The moment when a girl who killed her parents in a horrific way coldly explained to police officers the method she used to end their lives was captured in terrifying body camera footage. He then hid them in what were described as “makeshift graves” for four years.
Virginia McCullough, 36, was sentenced to 36 years in prison for administering a lethal “prescription drug cocktail” to her 70-year-old father John in his Guinness car. He then brutally attacked his mother Lois, 71, with a worn hammer and then inflicted eight stabs with a kitchen knife.
This chilling confession was captured on Essex Police body-worn cameras when McCullough was arrested. During his arrest, an officer asked if there was anything in the house that the police should be alerted to; McCullough nodded and replied: “Yes, there is.”
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He later confessed, “My father’s body is in the house,” revealing the location of both his father and mother. “It’s a bit more complicated,” he said when asked about his mother, the Mirror reported.
Displaying no emotion, he continued to elaborate on the matter of hiding the bodies and eventually agreed to sign a confession given to him by the officers. He told officers: “So there’s about five wardrobes upstairs, one behind the bed, but the second one in the back, next to the sink.”
He also revealed: “I slipped a little bit [prescription medication] into his drink. There were two or three drinks I brought downstairs. Basically he didn’t drink it all, he probably drank half of it. But yes, when I went in the morning, this was before my mother, when I went in the morning, it was early, I got up about half an hour early, around 6 in the morning, I walked in, she was gone, she was gone”
For four years, he used the Covid pandemic as a cover to hide his crimes, impersonating the elderly couple in messages he sent to his siblings, and even impersonating the elderly couple’s voice in phone calls to his family doctor and the police. He even sent birthday cards to his siblings, pretending to be from their vulnerable parents, and ordered them online with pre-printed messages.
McCullough continued to misuse pensions and rack up credit card debt. He stole a total of £149,697 in cash before and after the murders. Police eventually launched a missing persons investigation and raided the family home in Plump Hill, Chelmsford, Essex, on September 15 last year, where they found the badly decomposed bodies of the elderly couple.
Prosecutors sought a life sentence that would keep McCullough in prison until his death, arguing that McCullough was “motivated for financial gain” and “took concerted and extreme steps to conceal the bodies.” Had she been given the go-ahead, McCullough would have become only the fifth woman in UK history to be sentenced to life imprisonment, putting her in line with some of Britain’s most notorious murderers including Rose West, Lucy Letby and Joanna Dennehy.
Mr Justice Johnson accepted that although McCullough’s case was not a “last resort”, he committed the offenses because his financial fraud was on the verge of being exposed. He stated: “You say you feel trapped and want to break free. The truth is that you were trapped in your own dishonesty. You must have known that your lies and dishonesty were about to be discovered.”
Before the murders, McCullough had made several test runs to poison his family. The court was told the woman had spiked her lunches with drugs and used her father as a “guinea pig”, causing the elderly couple to feel drowsy and drowsy.
But on June 17, 2019, prosecutor Lisa Wilding KC told the court how McCullough had spiked his father’s alcoholic drinks with a “prescription drug cocktail”. He then fell asleep listlessly and woke up the next morning to find his father, a father of five, dead in the study where he usually slept. For the latest court reports, sign up for our crime newsletter here.
Virginia McCullough was faced with the fact that she “had to kill” her mother, arming herself with a hammer and kitchen knife, before brutally murdering her frail mother, who was listening to the radio on headphones in bed.
McCullough was indicted on two murders earlier this year. Mrs Wilding said: “He [Virginia] “He poisoned his father with a lethal combination of prescription drugs that he had spiked into his alcoholic drink, and the next day he attacked his mother with a hammer and then stabbed her with a kitchen knife he had bought for the purpose.”
In a haunting confession, McCullough detailed his mother’s harrowing murder, describing how, after hitting her with a hammer, she turned and pleaded: “What are you doing?” He explains that he continued his attack with a knife and hammer, then held his mother’s hand and kissed her, ending her life.
McCullough, who was diagnosed with paranoia and autism after the gruesome murders, went to the town of Chelmsford to buy plastic gloves and a sleeping bag with his father’s credit card. On the afternoon of June 18, and before her GP visit, she made a tearful call to them, whispering apologetically and tenderly: “I’m sorry, I love you, dad.”
Detective Constable Rob Kirby, of Essex Police, said: “Virginia McCullough murdered her parents in cold blood. “Her actions were considered, carried out with care and carried out in a way that concealed what she had done for as long as possible.
“These were the actions of someone who spent time planning and carrying out the murder of his parents for self-preservation and personal gain, before living within meters of the bodies of his two victims for several years. During our investigation we have built up a picture of the sheer scale of deception, betrayal and fraud he committed. “It was on a shocking and monumental scale.”