U.K. woman Virginia McCullough, 36, received a life sentence after murdering her parents in their home and living with their corpses for four years.
McCullough killed the couple at their home in Great Baddow, Essex, in 2019, The Guardian reported.
She then stashed their bodies in the house and continued living there until the day of her arrest on Sept. 15, 2023.
She poisoned her 70-year-old father, John McCullough, with prescription drugs that she slipped into his drinks.
The following day she “beat her mother [Lois McCullough, 71] with a hammer and stabbed her multiple times in the chest with a kitchen knife bought for the purpose,” prosecutor Lisa Wilding KC said.
“When I was hitting her, it was like someone badly playing the xylophone, it was willy-nilly,” McCullough told police, according to the BBC.
Bodycam footage the day of her arrest showed police entering the home and confronting McCullough as she coolly admitted her crimes and disclosed the locations of the bodies.
This is wild, Virginia McCullough killed her parents and lived with their bodies for over 4 years. Her mum’s body was in the wardrobe
She made calls pretending to be her mum and told family members that they were going on cruises or ill. She also spent £150k of their money. pic.twitter.com/VCIHR7boqU
— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) October 11, 2024
“I did know that this would kind of come eventually. It’s proper that I serve my punishment,” McCullough told police.
She then said, “Cheer up, at least you caught the bad guy.”
McCullough had created a “homemade mausoleum” for her father using masonry blocks, while she wrapped her mother in a sleeping bag in the upstairs wardrobe, the BBC reported.
Police made the Poe-eque discovery in September 2023, when the McCulloughs’ doctors grew concerned about the couples’ absence, according to The Guardian.
Becoming suspicious of McCullough’s excuses regarding her parents, police eventually raided the home and discovered the grisly scene.
As for the motive, McCullough had exploited £149,697 from the death of her parents, derived from collecting their pensions, using their credit cards, and selling their assets, the BBC reported.
“The money appears to have been frittered away and not spent on expensive or lavish items,” Wilding said.
McCullough spent about £21,000 on online gambling between 2019 and 2023.
McCullough’s uncle, Richard Butcher, called his niece “very dangerous” and said details of the account had “undermined my faith in humanity,” The Guardian reported.
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