The recent college graduate suspected of quadruple homicide reportedly admitted to beating his family to death with a baseball bat.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Orion Krause, a jazz musician and recent graduate of the prestigious Oberlin College, was arrested earlier this month in Groton, Massachusetts, after he appeared naked at the door of a home in the quiet, upscale neighborhood, claiming to have killed people.
While that resident initially did not believe the young man could be telling the truth, police found four dead bodies at a nearby home: Orion’s mother Elizabeth “Buffy” Krause, 60; his grandfather, 88-year-old F. Danby Lackey III; his grandmother, Elizabeth Lackey, 85; and the elder couple’s caretaker, 68-year-old Bertha Mae Parker.
Unsealed police reports obtained by the Bangor Daily News detail the first hours after authorities apprehended Krause, revealing some bizarre behavior on the part of the suspect.
The newspaper reports that Krause was covered in mud with tiny cuts all over his body when police responded to the call, and said that suspect was singing quietly at points while wrapped in a sheet at the home of his grandparents’ neighbor.
Groton Police officer Gordon A. Candow said in his probable cause statement that Krause showed police where the alleged murders took place.
“I asked where the murders happened? Orion pointed towards the woods and said, ‘somewhere over there,’” Candow said in his statement.
Police found a grisly scene in the Lackeys’ home: Krause’s grandparents and his mother were found sitting in chairs in the kitchen, with severe trauma to their head. Parker’s body was reportedly found facedown in a flowerbed near the driveway.
Investigators also found a bloodied wooden bat under a tree on the property.
A precise motive for the killings is not yet known, though Krause reportedly told investigators that he “freed them,” referring to the four victims. He also reportedly admitted to using heroin.
Krause’s attorney Edward W. Wayland urged the press and the public in a statement Friday “not make assumptions about anything [Krause] is alleged to have said, including that any of it was actually true.”
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