Why Virginia McCullough killed her parents and lived with their bodies

Virginia McCullough knew why the police had smashed through her front door, but part of her wondered why it took them so long to discover she had murdered her parents. “Cheer up, at least you’ve caught the bad guy,” she calmly told the officers handcuffing her. Neighbours thought John and Lois McCullough had retired to the seaside, but the reality was they were callously poisoned by their daughter. Why did she do it?

The goings-on inside the McCullough family home in Great Baddow near Chelmsford, Essex, were becoming increasingly secretive in 2019.

Relatives were asked to stay away and friends were told Mr and Mrs McCullough had retired to the Clacton area on Essex’s sunshine coast.

The gruesome reality was very different. It would be four years before anyone found out the horrors that took place behind closed doors on Pump Hill.

John McCullough, a retired business studies lecturer, had been fatally poisoned and the 70-year-old’s body was hidden in a crudely-built tomb made out of breeze blocks and blankets.

The corpse of his 71-year-old wife, Lois, was stashed behind sleeping bags and duvets in an upstairs wardrobe.

Mrs McCullough had been battered with a hammer and stabbed, but she too had also been poisoned with prescription medication administered by her daughter.

Virginia McCullough, 36, was handed a life sentence at Chelmsford Crown Court for their murders, to serve a minimum of 36 years, on Friday.