Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Televised Confessesion "I Killed My Parents, Buried Them in Backyard"

Summary

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

Episode: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Televised Confession "I Killed My Parents, Buried Them in Backyard"
Date: October 12, 2025
Hosts: Joseph Scott Morgan & Dave
Network: iHeartPodcasts and CrimeOnline

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Overview

This episode dives into the shocking case of Lawrence Krauss, a man who confessed on live television to killing his elderly parents and burying them in the backyard of their Albany, NY home—eight years after their disappearance. Forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan and co-host Dave dissect the crime, the confession, the concealment of the bodies, and the subtle techniques used by respected news anchor Greg Floyd to elicit a full on-camera confession. The discussion blends true crime storytelling with forensic science, media analysis, and commentary on family and society.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Family Plots & Burial Traditions

• Opening Reflection: Morgan opens with the notion of family plots, drawing on personal anecdotes and how familial burial on private property, though rare and seen as ‘quaint,’ has historical resonance (00:05–05:11).
• Contrast: Dave highlights that, when done legally and out of love, family burials are not suspicious—but this case presents a grotesque perversion of the idea (05:11–05:40).

2. The Krauss Case: Timeline & Discovery

• Victims: Franz Krauss (would be 92) and Teresa Krauss (would be 83); disappeared in August 2017, making them 84 and 75 at time of death (05:59).
• Discovery: Societal systems failed to notice their absence for eight years. Discovery was triggered by Social Security and banking institutions, concerned by a lack of contact and ongoing payments, which led to a welfare check and eventual unearthing of the bodies (05:59–09:27).

3. The Televised Confession

• Manifesto & Media: Lawrence Krauss sent a two-page manifesto to every media outlet in town. Only Greg Floyd, veteran news anchor at Albany’s WRGB TV, engaged, leveraging deft interview technique to secure a detailed on-camera confession (05:59–10:03).
• Media Strategy: Floyd traded posting Krauss’s manifesto for an in-person interview, preparing in just 10 minutes. Floyd’s skill allowed Krauss to “dig his own hole” while encouraging him to confess (05:59–10:03).
• Legal Weight: This confession is likely admissible in court, since it was made to a civilian, not elicited by law enforcement (09:27–10:03).

Quote:
“He allowed him to dig a hole, but he kept handing him the shovel. ... It’s a brilliant piece of work.”
— Dave (07:59)

4. Assessing Motive & Public Perception

• Misapplied Labels: Morgan and Dave critique media use of terms like “deranged,” arguing Krauss’s actions were methodical, not irrational, especially given how he continued to cash his parents’ checks (11:09–12:36).
• Social Isolation: Commentators are critical of the family and community’s lack of contact, with Dave noting, “Eight years. Come on. Eight years [missing] with elderly people” (24:12).

5. Forensic Analysis: Concealment & Decomposition

• Ground Burial: Morgan explains clandestine graves, details how soil settles, body decomposition, and investigative methods including the use of methane probes (17:11–19:01, 37:38–42:51).
• Lack of Odor Detection: Burying bodies even a few feet deep may effectively mask decomposition smells, further cloaked if remains are wrapped or cocooned (19:01).
• Cadaver Dogs: Even after eight years, cadaver dogs can detect remains, a testament to canine scent abilities (43:00).
• Evidence Limitations: After so long, only bones and possibly remnants of clothing or medical hardware will remain; critical evidence like soft tissue ligature marks will have disappeared (44:21).

Quote:
“Guess what happens? Well, the soil begins to sink. And as the body decomposes at the bottom ... it’s going to begin to collapse in on itself.”
— Joseph Scott Morgan (21:32)

6. Lawrence Krauss’s Rationale and Details of Deaths

• Mercy Killing Claim: Krauss framed his actions as a mercy killing, citing his parents’ declining health—his father’s ambulation issues and his mother’s cataract surgery (30:10–31:53).
• Method:
  • Suffocated his father (hand, pillow, or bag implied for a debilitated victim).
  • Allowed his mother to spend hours with her dead husband before killing her by ligature strangulation (rope) (31:53–36:07).

Chilling Quote:
“He kills his dad at this point... then his mother laid her head on the chest of her now deceased husband... and then he books the exclamation point on it by saying, ‘I put her out of her misery by using a rope.’”
— Joseph Scott Morgan (34:26)

7. Financial & Investigative Elements

• Financial Motive: Continued collecting Social Security was a core reason suspicion arose, as authorities noticed benefits still being collected for years after the couple’s disappearance (36:07–37:38).
• Investigative Trigger: The case began as a potential financial crime, then escalated into a homicide investigation after welfare checks failed (36:07).

8. Psychology of Body Concealment

• Control & Proximity: Discussion of the psychology behind killers keeping bodies close, maintaining control over the victims even after death (34:41).
• Dark Irony: Dave wonders what kind of mindset can justify such acts under the veneer of duty, noting dryly, “He gonna be selling in prison now, so” (31:43).

9. Legal and Evidentiary Challenges

• Trial Prospects: Greg Floyd, as the interviewer who got the confession, will likely be called to testify, a rare and notable circumstance for a news anchor (26:29).
• Evidence Limitations: Absence of soft tissue means proving cause of death will rely more on confession than forensic pathology (44:21).
• Caution on Guilt: Dave introduces a speculative twist—what if the confession was false, part of a bizarre bid for notoriety, or to cover for a murder-suicide between the parents? He warns the audience not to accept guilt as a “slam dunk” without scrutiny (46:41).

Quote:
“If O.J. Simpson can walk out of court a free man, other stories can work as well. It ain’t a slam dunk.”
— Dave (47:46)

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• On the skill of journalist Greg Floyd:
  “If I 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...”
  — Joseph Scott Morgan (26:29)

• On family and social neglect:
  “If they [the Krauses] had any other relatives, shame on them.”
  — Dave (24:12)

• On forensic realities:
  “There’s nothing like nature to pack soil.”
  — Joseph Scott Morgan (21:42)

• On the psychology of killers:
  “I’m always amazed by the psychology of these people... kill someone, but yet want to keep the body near them.”
  — Joseph Scott Morgan (34:41)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:05–05:11: Discussion of family burial plots and traditions
• 05:59–10:03: The Krauss case overview and televised confession
• 11:09–12:36: Debating "deranged" media descriptions and methodical behavior
• 17:11–19:01: The forensics of clandestine backyard burials
• 24:12: Criticism of family and social failure to follow up on the missing elderly couple
• 30:10–36:07: Details of the killings, Krauss’s “mercy killing” claim, and the confession
• 37:38–42:51: Forensic challenges: decomposition & evidence after eight years
• 43:00–44:21: The use and reliability of cadaver dogs in detection
• 46:41–47:46: Caution on legal certainty, alternate scenarios, and the unreliability of confessions alone

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Tone & Language

Morgan and Dave maintain a conversational yet analytical tone, blending macabre forensic details with dry wit and media critique. They are empathetic but unflinching, alternately somber, incredulous, and skeptical, always foregrounding the chilling reality and procedural oddities of the case.

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Conclusion

This episode provides a comprehensive, multi-layered dive into a modern true crime saga blending forensics, investigative shortcomings, media savvy, and the complexities of confessions and evidence. It’s a reminder of how even the most shocking stories can hide in plain sight—and of the vital, at times eerie, intersection between crime, science, and storytelling.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Dave]

This is an I Heart podcast.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Body Bags, with Joseph Scott Moore. I, for one, like the idea of having what's called a family plot. 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 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 quote 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, you'll be perpetually taken care of. Today on Body Bags, we're going to talk about a fellow who literally decided to bury his mom, dad on his own property in the backyard eight years ago after he, of course, allegedly murdered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Max. 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 truly have an awareness of this sort of thing. Not going to address it spiritual, but I think scientifically 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. You know, you. I got to tell you a quick story. 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 Cabbagetown, Dave, but it's.

[Dave]

I bet it smells like socks.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Well, it's actually a. A place where. Where people from Appalachia came to Atlanta to work in the mills, and they came lock, stock, and barrel. And they still had relatives that lived up in that mountainous region of North Georgia and points beyond because there's work in the big city, right? And they inhabited these, you know, quickly built wooden structures that in the south at least, we call them mill villages that are 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, the roads, you know, kind of cut off in different directions. And there were these. These families that had indwelled these houses for a couple of generations, but they would still go back up home to See their kinfolk. Well, we had a. A fellow in Atlanta that had died. Right. And he had died violently in a car accident. And he was domsiled 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 the proper paperwork, by the way. Really, 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 at. In the family plot. I was always fascinated by that. Yeah. And it wasn't my case. It was one of my colleagues and the story was related to me. It had happened late at night. They show up, which normally happens if you in a busy medical examiner's office. Bodies are literally being picked up and delivered all hours of day and night. You worked in a funeral home for a while. I know. And it's unpredictable. So you can have a funeral home that'll come from out of town. They might hit the city, you know, at midnight, 1, 2 in the morning, they're there to pick up remains. They're going to put the remains in their hearse, 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 in the family plot.

[Dave]

I love the fact that you said they got the right paperwork.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yes, they did. They'd gone through and had gotten. I think it was a burial certificate, which also. It was required for them to. 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. 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.

[Dave]

Well, see, you know, he sounds like a lot of love. 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 ones. But what we're dealing. What we're dealing with here is a failure to communicate because. Communicate.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, you're right.

[Dave]

You know, Joe, this loving son who, when we look at his parents, ages, they were 92. Yeah. Franz Krauss was 92 and Teresa Krause, 83. Okay. That's today, that's how old they would be today. But they were killed eight years ago. They haven't been seen since 2000, August of 2017. So take away eight years and you're talking about Franz Krause was 84 and Teresa Krause 75. 75. That's, that's not crawling in the basket, you know. Anyway, we'll talk more about their physical condition in a few minutes. But I just wanted to get this off my chest because you, you need to know that Lawrence Krauss wrote up this two page manifesto, so to speak. He sent it to every media outlet in town. And there was an investigation happening at the house. The Social Security administration and the bank and a few other financial institutions were concerned that they hadn't seen Mr. And Ms. Kraus for eight years. And they tried to reach out to him, they tried to contact him over the years. 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, with the crowd, with Mr. And Mrs. Cross and couldn't, couldn't do it. And that's when finally Social Security asked the police to go do a, a welfare check. And that's when they started realizing we got a bigger problem here. So I just want to be clear on this because their son, their loving son sends out this two page manifesto and, and he gets a call back from a news anchor at the local CBS affiliate in town. This news anchor has been in the business of broadcasting news for 45 years. This ain't his first rodeo, I will tell you that. If you sit down with Greg Floyd, a 45 year veteran newsman, he's gonna get out of you what he wants. He's gonna 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, that Krauss 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 say, he didn't want to admit it. He knows the jig is up once I do this. But Mr. Floyd would not give in. He would not. He allowed him to dig a hole, but he kept handing him the shovel. 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 R G B, Channel 6. It is. It is something that should be studied by. It should be studied by everybody in broadcasting. This is how you do an interview when you have no time to Prepare. He had 10 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?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

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 going to walk into a studio. And more than that, you never know what they might say.

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[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Deranged, which is 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, we hear that term frequently in the media. I was reading an article, Dave, in the New York Post, and they used the term deranged to describe this son who went into the studio relative to what he had done. This is after the fact, Dave. We're eight years down range from the disappearance of his parents. I think someone at the editorial. The editorial people with New York Post need to sit down with 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?

[Dave]

I think that I, 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. Right. He actually. It's interesting because this is. I wanted the opening paragraph. And by the way, it was a CBS affiliate that actually got this news thing. It's WRGB tv. And it's not that RGB TV was the target for this guy. Lawrence Krauss 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 Lawrence Krause, 53, came a day after police say they recovered two bodies from the home in Albany as part of an investigation that found CR's parents, Franz and Teresa, were still receiving Social Security payments despite not having been seen or heard from in years. Eight years, Joe. Eight years, I think about that. Where were you eight years ago? What were you doing?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Oh, Lord. Let's see, where was. 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, I mean, that's where I was. Here's the chilling thing about that. And 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 missing for a while, and the child has, has gotten rid of remains one way or another. You know, you and I, you know, always harp on dismemberment, but, you know, we've, we've covered those cases. We've covered burning, reducing the body through, through cremation. And in some cases like this burial, 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 corner New Orleans, there was an adjacent city where a guy had been living in the house. His wife had gone missing. His wife. And this is right, by the way, this is right after Lumenal stepped onto the stage as 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. He agreed to go to this jurisdiction and apply it in the basement of. Of the house. What happened is the guy that lived in the house sold the house. And 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. In the basement of this home and sprayed it, and this is many years later, and it just began to luminesce. 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 35 millimeter photography. And you have to be very, very sensitive to the settings on your. On your film and these sorts of things on your camera, rather. And as it turns out, the new couple, the 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 you just bought. 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 they have a rose garden. I want you to know they dug up the rose garden. The wife was buried there.

[Dave]

I beg your pardon?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, yeah. I never promised you. I see what you did there. Very well done. Yeah. And so, yeah, and so this does happen, you know, these ideas of concealment. And from a forensics perspective, 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 attempting to conceal a body. Now, you can't say necessarily that you have a homicide on your hands, but 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, it might be a good idea 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 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?

[Dave]

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 people would smell it.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

No, 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 still found the burlap sack from 100 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 cocooned the bodies and then buried 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. To, did he add soil to it? 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 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 smell the decomposition, 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 in, you know, in literature and movies and that Sort of thing where you got a mound of earth where a body has been buried beneath 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 of like a concrete vault that's stuck in the ground. Like when you put it 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, pack it down and all. 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 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, I doubt it, because this is a plot where a home was built at some point in time. So you have to imagine that some, 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 indwelling. It's going to begin to collapse in on itself.

[Dave]

Wow. I'm amazed at the things I don't think about sometimes when we get ready to do a story, you know.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave]

Didn't occur to me.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

So I don't 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 them.

[Dave]

All right. Well, in this particular case, I have to wonder, Joe, as Lawrence Krauss, like I said, they, they figured this out. They say they being pretty much probably accountants because nobody had seen. It's just, you know, Albany's not a big, big place.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

It's seat of government for New York.

[Dave]

Yeah. But in from a neighborhood standpoint, you know, just like your neighborhood, my neighborhood, people ask 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 A, gonna be jealous, and B, they're gonna want to know what happened. And so.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

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 Krauses, you know, who. Like, were there. Did they have any living siblings? Were there any cousins that were still alive? They're elderly, so you. You have to assume that their parents had passed on. But did they have. According to Lawrence, their siblings have any kids?

[Dave]

According to him, they were World War II Nazi survivors. Survivors. Nazi Germany, you know, and. 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.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah.

[Dave]

Eight years. Come on. Eight years.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah.

[Dave]

With elderly people. I hope I make it to 90. And you don't hear from me from. That. You don't show up and find me in my recliner, you know, skeletonized.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah. Yeah. And you. 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, 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 die, and then the husband will die shortly, you know, shortly after, 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 great beyond without even leaving a trace?

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[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Dave, a real 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, this, he's actually an anchor. His name's Greg Floyd. If I 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 professional in media, I'm sure that he would try to keep it right down the line. But at a human level, 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 only imagine the tale. And what's really fascinating about this, Dave, is that this case, these cases are going to go to trial, right? He's going to be compelled to testify and he'll be up on the stand. And it's a rare thing when you hear reporters testify, you know, so in this case you will, you probably because, you know, he's the one that kind of gleaned 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, you know, access to you and to, you know, to your, your, your megaphone that you have with the media and you know, and the thing about it is it's all on tape, brother. Every bit is on tape with it, with this case.

[Dave]

It kind of makes you, when you look at the, the history of the, the guy, Floyd, Mr. Floyd had been in the business for 45 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 posted. That's where this whole thing started with the son, the, the killer. The son or the alleged killer, the admitted killer. I don't know the right word. But anyway, Lawrence Krauss sends an email to all, 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 what, why they're in the backyard and 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 news place, they are manned, and they did have a professional in there. And so he reaches out and says, tell you what, buddy, we'll post your. We'll post this on our website if you come in for an interview. So it's a little trade off here. You know, you don't know if this guy's 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 10 minutes to prepare. 10 minutes. So in that 10 minutes, he knows the bodies are in the backyard, and he knows they're elderly, so he's probably going to assume they were getting some kind of payment here. Money's coming in. There's going to have to. He's going to have to justify something. And so once he gets him in there, the son is trying to make it seem like he was doing a. A sonly duty, a. A. 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 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 157, you know.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

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, is what it comes down to. And one of the things that he had stated, his rationale is his parents were. And again, I'm kind of using my own words here, that his parents were declining in health. And one of the reasons cited is that his parents had. Had. The dad had been hit at some point in time as a pedestrian and had, 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. Was a qualification for, you know, for murder. But, you know, if everybody in America that had cataract surgery, if that condemns you to death, oh, my Lord, we'd lose half the population. Population.

[Dave]

That's a sign.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

That's. That's the perspective he's coming from.

[Dave]

Dave. 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 m. They're falling apart. I'm just going to help them so they can die in peace and at their own home. And I. Again, this guy's level of. He. He needs to be a salesman, but he's not.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

He.

[Dave]

He gonna be selling in prison now, so.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't understand it, but I need.

[Dave]

To know what he did. How did he accomplish killing his mom and his dad?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Joe, listen, this is according to the interview, and 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 actually from the local news outlet up there, he actually confesses. And when 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 to compromise the airway are considered to be asphyxial deaths, which asphyxia means that you're depriving someone of oxygen. Okay, so how would you go about suffocating somebody? Well, there are any number of ways. Suffocation, smothering. You know, you begin to think about using a pillow, placing a plastic bag over somebody's head, or even the hand if they're in a debilitated state, which he's making the argument that they're physically compromised at this point in time in their lives. Would you hold your hand, pinch your dad's nose, and hold your hand over his mouth? What kind of person would do this to their father? And then this is the real chilling part. He kills his dad at this point, Tom. Then he says, get this, Dave, that his mother laid her head on the chest of 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 books the exclamation point on it by saying, I put her out of her misery by using a rope. So now he's suffocated his dad, allegedly, and has taken a rope wrapped around his mama's throat and choked life out of her with it. Now, that's a ligature strangulation. Again, it falls under the broad category of asphyxial death. And he sees this, apparently, as a mercy killing, that this was merciful. But then you have to decide at this point in time, what you going to do with mom and dad. And apparently he lingered for some time thinking about this, maybe a couple of days thinking about, how do I dispose the remains. One of the most fascinating aspects to People that kill individuals, to me, and they do it in 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. I'm 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 can keep tabs on who's coming and going, who's around the area, you know, things like that. You know, and I've. I've often wondered what the psychology behind that is, you know, thinking about, can you imagine, you know, making your cup of coffee, you're sitting at the breakfast nook, you're looking out the window, and there, the grassy plain 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? With the fact that this guy goes on. On a. In a broadcast and actually admits to this, Dave.

[Dave]

You know, I. 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 actually asked for a welfare check because there were some question marks. You know, neighbors thought that the crosses had moved back to Germany. That's what neighbors said 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 fruit, to the. To the forefront. But I have to ask you, 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. Decomposition sets in, you've gone over rigor mortis. Rigor mortis.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Oh, yeah.

[Dave]

And all of that, because they still have to be buried. They still 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.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Well, here's a, here's an interesting thing. I think we, we may have mentioned this before, but if, if they were, let's say that they had died. I hate to box myself in with specific time, but let's just say that they had died. Just for grins and giggles, we'll say that they had died and they had been in the ground for one year and you had an indication as an investigator that they were buried back there. But you didn't know where 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, in the methane. Something that, like if you have normal organic material, say if 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, good example of that. I'll give you a great example of that. One of the things that happens down in, in the swamps in, 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. You'll have these little methane methane fires that'll break out in the swamp because 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 casketed body, 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. Dave, we're talking eight years down the road. I would, 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 the area because.

[Dave]

Oh wow, didn't even think about the water table in Albany.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Oh yeah, because it'll rise and fall. We talked about this with the 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, we always talk about the earth just keeps on spinning. It keeps on moving. Well, the earth is actually earth. The substrata is actually moving as well. People don't realize this is a process called turbation. And so the soil actually kind of. If you'll think about the slowest turning tumble dryer you've ever seen. All right, maybe just tiny bits. All right. The earth actually 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 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 left behind, but they should still 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 covering? Like were they cocooned? And also, are there clothing? Now if you've got, let's say that you have synthetics, synthetic, you know, rayon, 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 a little bit more. You might not have as much remnant, but things like zippers, buttons, medical devices. Let's just say that they, they had had surgery. Maybe you have a subject that has had a screw put into a bone. Dude, that surgical steel is still going to be there, brother. Wow. You'll be able to see it. That's.

[Dave]

You have to test it in the cave at the beach and Planet of the Apes, you know.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

I know, I know. You're gonna. Yeah, you're gonna find all that there.

[Dave]

Let me ask you about this because one of the tips that they had, okay, it started as a financial crime with Social Security and all that. They brought cadaver dogs out to the property. And the cadaver dogs hit Joe. They hadn't been seen in eight years. They're buried in the background. But cadaver dogs could still get a hit.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, their spectrum is, is quite amazing. You know what. And it might be something that you and I obviously would because we've had a very limited olfactory spectrum, you know, compared to, compared to canines. Canines are amazing. You and I are both, you know, huge dog lovers anyway.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

And so it's amazing what dogs are capable of, these working dogs. So. Yeah. Now I don't, I don't put a lot of stock in dogs that you take out the lakes.

[Dave]

Right.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

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 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?

[Dave]

Right.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Relative to this.

[Dave]

That's when I saw eight years. The last time these people are seen, we know they're gone.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

And these dogs, that's something. Yeah. That they. But, you know, here's the real problem. Even though he's saying that he did this, and I'm assuming that the coroner slash medical examiner is going to rule their deaths at some point in time as a homicide, if they haven't already at this point. Here's, 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, 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 tissue is no longer going to exist at this point. The 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. Suffocation is not this. It's not quite as violent as, you know, taking a rope, you know, and like, cinching it up on. On an elderly woman's neck and doing that sort of thing. If you're putting a pillow over someone's face to suffocate 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 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 pitch this. This case to you is it's one of the more bizarre things that we've actually had happen in recent memory. I don't know if you concur with.

[Dave]

Before you guys, before you guys think this is a slam dunk, let me share one quick side note. All right?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, please.

[Dave]

Let's just say for the sake of argument, that this guy who goes on TV and confesses that they found the. The financial crimes and all that, but what if. What if after everything's said and done, Joe, they find out this guy's 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, and he used this as the stepping stone to launch his own career in true crime. But he didn't actually kill his parents. He did put their bodies in the backyard, but he did that out of love and devotion. He did not want his. The memory of his father to, you know, what about something like that coming down the pike? I'm telling you, friends, if O.J. simpson can walk out of court a free man, other stories can work as well. It ain't a slam dunk.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

I gotta tell you 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 is on the table. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.

[Dave]

This is an iHeart podcast.