Insidious lie: Woman murders parents and lives with the bodies for four years
Chelmsford (England) - To get hold of her parents' savings, Englishwoman Virginia McCullough hatched a murderous plan. She then lived under the same roof as the dead for four years. When the police caught up with her, the 36-year-old admitted to the double murder on camera.

"Dad's body is in there, mom's in the closet," says the killer in a calm voice in the police video, pointing to the place where she hid her dead parents. She must have suspected that her construct of lies was bound to collapse at some point.
Now Virginia McCullough (36) has been put on trial at Chelmsford Crown Court. For the murder of her father John (†70) and her mother Lois (†71), the court handed down the appropriate sentence on Thursday: life imprisonment. This was reported bythe Daily Mail.
During the trial, the murderer admitted everything, describing in detail how she first poisoned her father with prescription drugs in the summer of 2019 and then attacked her mother with a hammer the next morning, holding her hand as she slowly bled to death.
The artist hid the bodies in the family home in Chelmsford, which she lived in until her arrest. She put the father in a "makeshift grave" disguised as a bed, stuffed the dead mother in a sleeping bag and stowed the body in a closet on the top floor of the red-brick terraced house.



Investigators are convinced that Virginia McCullough was regularly tapping into her parents' savings, forging bank documents and making up tall tales of bank failures or hacker attacks.
When her father John, who was a highly respected university lecturer, found out about her, she hatched her perfidious plan and began procuring prescription drugs.
After the double murder, Virginia McCullough - who was certified by an expert as having "psychopathic tendencies" - continued to live completely unaffected, not letting anything show. When family members asked questions, Virginia McCullough told lies. Sometimes her parents were on a long trip, sometimes they were ill. She regularly wrote postcards on behalf of the deceased. This went on for four years.
Meanwhile, the double murderer was living large on her parents' savings. She squandered a total of 149,697 British pounds (the equivalent of 178,000 euros). She gambled away almost 25,000 euros in online casinos alone.
McCullough's crimes were only discovered in September 2023 - when the GP informed the police because John, who suffered from diabetes and glaucoma, had not been to the surgery for a long time. The killer daughter had previously phoned the GP practice 185 times, pretending to be her mother.
Virginia McCullough immediately admitted her crimes. "Cheer up, you've caught the bad guy," she said to police officers in the hallway of the house of death.
Video: Here the murderess admits everything
In court, witnesses painted a picture of a compulsive liar who, among other things, made up pregnancies and serious illnesses. She pretended to her parents that she was a successful web designer. In fact, the artist last worked in a bar in 2017.
Virginia McCullough accepted the verdict without any visible emotion. She can apply for early release in 34 years at the earliest.