An Albany reporter’s steady questioning led a murder suspect to confess on camera

Greg Floyd has done a lot of tense interviews over his 46-year career, but none have unfolded quite like the one that aired last month. During an interview with Floyd for Albany’s CBS6 news station, a local man confessed on camera to killing and burying both of his parents eight years prior.

Floyd didn’t hesitate to ask the man — 53-year-old Lorenz Kraus — what he knew his viewers wanted to know: Did he kill his parents, whose bodies had been discovered in the backyard of their home? Just two minutes after the cameras started rolling, after Kraus had described his aging parents’ deteriorating health, Floyd asked him: “Did you kill your parents as a mercy killing, to put them out of their misery?”

Initially, Kraus dodged the question, referring to a statement he had provided (which didn’t actually reference his parents’ deaths at all) and saying he was invoking his Fifth Amendment rights. Floyd had to conduct the interview carefully.

“I was trying to thread a needle, to walk that very fine line, because there was a chance he would just leave,” Floyd said in an interview with Poynter. “But I believed early on that he wanted to go there. And I just had to find a way to get him there.”