Lorenz Kraus, a 53-year-old American, confessed in a television interview that he had killed both of his parents eight years earlier. The day before this revelation, the bodies of Franz and Theresia Kraus were discovered buried in a garden in New York State. All these years, the man had been receiving Social Security payments intended for his parents.

He says he killed his parents because it was "his duty." Lorenz Kraus, a man living in the United States, was arrested on Thursday, September 25, outside a television station studio after confessing to the murder of his parents in 2007 in an interview, reports the Association Press.

He also confessed to burying the bodies in the yard of their upstate New York home.

"I did my duty to my parents [...] they knew they were in trouble," he said in the interview. They were fragile because of their age, but they did not suffer from an incurable disease.

"It was so fast"

It was Lorenz Kraus himself who contacted the television channel and it was the media team who suggested that he come for an interview.

Although he was reluctant to give any information about the deaths of the two elderly people at the beginning of the interview, he eventually confessed. He even said he suffocated both of his parents. "It was so fast," he said.

The day before, the bodies of both parents had been found in the backyard of a home in New York State. This discovery came after a fraud investigation, as the local Social Security system paid benefits to the couple every month and had not heard from them in years.

Two disappearances never reported

In reality, it was Lorenz Kraus who had been receiving these benefits for the past eight years. Moreover, no one had ever reported the disappearance of Franz and Theresia Kraus, aged 92 and 83 at the time of the events.

The fifty-year-old was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and concealment of a corpse, and was taken into custody. During a brief court appearance on Friday, Lorenz Kraus's court-appointed lawyer pleaded not guilty. The suspect, however, said nothing.