Virginia McCullough, 36, was sentenced to life for murdering both of her parents in 2019 and then living with their corpses. It was the victims’ doctors who reported their disappearance to the authorities.
Virginia McCullough, 36, kept the bodies of her two parents whom she had previously killed in her home in England for four years. She was sentenced to life in prison, reports The Guardian.
It was in June 2019, at the home of her two parents in Essex, that Virginia McCullough began her criminal project. She first poisoned her 70-year-old father with prescription drugs. To make him ingest her deadly cocktail, she crushed the pills then diluted them in her alcoholic drinks, said the prosecutor at Chelmsford Crown Court.
The next day, Virginia McCullough killed her 71-year-old mother by beating her “with a hammer and stabbing her several times in the chest with a kitchen knife,” the accused’s lawyer said. A weapon purchased “for this purpose,” the council said.
Then Virginia McCullough continued her life, as if nothing had happened, for almost four years at the family home with the corpses of her two parents.
Makeshift grave, corpse hidden in a closet
The thirty-year-old “built a makeshift grave” for her father, reported the prosecutor of the Assize Court. A “rectangular grave” discovered not in the garden, but in the deceased’s bedroom. “It was made up of masonry blocks stacked on top of each other.”
To disguise her father’s grave, Virginia McCullough covered it with blankets, pictures and paintings.
His mother was also kept in her room for four years. Virginia McCullough wrapped her in a sleeping bag and then stored her in a closet in the bedroom on the top floor of her family’s home.
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Virginia McCullough managed for years to lie to health professionals to justify medical appointments not honored by her two parents: vacations, long trips, excuses that she also uses to the relatives of septuagenarians, including her brothers and sisters.
The lie lasted until September 15, 2023. That day, police forced open the front door of the family home after GPs for both of Virginia McCullough’s parents became concerned about missed appointments.
Virginia McCullough confessed in a hallway of the house. “I knew this would eventually happen. It’s normal that I serve my sentence,” she told officers during her arrest.
A “planned” murder
At trial, the prosecutor said the defendant “had been thinking about killing her parents since March 2019 and had planned it.” After her actions, she “made arrangements to ensure that she continued to benefit from the pensions” of both her parents.
In total, she received more than 76,000 pounds sterling (around 85,000 euros) from her mother’s pension between June 2019 and September 2023. She used part of this sum in online gambling. Between June 2019 and September 2023, she spent more than £21,000 on these transactions.
“I am sure that an important motive for each of the murders was to prevent your parents from discovering that you were stealing from them, lying to them and taking money that was intended for them,” the judge told the court. audience, reports The Guardian.
