UK woman who killed her parents and lived with their bodies gets life sentence

A British woman who murdered her parents and then lived for four years alongside their bodies in makeshift tombs at the family home was sentenced Friday to life imprisonment and told she will not be eligible for parole for 36 years.

Virginia McCullough, who spent her parents’ money and went to great lengths to cover her tracks with family and friends through a web of lies, had pleaded guilty to murdering her parents in June 2019 at a previous hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court in southeast England.

Judge Jeremy Johnson said at the sentencing hearing that McCullough’s actions represented a “gross violation of the trust that should exist between parents and their children”.

When Essex Police raided her house in the village of Great Baddow last September, McCullough confessed that her parents’ bodies were in the house and that she had killed them.

McCullough, 36, admitted to poisoning her father John McCullough, 70, with prescription medication that she crushed and put into his alcoholic drinks and that a day later she beat her 71-year-old mother Lois McCullough with a hammer and fatally stabbed her.

“I did know that this would kind of come eventually,” she said while handcuffed in body-worn footage captured by police that was released on Friday. “It’s proper that I serve my punishment.”