The residents of the ‘sleepy’ village of Great Baddow, Essex, woke up to a nightmare in the fall of 2019 when a woman named Virginia McCullough, 36, admitted to having murdered both her parents and kept them in the house where she lived for four years. She was later sentenced to 36 years in prison.
Now, a documentary has been made about the horrifying murders. There, Virginia revealed in a harrowing letter why she murdered her parents – and it’s a scary read.
The terrifying case of Virginia McCullough shocked an entire nation. She had poisoned her father, John, 70, and savagely beaten her mother, Louis, 71, to death with a hammer.
The Essex Police launched a missing persons investigation regarding John and Louis in September 2023, following concerns raised by their couple’s counselor. They lived in Pump Hill, Great Baddow, Essex, but when questioned by the police, their daughter, Virginia, lied repeatedly.
“She told persistent lies about their whereabouts, cancelling family arrangements and frequently telling doctors and relatives her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips,” the police stated.
At one point in 2023, police officers visited the couple’s home, where Virginia was also located. They became suspicious, and once they began searching the property, they made a horrifying discovery.
Virginia McCullough murdered and lived with her dead parents for 4 years
Police located human remains, which were inferred to be of John and Lois. It was soon established that they had been murdered in the summer of 2019.
“Cheer up. At least you caught the bad guy!” Virginia McCullough told officers when they found the bodies.
The fact that she had murdered both her parents was one thing. But that she had lived alongside the corpses for about four years was shocking. Examinations later revealed that both John and Lois had been poisoned with prescription medication. John died of poisoning, while Lois died from being struck with a hammer.
Virginia McCullough had then kept her mother’s body in a sleeping bag in a taped-up wardrobe to “keep the maggots out.” Meanwhile, she had laid her father, John, in what she called a “mausoleum” made of breeze blocks and blankets.
Virginia’s motive was reportedly financial gain, investigators stated. She had “long manipulated and abused her parents’ goodwill for financial gain.” BBC, citing authorities, reported that the woman took nearly $200,000 through the pensions and their credit cards and spent about $30,000 on online gambling in the years following her parents’ deaths.
In a statement, Essex Police Detective Superintendent Rob Kirby said Virginia McCullough’s crimes “were the actions of someone who had taken time to plan and carry out the murder of her parents in the interest of self-preservation and personal gain, before living within meters of the bodies of her two victims for a number of years.”
Sentenced to 36 years before being able to apply for parole
The police detective added that through their investigation, authorities “built a picture of the vast levels of deceit, betrayal and fraud she engaged in, with the scale being ‘shocking and monumental.’ Moreover, he called Virginia an ‘intelligent manipulator’ who ‘lied about almost every aspect of her life.”
“The details of this case shock and horrify even the most experienced of murder detectives, let alone any right-thinking member of the public,” the detective superintendent added. “It therefore follows that the wider family of John and Lois, understandably, could never have guessed or anticipated that McCullough would be capable of undertaking these murders before committing herself to this level of deceit.”
Virginia McCullough was sentenced to at least 36 years in prison before she could even be considered for parole. She was sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on October 11, 2024. The family of Lpuis and John released a statement after Virginia’s sentencing.
“Our family has been left devastated and heartbroken at the deaths of our parents who were taken from us so cruelly,” the statement read. “As we try to move forward with our lives, we will remember the happy times we enjoyed with them.”
They concluded, “Our Mum and Dad are forever in our hearts, and are loved and missed beyond any measure. We request privacy as we continue to grieve the loss of our dear parents.”
Virginia McCullough shares harrowing letter in new documentary
Nicola Rice, a Specialist Prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said after the sentencing, “This was a truly disturbing case, which has left behind it a trail of devastation, and I can only hope that the sentence passed today will help those who loved and cared for Lois and John begin to heal.”
A few weeks ago, Paramount+ released a new documentary about the horrifying murders. The film, titled Confessions of a Parent Killer, focuses on Virginia’s relationship with her parents, where the woman claimed she had suffered from years of emotional abuse, per Unilad.
In a harrowing letter, Virginia McCullough wrote that she felt “emotionally trapped” and never “a part of the family,” which was “too cold.” She also accused her parents of violence and that she had been smacked” as a youngster if she wet her bed.
She said she had been bullied at school, which one of her former elementary school classmates also said.
“Children were noticing that I looked untidy and strange. I was dirty some days and others I had washing up liquid slicked back in my hair in a ponytail,” Virginia McCullough wrote in the letter, which appears in the Paramount+ documentary. “I looked so unkempt and dirty that kids started saying ‘Ginny germs, no returns.'”
She continued, “I wondered if my parents loved me or if I was a burden?”, adding that in her teenage years, her parents berated her about her academic performance. She further wrote that her dad had a drinking problem, and her mom had mental health issues, meaning she was “taking abuse from one or both of them.”
“There was nothing I wanted more than a normal quiet life”
“Sometimes my mother would shout out insults in the night or say she wished I was dead. It was hard to calm her down or reason with her and my dad resorted to drinking more,” she continued.
So why did she really kill her parents? In the latter, Virginia concluded that she wanted a “quiet life.”
“A number of months before the end, my mother was getting more and more emotionally cruel, telling me that I was worthless and there was growing toxicity from my dad’s drinking. Nighttime was my only respite, and even then, I would cry and feel hopeless,” she wrote. “I felt emotionally desperate and trapped. I got to a point where there was nothing I wanted more than a normal quiet life at almost any cost.”
Our thoughts are with the families of Lois and John. Do you think the sentence Virginia McCullough got was fair? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
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