A woman who murdered her parents then lived alongside their bodies for four years as she stole almost £150,000 of money in their names is facing a life sentence.
Virginia McCullough, 36, poisoned her father John McCullough, 70, with sleeping pills before beating her 71-year-old mother Lois McCullough and stabbing her to death at their house in Pump Hill, Chelmsford.
She would tell doctors and relatives that her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips – all while their bodies rotted away in the home she continued to live in as she cashed in their pension cheques and racked up huge debts.
The artist – described in court by a psychiatrist as exhibiting psychopathic tendencies – admitted murdering them on a date in June 2019 before spending more than four years covering up their disappearance.
She stuffed her father’s body in a ‘makeshift tomb’ disguised as a bed on the ground floor and secreted her mother’s 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 this morning. She spoke only to confirm her name.
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, her daughter struck her with a hammer and stabbed her eight times to her chest and neck, apologising to her as she lay bleeding out.
McCullough cut her own finger during the savage attack – and tried to pass it off as an accident from chopping vegetables after she went to the GP with the injury, which would not stop bleeding.
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 frauds, banking failures or the work of hackers, even creating fraudulent documents from financial institutions to cover her tracks.
Her deception after their deaths deceived everyone – including Mrs McCullough’s brother Richard Butcher, who told the court: ‘I have been manipulated over the years to think my sister was alive.’
Prosecutor Lisa Wilding KC said: ‘Between June 17 and 18 2019, Virginia McCullough murdered both of her parents.
‘She poisoned her father with a fatal combination of prescription drugs that she crushed and put into his alcoholic drinks on the night of June 17 and, the following day, she beat her mother with a hammer and stabbed her multiple times in the chest with a kitchen knife bought for the purpose.
‘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 mother’s 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.’
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 you’re gonna be arrested anyway for the murder of your father, you’re gonna go to prison,’ she had said.
The gruesome attack began with a hammer – before she fetched a Lakeland kitchen knife because ‘the hammer was not going to work and I didn’t actually want her to suffer’, she told detectives.
‘I was hitting like someone badly playing the xylophone or something,’ she had added.
After the killing, McCullough went into Chelmsford town centre where she bought plastic gloves from Lakeland, paying with her father’s credit card.
The same day, she bought sleeping bags and wrapped her parents’ bodies in them.
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 mother’s phone to text a relative, writing that she and Mr McCullough were ‘at the seaside in Walton this week’.
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.
When police officers arrested her at home, she asked to speak to them in a back room.
Ms Wilding said: ‘She pointed to a concrete structure which looked like a bed. She said, “I know why you’re here, my father is in there, I murdered him”.’
When police asked where her mother was, McCullough replied: ‘She’s upstairs in a double wardrobe.’
McCullough had hidden her father’s 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 mother’s 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.
Ms Wilding said: ‘She expressed a concern that she had not opened the wardrobe since so was unsure of the state inside.’
A psychiatrist who examined McCullough said her ‘callousness, lack of empathy and deceptive behaviours’ indicates she is a psychopath.
And Lois’s brother Mr Butcher 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 couldn’t comprehend what has happened and still can’t. I believed I was in communication with Lois, John and Virginia before hearing the awful news.
‘I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t understand why Virginia would do such a thing, and still can’t.
‘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.’
Other relatives spoke of being left ‘devastated and bereft’ and being forced to endure ‘a living nightmare’ for the rest of their lives.
One said Virginia’s ‘immeasurable amount of lies is sickening’ and blasted her ‘lies, laziness and greed’.
In a letter to the killer, one relative 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.
McCullough had rubbed tears from her eyes at the previous hearing as Judge Christopher Morgan told her: ‘You will understand there is a single sentence that can be passed upon you in these circumstances.
‘What must be determined is the minimum term. You will remain in custody.’
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. ‘We’re all shocked, we didn’t think she was capable of this.’
He said that McCullough would speak to workers in the local shops and buy them things.
‘If anything she was just like a pest,’ he added. ‘She would come in and go “do you want a coffee” then five minutes later there would be a coffee sitting there.’
Neighbour Phil Sargent said McCullough was ‘quite chatty’ and ‘would always come and descend on you’.
‘It would be a fair comment to say she was slightly irrational with her thinking,’ he said. ‘She didn’t appear to be a threat of any kind.’
He said McCullough ‘would buy you things, gifts and leave them outside your door – stuff from the Chinese takeaway, on a regular basis’.
‘She would all of a sudden appear at 10pm and want to talk,’ he said.
‘If you were going out she would spot you and come out. You would get this story or other on what’s happening to her and her world, most of it was just made up.’
Another neighbour, who did not give his name, described McCullough as ‘pleasant’, ‘generous’ and an ‘artist’, adding that he had not seen her parents for at least two years.
Neighbour Dave Oldershaw said McCullough had been ‘carrying on, going up to the Chinese (takeaway) like nothing has happened’.
He said he ‘thought she lived on her own’ at the house, adding: ‘I only knew her to say hello to – she wasn’t trouble.’