Essex woman who killed her parents - then lived with them for four years - is jailed for life

Virginia McCullough poisoned her father John McCullough, 70, with prescription medication that she crushed and put into his alcoholic drinks in June 2019. A day later she also beat her 71-year-old mother Lois McCullough with a hammer and fatally stabbed her.

Chelmsford Crown Court heard the 36-year-old hid their bodies in makeshift tombs at the family home in Great Baddow in Essex, then told persistent lies to cover her tracks. She ran up large debts on credit cards in her parents’ names and after their deaths, she continued to spend their pensions.

The court heard she cancelled family arrangements and frequently told doctors and relatives her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips. Police said a missing persons investigation was initially launched and McCullough lied to officers, claiming her parents were travelling and would be returning in October.

It became a murder investigation, and when officers forced entry to the house in Pump Hill on September 15 2023, McCullough confessed that her parents’ bodies were in the house and that she had killed them.

She pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court to murdering her parents between June 17 and June 20 2019, and was sentenced at the same court on Friday.

In body-worn video footage released by police, a handcuffed McCullough told officers: “I did know that this would kind of come eventually. It’s proper that I serve my punishment.”

She said she had slipped something into her father’s drink and put his body under a bed on the ground floor, and put her mother’s body in an upstairs wardrobe.

Nicola Rice, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: “McCullough callously and viciously killed both of her parents before concealing their bodies in makeshift tombs within their home address.

“She spent the next four years manipulating and lying to family members, medical staff, financial institutions, and the police, spending her parents’ money and accruing large debts in their name. This was a truly disturbing case, which has left behind it a trail of devastation, and I can only hope that the sentence passed today will help those who loved and cared for Lois and John begin to heal.”