A man who once ran for president on a fringe platform now stands accused of killing his elderly parents—and a TV confession is a major factor, reports the Albany Times-Union. Lorenz Kraus, 53, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges related to the 2017 deaths of his parents, Franz and Theresia Kraus—a case that drew national attention after Kraus confessed to WRGB during an interview on Thursday. He described the deaths as mercy killings. Kraus was arrested soon after the interview and now faces charges of second-degree murder. (See the confession here.)
Police had begun investigating prior to the interview after noticing that Social Security payments were still flowing into the couple's accounts years after their disappearance. Authorities executed a search warrant and discovered one body on Wednesday behind the couple's home and the second the following day. Lorenz then reached out to the station and sat for an interview with anchor Greg Floyd.
"You suffocated them? You suffocated your parents," Floyd asked. "Yeah, basically," Kraus eventually responded, per the New York Post. "My father, after he died, my mother put his head on his chest, and after a few hours, I finished her." He said both were struggling with health problems, though he acknowledged that they "didn't explicitly" ask to be killed. He also admitted burying them on their property.
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Kraus' televised confession also veered into his political views—at his insistence—which include calls to replace US governance with a trustee board and references to a Filipino cryptocurrency. Prior to this, Kraus was a marginal political figure, running a little-noticed presidential campaign in 2020 with openly antisemitic and conspiratorial rhetoric. He maintained a campaign website with antisemitic content and frequently shared extremist material online.
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