Virginia McCullough told police where she’d hidden the bodies for four years
Warning: the following video contains stressing scenes which some viewers may find distressing
The moment a woman who killed her parents and hid their bodies in her house for four years told police what had happened was captured on bodycam footage.
Virginia McCullough has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 36 years in prison for the murders of her father John, 71, and mother Lois, 70 at their home in Essex.
The 36-year-old woman poisoned her father with what prosecutors described as a ‘cocktail of prescription drugs’ and then ‘beat her mother with a hammer and stabbed her multiple times in the chest with a kitchen knife bought for the purpose’.
The murders took place in June 2019, and for the next four years, McCullough lived with the corpses of her parents hidden within the house.
Prosecutors said that she ‘built a makeshift tomb’ for her father covered in blankets, pictures and paintings, while she wrapped her mother’s body in a sleeping bag and put it in a wardrobe.
Bodycam footage from Essex Police showed the moment where McCullough told officers arresting her where she’d put the bodies of her parents.
“Upstairs there are about five wardrobes, it’s behind the bed at the back next to the sink, it’s the second one,” she said matter-of-factly about the location of her mother’s body.
She then directly told officers she ‘did know this would kind of come eventually’ and added that it was ‘proper that I serve my punishment’.
McCullough also agreed to sign a statement detailing how she’d killed her parents and stashed their bodies in her house.
An officer arresting her asked if she was happy to agree that she’d hidden her dad’s body ‘under a bed in the rear ground floor of the house’ and her mother’s upstairs in a cupboard next to the sink’.
The only correction she had was to say she’d put her mother’s body in a wardrobe.
She said: “Wardrobe, it’s a double wardrobe. It’s like four wardrobe doors but it’s the one nearest the sink.”
She then signed the account agreeing with all that she’d confessed to, telling the arresting officers ‘cheer up, at least you’ve caught the bad guy’.
McCullough fell under suspicion after her parents GPs raised concerns over them missing multiple appointments, which led to police launching an investigation.
Officers entered the property on 15 September, 2023, where the woman said she would ‘cooperate’ with the investigation, telling them she ‘knew that this would have come eventually’.
