Man pleads guilty to violently beating his Massachusetts family to death with baseball bat
By Web Staff
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GROTON, Massachusetts (WCVB) — A Maine man charged in the violent beating deaths of four family members in Massachusetts in 2017 pleaded guilty in the case Wednesday.
Orion Krause, 26, of Rockport, Maine, plead guilty to using a baseball bat to beat his mother, his grandparents and his grandparents’ caretaker to death in his grandparents’ Groton, Massachusetts, home on Sept. 8, 2017.
Kause called the killings “an insane thing,” and told his family in court Wednesday, “I pray we will be able to process it in the future — hopefully together.”
Kraus admitted killing his grandfather Frank Darby Lackey III, 89; grandmother Elizabeth “Esu” Lackey, 85; mother Elizabeth “Buffy” Krause, 60; and his grandparents’ caretaker Bertha Mae Parker, 68.
“I killed my family with a baseball bat,” Krause, then 22, told responding Groton police officers.
A neighbor called police after Krause came to his door telling him about the murders, police reports said.
Responding officers found Krause sitting naked in a patio chair behind the neighbor’s house, with his skin rubbed with mud, according to police reports.
“Orion started to sing quietly,” one of the officers wrote. “Orion then said, ‘I freed them.’”
In a deal, Krause agreed to plead guilty to four counts of second-degree murder in exchange for a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years. He had been facing four counts of first-degree murder.
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