Lorenz Kraus, who was arraigned Friday, asked that he be prosecuted “under German law.” Photo / Getty Images
After investigators came looking, Lorenz Kraus told a reporter he had strangled Franz and Theresia Kraus eight years ago. Two bodies were buried in their backyard.
For eight minutes, Lorenz Kraus sat in a tan armchair inside an Albany, New York, television station’s news studio, parrying questions about the fate of his parents after police had found two bodies buried in their backyard the day before.
He sat awkwardly, clad in shorts and sneakers but no visible socks, as the reporter pressed him. Then, the words tumbled from his mouth.
“When your parents died, did they know what was happening to them?” asked the interviewer, Greg Floyd of WRGB, a CBS affiliate.
“Oh yeah.”
“And they knew it was at your hand?”
“Well, yes, no one else’s.”
Kraus had come to the station Thursday evening to tell his version of events, days after officers, who had been investigating Social Security fraud, discovered the bodies and took him in for questioning, the outlet said. By the time the taped interview ended roughly 20 minutes later, police officers were waiting in the parking lot and arrested Kraus when he emerged, authorities said. The station aired the interview during its 6pm broadcast that evening, the station said.
Kraus has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of concealment of a human corpse in connection with the killings of his parents, Franz and Theresia Kraus, eight years ago.
Prosecutors say that sometime between July and September 2017, Kraus strangled his parents and then buried them in the backyard of their home on Crestwood Court in the Whitehall section of Albany.
In the interview, Kraus claimed that he had killed his parents as an act of mercy, to save them from deterioration as they aged. He told Floyd that he had killed his father with his bare hands late one night and then strangled his mother with a rope after she had lain her head on her husband’s chest for hours.
He added that he had done his “duty to them as a son,” telling Floyd that the situation was “regrettable”.
(According to their birth years provided by the court, the parents would have been in their 70s and 80s at the time.)
In a manifesto rife with antisemitic and bigoted remarks that Kraus shared with the news station, he referred to a handful of people – Zionists, Governor Kathy Hochul and recipients of Oxford’s Rhodes scholarship – as “domestic enemies” and asked that he be prosecuted “under German law”.
Kraus was arraigned in Albany city criminal court Friday morning, where he pleaded not guilty. He was ordered held without bail and returned to the county jail, Lee Kindlon, the Albany County district attorney, said Friday.
Kraus’ lawyer, Rebekah Sokol, said Friday that she had “major concerns” and legal questions about the newscast, which she said “looked remarkably similar to police investigations”.
“Lots of people made a judgment about what happened, and I would very strongly urge the public to take a breath. Everyone is entitled to a rigorous defence, Mr Kraus included,” she said.
According to Kraus’ account during the interview, it was late on an unseasonably cool August night when he decided to kill his parents.
They had been faltering, he said – his mother had taken a fall and his father had cataract surgery and could not drive. Kraus said he felt that his parents had “implicitly” asked him to take their lives.
He described strangling his father quickly and how hours later he turned to his mother and “finished her.” Days later, he buried them in the yard, he said. He then continued to collect their Social Security benefits and donated it to “people who were starving in the Philippines,” Kraus said.
Kraus made a presidential run as a Democrat in New Hampshire in 2020, The Times Union reported. He campaigned on a platform of dissolving the presidency and promoted a series of antisemitic conspiracy theories, the newspaper said.
Kindlon and the Albany Police Department said the investigation into the Krauses’ disappearance began in May, when Social Security Administration investigators asked police to help conduct a welfare check on the Krauses, who had not been seen for some time.
Police had previously been asked to do a welfare check in 2020, after a faraway relative reported that they had not seen the couple in a long time, said Megan Craft, a spokesperson for the Albany Police Department. Police were unable to find anyone at the house and were told by neighbours that the couple had moved to Germany a few years before. The officers “did their due diligence and cleared the call,” she said.
No missing persons report for the couple was filed at any point in Albany, Craft said.
But in May, after another welfare check showed the Krauses were not living at their home, police, Kindlon’s office, and several other local and federal agencies began investigating what they believed was possible financial fraud, as well as the couple’s apparent disappearance.
Around 9am Tuesday, four months after the welfare check, law enforcement officers arrived at the shaded, grey house to execute a search warrant. Police took in Kraus, whose last known address was in Troy, New York, for questioning.
There were two small trees – one peach and one apple – in two sections of the yard, which struck investigators as an odd sign, Kindlon said. On Wednesday, cadaver dogs discovered one body in the yard, and on Thursday morning, they discovered another corpse in a different section of the grass.
During a news conference afterward, Brendon Cox, Albany’s police chief, said while he believed the bodies belonged to the Krauses, they had not yet been formally identified.
That afternoon, Kindlon said officials were deep in discussion about how to prosecute the case without a positive identification or evidence of how the victims might have died or when.
That’s when Kraus decided to tell his version of events.
“In the middle of those discussions, we received word that he was on his way to a local TV station,” Kindlon said. Police made their arrest right after the interview concluded.
“My office just sat and watched with everybody else,” Kindlon said.
Kraus’ actions have shocked residents in Albany and well beyond with his blunt and detached treatment of familial violence.
“This is so beyond the pale to contemplate the hatred in someone’s heart, to be able to do this to their parents,” Hochul said Friday.
On Crestwood Court, the scene outside the Kraus home Friday was quiet. Neighbours said they often observed Theresia Kraus sweeping the driveway in front of their home, or her husband planting tomatoes. Their son came by regularly to mow the lawn.
The couple, neighbours said, did not seem visibly unhealthy and they took daily walks until one day they seemed to disappear.
Annmarie Calabrese, who has lived in the house next to the Krauses for more than 40 years, said she was startled when they disappeared. Lorenz Kraus had told her that they had moved to Germany, but she was surprised they had left so abruptly without saying goodbye – especially so soon after planting tomatoes.
When she learned that they had been buried just yards from her house for so many years, she said she was stunned.
“It’s so very, very sad and I feel bad they were so isolated,” Calabrese said. “We wouldn’t have known to call anyone.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Maia Coleman
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