by A woman who murdered her parents and lived next to their bodies for four years told police who arrested her: “Smile, at least you’ve caught the bad guy.”
Virginia McCullough, 36, poisoned her father John McCullough, 70, with a “mocktail of prescription drugs” and fatally stabbed her mother Lois McCullough, 71, with a kitchen knife in the summer of 2019.
At Friday’s sentencing hearing, the court heard how McCullough had built a “makeshift tomb” for her father in a room on the ground floor of the family home, which served as a bedroom and study.
She is then said to have placed her mother’s body in a sleeping bag in an upstairs bedroom wardrobe of their home in Pump Hill in Great Baddow, Essex.
When she was arrested by Essex police last year, she admitted everything to them and said “you’ve caught the bad guy”.
The court also heard how McCullough made 185 calls to a GP including calls in which she pretended to be her mother.
McCullough also spoke to a police officer on the phone and told them her parents were away but would be back for her mother’s birthday.
McCullough benefited from more than £135,000 after the murders to cash in on her parents’ pensions.
Professor Nigel Blackwood, a psychiatrist, who assessed McCullough, told the court that her behavior including her “lack of emotional empathy” was “typical of psychopathic personalities”.
Essex Police have now released footage of his arrest.
On 15 September 2023 officers attended McCullough’s home address after her parents failed to attend GP appointments after raising concerns about her wellbeing.
Footage shows five officers outside the suburban home as a police officer in riot gear smashes a plane of glass in the back door.
Then an officer in forensic clothes goes through the door, and says, “Nobody’s here right now, hold on.” he said: “[This is] the police.”
Armed with a yellow Taser, an officer walks through the property to the front door, where McCullough is standing wearing a pink top.
Calmly, McCullough is told: “It’s 12.12pm and you’re under arrest on suspicion of murder against John McCullough and Lois McCullough, okay?”
She answers: “Yes.”
While being handcuffed, one of the officers asks McCullough if there is “anything inappropriate we should be aware of?”
She replied: “Yes, yes.”
The officer interjected: “Where?”
She continued: “Can I give you to him?”
He replied: “No, you can tell me.”
Four years earlier, on 17 June 2019, McCullough had poisoned her father with a prescription drug before beating her mother with a hammer the following day. Their bodies never left the house.
While still being questioned by police, McCullough told them her father’s body was in what prosecutors described as a “domestic mausoleum” in the back room of the ground floor of the house.
When asked where her mother’s body was, she said it was “a bit more complicated”.
“So, upstairs, there are about five wardrobes,” she said. “It’s behind the bed at the back, next to the sink.”
This footage shows McCullough telling the police how she killed her father by spiking his drinks.
“He’s slipped a bunch of those into his drink,” she said. “I took about two or three drinks downstairs.
“He didn’t drink them all. He probably only drank half of them. Six o’clock in the morning, I came in and he was gone. He was gone.”
As the officers searched the house, McCullough continued to talk to the officers who arrested her.
“I knew it would come to this eventually,” she told them. “It is right that I should cut my punishment.”
The court heard that she constantly told lies about her parents’ whereabouts, canceled family arrangements and often told doctors and relatives that her parents were ill, on holiday or away on long trips.
The murders were only discovered after Lois’ GP and John’s practice raised concerns for their welfare, having not seen them for some time.
It later emerged that McCullough often canceled appointments, using a variety of excuses to explain her father’s absence.
McCullough initially lied to officers when they first contacted her claiming her parents were traveling and would be returning in October.
The captured footage shows McCullough signing the confession she just made to the police.
The officer asks her: “Are you willing to sign that to say it’s a real account?” She replied, “Yes, yeah”, before signing with a biro pen, like emotions.
In a strange turn, McCullough told the officer to “laugh” because he had “caught the bad guy”.
“I know I don’t look 100 percent bad,” she said.
The officer replied: “I woke up today and did my job.”
Detectives told the court that McCullough had “manipulated and abused the goodwill of her parents for financial gain”.
She stole from them while they were alive to support her gambling habit and also after they died. Documents found at the property revealed she was thousands of pounds in debt on credit cards in her parents’ names.
As she continued to talk to the officers, McCullough told them that their eventual conviction might “give me some peace.”
“Obviously I deserve whatever is coming in terms of sentencing because it’s the right thing to do and maybe that will give me a little bit of peace,” she said.
McCullough was jailed for life at Chelmsford Crown Court on Friday and ordered to serve a minimum of 36 years.
Footage taken later in the police station where McCullough was taken after her arrest shows her revealing the location of the knife used in her mother’s murder.
Handcuffed, she said: “So, um, there’s a murder weapon upstairs… a kitchen knife.”
The court was told that her fatal attacks, by her own admission, were the result of months of thought and planning that began around March 2019.
She hit her mother over the head with a hammer and pleaded with her, “What are you doing? What are you doing?”.
McCullough then stabbed her mother with a kitchen knife when she “realized the hammer wasn’t going to work”, she admitted to police.
McCullough admitted to the police that the hammer she used to attack her mother would still have “traces of blood”.
“It’s very difficult to talk about the next piece, that’s probably the ugliest detail,” she told officers from her cell.
“So on the ground floor, under the stairs, there are some storage boxes and things like that.
“It will help you forensically. There is a hammer. There will still be blood on it. It’s rusty but it will still have traces of blood on it.”
In the final clip, McCullough was filmed candidly telling police why she confessed to her crimes, telling them she “should pay for what I’ve done”.
“So not to cooperate, it’s futile,” she said. “It’s not a bad idea to collaborate. Not really.
“And besides which, anyway, I should pay for what I’ve done. That’s the other side of the coin, I think.”
Detective Superintendent Rob Kirby, of Essex Police, said the case “challenged even the most experienced homicide detectives”.
“This process, from finding the remains of John and Lois, to unraveling McCullough’s web of lies, has had a profound impact on the wider family network,” he said.
“With this sentence and everything we have found during our investigation, we hope they can now begin to find a way forward in their lives.”
