Chilling moment Virginia McCullough who murdered her parents reveals where she hid the bodies
A remorseless woman who killed her parents and hid their bodies in their own home for four years, sickeningly told police who turned up to arrest her: Dads body is in there, mums in the wardrobe.
A remorseless woman who killed her parents and hid their bodies in their own home for four years, sickeningly told police who turned up to arrest her: Dads body is in there, mums in the wardrobe.
Virginia McCullough, 36, was arrested by police last year four years after murdering her parents John, 71, and Lois, 70, at their home in Pump Hill, Chelmsford and covering up her crime as she frittered away £150,000 of cash in their name.
Intense body-worn camera footage released by Essex Police shows the moment she was finally caught after her fathers GP raised the alarm over missed appointments - at which point she confessed on the spot.
The video, released yesterday after she was sentenced to life in prison, shows the cold-hearted killer telling officers how her mother is upstairs in a wardrobe and her father is under a make-shift bed in his office.
She appears to stifle a smile as she tells a stony-faced officer to cheer up, youve caught the bad guy.
I did know that this would come, eventually, she then adds. Its proper that I serve my punishment, so, yeah.
Police said she embarked on a meticulous campaign of deceit, betrayal and fraud after helping herself to her parents finances - which culminated in her decision to kill them and bury the crime so she could continue doing so.
Relatives who had been told for years they were away on lengthy trips or unwell had pleaded with the judge to lock her away for good. Her mothers brother told the court she would have a lot of time to plan something else while in prison.
This is the moment Virginia McCullough admits to police she hid her parents bodies in the house after murdering them
McCullough killed her parents John, 74, (right) and Lois, 75, (left) at their home in Chelmsford, Essex, between June 17 and June 20, 2019
Artist McCullough, 36, admitted poisoning her father with prescription medication and stabbing her mother before hiding their bodies for years
She continued to live out of their house in Pump Hill, Chelmsford for four years before her dark secret was discovered
McCullough leads police into the back of the house where she tells them in full where to find her parents bodies - and signs the confession herself
After taking them through to the rear of the house to indicate where she hid her fathers body, she quips: Cheer up, you caught the bad guy
The artist - described in court by a psychiatrist as exhibiting psychopathic tendencies - admitted to police who turned up to arrest her that she had murdered them before spending more than four years covering it up.
She had stuffed her fathers body in a makeshift tomb disguised as a bed on the ground floor and secreted her mothers remains in a wardrobe upstairs.
Wearing a tight, long-sleeved purple top and heavy eye makeup, blonde McCullough looked noticeably thinner as she appeared in the dock at Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday.
She spoke only to confirm her name - and wept as the grisly details of her evil deeds were read out.
The court heard she gave her father a fatal dose of sleeping tablets, leaving him to die alone. McCullough found him dead the next morning - before deciding her mother could not be allowed to find out.
As Mrs McCullough lay in bed listening to the radio, unaware her husband was dead, her daughter entered and exited the room, plotting how to kill the woman who had given her life.
The gruesome attack began with a hammer - before she fetched a Lakeland kitchen knife because the hammer was not going to work and I didnt actually want her to suffer, she told detectives.
I was hitting like someone badly playing the xylophone or something, she had added.
She then held her mothers hand and apologised as the 71-year-old bled out.
After the killing, McCullough went into Chelmsford town centre where she bought plastic gloves from Lakeland, paying with her fathers credit card, along with sleeping bags she used to roll up her parents bodies.
In all, she frittered away £149,697 from credit cards, bank accounts, pensions and benefits attached to her parents - including over £21,000 on gambling.
Some of this happened before their deaths - which she would pass off as fraud, banking failures or the work of hackers, even creating forged documents from financial institutions to cover her tracks.
Her trickery deceived everyone - including Mrs McCulloughs brother Richard Butcher, who told the court: I have been manipulated over the years to think my sister was alive.
Sentencing her, Mr Justice Johnson told McCullough she had engaged in substantial planning and premeditation that saw her accumulate large amounts of prescription drugs, a knife and implements to crush the tablets into powder.
Her sustained economic abuse amounted to domestic abuse, he said, adding that she had robbed her parents of dignity in death by concealing their murders.
While he recognised that she had symptoms of a personality disorder, her mental health did not substantially reduce her culpability, adding: There was no impairment of your ability to understand the nature of your conduct, to form a rational judgement and exercise self-control.
Mr Justice Johnson told her: You say you murdered them because you felt trapped. The reality is you were trapped only by your own dishonest behaviour.
You are described by one of your sisters as a compulsive liar, but that hardly captures the elaborate and enduring web of deceit you spun over numerous years.
These murders were done in the expectation you would gain financially from your parents deaths. They were murders done for gain. You think more of money than you do of humanity.
Your conduct amounted to a gross violation of the trust between parents and their children.
The fact you concealed your parents bodies for so long and maintained the deceit that they were still alive robbed them of dignity in death.
McCullough nodded as the sentence was passed and she was taken to the cells but showed no other emotion.
Prosecutor Lisa Wilding KC had urged the court to impose a whole-life order for the crime, pointing out the level of planning, deception and abuse of trust, as well as McCulloughs motive of financial gain.
Ms Wilding said: Between June 17 and 18 2019, Virginia McCullough murdered both of her parents.
The defendant then built a makeshift tomb for her father in a ground floor room of the family home, which had been his bedroom and study.
She concealed the body of her mother, wrapped in a sleeping bag, in a wardrobe in her mothers bedroom on the top floor of the property. They remained there for four years until these events were discovered.
Her actions were, on her own admission, the culmination of months of thought and planning which began in March 2019.
Christine Agnew KC, for McCullough, said the highly unusual killings did not merit the rare punishment of prison without any chance of parole.
She made full admissions to her crimes to officers who attended her address, she said.
Upon opening the door to the police officers she said I know why you are here and pointed them towards the bodies of her mother and father.
She explained what she had done and how she had done it. She laid bare what had taken place four and a half years earlier.
Ms Agnew added that McCullough had a personality disorder, autism and depression, and had shown grief and remorse, adding: She has accepted her fate. She knows she is going to prison for an extremely long time.
Her father was hidden beneath a bed in the rear of the house in Pump Hill, Chelmsford
She would tell friends and relatives that her parents Lois and John (pictured) had moved away to Clacton to be by the seaside - all while they decomposed in the house
Police staged a raid on the house on September 15 last year after McCulloughs parents doctors raised the alarm
The footage from the arresting officers bodycam shows how he entered the house with a Taser drawn
The court heard Mr McCullough - a university lecturer on the autistic spectrum - had a medical history of hypertension, type-2 diabetes, high cholesterol and glaucoma, all of which required regular medication and appointments with his doctor.
Ultimately, it was his failure to attend review appointments with his GP that triggered an enquiry and subsequent police involvement, said Ms Wilding.
Mrs McCullough had a history of anxiety and was prescribed lorazepam. She was also agoraphobic and had obsessive compulsive disorder.
Both were described in court as being functional rather than affectionate parents who nevertheless did love and care for their children despite being old fashioned in their ways, not prone to displaying affection. They slept in separate beds.
Virginia McCullough, the court was told, was described as a compulsive liar and socially awkward by those who knew her.
She claimed to suffer from complex medical issues including thunderclap headaches - which did not surface during her time in custody - and had not been employed since she was a barmaid in 2017.
Nevertheless, she pretended to her parents she was a salaried web designer, and pretended to go into the office. She also lied about having benign cysts requiring treatment, and falsely made out to her GP that she was pregnant and had miscarried.
She resented her mother, the court heard, branding her a happiness hoover who would smack her while bathing her as a child.
Prosecutors read out an account, given by McCullough to police, of how she carried out the murder of her own mother.
It was pretty much either do it or youre gonna be arrested anyway for the murder of your father, youre gonna go to prison, she had told detectives.
She then embarked on a never-ending chronicle of lies, telling friends and relatives her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips.
On June 18, she used her mothers phone to text one of her sisters, writing that Mr and Mrs McCullough were at the seaside in Walton this week.
She wrote in another text: Good night. Mum x.
On at least one occasion, she tried to pass herself off as her mother in a phone call to a relative.
McCullough also sent birthday cards from Moonpig and gift vouchers as presents, purporting to be from her mother.
The court heard McCullough made 238 calls made to Essex police from July 2020 until her arrest for a variety of trivial matters, which the prosecutor said demonstrate apparent paranoia on her part.
In October 2022, she called police pretending to be her mother, saying that she and her father had been staying at different family addresses, and made 185 calls to the GP surgery, including calls in which she pretended to be her mother.
Prosecutor Ms Wilding said: Undoubtedly the Covid restrictions, and remote appointments, were a stroke of luck for the defendant in pursuing her deception that her parents were still alive.
But the repeat pattern of booking and cancelling appointments on behalf of her parents caught the eye of a GP receptionist, who raised a safeguarding issue with the police on September 1.
McCullough tried to ward them off by telling an officer they were travelling and would be back in October, adding that they did not carry mobile phones, but she was arrested on September 15 2023 after GPs raised the alarm.
Dramatic video of the lunchtime raid starts as police smash in the back door of the house as McCullough was greeted by officers at the front - closing off all possible routes of escape.
An officer in forensic overalls and rubber gloves draws a Taser and trains it on McCullough as he moves through the hallway.
A placid-looking McCullough , who answers yes when asked if she is Ginny, requests to pull up the sleeve of her sweater as she tells the arresting officer: Ill co-operate, Ill co-operate.
Asked if there is anything in the house the police should know about, she calmly tells the police: Yes, there is. Can I take you to it?
Gesturing towards the rear of the property, she adds: Can we go in there for a second just so I can tell you something about whats in there? I need to tell you something about whats in there.
And I need to tell you something about whats on the top floor as well.
McCullough appears completely calm as she is confronted by a cohort of police officers at her home
McCullough immediately offered to show police where she had hidden her parents bodies when she was handcuffed
A police officer stands guard outside the house after McCullough was arrested in September last year
McCullough (pictured in court at an earlier hearing) was arrested on September 15 last year after her parents bodies at their three-storey house in Pump Hill
As they walk to the back of the house, she indicates a structure resembling a bed in the corner of the room and says: My dads bodys in there.
What about your mum? asks the officer. She replies: Its a little bit more complicated.
The chilling footage shows her recounting how she murdered her own parents in calm, collected detail.
I slipped a pile of those into his drink... there were about two or three drinks I brought downstairs. They were basically... he didnt drink all of them, he only drunk probably half of two.
When I went in in the morning - this was before my mother - when I went in the morning, early hours, about six oclock, I came in and he was gone. He was gone.
She then sneezes, and laughs off the sternutation.
I did know that this would come, eventually, she then adds. Its proper that I serve my punishment, so, yeah.
McCullough had hidden her fathers body in a homemade mausoleum disguised as a bed.
The structure was made from masonry blocks and wooden panels secured together with white filler. The structure was covered with multiple blankets, with pictures and paintings on top.
Inside, police found at least 11 layers of plastic and other materials covering the body, which was wrapped in a sleeping bag.
McCullough had wrapped her mothers body in plastic packing and placed it into a sleeping bag which was stuffed into a double wardrobe. The doors were taped shut and concrete blocks were placed in front.
The bodies of both Mr and Mrs McCullough were severely decomposed and had to be identified from dental records.
Prosecutor Ms Wilding said: She expressed a concern that she had not opened the wardrobe since so was unsure of the state inside.
In the continuing footage, McCullough shows no remorse as the officer reads her full confession back to her - and even corrects him on using the word cupboard instead of wardrobe to describe the hiding place for her mothers body.
Wardrobe, wardrobe, its a double wardrobe, she says, using her hand for emphasis, before signing the confession.
Cheer up, she says, grinning callously as she hands the pen back. At least youve caught the bad guy.
She adds: I deserve to obviously get whatevers coming, sentence-wise. Its the right thing to do. Then that might give me a bit of peace.
In the final moment of her arrest in the house her parents had called home, McCullough even tells police which bank card they should examine - admitting she had been using it after her parents death.
In the handbag theres, and again because you probably need to know about it, a card in there, a card, a bank card, she says.
Theres a lot of transactions that have taken place over the last few years from money that pertains to my parents.
It emerges in other footage that McCullough had even kept the murder weapons - as she calmly recollected where she hid the knife and hammer she used to stab and beat her mother.
She adds: Not cooperating is futile. Theres no point in not cooperating.
Footage from within the holding cells at a local police station shows McCullough revealing where she hid the weapons she used to kill her mother
McCullough stabbed her parents to death at the home in Pump Hill, Chelmsford, before continuing to live there as if nothing had happened (pictured: forensic police on the scene)
A general view of police outside the home on Pump Hill, Chelmsford, three days after Virginia McCullough was arrested for murdering her parents
A psychiatrist who examined McCullough said her callousness, lack of empathy and deceptive behaviours indicates she is a psychopath.
And Loiss brother Mr Butcher had urged the judge never to release his niece.
He said: Virginia is very dangerous. She has spread many lies to cover her misdeeds. Her ability to kill her parents undermines my faith in humanity.
Virginia used our hope to see Lois and John to manipulate us. I have been manipulated over the years to think my sister is alive.
I couldnt comprehend what has happened and still cant. I believed I was in communication with Lois, John and Virginia before hearing the awful news.
I couldnt sleep and I couldnt understand why Virginia would do such a thing, and still cant.
I can never get this time back with my sister and her husband. My biggest fear is that Virginia is dangerous, and she will now have a lot of time to plan something else.
Her siblings of being left devastated and bereft and being forced to endure a living nightmare for the rest of their lives.
One said Virginias immeasurable amount of lies is sickening and blasted her lies, laziness and greed.
In a letter to the killer, one sister expressed their profound disbelief and hate for McCullough, writing: The evilness and vindictive nature of your actions have rocked our family to its core.
She had been warned to expect a life sentence when she admitted their murders in July, appearing then via video link from HMP Peterborough.
It later emerged Essex Police had attended at the address less than a month beforehand on 18 August, after McCullough alleged she was assaulted in her back garden.
A female officer had interviewed McCullough in a first-floor living room - unaware of the bodies upstairs.
A review has been carried out by Essex Police over the prior contact with Ms McCullough and concluded the female officer did not do anything wrong.
It is understood the investigation was filed away after enquiries were carried out.
Locals living around Pump Hill in September last year had described McCullough as quite chatty and a little bit odd.
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 he had not seen them since before the Covid-19 pandemic, but that previously I would see them two or three times per week.
The worker said he did not really chat with her parents but they seemed nice, normal people.
We were told they had moved to be beside the seaside, he said, adding that it was McCullough who told him. Were all shocked, we didnt think she was capable of this.
