‘Caught a bad guy’: Woman admits she killed parents, hid bodies for 4 years – National

A British woman will spend at least the next 36 years in prison after a judge found her guilty of murdering her parents in “cold blood” and hiding their bodies in their home for four years while using their money.

Virginia McCullough, 36, was jailed last Friday after admitting hiding her mother’s body in a wardrobe and building a “makeshift grave” for her father.

His crimes began in June 2019, when he used a cocktail of synthetic drugs, slipped into the drink of 70-year-old John McCullough, to kill his father. The next day he killed his mother, Lois McCullough, 71, with a hammer and a kitchen knife.

During the trial, reported The Guardian, prosecutor Lisa Wilding described in detail the hand-built tomb to hide her father’s body in her bedroom, describing it as “made of stone slabs stacked together” and “covered with many blankets, and lots of stones.” pictures and drawings on top.”

“He hid his mother’s body, wrapped in a sleeping bag, inside a wardrobe in his mother’s bedroom upstairs,” Wilding continued, describing the days following the murders at the family’s Essex home.

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Once the bodies were hidden, attorneys argued, McCullough tried to elaborate to convince people his parents were alive.

He asked relatives not to go, the BBC reported, and friends were told that the couple had retired and left. The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown measures that followed over the next year helped, in part, to cover up his crimes, the court heard.

The couple’s family doctor became suspicious after missing several times over the years and notified the police, who forced their way into the house on September 15, 2023.

Bodycam footage from when police arrived to confront McCullough at the home, where he confessed to the murder.

“I knew this would come to an end. It is appropriate for me to issue my punishment,” he is heard telling the police.

He added: “Rejoice, at least you caught a bad person.”

While in custody following his arrest, he explained in detail how they killed his parents.

He then pointed to the police where the knife he stabbed his mother with, hid under the stairs of the house, and said “there will still be blood on it, it is rusty, but there will still be blood on it.”

He also said that he had to “create blood” to kill his mother.

“I knew I had to do it.”

Richard Butcher, Lois McCullough’s brother, wrote in a victim impact statement that his nephew – the defendant – was “extremely dangerous” and what happened “shattered my faith in humanity.”

The Independent reports that McCullough ran up huge credit card debt while his parents were alive and continued to use their pension money after their deaths, all while living in a rented home.

The fake documents show that McCullough was tricking his parents into thinking they had lost money in the scams.

Essex Police said documents found at the address “create a picture of a woman who desperately tried to prevent her parents from discovering the depths of the financial black hole she continued to dig, while giving them false assurances about her employment and future prospects.”

In sentencing, the judge told McCullough that he was close to £60,000 (C$107,000) in debt before the murders and that he developed and maintained an “elaborate, extensive and persistent web of fraud” for months and years.

“I’m sure the main reason for each murder was to prevent your parents from finding out that you were stealing from them and lying to them and taking money that was meant for them,” he said, according to the Independent.

McCullough was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum of 36 years.

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