According to reports, Lorenz Kraus's elderly parents haven't been seen or heard from for about eight years, yet they were still receiving and cashing Social Security checks.
When the authorities came to the couple's house with a warrant last week, their search ended with an excavation in the backyard where they found the Krauses' remains.
Lorenz, being the devoted son that he is, ran to the local news station to give his side of the story, and the journalist managed to get him to admit to the murder — on tape.
Let's pick up the interview after Kraus explains that his parents were getting old and unable to care for themselves.
Kraus said his parents didn't ask to be killed but ‘they knew they were going downhill.'
‘I did my duty to my parents,' Kraus said in the interview. ‘My concern for their misery was paramount.'
Kraus said his mother had recently been injured from falling while crossing a road, and that his father could no longer drive after cataract surgery.
You read that right.
He said he killed them because his mother had fallen down once, and his father had cataracts removed.
At the interview's conclusion, police arrested Kraus as he left the building. He was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of concealment of a human corpse.
In a follow-up interview, the same journalist asked if Kraus felt any relief getting the murders off his chest.
No, not any extra relief … none at all.
And in another surprising turn, Kraus has pled "not guilty" to all charges.
Here's the defense it sounds like his attorney is going with:
Albany County Assistant public defender Rebekah Sokol, who represented Kraus at Friday's hearing, said she would be looking into how the interview came about because ‘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.'
No word on whether or not there will be fraud charges for those Social Security checks that have been cashed for the past eight years...
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