Daughter’s startling confession to police who turned up to check on her parents

Chilling police bodyworn footage shows a woman calmly telling officers how she murdered her own parents, hid their bodies and carried on living alongside them for four years.

Virginia McCullough, 36, poisoned her father John McCullough, 70, with prescription medication and beat and stabbed her 71-year-old mother Lois McCullough.

She kept her father’s body in a ‘homemade mausoleum’ composed with masonry blocks stacked together inside his room.

It formed a ‘rectangular tomb’ and was ‘covered with multiple blankets, and a number of pictures and paintings over the top’, Lisa Wilding KC said.

McCullough hid her mother’s body wrapped in a sleeping bag inside a wardrobe.

She was today jailed for life with a minimum term of 36 years.

The judge, Mr Justice Johnson, said McCullough had engaged in ‘substantial planning and premeditation’ before carrying out the killings.

He told her: ‘You drugged your father’s drink two days before the murders in order to use him as a guinea pig.’

Lois and John McCullough were murdered by their daughter (Picture: Family Handout/PA Wire) 

Virginia McCullough hid the bodies of her parents for four years (Picture: Essex Police/PA Wire)

‘You had a primary plan which was to use the drugs to cause their deaths, and you had a back-up plan which was to use murder weapons including a knife if your primary plan failed.’

McCullough then ‘robbed’ her parents of ‘dignity in death’ by hiding their bodies, the judge added.

‘You think more of money than you do of humanity,’ he said.

‘Your parents were entitled to feel safe in their own beds and their own home. They are entitled to feel safe with their own daughter.’

McCullough carried out the murders between June 17 and June 20 2019 before concealing their bodies at the home in Great Baddow, Essex.

She continued to live at the address and told persistent lies about their whereabouts.

McCullough confessed to police as they entered the property (Picture: Essex Police)

McCullough inside a police cell(Picture: Essex Police/PA Wire)

This included telling doctors and relatives her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips.

Her actions were uncovered after her parents’ GPs raised concerns over missed appointments and Essex Police forced entry to the home on September 15 2023.

In the moments afterwards, she confessed to what she had done.

Ms Wilding said the defendant ‘had been thinking about killing her parents since March 2019 and had been planning for it’.

She said that McCullough ‘has not been employed for many years’.

The prosecutor said the defendant ‘engaged in online gambling’ and spent £21,193 in transactions related to gambling between June 1 2018 and September 14 2023.

She told police exactly where the bodies were hidden (Picture: Essex Police)

Ms Wilding said that McCullough ‘made arrangements to ensure that she continued to enjoy the benefit of the pensions that continued to be paid in their names’ after the deaths of her parents.

The prosecutor said McCullough ‘benefited from’ £59,664.01 from the state pension and £76,334.58 from Mr McCullough’s Teacher’s Pension between June 18 2019 and September 15 2023.

Ms Wilding said money appeared to have been ‘frittered away and the investigation has not revealed any expenditure on expensive, luxury or extravagant items’.

A worker at a nearby shop, who asked not to be named, said McCullough had told him her parents had moved to be by the seaside.

He said: ‘We’re all shocked, we didn’t think she was capable of this.’

Judge Mr Justice Johnson is to sentence McCullough on Friday at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Warning her at an earlier hearing that she faced a life sentence, Judge Christopher Morgan, who presided over the plea hearing, said: ‘You will understand that there is a single sentence that can be passed upon you in these circumstances.

‘Consideration however has to be given to the minimum term.’

David Wilson