Daughter horrifically compared murdering mum with hammer to 'playing a xylophone'
Calm Virginia McCullough confessed in detail of how she carried out the murders of both her dad John and her mum Lois, who were both in their 70s, before living with their corpses for four years
A woman who beat her elderly mum to death with a hammer after fatally poisoning her dad, told officers of the moments she went into the bedroom for the final time.
Virginia McCullough has today been jailed for life for murdering mum Lois and dad John. She killed them in 2019, then lived with their decomposing bodies for four years after racking up huge debts in their name.
Today as she was sentenced for her crimes, details that calm McCullough made in her confession, have been revealed for the first time. In one chilling description she called the hammer blows she delivered to her own mum as like "someone badly playing the xylophone - it was willy-nilly".
After her arrest, McCullough told officers said she poisoned her father with a "cocktail of prescription drugs" in his Guinness, red wine and brandy. She had given Lois a sleeping drug but it was not enough to kill her, so when she woke in the morning and discovered her father dead with rigor mortis, she knew she had to kill her mother.
It was then she attacked her mother as she lay defenceless on her bed listening to music, the court was told. She told cops: "I did go upstairs, I didn't really have a plan as such. I had a rough idea of what I might do.
"So I had Wilko garden gloves, I had a kitchen knife and I had a hammer. I went into my mother's only wearing the gloves. I had the hammer and the knife was still in my room. I knew I was going to be arrested for the murder of my father and I was going to go to prison.
"I looked at her and she looked so innocent. She was just listening to the radio, she was not doing anything. I went in with the hammer probably about four times. I went in three times maybe to build up the gumption, I knew I had to get it done.
"I raised the hammer a couple of times, I didn't do anything. I raised it a final time and I struck a blow... She didn't pass... She turned over and said, 'What are you doing?' That's when I hesitated for 20 seconds because she was staring at me in disbelief...
"I realised the hammer was not going to work. I didn't want her to suffer, I wanted her to be like my father, but my mother didn't drink... I left the room, I took off one of the garden gloves... I got the knife, which was from Lakeland, it was a large kitchen knife. I didn't have much time, she was still awake, she didn't say anything, other than, 'What are you doing?'"
After stabbing her, McCullough said: "I took her hand... she stopped moving and then that's when she just passed. I kissed her hand. That's when I came to the realisation I had killed them both. Then I just went for a wander around the house for a little bit."
For four years she used the cover of Covid to conceal her crimes, posing as the elderly couple in messages to her siblings and even pretending to be them in phone calls to the GP and the police. She even sent her siblings birthday cards purporting to be from her vulnerable parents which she ordered online with pre-printed messages.
But after McCullough continued to squander their pensions and built up debts on their credit cards. In total she stole cash to the tune of £149,697 before and after the murders. Police eventually began a missing persons probe and they stormed the family home in Plump Hill, Chelmsford, Essex, on September 15 last year and discovered the elderly couple's badly decomposed bodies.
Investigators discovered McCullough had been swindling their finances for years before the attack and struck as she feared her lies were about to be exposed.e Today prosecutors applied for a whole life order that would have meant McCullough died in prison, claiming she was "motivated for financial gain" and had made "concerted and extreme steps to conceal the bodies".
It would have made her only the fifth woman in UK history to get a whole life sentence and put her in the same ranks as some of Britain's most heinous killers, including Rose West, Lucy Letby and Joanna Dennehy. The Honourable Mr Justice Johnson said McCullough's case was not a case of "last resort" but said she acted because her financial fraud was about to be discovered.
He said: "You say you felt trapped and you wanted to be free from them. The reality is that you were trapped by your own dishonesty. You must have known that your lies and dishonesty were about to be discovered."