Franz and Theresia Kraus are a retired couple. In 2025 he is 92 and she is 83. The problem is that nobody has seen them in several years. Their social security checks are automatically deposited and their adult son, Lorenz Kraus, tends to other matters for them. After years of attempting to contact the couple without success, the social security office asks police to do a "welfare check" on Franz and Theresia Kraus. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a look at what happened when police do the welfare check and how their "loving son" Lorenz Kraus ends up on local tv confessing to killing his parents and burying their bodies in the backyard.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.11 Introduction
01:16.21 Man buries mom and dad in backyard
04:36.12 Mountain Family Comes to big city to transport body of their loved one on a flatbed truck
08:59.11 News Anchor gets son to admit murder during interview
14:37.45 Early Luminol story
20:10.37 Body decomposing in soil will cause sinking
25:11.76 Newsman interviews murderer
30:14.33 Suffocated father
34:31.88 Admits killing in 2017
40:13.36 Skeletal remains can breakdown
44:27.65 Conclusion
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody balance. But Joseph Scott.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
More I, for one, like the idea of having what's
called a family plot.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Family plot can either say that you're maybe you have
a space in a local municipal cemetery, or maybe you
have a place in your church's graveyard, or it can
mean that you actually have a plot set aside for
(00:38):
burial of your loved ones on property that perhaps has
been in your family for years and years. I don't
know if the word quaint quite applies here, but there's
something I think on one level that's kind of comforting.
That is, if you're buried on your family's property, he'll
(01:02):
be perpetually taken care of. Today, on Bodybacks, we're going
to talk about a fellow who literally decided to bury
his mom and dad on his own property in the
backyard eight years ago, after he, of course allegedly murder
(01:29):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. There's something comforting,
Dave about I think on one level about perpetual care.
Maybe I think it's more of a comfort to those
that remain as opposed to those that are passed on,
because I don't think the ones that have passed on
(01:50):
truly have an awareness of this sort of thing. I'm
not going to address the spiritual, but I think scientifically,
you know, they don't have an awareness of it. But
it's kind of a maybe it's a quaint notion. Like
I said, you don't have these very often, and you
know you, I got to tell you a quick story.
(02:13):
There was a place in Atlanta, and you'll find this
kind of interesting. There was a place in Atlanta neighborhood
in Atlanta that's called actually called Cabbage Town. I don't
know if you've ever heard of cabbage Town, Dave, but.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's I bet it's like socks.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Well. It's actually a place where where people from Appalachia
came to Atlanta to work in the mills, and they
came lockstock and barrel, and they still had relatives that
lived up in that mountainous region of North Georgia and
(02:55):
points beyond. Because there's work in the big city, right
and the habited these you know, quickly built wooden structures
that in the South at least we call the mill villages.
They're adjacent to textile mills and that sort of thing.
But Cabbagetown in particular had these kind of interesting rolling
features to it. You know, the hills were I mean
(03:16):
the roads, you know, kind of cut off in different directions.
And there were these these families that had dwelled these
houses for a couple of generations, but they would still
go back up home to see their kin folk. Well,
we had a fellow in Atlanta that had died, right,
and he had died violently in a car accident, and
(03:40):
he was domiciled in Cabbagetown. Well, his family wanted to
retrieve his remains. His family lived up in the North
Georgia Mountains. His family showed up with a flatbed truck
to pick up his remains, and they had signed all
(04:02):
the proper paperwork.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
By the way, really.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
They wanted to handle picking him up. They didn't want
a funeral home to do it. So we released the body.
We released the body to them, and he was left
in a body bag and he was strapped to the
back of a flatbed truck and off they went up
into the Blue Ridge Mountains where he would be buried
in the family plot. I was always fascinated by that. Yeah,
(04:25):
and it wasn't my case. It was one of my colleagues,
and it had the story was related to me. It
had happened late at night. You know, they show up,
which normally happens. You know, if you in a busy
medical examiner's office, bodies are literally being picked up and
delivered all hours of day, day at night. You worked
in a funeral home for a while, I know, and this,
(04:46):
you know, is unpredictable. So you can have a funeral
home that'll come from out of town. They might hit
the city, you know, at midnight, one, two in the morning.
They're there to pick up remains. They're going to put
the remains in their heart typically or their van and
haul them off. In this case, they were taking this
old boy back up to the mountains and they were
going to bury him the family flat.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
I love the fact that you said they got the
right paperwork.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
That yes they did. They they had gone through and
had gotten I think it was a burial certificate, which
also they it was required for them to have a
burial certificate to bury his remains on the property, you know,
because there has to be an accounting for where the
body is.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And you know, they had all these measures taken care
of and it was an accidental case. It was not
like it was an ongoing homicide investigation.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well see, you see that sounds like a lot of love.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
That's a family that has the family plot, and there's
no Alfred Hitchcock movie coming out about it. It's just
you know, they're going to take care of their loved one.
But what we're dealing what we're dealing with here as communicate, communicate.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
You know Joe, this loving son who when we look
at his parents' ages, they were ninety two. Yeah, Franz
Krause was ninety two and Teresa krousse eighty three. Okay,
that's today, that's how old they would be today. But
they were killed eight years ago. They haven't been seen
(06:15):
since August of twenty seventeen. So take away eight years
and you're talking about Franz Crouse was eighty four and
Teresa Krause seventy five, seventy five. That's that's not crawling
in the basket, you know. Anyway, we'll talk more about
(06:37):
their physical condition in a few minutes, but I just
wanted to get this off my chest because you need
to know that Lawrence Kraus wrote up this two page manifesto,
so to speak. You sent to every media outlet in town,
and there was an investigation happening at the house. The
self security administration in the bank and a few other
financial institutions were concerned that they hadn't seen mister and
(06:58):
miss Krause for eight years, and they tried to reach
out to him.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
They tried to contact him over the years.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
It wasn't like it just started one day last week,
you know, over the years, they had made several attempts
to make contact with the crowd with mister missus Crosson.
Couldn't couldn't do it. And that's when finally Social Security
asked the police to go do a welfare check, and
that's when they started realizing we got a bigger problem here.
(07:27):
So I just want to be clear on this because
their son, their loving son, sends out this two page manifesto,
and he gets a callback from a news anchor at
the local CBS affiliate in town. This news anchor has
been in the business of broadcasting news for forty five years.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
This ain't his first rodeo. I will tell you that.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
If you sit down with Greg Floyd, a forty five
year veteran newsman, He's going to get out of you
what he wants. He's going to figure you out. That's
what he does. He knows how to tell a story.
And what you do in this case is you find
what that person really wants to tell and you create
opportunities for them to tell it. He knew that he
(08:17):
that Cross really wanted to confess, and he was using
this two page manifesto of his belief system as the bait.
But he didn't want to confess. He didn't want to see.
He didn't want to admit it. He knows the jag
is up once I do this. But mister Floyd would
not give in. He would not He allowed him to
dig a hole, but he kept handing him the shovel.
(08:40):
You know, it's a brilliant piece of work. I hope
you get a chance to watch the video. Like I said,
The news anchor's name is Greg Floyd. He works for
the local CBS affiliate in Albany, New York, w RGB,
Channel six. It is it is something I should be
studied by, should be studied by everybody in broadcasting. This
(09:02):
is how you do an interview when you have no
time to prepare. He had ten minutes to prepare for
the interview of his life, and he's able to get
a very intelligent guy to confess to the murder of
his parents, and it's a confession on tape that will
hold up in court.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I think that it probably will because it wasn't elicited
by the police. This is a civilian doing this, and
can they use that, Yeah, I think they will. They're
certainly going to push forward with a trial in this
case because this individual has in fact been charged. But
it just goes to show you you never know who's
(09:44):
going to walk into a studio, and more than that,
you never know what they might say. Deranged, which is
(10:07):
an adjective, It's a descriptor, right, is a word that
is used to describe someone. And here's a definition. I
think this is actually Webster's definition of a person wildly
irrational or uncontrolled, such as in a deranged gunman. You know,
(10:30):
we hear that term frequently in the media. I was
reading an article, Dave in a New York Post, and
they used the term deranged to describe this son who
went into the studio relative to you know, what what
(10:51):
he had done. You know, and this is after the fact, Dave,
we're eight years down range from the disappearance of his parents.
I don't I think someone at the editorial the editorial
people with New York posts need to sit down with
(11:12):
some of their reporters and have a discussion about the
word deranged, because this doesn't seem like somebody that is
in fact deranged if they're acting in an irrational manner.
I wonder if he was deranged when he was cashing
the checks. What say you?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I think that.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
You know, a lot of words are misapplied, they're misused.
I hate the term superstar. I hate the term bravery
being used for people that are not brave. They're just
usually full of bs. You know, we reward people for
crazy things these days, and this guy's not deranged. He
(11:53):
actually it's interesting because this is I wanted the opening paragraph.
And by the way, it was the CBS affiliate that
actually got this news thing is WRGBTV. And it's not
that RGBTV was the target for this guy. Lawrence Krause
(12:16):
sent that email out to everybody in the community, and
this is the one that responded, and this is what
it says in the opening paragraph. A man admitted during
a television interview last week to killing his parents and
burying them in the backyard of their Upstate New York
home eight years ago. Then he was arrested as he
left the studio. The stunning on camera confession from Laurence
(12:41):
Kraus fifty three came a day after police say they
recovered two bodies from the home in Albany as part
of an investigation that found Krau's parents, Bronz and Teresa,
were still receiving Social Security payments despite not having been
seen or heard from in years.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Eight years. Joe, I think about that. Where were you
eight years ago? And what were you doing?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Oh lord, let's see where was I I had. I
was into my second or third year here at Jack State,
you know, working as a professor, appearing on air, doing
a lot of the stuff I'm doing right now. But
it wasn't quite at this tempo that I work at now.
Wasn't doing a podcast eight years ago. But yeah, yeah,
(13:27):
I mean that's where I was. Here's the chilling thing
about that. I love the fact that you referenced time
here because people, I think that people think these things
happen in a vacuum. Many times, there are cases like this.
There are currently cases out there right now that we're
not even aware of. Where you have a child perhaps
that has killed their parents. Parents are missing, have been
(13:49):
missing for a while, and the child has has gotten
rid of the remains one way or another. You know,
you and I you know, always harp on dismemberment. But
you know we've covered those cases. We've covered burning, reducing
the body through cremation, and in some cases like this burial.
(14:11):
I you know, it harkened back. I think I've mentioned
this case before to a case that we consulted on
many years ago. When I was with a corner in
New Orleans. There was an adjacent city where a guy
had been living in the house, his wife had none
missing his wife. And this is right out by the way.
This is right after luminol stepped onto the stage as
(14:35):
an instrument, and a friend of mine, one of my colleagues,
was one of the first people in Louisiana to be
trained up utilizing luminol. He was a forensic scientist and
he agreed to go to this jurisdiction and apply it
in the basement of the house. What happened is the
guy that lived in the house sold the house, and
(14:56):
the cops had been watching the house for a protracted
period of time. They knew they thought that the wife
had been killed in the house. And my friend shows up,
and you know, he's having to explain, you know, how
to use luminol and all that sort of thing. And
I want you to know, they peel the carpet back
in the basement of this home and sprayed it. And
(15:16):
this is many years later, and it just began to luminess.
And you have to do this in the dark, you know,
and you have to be keen. And this is back
when we were using thirty five millimeters photography and you
have to be very very sensitive to the settings on
your film and these sorts of things on your camera.
Rather and as it turns out, the new couple, the
(15:39):
couple that had bought the house hadn't moved in yet, Dave,
can you imagine having a cop show up and they said, hey,
we think this guy may have killed his wife in
the house.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
You just s fought.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
And they had a statement from the next door neighbor
that from years earlier that the neighbors had said he
had they used to didn't have a rose garden, now
to have a rose guarden. I want you to know,
they dug up the rose guard and the wife was
buried there your pardon. Yeah, yeah, I never promise you.
(16:11):
I said what you did. They're very well done. Yeah
and so yeah, and so this this does happen. You know,
these ideas of concealment, and from a forensics perspective, here's
here's kind of what you're faced with, because this is
what is referred to as a clandestine grave or some
people say clandestine grave, where you're you're attempting to conceal
(16:41):
a body. Now, you can't say necessarily that that you
have a homicide on your hands, but you do know
you do have somebody that is making an attempt to
keep the body out of view so that no one
else will find it. I guess in principle, maybe from
a practice standpoint point, it might be a good idea,
(17:02):
you know, to try to do it, to try to
render it down. But if you can't put distance between
yourself and the body and you're still domiciled at that location,
they show up and they disinter the bodies, dig up
the backyard, which you would have had to have done.
They would have called in a forensic anthropologist. You know,
you're they're going to be looking at you really hard
(17:26):
at this point because you have to ask who has
access to the backyard, who would have time in order
to do this, and who would who would kill two
elderly people like this?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Okay, and when we get into this, I'm curious because
going to the end of the story, first, I would
have thought that the smell of decomposition would have been prevalent,
that neighbors would have smelled, even if you bury them
a few feet deep. I would have thought that that
people would smell it.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
No, uh no, what I think probably it's masked greatly.
And of course this is and it's kind of common sense,
I think. First off, have you wrapped the body? Did
he wrap the body in anything? Is there any remnant?
You know, we just did the case about the woman
in the well and they found the burlap sack one
(18:18):
hundred years ago that she had been wrapped in and
dumped down the well. Great story. I've thought about that
several times since we laid that one down. And if
he concealed their bodies or cocoon the bodies and then
bury them. But a lot of this is going to
be depth related. And what did he do with the soil?
You know, how did he did he do anything to
(18:39):
did he add soil?
Speaker 1 (18:41):
To it.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Did he go out and augment because you know, you
can dig a hole. Here's one of the problems with
clandestine graves and truth, I mean clandestine burials. Let me
just say that, because again, you can in a clandestine manner,
you can get rid of a body. But when you
have a clandestine burial, you're not going to have a
(19:06):
vault to put a body in. So what does that mean. Well,
if you dig a hole and it's just a hole
in the earth, and let's say you decide to go
down six feet, okay, Well, once you put that body
at the bottom of that hole, you know you talked
about the smell of decomposition. You might not spell the decomposition.
(19:27):
But one of the things that's going to be evidenced,
and this is kind of cool, is that if you
look at a traditional image of a burial where you
got earth that's mounded up. You know, and I know
we've all seen this, and you know in literature and
movies and that sort of thing, where you've got a
mound of earth where a body has been buried beneath
(19:47):
the ground. Guess what happens, Well, the soil begins to
sink and as the body decomposes at the bottom. Okay,
all that tissue begins to disappear, the thing is going
to sink even more so, you don't have the framework
(20:08):
of like a concrete vault that's stuck in the ground,
like when you put into a regular you know, city cemetery,
where you drop this concrete vault in there and you
put a lid over it and you pack down. You know,
they got the machinery they pack it down and all that.
You don't have access to that unless he's got you know,
he's got like a little skid steer or something like
that that he can go out there. If you're digging
(20:30):
these holes by hand. Also you can go back behind
it and you can stack gravel perhaps or rock and
then bury that on top of the bodies as well.
But still you're going there's there's nothing like nature to
pack soil. If you have virgin, untouched soil, maybe the
soil has literally never been turned in this area. Now
(20:53):
I doubt it, because this is a plot where a
home was built at some point time. So you have
to imagine that some uh, some earth had been moved
at some point in time in the distant past. It's
going to change the configuration of the mound there that
you have where you have it kind of in dwelling,
it's going to begin to collapse in on itself.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
I'm amazed at the things I don't think about sometimes
when we get ready to do a story. You know,
it didn't occur to me, so I don't.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Think about them many times until I go back to
a case. Nowadays, I don't think about it and I'm like, oh, okay,
this is something that I once knew and that and
that you know, I was practiced at. You know, you know,
you rekindle these things in your brain, you begin to
think about.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Them, all right.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Well, in this particular case, I have to wonder Joe
as Laurence Kraus, Uh, like I said, they figured this out.
They say they being pretty much probably accountant because nobody
had seen.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
It's just you know, Alvan, he's not a big place.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
It's uh see the government for the New York Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
But from a neighborhood standpoint, you know, just like your neighborhood.
My neighborhood, people asked questions and you know, somebody's looking
at this guy, going, I haven't seen his parents. You're
down at the bank you're dealing with somebody's gonna talk. Okay,
when they don't see mom and dad in here and
they see you living off their money, somebody's they're going
(22:25):
to be jealous and be they're going to want to
know what happened.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
And so yeah, and you know, it begs a question,
you know, when you're an investigator and you're you're working
on cases like this, who else knew the crosses?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
You know?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Who like were there? Did they have any living siblings?
Were there any cousins that were still love They're elderly,
so you have to assume that their parents had passed on.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
But did they have laurens?
Speaker 3 (22:51):
They were siblings, have any kids?
Speaker 4 (22:54):
According to him, they were World War two Nazi survivors,
survivors of Nazi Germany, you know, which does kind of
lead you. I'm glad you pointed that out about the
did they have any other relatives because if they did,
shame on them.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Eight years, come on, eight years. Yeah, but elderly people.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I hope I make it to ninety and you don't
hear from me from that, You don't show up and
find me in my recliner, you know, skeletoniz?
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, yeah, and you have to because it's one thing. Okay,
it's one thing if you're taking care of elderly parents,
all right, and you have dad that passes away, and
there's all those you know, kind of And I don't
necessarily think they're anecdotal stories, Dave. As a matter of fact,
I recall having worked one similar to it. You know
(23:42):
these stories that pop up in the news, I know
you're aware of them, where you'll have an elderly couple
have been together for years and years and the wife
will died and then the husband will diestly, yeah, shortly after,
or or conversely, you know it can happen like that.
But what are the odds that both parents would essentially
slip off the mortal coil, if you will, into the
(24:04):
great beyond without even leaving a trace, Dave. A real
(24:26):
tip of the cap here too. And I love the
fact that you used the term newsman. You don't hear
that term used much anymore. This this guy, he's actually
an anchor. His name's Greg Floyd. I really if I
(24:48):
could sit down have a cup of coffee with him,
I would love just to sit there, ask him maybe
two questions and just let him talk. I'd love to
hear what his gut reaction was to all this and
being perfec professional in media. I'm sure that you know,
he would try to keep it right down the line,
but you know, at a human level, he's sitting across
(25:08):
He's sitting across from this guy saying this is the
last thing I expected when I woke up this morning.
You know, I can I can only imagine the tale.
And what's really fascinating about this, Dave, is that this case,
these cases are going to go to trial. He's going
to be compelled to testify and he'll be up on
the stand and it's it's a rare thing when you
(25:29):
hear reporters testify, you know, so in this case, you will,
you probably because you know he's the one that kind
of glinks because they're going to want him to break down.
How did this work? What was your motivation for you know,
offering this this guy, uh, you know, access to you
and to you know, to your your your megaphone that
you have with the media, and uh, you know. And
(25:51):
the thing about it is, it's all on tape, brother,
every bit is on tape. With with this case.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
It makes you when you look at the history of
the guy of Floyd. Mister Floyd had been in the
business for forty five years. Okay, he's not a rookie.
And when this two page email comes in from somebody
that they just found two bodies in the backyard, and he,
you know, he wants he wants his statement post.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
That's where this whole thing started with.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
The son, the the killer, the son or the alleged killer,
the admitted killer. I don't know the right word, but anyway,
Lawrence Krause sends an email to all the media, newspaper, radio, TV,
sends it out to everybody, and he's saying, I want
this posted. You know, I'm on your website. It's my
two page explanation of why they're in the backyard. And
(26:45):
nobody responded. And it's probably because there was probably nobody
at the radio stations there, you know, because they're all
brought in from outside nobody, you know, local radio and
TV are not really local anymore. And so this one newsplace,
they are a man, and they did have a professional
in there. And so he reaches out and says, heay, what, buddy,
(27:08):
We'll post this on our website if you come in
for an interview.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
So it's a little trade off here.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
You know, you don't know if this guy is going
to go, you know, David Koresh, you know, wanting to
open up the Seven Seals before he gives you the truth.
But this guy said, okay, let's do it. And so
Floyd has like ten minutes to prepare ten minutes. So
in that ten minutes, he knows the bodies are in
the backyard, and he knows they're elderly, so he's probably
gonna assume they were getting some kind of payment here.
(27:35):
Money's coming in. There's gonna have to He's going to
justify something. And so once he gets him in there,
the son is trying to make it seem like he
was doing a suddenly duty, a child's way of taking
care of mom and dad. Well, just because somebody's old
doesn't mean they're headed for the dirt. You know, there
(27:57):
are a lot of people that are very old that
are living vibrant lives. You know, Clint Eastwood is still
directing movies and he's one hundred and fifty seven.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
You know, yeah, yeah, you're you're right. And you know,
one of the one of the things that he had
he had he had stated as his rationale I think
he's he's regarding this as a mercy killing. Essentially, that
is what it comes down to. And one of the
things that he had stated his rationale is his parents
(28:26):
were and again I'm kind of using my own words here,
that his parents were declining in health. And one of
one of the one of the reasons cited is that
his parents had had Uh the dad had been hit
at some point in time as a pedestrian and had,
(28:50):
you know, could not ambulate real well. Mom had had
cataract surgery. Now I got I got to tell you,
I didn't know cataract surgery was a qualification for you know,
for murder. But you know, if everybody in America that
had had cataract surgery, if that condemns you to death,
(29:13):
oh my lord, we'd lose at the population. That's a
that's the perspective he's coming from. Day.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
I'm taking them out of their misery, Joe, my dad
not getting around like he used to him. Mom just
had cataract surgery. They're both they're old, and they're falling apart.
I'm just going to help them so they can die
in peace and at their own home. And again, this
guy's level of he needs to be a salesman, but
he's not. He's going to be selling in prison now.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So yeah, yeah, I don't understand it.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Now I know what he did. How did he accomplish
killing his mom and his dad?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Joe, listen, this is according to the interview, and it's
it is one of the more chilling things I've heard
in some time. And I've already shared this with you,
but I think our friends need to know. And this
is you know, actually from uh from the local the
local news outlet up there. He actually confesses and when
(30:13):
he confesses, he tells them in this taping that he
had in fact suffocated his father. Now, when you say suffocate,
that's very specific because it's suffocation, just like other ways
(30:37):
to compromise the airway are considered to be as phixial deaths,
which is phixial means that you're depriving someone of oxygen. Okay,
so how would you go about suffocating somebody? Well, there
are any number of ways, uh, suffocation, smothering. You know, you
begin to think about using a pillow, place a plastic
(31:00):
bag over somebody's head or even even the hand. Uh,
if they're in a debilitated state, which you know, he
he's making the argument that they're physically compromised at this
point in time in their lives. Would you would you
hold your hand pinch your dad's nose and hold holds
(31:22):
your hand over his mouth? What what kind of person
would do this to their father? And then he makes
this is the real chilling party kills his dad at
this point in tom Then he says, and get this, David,
that his mother laid her head on the chest of
(31:45):
her now deceased husband, and the son stated allegedly that
he allowed her to be with the man for a
couple of hours. And then he pooks the exclamation point
by saying, I put her out of her misery by
(32:06):
using a rope. So now he's suffocated his dad allegedly
and has taken a rope wrapped around his mama's throat
and choked the life out of her with it. Now
that's a ligature strangulation. Again, it falls under the broad
category of his sphyxial death. And he sees this apparently
(32:29):
as a mercy killing, that this was merciful. But then
you have to decide at this point in time, what's
going to do with mom and dad? And apparently he
lingered for some time thinking about this, maybe a couple
of days, thinking about, you know, how do I dispose
the remains. One of the most fascinating aspects to people
that kill individuals to me, and they do it in
(32:53):
a manner where it's unseen. This isn't some kind of
public attack or something like that, and they're trying to
cover it up. Always amazed by the psychology of these people.
Dave this idea that they kill someone, but yet they
want to keep the body near them, you know. It's
almost like they're they're controlling the remains years after. They
(33:14):
can keep tabs on who's coming and going, who's around
the area, you know, things like that, you know, and
I've often wondered what the psychology behind that is, you know,
thinking about can you imagine, you know, making you a
cup of coffee, You're sitting at the breakfast nook, You're
(33:36):
looking out the window, and there the grassy plane behind
the house. I wonder, I wonder how Mom and Dad
are doing, you know, in their subterranean dwelling that I
created for them eight years earlier. It just it absolutely
baffles me. And then to couple that with with what
(33:57):
with the fact that this guy goes on on a
in a broadcast and actually it missed to this day.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
You know, I have to wonder Joe breaking down how
he admitted he killed them to put them out of
their misery, sent them home. However, he wanted to look
at it based on the Social Security Administration beginning the investigation,
and I believe they were the ones that I actually
asked for a welfare check because there were some question marks,
(34:25):
and the neighbors thought that the Crosses hadn't moved back
to Germany.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
That's what neighbors said.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
They thought because they hadn't seen him around, thought they
went back to Germany. So I have to wonder Social
Security administration, they're looking into financial crimes, all targeted at
the son who's living in the home. Can't find mom
and dad. They didn't go back to Germany, Well where
are they? And that's when all of this kind of
came to the forefront. But I have to ask you,
(34:53):
when you kill somebody like that, not you, but generally speaking,
people die at your hand. Now he decides to bury
them in the backyard, how long are we talking about
from the time they die till the time you decompositions
that's in. You've gone over rigamortis, ragamortis, Oh yeah, and
(35:16):
all of that, because they still have to be buried.
They don't have to be put somewhere and they're going
to be decomposing. So what are we talking about from
the time they die inside the house and the time
he can get them in the backyard, you know, in
the flower bed, what are we talking about in terms of.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Well, here's an interesting thing. I think we may have
mentioned this before, but if if they were let's say
that they had died. Uh, I hate to box myself
in with specific time, but let's just say that they
had died. Just for grins and giggles, will say that
they had died and they had been in the ground
for one year, and you had an indication as an
(35:55):
investigator that they were buried back there. But you nowhere
you could go in with like a methane probe, you
know where you're taking taking this and you're taking samples
where you're sticking the probe into the ground. And one
of the things with organic material, when it decomposes, it
gives off methane gas, and so you're looking for like
a spike in the methane something that like if you
(36:19):
have normal organic material safe you had a composting bin,
for instance, in your backyard where people will put coffee
grounds and dog poop and leaves and all that, and
they'll turn it periodically. You know, you would have you
would have it would produce methane. Okay, a good example
(36:39):
of that. I'll give you a great example of that.
One of the things that happens down in the swamps
in New Orleans we have and I think this happens
in Florida too, you have swamp fires. And one of
the things that happens with swamp fires, our highways would
get covered with smoke. Have these little methane methane fires
(37:03):
that will break out in the swamp because of the
decomposing organic matter, and they might be in multiple places
and it'll catch a blaze, sometimes just spontaneously. So that's
the power of something decomposing. There's always decomposition going on
in swampy areas. So if you introduce a body into
you know, this non sealed situation, like a cascaded body,
(37:27):
you're not going to find methane production there. But if
you've buried a body like that, one of the ways
that they do it. You would, You could stick a
probe into the ground. But these people are not fresh
dead day. We're talking eight years down the road.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I would.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Okay, you're going to have you're going to have bone
that is left behind. I don't know what state the
bone would necessarily be in a lot of it's going
to be dependent upon the pH of the soil, you know,
is it more acid or is it more base. You're
going to have to take into consideration water flow through
(38:09):
the area because oh yeah, because it will rise and fall.
We talked about this with a well lady. But you
also have this even in ground burials like this. The
other thing that people that people don't think about. You
know how we always talk about the earth just keeps
on spinning and it keeps on moving. Well, the earth
(38:31):
is actually earth. The substrata is actually moving as well.
People don't realize this. It's a process called turbation. And
so the soil actually kind of if you will, think
about the slowest turning tumble dryer you've ever seen. All right,
maybe just time of bits, all right, the earth actually
(38:53):
does the sub subterranean the strata actually does turn like this,
and so you'll have changes in skeletal remains where it
let's just say that both mom and Dad are buried
in the same grave. You've got them laid out in there,
and now they're reduced to skeletal remains. You can have
(39:17):
these commingled remains, which is kind of a headache for
those that are doing the recovery. Now it's great, I
think investigatively that you'll have it all concentrated there, perhaps
unless you've had some kind of subterranean burrowing animal that
would get down there and you know, extricate some bit
of that that's that's left behind. But they should still
(39:40):
be there. Now there's things that are going on with
the skeletal remains that can cause them to begin to
break down more so, and a lot of that goes
with the environment that they're buried in. The chemicals, you know,
the chemical status of the soil. You know, I'd mentioned,
you know what the pH level was, those sorts of things.
And the other thing is do they have any external
(40:01):
covering like where the cocoon and also are their clothing. Now,
if you've got let's say that you have synthetics, synthetic
you know, ray on, uh, your polyesters, those sorts of
things if the clothing is still that clothing is very resilient.
But if you have natural fibers, you know, things like cotton,
for instance, or wool, it might tend to break down
(40:25):
a little bit more. You might not have as much remnant,
but things like zippers, buttons, medical devices. Let's you say
that they they had had surgery. Maybe you have a
subject that has had a screw put into a bone.
Do that surgical still is still going to be their brother,
so you'll be able to see it.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
That's you have to drink testing in the cave at
the beach and Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah, I know you're gonna, Yeah, you're gonna find all
that there.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Let me ask you about this because one of the
tips that they had, okay, it started as a financial crime,
with solid security and all that, they brought cadaver dogs
out to the property, and the cadaver dogs hit John.
They hadn't been seen in eight years. They're buried in
the background, but cadaver dogs could still get it.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Yeah. Their spectrum is quite amazing, you know what, And
it might be something that you and I obviously would
because we've had a very limited all factory spectrum. You know,
compared to compared to canines. Canines are amazing. You and
I are both you know, huge dog lovers anyway, Yeah,
and so it's amazing what dogs are capable of, these
(41:39):
working dogs. So yet, now, I don't put a lot
of stock in dogs that you take out the lakes,
you know, and put them on the bow of a boat,
and they allegedly can smell things. I think that's kind
of a hit or miss proposition. But you give me
a cadaver dog any day and run them out in
the woods. Now, there have been cases where they have failed.
They've walked right over bodies. I think my question would be,
(42:02):
with those dogs that fail to smell things, how well
were they trained to begin with? You know, I think
a lot of that goes to the handler and also
the evaluation of the of the animal. You know, are
they are they ticking all the boxes relative.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
To this, I saw eight years the last time these
people are seeing, we know they're gone and these.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
That's something yeah that they But you know, here here's
the real problem. Even though he's saying that he did this,
and I'm assuming that the corner slash medical examiner is
going to rule their deaths at some point tom as
a homicide if they haven't already at this point. Here's
(42:45):
here's the thing. You're not going to have any tissue
left behind to be able to make a diagnosis of
Like you know, like he talked about having used a
rope to quote unquote doing air quotes right here to
quote unquote put his mama out of her misery. Well,
(43:08):
we would be looking for furrows in the neck. I
don't know, like certain people I won't mention their name,
but their initials are Epstein, you know, where you're looking
for a furrow on the surface of the neck. That's
not going to be evidenced with her because that's that
tissues no longer going to exist at this point. The
(43:31):
only thing you could possibly hope for is if some
of the structures of the neck may have been fractured,
the skeletal structures, and if there's any evidence of that.
If you're suffocating, somebody's suffocation is not this It's not
quite as violent as you know, taking a rope, you know,
(43:51):
and like senching it up on an elderly woman's neck
and doing that sort of thing. If you're putting a
pillow over someone's face to stuff them or a hand
or a bag or whatever it is. It's not going
to leave a tremendous amount of trauma, certainly, no trauma
that I think, and I might be proven wrong. I've
been wrong before that you know that you're not going
(44:12):
to you know that you're going to be able to appreciate.
So I don't know, we'll we'll keep our eye on it,
and you know, kind of see what happens in this case.
I know that you know. I don't want to put
words in your mouth, but one of the reasons you
know I pitched this this case to you is it's
one of the more bizarre things that we've actually had
(44:33):
happen in recent memory. I don't know if you concur.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
With before you think this is a slam dunk. Let
me share one quick side note. All right, please, let's
just say, for the sake of argument, that this guy
who goes on TV and confesses that they found the
financial crimes and all that, but what if, what if
after everything's said and done, Joe, they find out this
(44:57):
guy is a true crime fan who wanted to start
his own podcast and this was the best way for
him to launch it. But really what happened it was
a murder suicide. His dad killed her, his mom, and
then he suffocated himself. And the son was so humiliated
by what had happened to his heroic parents that he
took care of their bodies. He did his you know,
(45:17):
and he used this as the stepping stone to launch
his own career in true crime.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
But he didn't actually kill his parents.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
He did put their bodies in the backyard, but he
did that out of love and devotion. He did not
want the memory of his father to you know what
about something like that coming down the pike. I'm telling you, friends,
if oj Simpson can walk out of court a free man,
their stories can work as well.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
It ain't a slam dunk.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
I got to take something, brother Dave. In the world
that we live in now, confessions on television, burials in
the backyard, sons that disregard the lives of their loving
parents that survived Nazi Germany, nothing nowadays surprises me. Everything
(46:06):
is on the table. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is body bags
Quody balance. But Joseph Scott.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
More I, for one, like the idea of having what's
called a family plot.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Family plot can either say that you're maybe you have
a space in a local municipal cemetery, or maybe you
have a place in your church's graveyard, or it can
mean that you actually have a plot set aside for
(00:38):
burial of your loved ones on property that perhaps has
been in your family for years and years. I don't
know if the word quaint quite applies here, but there's
something I think on one level that's kind of comforting.
That is, if you're buried on your family's property, he'll
(01:02):
be perpetually taken care of. Today, on Bodybacks, we're going
to talk about a fellow who literally decided to bury
his mom and dad on his own property in the
backyard eight years ago, after he, of course allegedly murder
(01:29):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. There's something comforting,
Dave about I think on one level about perpetual care.
Maybe I think it's more of a comfort to those
that remain as opposed to those that are passed on,
because I don't think the ones that have passed on
(01:50):
truly have an awareness of this sort of thing. I'm
not going to address the spiritual, but I think scientifically,
you know, they don't have an awareness of it. But
it's kind of a maybe it's a quaint notion. Like
I said, you don't have these very often, and you
know you, I got to tell you a quick story.
(02:13):
There was a place in Atlanta, and you'll find this
kind of interesting. There was a place in Atlanta neighborhood
in Atlanta that's called actually called Cabbage Town. I don't
know if you've ever heard of cabbage Town, Dave, but.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's I bet it's like socks.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Well. It's actually a place where where people from Appalachia
came to Atlanta to work in the mills, and they
came lockstock and barrel, and they still had relatives that
lived up in that mountainous region of North Georgia and
(02:55):
points beyond. Because there's work in the big city, right
and the habited these you know, quickly built wooden structures
that in the South at least we call the mill villages.
They're adjacent to textile mills and that sort of thing.
But Cabbagetown in particular had these kind of interesting rolling
features to it. You know, the hills were I mean
(03:16):
the roads, you know, kind of cut off in different directions.
And there were these these families that had dwelled these
houses for a couple of generations, but they would still
go back up home to see their kin folk. Well,
we had a fellow in Atlanta that had died, right,
and he had died violently in a car accident, and
(03:40):
he was domiciled in Cabbagetown. Well, his family wanted to
retrieve his remains. His family lived up in the North
Georgia Mountains. His family showed up with a flatbed truck
to pick up his remains, and they had signed all
(04:02):
the proper paperwork.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
By the way, really.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
They wanted to handle picking him up. They didn't want
a funeral home to do it. So we released the body.
We released the body to them, and he was left
in a body bag and he was strapped to the
back of a flatbed truck and off they went up
into the Blue Ridge Mountains where he would be buried
in the family plot. I was always fascinated by that. Yeah,
(04:25):
and it wasn't my case. It was one of my colleagues,
and it had the story was related to me. It
had happened late at night. You know, they show up,
which normally happens. You know, if you in a busy
medical examiner's office, bodies are literally being picked up and
delivered all hours of day, day at night. You worked
in a funeral home for a while, I know, and this,
(04:46):
you know, is unpredictable. So you can have a funeral
home that'll come from out of town. They might hit
the city, you know, at midnight, one, two in the morning.
They're there to pick up remains. They're going to put
the remains in their heart typically or their van and
haul them off. In this case, they were taking this
old boy back up to the mountains and they were
going to bury him the family flat.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
I love the fact that you said they got the
right paperwork.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
That yes they did. They they had gone through and
had gotten I think it was a burial certificate, which
also they it was required for them to have a
burial certificate to bury his remains on the property, you know,
because there has to be an accounting for where the
body is.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And you know, they had all these measures taken care
of and it was an accidental case. It was not
like it was an ongoing homicide investigation.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well see, you see that sounds like a lot of love.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
That's a family that has the family plot, and there's
no Alfred Hitchcock movie coming out about it. It's just
you know, they're going to take care of their loved one.
But what we're dealing what we're dealing with here as communicate, communicate.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
You know Joe, this loving son who when we look
at his parents' ages, they were ninety two. Yeah, Franz
Krause was ninety two and Teresa krousse eighty three. Okay,
that's today, that's how old they would be today. But
they were killed eight years ago. They haven't been seen
(06:15):
since August of twenty seventeen. So take away eight years
and you're talking about Franz Crouse was eighty four and
Teresa Krause seventy five, seventy five. That's that's not crawling
in the basket, you know. Anyway, we'll talk more about
(06:37):
their physical condition in a few minutes, but I just
wanted to get this off my chest because you need
to know that Lawrence Kraus wrote up this two page manifesto,
so to speak. You sent to every media outlet in town,
and there was an investigation happening at the house. The
self security administration in the bank and a few other
financial institutions were concerned that they hadn't seen mister and
(06:58):
miss Krause for eight years, and they tried to reach
out to him.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
They tried to contact him over the years.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
It wasn't like it just started one day last week,
you know, over the years, they had made several attempts
to make contact with the crowd with mister missus Crosson.
Couldn't couldn't do it. And that's when finally Social Security
asked the police to go do a welfare check, and
that's when they started realizing we got a bigger problem here.
(07:27):
So I just want to be clear on this because
their son, their loving son, sends out this two page manifesto,
and he gets a callback from a news anchor at
the local CBS affiliate in town. This news anchor has
been in the business of broadcasting news for forty five years.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
This ain't his first rodeo. I will tell you that.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
If you sit down with Greg Floyd, a forty five
year veteran newsman, He's going to get out of you
what he wants. He's going to figure you out. That's
what he does. He knows how to tell a story.
And what you do in this case is you find
what that person really wants to tell and you create
opportunities for them to tell it. He knew that he
(08:17):
that Cross really wanted to confess, and he was using
this two page manifesto of his belief system as the bait.
But he didn't want to confess. He didn't want to see.
He didn't want to admit it. He knows the jag
is up once I do this. But mister Floyd would
not give in. He would not He allowed him to
dig a hole, but he kept handing him the shovel.
(08:40):
You know, it's a brilliant piece of work. I hope
you get a chance to watch the video. Like I said,
The news anchor's name is Greg Floyd. He works for
the local CBS affiliate in Albany, New York, w RGB,
Channel six. It is it is something I should be
studied by, should be studied by everybody in broadcasting. This
(09:02):
is how you do an interview when you have no
time to prepare. He had ten minutes to prepare for
the interview of his life, and he's able to get
a very intelligent guy to confess to the murder of
his parents, and it's a confession on tape that will
hold up in court.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I think that it probably will because it wasn't elicited
by the police. This is a civilian doing this, and
can they use that, Yeah, I think they will. They're
certainly going to push forward with a trial in this
case because this individual has in fact been charged. But
it just goes to show you you never know who's
(09:44):
going to walk into a studio, and more than that,
you never know what they might say. Deranged, which is
(10:07):
an adjective, It's a descriptor, right, is a word that
is used to describe someone. And here's a definition. I
think this is actually Webster's definition of a person wildly
irrational or uncontrolled, such as in a deranged gunman. You know,
(10:30):
we hear that term frequently in the media. I was
reading an article, Dave in a New York Post, and
they used the term deranged to describe this son who
went into the studio relative to you know, what what
(10:51):
he had done. You know, and this is after the fact, Dave,
we're eight years down range from the disappearance of his parents.
I don't I think someone at the editorial the editorial
people with New York posts need to sit down with
(11:12):
some of their reporters and have a discussion about the
word deranged, because this doesn't seem like somebody that is
in fact deranged if they're acting in an irrational manner.
I wonder if he was deranged when he was cashing
the checks. What say you?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I think that.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
You know, a lot of words are misapplied, they're misused.
I hate the term superstar. I hate the term bravery
being used for people that are not brave. They're just
usually full of bs. You know, we reward people for
crazy things these days, and this guy's not deranged. He
(11:53):
actually it's interesting because this is I wanted the opening paragraph.
And by the way, it was the CBS affiliate that
actually got this news thing is WRGBTV. And it's not
that RGBTV was the target for this guy. Lawrence Krause
(12:16):
sent that email out to everybody in the community, and
this is the one that responded, and this is what
it says in the opening paragraph. A man admitted during
a television interview last week to killing his parents and
burying them in the backyard of their Upstate New York
home eight years ago. Then he was arrested as he
left the studio. The stunning on camera confession from Laurence
(12:41):
Kraus fifty three came a day after police say they
recovered two bodies from the home in Albany as part
of an investigation that found Krau's parents, Bronz and Teresa,
were still receiving Social Security payments despite not having been
seen or heard from in years.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Eight years. Joe, I think about that. Where were you
eight years ago? And what were you doing?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Oh lord, let's see where was I I had. I
was into my second or third year here at Jack State,
you know, working as a professor, appearing on air, doing
a lot of the stuff I'm doing right now. But
it wasn't quite at this tempo that I work at now.
Wasn't doing a podcast eight years ago. But yeah, yeah,
(13:27):
I mean that's where I was. Here's the chilling thing
about that. I love the fact that you referenced time
here because people, I think that people think these things
happen in a vacuum. Many times, there are cases like this.
There are currently cases out there right now that we're
not even aware of. Where you have a child perhaps
that has killed their parents. Parents are missing, have been
(13:49):
missing for a while, and the child has has gotten
rid of the remains one way or another. You know,
you and I you know, always harp on dismemberment. But
you know we've covered those cases. We've covered burning, reducing
the body through cremation, and in some cases like this burial.
(14:11):
I you know, it harkened back. I think I've mentioned
this case before to a case that we consulted on
many years ago. When I was with a corner in
New Orleans. There was an adjacent city where a guy
had been living in the house, his wife had none
missing his wife. And this is right out by the way.
This is right after luminol stepped onto the stage as
(14:35):
an instrument, and a friend of mine, one of my colleagues,
was one of the first people in Louisiana to be
trained up utilizing luminol. He was a forensic scientist and
he agreed to go to this jurisdiction and apply it
in the basement of the house. What happened is the
guy that lived in the house sold the house, and
(14:56):
the cops had been watching the house for a protracted
period of time. They knew they thought that the wife
had been killed in the house. And my friend shows up,
and you know, he's having to explain, you know, how
to use luminol and all that sort of thing. And
I want you to know, they peel the carpet back
in the basement of this home and sprayed it. And
(15:16):
this is many years later, and it just began to luminess.
And you have to do this in the dark, you know,
and you have to be keen. And this is back
when we were using thirty five millimeters photography and you
have to be very very sensitive to the settings on
your film and these sorts of things on your camera.
Rather and as it turns out, the new couple, the
(15:39):
couple that had bought the house hadn't moved in yet, Dave,
can you imagine having a cop show up and they said, hey,
we think this guy may have killed his wife in
the house.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
You just s fought.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
And they had a statement from the next door neighbor
that from years earlier that the neighbors had said he
had they used to didn't have a rose garden, now
to have a rose guarden. I want you to know,
they dug up the rose guard and the wife was
buried there your pardon. Yeah, yeah, I never promise you.
(16:11):
I said what you did. They're very well done. Yeah
and so yeah, and so this this does happen. You know,
these ideas of concealment, and from a forensics perspective, here's
here's kind of what you're faced with, because this is
what is referred to as a clandestine grave or some
people say clandestine grave, where you're you're attempting to conceal
(16:41):
a body. Now, you can't say necessarily that that you
have a homicide on your hands, but you do know
you do have somebody that is making an attempt to
keep the body out of view so that no one
else will find it. I guess in principle, maybe from
a practice standpoint point, it might be a good idea,
(17:02):
you know, to try to do it, to try to
render it down. But if you can't put distance between
yourself and the body and you're still domiciled at that location,
they show up and they disinter the bodies, dig up
the backyard, which you would have had to have done.
They would have called in a forensic anthropologist. You know,
you're they're going to be looking at you really hard
(17:26):
at this point because you have to ask who has
access to the backyard, who would have time in order
to do this, and who would who would kill two
elderly people like this?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Okay, and when we get into this, I'm curious because
going to the end of the story, first, I would
have thought that the smell of decomposition would have been prevalent,
that neighbors would have smelled, even if you bury them
a few feet deep. I would have thought that that
people would smell it.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
No, uh no, what I think probably it's masked greatly.
And of course this is and it's kind of common sense,
I think. First off, have you wrapped the body? Did
he wrap the body in anything? Is there any remnant?
You know, we just did the case about the woman
in the well and they found the burlap sack one
(18:18):
hundred years ago that she had been wrapped in and
dumped down the well. Great story. I've thought about that
several times since we laid that one down. And if
he concealed their bodies or cocoon the bodies and then
bury them. But a lot of this is going to
be depth related. And what did he do with the soil?
You know, how did he did he do anything to
(18:39):
did he add soil?
Speaker 1 (18:41):
To it.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Did he go out and augment because you know, you
can dig a hole. Here's one of the problems with
clandestine graves and truth, I mean clandestine burials. Let me
just say that, because again, you can in a clandestine manner,
you can get rid of a body. But when you
have a clandestine burial, you're not going to have a
(19:06):
vault to put a body in. So what does that mean. Well,
if you dig a hole and it's just a hole
in the earth, and let's say you decide to go
down six feet, okay, Well, once you put that body
at the bottom of that hole, you know you talked
about the smell of decomposition. You might not spell the decomposition.
(19:27):
But one of the things that's going to be evidenced,
and this is kind of cool, is that if you
look at a traditional image of a burial where you
got earth that's mounded up. You know, and I know
we've all seen this, and you know in literature and
movies and that sort of thing, where you've got a
mound of earth where a body has been buried beneath
(19:47):
the ground. Guess what happens, Well, the soil begins to
sink and as the body decomposes at the bottom. Okay,
all that tissue begins to disappear, the thing is going
to sink even more so, you don't have the framework
(20:08):
of like a concrete vault that's stuck in the ground,
like when you put into a regular you know, city cemetery,
where you drop this concrete vault in there and you
put a lid over it and you pack down. You know,
they got the machinery they pack it down and all that.
You don't have access to that unless he's got you know,
he's got like a little skid steer or something like
that that he can go out there. If you're digging
(20:30):
these holes by hand. Also you can go back behind
it and you can stack gravel perhaps or rock and
then bury that on top of the bodies as well.
But still you're going there's there's nothing like nature to
pack soil. If you have virgin, untouched soil, maybe the
soil has literally never been turned in this area. Now
(20:53):
I doubt it, because this is a plot where a
home was built at some point time. So you have
to imagine that some uh, some earth had been moved
at some point in time in the distant past. It's
going to change the configuration of the mound there that
you have where you have it kind of in dwelling,
it's going to begin to collapse in on itself.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
I'm amazed at the things I don't think about sometimes
when we get ready to do a story. You know,
it didn't occur to me, so I don't.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Think about them many times until I go back to
a case. Nowadays, I don't think about it and I'm like, oh, okay,
this is something that I once knew and that and
that you know, I was practiced at. You know, you know,
you rekindle these things in your brain, you begin to
think about.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Them, all right.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Well, in this particular case, I have to wonder Joe
as Laurence Kraus, Uh, like I said, they figured this out.
They say they being pretty much probably accountant because nobody
had seen.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
It's just you know, Alvan, he's not a big place.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
It's uh see the government for the New York Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
But from a neighborhood standpoint, you know, just like your neighborhood.
My neighborhood, people asked questions and you know, somebody's looking
at this guy, going, I haven't seen his parents. You're
down at the bank you're dealing with somebody's gonna talk. Okay,
when they don't see mom and dad in here and
they see you living off their money, somebody's they're going
(22:25):
to be jealous and be they're going to want to
know what happened.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
And so yeah, and you know, it begs a question,
you know, when you're an investigator and you're you're working
on cases like this, who else knew the crosses?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
You know?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Who like were there? Did they have any living siblings?
Were there any cousins that were still love They're elderly,
so you have to assume that their parents had passed on.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
But did they have laurens?
Speaker 3 (22:51):
They were siblings, have any kids?
Speaker 4 (22:54):
According to him, they were World War two Nazi survivors,
survivors of Nazi Germany, you know, which does kind of
lead you. I'm glad you pointed that out about the
did they have any other relatives because if they did,
shame on them.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Eight years, come on, eight years. Yeah, but elderly people.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I hope I make it to ninety and you don't
hear from me from that, You don't show up and
find me in my recliner, you know, skeletoniz?
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, yeah, and you have to because it's one thing. Okay,
it's one thing if you're taking care of elderly parents,
all right, and you have dad that passes away, and
there's all those you know, kind of And I don't
necessarily think they're anecdotal stories, Dave. As a matter of fact,
I recall having worked one similar to it. You know
(23:42):
these stories that pop up in the news, I know
you're aware of them, where you'll have an elderly couple
have been together for years and years and the wife
will died and then the husband will diestly, yeah, shortly after,
or or conversely, you know it can happen like that.
But what are the odds that both parents would essentially
slip off the mortal coil, if you will, into the
(24:04):
great beyond without even leaving a trace, Dave. A real
(24:26):
tip of the cap here too. And I love the
fact that you used the term newsman. You don't hear
that term used much anymore. This this guy, he's actually
an anchor. His name's Greg Floyd. I really if I
(24:48):
could sit down have a cup of coffee with him,
I would love just to sit there, ask him maybe
two questions and just let him talk. I'd love to
hear what his gut reaction was to all this and
being perfec professional in media. I'm sure that you know,
he would try to keep it right down the line,
but you know, at a human level, he's sitting across
(25:08):
He's sitting across from this guy saying this is the
last thing I expected when I woke up this morning.
You know, I can I can only imagine the tale.
And what's really fascinating about this, Dave, is that this case,
these cases are going to go to trial. He's going
to be compelled to testify and he'll be up on
the stand and it's it's a rare thing when you
(25:29):
hear reporters testify, you know, so in this case, you will,
you probably because you know he's the one that kind
of glinks because they're going to want him to break down.
How did this work? What was your motivation for you know,
offering this this guy, uh, you know, access to you
and to you know, to your your your megaphone that
you have with the media, and uh, you know. And
(25:51):
the thing about it is, it's all on tape, brother,
every bit is on tape. With with this case.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
It makes you when you look at the history of
the guy of Floyd. Mister Floyd had been in the
business for forty five years. Okay, he's not a rookie.
And when this two page email comes in from somebody
that they just found two bodies in the backyard, and he,
you know, he wants he wants his statement post.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
That's where this whole thing started with.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
The son, the the killer, the son or the alleged killer,
the admitted killer. I don't know the right word, but anyway,
Lawrence Krause sends an email to all the media, newspaper, radio, TV,
sends it out to everybody, and he's saying, I want
this posted. You know, I'm on your website. It's my
two page explanation of why they're in the backyard. And
(26:45):
nobody responded. And it's probably because there was probably nobody
at the radio stations there, you know, because they're all
brought in from outside nobody, you know, local radio and
TV are not really local anymore. And so this one newsplace,
they are a man, and they did have a professional
in there. And so he reaches out and says, heay, what, buddy,
(27:08):
We'll post this on our website if you come in
for an interview.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
So it's a little trade off here.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
You know, you don't know if this guy is going
to go, you know, David Koresh, you know, wanting to
open up the Seven Seals before he gives you the truth.
But this guy said, okay, let's do it. And so
Floyd has like ten minutes to prepare ten minutes. So
in that ten minutes, he knows the bodies are in
the backyard, and he knows they're elderly, so he's probably
gonna assume they were getting some kind of payment here.
(27:35):
Money's coming in. There's gonna have to He's going to
justify something. And so once he gets him in there,
the son is trying to make it seem like he
was doing a suddenly duty, a child's way of taking
care of mom and dad. Well, just because somebody's old
doesn't mean they're headed for the dirt. You know, there
(27:57):
are a lot of people that are very old that
are living vibrant lives. You know, Clint Eastwood is still
directing movies and he's one hundred and fifty seven.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
You know, yeah, yeah, you're you're right. And you know,
one of the one of the things that he had
he had he had stated as his rationale I think
he's he's regarding this as a mercy killing. Essentially, that
is what it comes down to. And one of the
things that he had stated his rationale is his parents
(28:26):
were and again I'm kind of using my own words here,
that his parents were declining in health. And one of
one of the one of the reasons cited is that
his parents had had Uh the dad had been hit
at some point in time as a pedestrian and had,
(28:50):
you know, could not ambulate real well. Mom had had
cataract surgery. Now I got I got to tell you,
I didn't know cataract surgery was a qualification for you know,
for murder. But you know, if everybody in America that
had had cataract surgery, if that condemns you to death,
(29:13):
oh my lord, we'd lose at the population. That's a
that's the perspective he's coming from. Day.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
I'm taking them out of their misery, Joe, my dad
not getting around like he used to him. Mom just
had cataract surgery. They're both they're old, and they're falling apart.
I'm just going to help them so they can die
in peace and at their own home. And again, this
guy's level of he needs to be a salesman, but
he's not. He's going to be selling in prison now.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So yeah, yeah, I don't understand it.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Now I know what he did. How did he accomplish
killing his mom and his dad?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Joe, listen, this is according to the interview, and it's
it is one of the more chilling things I've heard
in some time. And I've already shared this with you,
but I think our friends need to know. And this
is you know, actually from uh from the local the
local news outlet up there. He actually confesses and when
(30:13):
he confesses, he tells them in this taping that he
had in fact suffocated his father. Now, when you say suffocate,
that's very specific because it's suffocation, just like other ways
(30:37):
to compromise the airway are considered to be as phixial deaths,
which is phixial means that you're depriving someone of oxygen. Okay,
so how would you go about suffocating somebody? Well, there
are any number of ways, uh, suffocation, smothering. You know, you
begin to think about using a pillow, place a plastic
(31:00):
bag over somebody's head or even even the hand. Uh,
if they're in a debilitated state, which you know, he
he's making the argument that they're physically compromised at this
point in time in their lives. Would you would you
hold your hand pinch your dad's nose and hold holds
(31:22):
your hand over his mouth? What what kind of person
would do this to their father? And then he makes
this is the real chilling party kills his dad at
this point in tom Then he says, and get this, David,
that his mother laid her head on the chest of
(31:45):
her now deceased husband, and the son stated allegedly that
he allowed her to be with the man for a
couple of hours. And then he pooks the exclamation point
by saying, I put her out of her misery by
(32:06):
using a rope. So now he's suffocated his dad allegedly
and has taken a rope wrapped around his mama's throat
and choked the life out of her with it. Now
that's a ligature strangulation. Again, it falls under the broad
category of his sphyxial death. And he sees this apparently
(32:29):
as a mercy killing, that this was merciful. But then
you have to decide at this point in time, what's
going to do with mom and dad? And apparently he
lingered for some time thinking about this, maybe a couple
of days, thinking about, you know, how do I dispose
the remains. One of the most fascinating aspects to people
that kill individuals to me, and they do it in
(32:53):
a manner where it's unseen. This isn't some kind of
public attack or something like that, and they're trying to
cover it up. Always amazed by the psychology of these people.
Dave this idea that they kill someone, but yet they
want to keep the body near them, you know. It's
almost like they're they're controlling the remains years after. They
(33:14):
can keep tabs on who's coming and going, who's around
the area, you know, things like that, you know, and
I've often wondered what the psychology behind that is, you know,
thinking about can you imagine, you know, making you a
cup of coffee, You're sitting at the breakfast nook, You're
(33:36):
looking out the window, and there the grassy plane behind
the house. I wonder, I wonder how Mom and Dad
are doing, you know, in their subterranean dwelling that I
created for them eight years earlier. It just it absolutely
baffles me. And then to couple that with with what
(33:57):
with the fact that this guy goes on on a
in a broadcast and actually it missed to this day.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
You know, I have to wonder Joe breaking down how
he admitted he killed them to put them out of
their misery, sent them home. However, he wanted to look
at it based on the Social Security Administration beginning the investigation,
and I believe they were the ones that I actually
asked for a welfare check because there were some question marks,
(34:25):
and the neighbors thought that the Crosses hadn't moved back
to Germany.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
That's what neighbors said.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
They thought because they hadn't seen him around, thought they
went back to Germany. So I have to wonder Social
Security administration, they're looking into financial crimes, all targeted at
the son who's living in the home. Can't find mom
and dad. They didn't go back to Germany, Well where
are they? And that's when all of this kind of
came to the forefront. But I have to ask you,
(34:53):
when you kill somebody like that, not you, but generally speaking,
people die at your hand. Now he decides to bury
them in the backyard, how long are we talking about
from the time they die till the time you decompositions
that's in. You've gone over rigamortis, ragamortis, Oh yeah, and
(35:16):
all of that, because they still have to be buried.
They don't have to be put somewhere and they're going
to be decomposing. So what are we talking about from
the time they die inside the house and the time
he can get them in the backyard, you know, in
the flower bed, what are we talking about in terms of.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Well, here's an interesting thing. I think we may have
mentioned this before, but if if they were let's say
that they had died. Uh, I hate to box myself
in with specific time, but let's just say that they
had died. Just for grins and giggles, will say that
they had died and they had been in the ground
for one year, and you had an indication as an
(35:55):
investigator that they were buried back there. But you nowhere
you could go in with like a methane probe, you
know where you're taking taking this and you're taking samples
where you're sticking the probe into the ground. And one
of the things with organic material, when it decomposes, it
gives off methane gas, and so you're looking for like
a spike in the methane something that like if you
(36:19):
have normal organic material safe you had a composting bin,
for instance, in your backyard where people will put coffee
grounds and dog poop and leaves and all that, and
they'll turn it periodically. You know, you would have you
would have it would produce methane. Okay, a good example
(36:39):
of that. I'll give you a great example of that.
One of the things that happens down in the swamps
in New Orleans we have and I think this happens
in Florida too, you have swamp fires. And one of
the things that happens with swamp fires, our highways would
get covered with smoke. Have these little methane methane fires
(37:03):
that will break out in the swamp because of the
decomposing organic matter, and they might be in multiple places
and it'll catch a blaze, sometimes just spontaneously. So that's
the power of something decomposing. There's always decomposition going on
in swampy areas. So if you introduce a body into
you know, this non sealed situation, like a cascaded body,
(37:27):
you're not going to find methane production there. But if
you've buried a body like that, one of the ways
that they do it. You would, You could stick a
probe into the ground. But these people are not fresh
dead day. We're talking eight years down the road.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I would.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Okay, you're going to have you're going to have bone
that is left behind. I don't know what state the
bone would necessarily be in a lot of it's going
to be dependent upon the pH of the soil, you know,
is it more acid or is it more base. You're
going to have to take into consideration water flow through
(38:09):
the area because oh yeah, because it will rise and fall.
We talked about this with a well lady. But you
also have this even in ground burials like this. The
other thing that people that people don't think about. You
know how we always talk about the earth just keeps
on spinning and it keeps on moving. Well, the earth
(38:31):
is actually earth. The substrata is actually moving as well.
People don't realize this. It's a process called turbation. And
so the soil actually kind of if you will, think
about the slowest turning tumble dryer you've ever seen. All right,
maybe just time of bits, all right, the earth actually
(38:53):
does the sub subterranean the strata actually does turn like this,
and so you'll have changes in skeletal remains where it
let's just say that both mom and Dad are buried
in the same grave. You've got them laid out in there,
and now they're reduced to skeletal remains. You can have
(39:17):
these commingled remains, which is kind of a headache for
those that are doing the recovery. Now it's great, I
think investigatively that you'll have it all concentrated there, perhaps
unless you've had some kind of subterranean burrowing animal that
would get down there and you know, extricate some bit
of that that's that's left behind. But they should still
(39:40):
be there. Now there's things that are going on with
the skeletal remains that can cause them to begin to
break down more so, and a lot of that goes
with the environment that they're buried in. The chemicals, you know,
the chemical status of the soil. You know, I'd mentioned,
you know what the pH level was, those sorts of things.
And the other thing is do they have any external
(40:01):
covering like where the cocoon and also are their clothing. Now,
if you've got let's say that you have synthetics, synthetic
you know, ray on, uh, your polyesters, those sorts of
things if the clothing is still that clothing is very resilient.
But if you have natural fibers, you know, things like cotton,
for instance, or wool, it might tend to break down
(40:25):
a little bit more. You might not have as much remnant,
but things like zippers, buttons, medical devices. Let's you say
that they they had had surgery. Maybe you have a
subject that has had a screw put into a bone.
Do that surgical still is still going to be their brother,
so you'll be able to see it.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
That's you have to drink testing in the cave at
the beach and Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah, I know you're gonna, Yeah, you're gonna find all
that there.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Let me ask you about this because one of the
tips that they had, okay, it started as a financial crime,
with solid security and all that, they brought cadaver dogs
out to the property, and the cadaver dogs hit John.
They hadn't been seen in eight years. They're buried in
the background, but cadaver dogs could still get it.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Yeah. Their spectrum is quite amazing, you know what, And
it might be something that you and I obviously would
because we've had a very limited all factory spectrum. You know,
compared to compared to canines. Canines are amazing. You and
I are both you know, huge dog lovers anyway, Yeah,
and so it's amazing what dogs are capable of, these
(41:39):
working dogs. So yet, now, I don't put a lot
of stock in dogs that you take out the lakes,
you know, and put them on the bow of a boat,
and they allegedly can smell things. I think that's kind
of a hit or miss proposition. But you give me
a cadaver dog any day and run them out in
the woods. Now, there have been cases where they have failed.
They've walked right over bodies. I think my question would be,
(42:02):
with those dogs that fail to smell things, how well
were they trained to begin with? You know, I think
a lot of that goes to the handler and also
the evaluation of the of the animal. You know, are
they are they ticking all the boxes relative.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
To this, I saw eight years the last time these
people are seeing, we know they're gone and these.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
That's something yeah that they But you know, here here's
the real problem. Even though he's saying that he did this,
and I'm assuming that the corner slash medical examiner is
going to rule their deaths at some point tom as
a homicide if they haven't already at this point. Here's
(42:45):
here's the thing. You're not going to have any tissue
left behind to be able to make a diagnosis of
Like you know, like he talked about having used a
rope to quote unquote doing air quotes right here to
quote unquote put his mama out of her misery. Well,
(43:08):
we would be looking for furrows in the neck. I
don't know, like certain people I won't mention their name,
but their initials are Epstein, you know, where you're looking
for a furrow on the surface of the neck. That's
not going to be evidenced with her because that's that
tissues no longer going to exist at this point. The
(43:31):
only thing you could possibly hope for is if some
of the structures of the neck may have been fractured,
the skeletal structures, and if there's any evidence of that.
If you're suffocating, somebody's suffocation is not this It's not
quite as violent as you know, taking a rope, you know,
(43:51):
and like senching it up on an elderly woman's neck
and doing that sort of thing. If you're putting a
pillow over someone's face to stuff them or a hand
or a bag or whatever it is. It's not going
to leave a tremendous amount of trauma, certainly, no trauma
that I think, and I might be proven wrong. I've
been wrong before that you know that you're not going
(44:12):
to you know that you're going to be able to appreciate.
So I don't know, we'll we'll keep our eye on it,
and you know, kind of see what happens in this case.
I know that you know. I don't want to put
words in your mouth, but one of the reasons you
know I pitched this this case to you is it's
one of the more bizarre things that we've actually had
(44:33):
happen in recent memory. I don't know if you concur.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
With before you think this is a slam dunk. Let
me share one quick side note. All right, please, let's
just say, for the sake of argument, that this guy
who goes on TV and confesses that they found the
financial crimes and all that, but what if, what if
after everything's said and done, Joe, they find out this
(44:57):
guy is a true crime fan who wanted to start
his own podcast and this was the best way for
him to launch it. But really what happened it was
a murder suicide. His dad killed her, his mom, and
then he suffocated himself. And the son was so humiliated
by what had happened to his heroic parents that he
took care of their bodies. He did his you know,
(45:17):
and he used this as the stepping stone to launch
his own career in true crime.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
But he didn't actually kill his parents.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
He did put their bodies in the backyard, but he
did that out of love and devotion. He did not
want the memory of his father to you know what
about something like that coming down the pike. I'm telling you, friends,
if oj Simpson can walk out of court a free man,
their stories can work as well.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
It ain't a slam dunk.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
I got to take something, brother Dave. In the world
that we live in now, confessions on television, burials in
the backyard, sons that disregard the lives of their loving
parents that survived Nazi Germany, nothing nowadays surprises me. Everything
(46:06):
is on the table. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is body bags
Host
Nancy Grace
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.