‘You’ve caught the bad guy’: Woman admits she killed parents, hid bodies for 4 years

A British pistillate volition walk astatine slightest the adjacent 36 years down bars aft a assemblage recovered her blameworthy of murdering her parents “in acold blood” and past hiding the bodies successful their household location for 4 years portion she spent their money.

Virginia McCullough, 36, was sentenced to jailhouse past Friday aft admitting to hiding her mother’s assemblage successful a wardrobe and gathering a “makeshift tomb” for her father.

Her crimes day backmost to June 2019, erstwhile she utilized a cocktail of crushed-up medicine drugs, slipped into 70-year-old John McCullough’s drink, to poison her begetter to death. The adjacent time she killed her mother, Lois McCulllough, 71, with a hammer and a room knife.

During the trial, reports The Guardian, authoritative Lisa Wilding elaborate the hand-built tomb she built to fell her father’s assemblage successful his bedroom, describing it arsenic “composed with masonry blocks stacked together” and “covered with aggregate blankets, and a fig of pictures and paintings implicit the top.”

“She concealed the assemblage of her mother, wrapped successful a sleeping bag, wrong a wardrobe successful her mother’s chamber connected the apical level of the property,” Wilding continued, describing the days pursuing the murders wrong the family’s Essex home.

Once the bodies were hidden, lawyers argued, McCullough went to progressively elaborate lengths to person radical her parents were fine.

She asked relatives to enactment away, reports the BBC, and friends were told the mates had retired and moved away. The COVID-19 pandemic and consequent lockdown measures the twelvemonth pursuing their deaths helped, successful part, to screen up her crimes, the tribunal heard.

The couple’s household doc became suspicious aft a fig of missed appointments implicit the years and alerted police, who forced introduction into the location connected Sept. 15, 2023.

Bodycam footage from their accomplishment amusement officers confronting McCullough successful the home, wherever she admitted to the killings.

“I did cognize that this would benignant of travel eventually. It’s due that I service my punishment,” she tin beryllium heard telling police.

She added: “Cheer up, astatine slightest you caught the atrocious guy.”

In custody pursuing her arrest, she went into item astir however she killed her parents.

She pointed officers successful absorption of the weapon she utilized to killed her mom, stashed nether the home’s stairs, saying it “will inactive person humor connected it, it’s rusted, but it volition inactive person humor traces connected it.”

She besides said she had to “build up gumption” to termination her mother.

“I knew I had to get it done.”

Richard Butcher, member of Lois McCullough, wrote successful a unfortunate interaction connection that his niece — the suspect — was “very dangerous” and what had happened “undermined my religion successful humanity.”

The Independent reports that McCullough had run up ample debts connected her parents’ recognition cards portion they were inactive live and continued to walk their pensions aft their deaths, each portion surviving rent-free successful the household home.

Forged letters showed McCullough had been tricking her parents into reasoning they had mislaid wealth done scams.

Essex Police said documents recovered astatine the code “built a representation of a pistillate who was trying desperately to support her parents from discovering the depth of the fiscal achromatic hole she continued to dig, portion giving them mendacious assurances astir her employment and aboriginal prospects.”

At sentencing, the justice told McCullough that she was adjacent to £60,000 (C$107,000) successful indebtedness earlier the killings and that she grew and maintained an “elaborate, extended and enduring web of deceit” implicit months and years.

“I’m definite a important motive for each of the murders was to halt your parents discovering you had been stealing from them and lying to them and to instrumentality wealth that was intended for them,” helium said, according to The Independent.

McCullough was sentenced to beingness successful prison, to service a minimum of 36 years.