,” Floyd asked in a series of stammering back and forths, where Kraus tried to backpedal on the confession and invoke his “Fifth Amendment rights.”
“Yeah, basically,” Kraus said, nodding.
“My father, after he died, my mother put his head on his chest, and after a few hours, I finished her,” Kraus said.
He then detailed that he had choked his father with his hand, then strangled his mother with a rope.
It then took him several days to decide to allegedly bury his parents’ bodies in the backyard of their suburban home, he explained.
Stone Grissom, the TV station’s news director, told The Times-Union that the chilling interview came about when Kraus emailed a two-page rambling, conspiracy-laden statement to news outlets that contained his phone number.
Grissom called Kraus, who told him he had buried his parents in his yard.
“When I asked if he killed them, he said, ‘I plead the Fifth,’” Grissom said.
Grissom said he promised to post Kraus’ statement on the station’s website if Kraus agreed to come in for an interview.
The madman agreed and arrived within an hour. Grissom then checked to make sure Kraus was unarmed before the sit-down.
A plainclothes police officer was also in the front lobby, where the interview was conducted, Grissom said. He added that Floyd had just 10 minutes to prepare for the interview.
“I was thinking that I was on a mission to find the truth of what happened,” Floyd told The Associated Press.
“I did not prepare for this because it was thrust upon us with virtually no notice,” Floyd said. “And I think that worked out in an advantageous way because I didn’t go in with a set of predetermined questions,” he said.
“I just followed the script that he laid out. I followed what he was saying and reacted to that.”
Once the taping ended, Kraus left the CBS6 building and was immediately taken into custody.
In a second exclusive interview with Kraus behind bars on Friday, Floyd asked the alleged killer if he felt any relief after his confession.
“Not any extra relief, no, not at all,” Kraus replied, wearing an orange shirt.
“I’m glad that people know about my statement, that’s important to me,” he said.
“My father lay back and was readied, he knew. There’s a legal defense, and there’s a political defense. The most important law in this country is the New York Ratification Law,” Kraus said, possibly citing the Ratification of the Constitution by the State of New York in 1788.
He then continued to spew about his desire to create a Board of Trustees for New York State and the need for more options to solve the growing population of Baby Boomers.
“But who are you to decide, other than being their son. Is that decision up to you? Can you play God?” Floyd asked.
“You can do your duty to your parents as they give you feedback, information, etc. It’s not a decision of God, it’s a matter of what life you are trying to give your parents,” Kraus said.
When asked what he has been doing with the last eight years of his life, since the death of his parents, Kraus said he is “trying to make good on their lives.”
The discovery of the bodies in the yard was the culmination of a financial crimes investigation, where police discovered that Kraus had been allegedly collecting his dead parents’ Social Security benefits.
“The public never knew anything until Tuesday when an array of police vehicles showed up on that street and started searching a house and digging in the backyard,” he said.
Public Defender Rebekah Sokol, who represented Kraus at Friday’s hearing, said she would be looking into the process of the station’s interview with her client.
“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,” Sokol said.
The alleged killer was a graduate of Albany High School and Sienna University, where he was named valedictorian as a political science major, the Times Union reported.
Kraus has been ordered held without bail.
With Post wires.
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