In a case that has stunned upstate New York and reverberated through national headlines, Lorenz Kraus, 53, was arrested on September 25, 2025, after making a chilling on-air confession: he killed his elderly parents and buried their bodies in the backyard of their Albany home eight years ago. The revelation came during a half-hour interview with WRGB (CBS6 Albany) anchor Greg Floyd, marking a rare instance where a murder suspect’s own televised words led directly to their arrest.
The investigation that ultimately led to Kraus’s confession began not with a missing persons report, but with questions about Social Security payments. According to statements from the Albany Police Department cited by 7NEWS and Sky News, authorities executed a search warrant at the home of Franz Kraus, 92, and Theresia Kraus, 83, on September 23, 2025. The couple had not been seen or heard from since the summer of 2017, yet their Social Security benefits continued to be collected and used. Police suspected their son, Lorenz, had been pocketing the funds for his own use.
On September 24, 2025, detectives recovered two bodies buried in the backyard of the Kraus family’s modest Albany residence. The following day, Kraus reached out to WRGB, requesting an interview. During the broadcast, he admitted to killing both of his parents and burying them on their property. When asked by Floyd if he had buried them in the backyard, Kraus replied simply, “Yes.” Pressed for details, he described the deaths as “mercy killings,” motivated by his parents’ declining health and frailty.
“They knew that this was it for them, that they were perishing at your hand?” Floyd asked during the interview. Kraus responded, “Yes. And it was so quick.” He elaborated, “I did my duty to my parents. My concern for their misery was paramount.” Kraus explained that his father could no longer drive after cataract surgery and that his mother had been injured in a fall while crossing a road. However, he did not indicate that either parent was facing a terminal condition. “They knew they were going downhill,” Kraus said, but clarified, “my parents didn’t ask to be killed.”
The specifics of the killings, as recounted by Kraus, were both matter-of-fact and deeply unsettling. He stated that he strangled his father with his hands and used a rope on his mother. In a particularly disturbing detail, Kraus told Floyd, “I killed my father first, and after he died, my mother put her head on his chest, and she was there for a few hours, and then I finished her.” When Floyd asked, “You suffocated your parents?” Kraus replied, “Yeah, basically.”
Moments after the interview concluded, police arrested Kraus at the WRGB studio. He was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of concealment of a human corpse. The following day, Kraus appeared in Albany City Court, where Assistant Albany County Public Defender Rebekah Sokol entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. Kraus did not speak during the hearing, and Sokol quickly raised concerns about the circumstances of his confession. “While the interview from the other night was certainly shocking, I have to question how it occurred, who initiated, and what the police’s involvement was,” Sokol said in a statement, as reported by 7NEWS. “If a vulnerable individual’s constitutional rights were violated for the sake of ratings, that would be extremely concerning.”
Sokol also cast doubt on whether the televised confession would be admissible in court, telling reporters, “I am starting to suspect that the TV interview cannot be admissible in court, but it is very early in the case and time will tell.” Her remarks were echoed in reports by Sky News and The Telegraph, highlighting the legal complexities that now surround the case.
The story’s roots stretch back to the summer of 2017, when neighbors first noticed the sudden absence of Franz and Theresia Kraus. One neighbor, who lived next door to the couple from 2016 to 2021 and requested anonymity for safety reasons, told NBC and Sky News that Kraus maintained the property meticulously after his parents vanished. He routinely collected mail, mowed the lawn, and shoveled snow, but when asked about his parents’ whereabouts, he claimed they had moved to Germany. “Every time I ask him for them, he don’t look you in the eyes when he’s talking to you,” the neighbor recalled. “He just gives you short answer and is in a rush all the time.”
The neighbor also recounted a peculiar incident in the summer of 2017, after a storm toppled a tree onto both properties. Kraus left an envelope with $300 in her mailbox to help with the damage but insisted that whoever she hired should not clear debris from his side. Around the same time, she noticed him discarding large amounts of trash, including what appeared to be a carpet. The once neatly kept backyard soon became a barren dirt field. “On one hand, I felt that he was psycho,” the neighbor said. “On the other hand, I was thinking ‘how can child kill the parents?’ It’s just unbelievable. My instinct was right.”
As the case unfolds, it has raised difficult questions about elder care, mental health, and the boundaries of so-called “mercy killings.” Kraus’s own words—“I did my duty to my parents. My concern for their misery was paramount”—have sparked debate over his motives, with some legal experts and members of the public expressing skepticism about his justification. Others have focused on the financial crime aspect, noting that the continued collection of Social Security benefits was the catalyst for the police investigation.
At its core, the Kraus case is a grim reminder of how secrets can fester behind closed doors and how even the most shocking confessions can emerge in the unlikeliest of ways. As the legal process moves forward, questions remain about the admissibility of Kraus’s televised statements and whether justice will ultimately be served in a courtroom—or if the case will be defined by a confession that played out on live television.
The community in Albany is left grappling with the tragedy, and neighbors who once wondered about the fate of Franz and Theresia Kraus now have their answer—one that is as heartbreaking as it is confounding.
