Horrifying bodycam footage has captured the moment a daughter who gruesomely murdered her parents coldly describes to police officers the method she used to take their lives. She later concealed them in what were described as “makeshift tombs” for four years.
Virginia McCullough, aged 36, received a 36-year prison sentence for administering her father, John, aged 70, with a fatal “cocktail of prescription medication” in his Guinness. Subsequently, she brutally attacked her mother, Lois, aged 71, with a corroded hammer, following up with eight stabbing blows using a kitchen knife.
The chilling admission was recorded on Essex Police’s body-worn cameras when McCullough was arrested. During her arrest an officer inquired if there was anything within the home that police should be alerted to; with a nod, McCullough replied: “Yes, there is.”
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She then proceeded to tell the location of both her father and mother, confessing, “My dad’s body is in the house.” When quizzed about her mum, she remarked: “A little bit more complicated.”, reports the Mirror.
Exhibiting no emotion, she continued to elaborate on the concealment of their corpses, eventually agreeing to sign a confession handed to her by the officers. She informed the officers: “So upstairs there are about five wardrobes, it’s behind the bed, but back, next to a sink, it’s the second one.”
She further revealed: “I slipped some [prescription medication] into his drink. There were about two or three drinks that I brought downstairs. They were, basically, he didn’t drink all of them, he drunk probably about half of two. But yeah, when I went in in the morning, this is before my mother, when I went in the morning, early hours, I got up about half an hour early, about 6am, I came in, he was gone, he was gone.”
For four years, she used the Covid pandemic as a cover to hide her crimes, impersonating the elderly couple in messages to her siblings and even mimicking their voices in phone calls to the GP and police. She even sent birthday cards to her siblings pretending to be from her vulnerable parents, ordering them online with pre-printed messages.
McCullough continued to misuse their pensions and racked up debts on their credit cards. In total, she stole cash amounting to £149,697 both before and after the murders. Police eventually initiated a missing persons investigation and stormed the family home in Plump Hill, Chelmsford, Essex, on September 15 last year, where they discovered the elderly couple’s badly decomposed bodies.
Prosecutors sought a whole life order for McCullough, which would have ensured she remained in prison until her death, arguing that she was “motivated for financial gain” and had taken “concerted and extreme steps to conceal the bodies”. Had it been granted, McCullough would have become only the fifth woman in UK history to receive a whole life sentence, aligning her with some of Britain’s most notorious murderers such as Rose West, Lucy Letby, and Joanna Dennehy.
The Honourable Mr Justice Johnson acknowledged that while McCullough’s case was not one of “last resort”, she had committed the crimes as her financial deceit was on the verge of exposure. He remarked: “You say you felt trapped and you wanted to be free from them. The reality is you were trapped by your own dishonesty. You must have known your lies and dishonesty were about to be discovered.”
In the lead-up to the murders, McCullough had conducted several trial runs to poison her parents. The court was informed that she had laced their lunches with drugs, using her father as a “guinea pig”, which resulted in the elderly couple feeling drowsy and sleepy.
However, on June 17, 2019, prosecutor Lisa Wilding KC described to the court how McCullough crushed a “cocktail of prescription drugs” into her father’s alcoholic beverages. She then went to sleep nonchalantly and upon waking the next morning, found her father, a father of five, dead in his study where he usually slept. For the latest court reports sign up to our crime newsletter here.
Virginia McCullough faced the stark realisation that she “had to kill” her mother, equipping herself with a hammer and a kitchen knife before mercilessly killing her frail mother, who was listening to the radio through headphones in bed.
McCullough entered guilty pleas to two counts of murder earliest this year. Ms Wilding said: “She [Virginia] poisoned her father with a fatal combination of prescription drugs that she put into his alcoholic drink and the following day she attacked her mother with a hammer and then stabbed her with a kitchen knife bought for that purpose.”
McCullough detailed the harrowing murder of her mother in a haunting admission, recounting how after striking her with the hammer, her mother turned and begged: “What are you doing?” She describes continuing her assault with a knife and hammer, then holding her mother’s hand and kissing her as her life slipped away.
Following the horrific murders, McCullough, who had been diagnosed with paranoia and autism, went into Chelmsford town to buy plastic gloves and sleeping bags with her dad’s credit card. On the afternoon of June 18 and prior to a GP visit, she made a tearful call to them, whispering an apologetic and affectionate: “Sorry, I love you daddy.”
Det Supt Rob Kirby of Essex Police said: “Virginia McCullough murdered her parents in cold blood. Her actions were considered, meticulous and carried out in such a way as to conceal what she had done for as long as possible.
“These were the actions of someone who had taken time to plan and carry out the murder of her parents in the interest of self-preservation and personal gain, before living within metres of the bodies of her two victims for a number of years. Throughout the course of our investigation, we have built a picture of the vast levels of deceit, betrayal and fraud she engaged in. It was on a shocking and monumental scale.”
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