Washington DC: A shocking incident surfaced from the United States' New York, where a man admitted during a television interview to murdering his parents. In a stunning confession on camera, 53-year-old Lorenz Kraus, on Thursday (local time), claimed that after killing his parents, he buried them in the backyard of their upstate New York home almost eight years ago.
Kraus made the confession on television, a day after the police claimed to have recovered two bodies from the home in Albany. The bodies were recovered as part of an investigation that found Kraus' parents, Franz and Theresia Kraus, were receiving Social Security payments despite not being seen for years, reported The Associated Press.
During his interview with local news outlet CBS6, he termed the murders as mercy killings for his ageing parents. When news anchor Greg Floyd asked Kraus whether his parents knew that they were being murdered by him, the accused replied positively.
Initially, Kraus was reluctant to admit that he killed his parents. However, after several minutes into the interview, Kraus confessed to his crime.
He said that his parents knew that they were "going downhill". "I did my duty to my parents," Kraus said in the interview, as quoted by AP.
"My concern for their misery was paramount," Kraus added. The 53-year-old accused further stated that his mother had recently been injured from falling while crossing a road, and his father could not drive after cataract surgery.
Kraus was arrested soon after he left the television studio. He was reportedly charged with two counts of murder.
The public defender filed a not guilty plea during a court appearance on Friday. According to the report, the accused did not speak during the hearing.
The TV station's news director, Stone Grissom, told The Times-Union that the interview was scheduled after Kraus emailed a two-page statement to news outlets. When Grissom called Kraus, he told him that he had buried his parents in his yard.
