Latest news with #GreatBaddow
The Independent
7 days ago
- The Independent
Gang dubbed ‘three musketeers' chased dog walker and stabbed him to death, court hears
Three men who called themselves the three musketeers chased down a man walking his dog before he was stabbed to death in a street, a court has heard. CCTV footage played to jurors at Chelmsford Crown Court showed 30-year-old Kieran Shepherd, with his pet on a lead, being chased by the three men in broad daylight in Great Baddow near Chelmsford in Essex last year. The chase, shown in footage, started at 12.24pm on October 15. Mr Shepherd was found lying on the floor at around 12.30pm by a cleaner who had been working in a nearby block and dialled 999. Mr Shepherd was pronounced dead at the scene in Meadgate Avenue at 1.22pm that day. Joseph Dawe, 20, of Greenland Gardens, Great Baddow, Zack O'Keeffe, 20, of Stafford Green, Langdon Hills, Basildon, and 20-year-old Harrison Carpenter, of Ben Wilson Link, Springfield, all deny murder and are on trial. Tracy Ayling KC, prosecuting, said Mr Shepherd was 'clearly caught by the three men and shortly afterwards he was found dead, stabbed in the back twice with a knife'. She said the knife was 'large' and the force used was such that the depth of the wound was 13 to 15 centimetres, going through his left lung and 'into his heart coming out the other side of it'. Ms Ayling said the prosecution case is that the three defendants are 'jointly responsible'. 'One person may have delivered the fatal blows but the prosecution case is the three are jointly liable as they were acting together in a joint attack,' she said. She continued: 'You will hear the defendants called themselves the three musketeers.' Cleaner Holly Duffett, who dialled 999, said she saw three men run across the street and the man in the middle was putting a knife into the waistband of his trousers, Ms Ayling said. In footage of the call played in court on Tuesday, Ms Duffett said a man had a 'massive shank', adding: 'I don't know if they've just stabbed him or something.' CCTV footage was played of the three men in a newsagents at 12.21pm, shortly before the stabbing, and at Carpenter's grandmother's address in the village of Stock afterwards, from 1.10pm. In a statement read by the prosecutor, Carpenter's girlfriend Olivia McElvaney said she was with Carpenter in Chelmsford on October 15. She said the pair were sitting on a bench when Carpenter received a phone call and O'Keeffe, who was driving a car, and Dawe, who was a passenger in the vehicle, met with them. 'They call themselves the three musketeers,' Ms McElvaney said in her statement, summarised by the prosecutor. Ms Ayling said Ms McElvaney 'knew Zack O'Keeffe was a drug dealer – she said he didn't hide the fact'. 'Possibly the plan was to get some food but suddenly Zack stopped the car as if he had seen someone he knew,' said Ms Ayling, summarising Ms McElvaney's evidence. She said the three men got out of the car and they were gone for around half an hour. 'When they got back in Zack drove off immediately,' Ms Ayling said. 'She (Ms McElvaney) said Zack kept saying 'shut up, shut up'.' She said she thought there was blood on Carpenter's jeans and she said she thought a knife in a sheath was passed to the back of the car. 'There was also talk between the defendants of the need to burn clothes,' Ms Ayling said. Ms Ayling said that the men went into some woods in Stock and later got a lift to a caravan in Clacton on Sea. She said Carpenter attended a police station and handed himself in on October 16, and O'Keeffe and Dawe 'weren't located until October 18'. The prosecutor said Ms McElvaney had also gone to the caravan at Clacton, and later gave a statement to police about what was said there. Ms McElvaney was asked by police: 'Did they say it was them that was there when Kieran got stabbed and that they were the group responsible?' Ms Ayling said: 'Her answer was yes.' She continued: 'She (Ms McElvaney) said Joe and Harrison had a fight with Kieran but Zack O'Keeffe stabbed him apparently twice in the back.' Ms McElvaney said that O'Keeffe said it 'had to be done', according to the prosecutor. 'The reason she said it had to be done, according to Olivia, was he (Mr Shepherd) had pulled a knife on a 14-year-old at some time in the past,' Ms Ayling said. 'Zack O'Keeffe said in stabbing Mr Shepherd he was doing the police's job for them.' The trial continues.
BBC News
7 days ago
- BBC News
Great Baddow: Three men stabbed dog walker to death, court hears
A group of friends who called themselves the "three musketeers" chased down a man walking his dog before he was stabbed to death in broad daylight, a court has Shepherd, 30, was fatally injured in Meadgate Avenue in Great Baddow, near Chelmsford, Essex, on 15 October last Dawe, 20, of Greenland Gardens in Great Baddow, Zack O'Keeffe, 20, of Stafford Green in Langdon Hills and Harrison Carpenter, 20, of Ben Wilson Link, Chelmsford pleaded not guilty to murder earlier this the opening of the trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, the jury was played CCTV showing three men chasing Mr Shepherd and his dog down the street at 12:24 GMT. Prosecutor Tracy Ayling KC told the court he had been stabbed in the back with a 15 to 30cm (6 to 12in) knife."The blade went into his left lung and heart with it coming out the other side," she told the jury. The court also heard a 999 call made at 12:30 GMT by the woman who found Mr Shepherd following the Ayling said the woman, a cleaner named Holly Duffett, said she had "just seen three men carrying a massive shank".A shank is a colloquial term used for a weapon typically used to stab someone."I'm just a bit shaken up, I haven't seen anything like that," she told the call handler, adding that she saw "three men run past and all three boys were wearing balaclavas".She described them as being armed with a "massive" arrived and tried to save Mr Shepherd, but he was pronounced dead at the scene at 13:22 GMT. The court heard evidence from Mr Carpenter's girlfriend, Olivia McElvaney, who said the three defendants were all good friends and called themselves the "three musketeers".In a statement read by the prosecution, Ms McElvaney said: "Zack was a drug dealer and did not try and hide it."She described travelling in a car with the three men on the day of the stabbing before stopping suddenly - adding that the group was then out of the car "for about 30 minutes".CCTV footage was played in court of the three men in a newsagents at 12:21, shortly before the Ms Ayling said Ms McElvaney recalled the men returning to the car and driving off immediately."She (Ms McElvaney) said Zack kept saying 'shut up, shut up', Ms Ayling said, adding that McElvaney reported seeing "what she thought was blood on Carpenter's jeans".Ms McElvaney said she thought a knife in a sheath was passed to the back of the car and there was also talk of the need to burn clothes, Ms Ayling all drove to Mr Carpenter's grandmother's house in Stock, the court heard, before getting a lift to a caravan park in Clacton-on-Sea later that evening, Mr Carpenter handed himself into police on the 16 October but refused to answer any of the officer's questions. Instead, he read out a prepared statement that said: "I deny the allegation of murder, I do not have or use any weapon. "I am not responsible for the killing of Kieran Shepherd." Mr Dawe and Mr O'Keeffe "weren't located until October 18," Ms Ayling told the trial continues. Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Daily Mail
20-06-2025
- Daily Mail
What drove a daughter, 36, to kill her parents and then hide their bodies in the family home for FOUR years - as her sister says: 'I understand why she did it, but I never want to see her again'
There is little to distinguish the Seventies three-storey property that stands on a corner of Pump Hill, in the Essex commuter village of Great Baddow. The metal shutters that, until recently, covered the entrance and garage, have been removed and the fake daffodils and stone hedgehog that once stood by the door have gone. A few weeks ago, house clearers arrived, emptying both home and garden. Yet, net curtains still hang limply at the windows where a small silver star - an overlooked Christmas decoration maybe - remains stuck to an upstairs pane of glass. It's the only enduring reminder of the family - and the horror - that once filled this home. Two of the most recent occupants are dead and the third, Virginia McCullough, is currently residing within the secure confines of HMP Downview, in Surrey. The crimes the bleached blonde, 37-year-old aspiring artist hid here - in her childhood home - are appalling and terrifying in equal measure, not simply because of what she did, but because they stand as ultimate proof that you really do never know what goes on behind closed doors. The truth about just what did go on here was revealed in September 2023, when the bodies of McCullough's parents, John and Lois, were found inside the property. They had been murdered and entombed – Lois, 71, in an upstairs wardrobe, sealed with tape and barricaded with breeze blocks and John, 70, in a makeshift mausoleum made from more blocks (Virginia bought 40 of them, along with sand and cement, at B&Q), in the downstairs study. She had, it transpired, been living with their bodies for four years, during which time she ploughed through tens of thousands of pounds of their savings, while tricking everyone into believing her parents were still alive, before their concerned GP finally raised the alarm. The extraordinary moment of her arrest was captured in police bodycam footage, released by Essex Police, after McCullough was jailed for life for murder - a crime she admitted - last October. The video, viewed hundreds of thousands of time online, is as chilling as it is macabre. 'Is there anything in the property that we should know about?' asks one officer, as McCullough is handcuffed in the hallway. 'Yes, there is,' she replies, calmly and chirpily. 'Shall I take you to it?' Her matter-of-fact manner never changes. 'Cheer up, at least you've caught the bad guy,' she quips. The Daily Mail has visited Great Baddow, where we spoke to neighbours and residents who remember 'Ginny', as she was known. We also spoke to her elder sister, Louise Hopkins - the only one of her four siblings to comment publicly on the tragedy - who provided a disturbing insight into a deeply troubled family, the full facts about whom may never be known. Of her parents, she said: 'They did their best, but things were bad from the beginning. They both had issues and they did not get the help they needed.' 'When one went down the other might be up. If they were both down then all hell broke loose. 'I grew up in that environment trying to read what was going to happen.' Louise, now a 49-year-old mother-of-three and a life coach living in Cambridgeshire, said she'd broken contact with her parents in 2018, a year before they were killed. While she did not want to go into detail about her childhood, Louise said: 'My mother, when she was young, got involved with an American cult. She was on her own in London and the cult got hold of her. She brought that home. 'You never knew [what] you were going to get. 'I left the family for that reason. My sister did what she did for the same reason.' Now, McCullough has spoken again, this time in a series of letters written from behind bars to the makers of a Paramount documentary, Confessions of a Parent Killer. McCullough's words are every bit as unnerving as her reaction when police knocked on her door that day. 'I knew I would be arrested one day and should be,' she writes. 'I knew I should be punished, which is why I did not try and run or leave. 'I was relieved in a huge way that the deception was over... so I told the police plenty of information to help the investigation and was trying to make things easier for them.' As a mea culpa it is eerily self-centred and dispassionate. But in truth, everything about the murders of John and Lois McCullough is strange. The murders will be analysed in a compelling new Daily Mail podcast called Trial+, to be released next week. So who were John and Lois McCullough? And what drove their youngest daughter to murder them? The couple were in their 30s by the time they married in Doncaster, in 1975 and had Louise, the first of five daughters. Over the next seven years, they had three more girls, before moving south, to Essex, where Ginny was born in 1987. John was a management consultant, turned business studies lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University - and also a heavy drinker. Lois, meanwhile, once worked as a secretary, but battled with anxiety, agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. By the time of their deaths, only their youngest daughter Ginny - an aspiring artist - remained at the family home. Yet none of her sisters appeared to have made contact with the authorities when their parents disappeared in June 2019. We now know that McCullough, masquerading as her mother, texted the rest of the family, asking them to stay away, while neighbours were told the pensioners had moved to the seaside. It's McCullough herself, who tries to explain her actions, in 60-pages of disturbing, and neatly penned prose, sent to documentary producer, Charlie Wakefield - who was at school with her - before sentence. Her account, while to be treated with caution (she was labelled a 'compulsive liar' by family in court) nevertheless paints a picture of a deeply unhappy childhood. 'I knew as a child that I should not have been a part of that family,' she writes. 'My parents were too strict and cold.' She goes on to document being smacked for minor misdemeanours, and battling the humiliation of bed-wetting. 'At home my drinks were limited to three cups a day to try to prevent me wetting the bed,' she says. 'But when I was ten, I was still not dry at night. My dad took me to the chemist to get Huggies pull-ups and said, very loudly to embarrass me, 'You can carry them as they are yours'.' She describes being dirty and unkempt at school, being called 'Ginny Germs' by classmates and branded 'stupid' and 'useless' by her parents after a poor school report. As for her parents' problems, she says she was the 'buffer between my dad's drinking and mother's mental health'.' 'A number of months before the end, my mother was getting more and more emotionally cruel, telling me 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. 'I felt emotionally desperate and trapped. I got to a point where there was nothing that I wanted more than a normal quiet life at almost any cost.' We, of course, now know what that cost was. Det Supt Rob Kirby, of Essex Police, described McCullough, as an 'intelligent and adept manipulator' who perpetrated fraud and betrayal on a 'monumental' scale. Years before she killed them, she'd gained control of her parents' finances, and frittered away thousands on shopping and online gambling, which she covered up by telling them they'd been victims of fraud. By June 17, 2019, she was £60,000 in debt, so that night she enacted a plan she had been hatching for months - a plan she describes in harrowing details in her letters. She poisoned her parents' drink with a cocktail of prescription drugs. The following morning, she found her father dead in his bed. But, as she says in her letters, her mother, who slept separately from her husband, was still alive. 'One worked and one did not,' she writes, chillingly matter-of-fact. 'I'd given less drugs to my mother. 'I quietly went into the doorway and found her. As it turned out, she was in a deep sleep. I pulled the door back closed again and went to get gloves, a knife and a hammer. 'I went back in, and she was facing away from me. I hesitated, and then I carried out the act.' The act was appalling; McCullough hit her mother in the head with the hammer and stabbed her eight times with a knife. Defensive injuries contradict McCullough's account of her mother being in a deep sleep: the elderly woman had fought for her life. That same day, McCullough purchased sleeping bags, into which she placed her parents' bodies, wrapping them in layer upon layer of plastic and then constructing the makeshift tombs in which they would eventually be found. The next day, she posed as her mother to apply for a new credit card and PIN, which she would go on to use to buy clothes and jewellery. The subterfuge that followed was swift. That afternoon, she sent a text message from her mother's phone to one of her sisters. It read: 'Your dad and I are at the seaside in Walton this week. Mum x'. Later that night, there was another message: 'Good night. Mum. X' Over the ensuing months and years, McCullough sent numerous messages pretending to be her mother. She made phone calls to her siblings and to the GP, and to her father's pension provider. There were birthday cards, and postcards to neighbours filled with anecdotes about their life by the sea. Meanwhile, she plundered their bank accounts and pension payments, spending almost £150,000. To those on the outside - neighbours, shopkeepers, the postman - McCullough - with her peroxide hair and two-tone fingernails - was viewed either as an annoyance or an eccentric. She would stand outside for long periods sweeping away six or seven leaves, she would arrive unannounced at neighbours's homes with gifts – steak, doughnuts, or a takeaway. McCullough's own written account of that time, living with her terrible secret, is extraordinary, to say the least. 'I spent the first six months mostly indoors. I did not sleep upstairs, but in the lounge, on the couch,' she wrote. 'Having my parents in the house but without any mental abuse or drinking, I admit, in a strange way, was a silent comfort. 'I was just living normally and quietly... but it's all I wanted at the time I committed the crime.' She claims, to have only spent money on 'every day' things, insisting her gifts were because she was 'addicted' to the smile it would put on people's faces. Those the Mail have spoken to revealed there may be kernels of truth in what she says. 'Ginny did what she did, but deep down she was trying to prove she was not a bad person,' says one villager. 'She was trying to endear herself to people by giving them presents, so much so that she became a bloody nuisance. She went overboard. It was too much.' In Great Baddow, there remain very mixed emotions about the killer who lived among them. One friend says: 'When you boil it down, what Ginny did, you cannot condone. You do not go around killing people, least of all your parents, but you can understand why. It leaves a lot of unanswered questions. 'Something had to give. Maybe if she could have got the support from her family when she was growing up, maybe this whole wretched thing would not have happened.' Life in prison, however, seems to suit McCullough, and she says she's happier than she ever was on the outside. And she continues to profess her remorse. In her letters to the documentary makers, she writes: 'Not only do I think I deserved life without parole, but felt that even that was not punishment enough to ease my guilt or remorse, even mildly. 'I have made so many mistakes in my life through deception, secrecy and self-sabotage. The worst of all is the crime that I killed my parents.' Certainly McCullough's siblings and uncle would agree. At Chelmsford Crown Court, Richard Butcher, Lois's brother, who lives in India, said he had been manipulated into thinking his sister was alive and that the truth was still incomprehensible. 'Virginia is very dangerous. Her ability to kill her parents undermines my faith in humanity,' he said. Meanwhile, her other siblings released a statement, in which they said: 'Mum and Dad always enjoyed the time they spent with us. Family was their pride and joy. 'Our family has been left devastated and heartbroken at the deaths of our parents who were taken from us so cruelly.' Only McCullough's sister, Louise - who didn't attend court, nor even her parents' funerals - can begin to understand. She says of her youngest sibling: 'I think I know why she did it. I forgive her but I feel nothing for her. I do not want to see her. I will never see her.' Confessions of a Parent Killer is on Paramount+ now For more on this case, listen to a special interview with retired detective Paul Maleary, available now on the Mail's award-winning podcast The Trial+. To subscribe go to
Daily Mail
19-06-2025
- Daily Mail
The chilling letters from jail that reveal twisted motivation of aspiring artist who murdered her parents then lived with their bodies in her childhood home for FOUR years
There is little to distinguish the 1970s three-storey property that stands on a corner of Pump Hill, in the Essex commuter village of Great Baddow. The metal shutters that, until recently, covered the entrance and garage, have been removed and the fake daffodils and stone hedgehog that once stood by the door have gone. A few weeks ago house clearers arrived, emptying both home and garden. Yet, net curtains still hang limply at the windows where a small silver star – an overlooked Christmas decoration maybe – remains stuck to an upstairs pane of glass. It's the only enduring reminder of the family – and the horror – that once filled this home. Two of the most recent occupants are dead and the third, Virginia McCullough, is currently residing within the confines of HMP Downview, in Surrey. The crimes the bleached blonde, 37-year-old aspiring artist hid here – in her childhood home – are appalling and terrifying in equal measure, not simply because of what she did, but because they stand as ultimate proof that you really do never know what goes on behind closed doors. The truth about just what did go on here was revealed in September 2023, when the bodies of McCullough's parents, John and Lois, were found inside the property. They had been murdered and entombed – Lois, 71, in an upstairs wardrobe, sealed with tape and barricaded with breeze blocks; and John, 70, in a makeshift mausoleum made from more blocks (Virginia bought 40 of them, along with sand and cement, at B&Q), in the downstairs study. She had, it transpired, been living with their bodies for four years, during which time she ploughed through tens of thousands of pounds of their savings, while tricking everyone into believing her parents were still alive, before their concerned GP finally raised the alarm. The extraordinary moment of her arrest was captured in bodycam footage, released by Essex Police, after McCullough was jailed for life for murder – a crime she admitted – last October. The video, viewed hundreds of thousands of times online, is as chilling as it is macabre. 'Is there anything in the property that we should know about?' asks one officer, as McCullough is handcuffed in the hallway. 'Yes, there is,' she replies, calmly and chirpily. 'Shall I take you to it?' Her matter-of-fact manner never changes. 'Cheer up, at least you've caught the bad guy,' she quips. The Daily Mail has visited Great Baddow, where we spoke to neighbours and residents who remember 'Ginny', as she was known. We also spoke to her elder sister, Louise Hopkins – the only one of her four siblings to comment publicly on the tragedy – who provided a disturbing insight into a deeply troubled family, the full facts about whom may never be known. Of her parents, Louise said: 'They did their best, but things were bad from the beginning. They both had issues and they did not get the help they needed. When one went down, the other might be up. If they were both down, then all hell broke loose. 'I grew up in that environment trying to read what was going to happen.' Louise, now a 49-year-old mother-of-three and a life coach living in Cambridgeshire, said she'd broken contact with her parents in 2018, a year before they were killed. While she did not want to go into detail about her childhood, Louise said: 'My mother, when she was young, got involved with an American cult. She was on her own in London and the cult got hold of her. She brought that home. 'You never knew [what] you were going to get. I left the family for that reason. My sister did what she did for the same reason.' Now, Virginia McCullough has spoken again, this time in a series of letters written from behind bars to the makers of a Paramount documentary, Confessions of a Parent Killer. Her words are every bit as unnerving as her reaction when police knocked on her door. 'I knew I would be arrested one day and should be,' she writes. 'I knew I should be punished, which is why I did not try and run or leave. I was relieved in a huge way that the deception was over . . . so I told the police plenty of information to help the investigation and was trying to make things easier for them.' As a mea culpa it is eerily self-centred and dispassionate. But in truth, everything about the murders of John and Lois McCullough is strange. The crime will be analysed by former top Essex detective Paul Maleary in a compelling episode of the Daily Mail's award-winning The Trial+ podcast, out tomorrow (subscribe at So who were John and Lois McCullough? And what drove their youngest daughter to murder them? The couple were in their 30s by the time they married in Doncaster, in 1975 and had Louise, the first of five daughters. Over the next seven years, they had three more girls, before moving south, to Essex, where Ginny was born in 1987. John was a management consultant-turned-business studies lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University – and also a heavy drinker. Lois, meanwhile, once worked as a secretary, but battled with anxiety, agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. By the time of their deaths, only their youngest daughter Ginny remained at the family home. Yet none of her sisters appeared to have raised the alarm when their parents disappeared in June 2019. We now know that McCullough, masquerading as her mother, texted the rest of the family, asking them to stay away, while neighbours were told the pensioners had moved to the seaside. It's McCullough herself who tries to explain her actions, in 60 pages of disturbing and neatly penned prose sent to documentary producer Charlie Wakefield – who was at school with her –before her sentence. Her account, which must be treated with caution (she was labelled a 'compulsive liar' by family in court), nevertheless paints a picture of a deeply unhappy childhood. 'I knew as a child that I should not have been a part of that family,' she writes. 'My parents were too strict and cold.' She goes on to document being smacked for minor misdemeanours, and battling the humiliation of bed-wetting. 'At home my drinks were limited to three cups a day to try to prevent me wetting the bed,' she says. 'But when I was ten, I was still not dry at night. My dad took me to the chemist to get Huggies pull-ups and said, very loudly to embarrass me: "You can carry them as they are yours." ' She describes being dirty and unkempt at school, being called 'Ginny Germs' by classmates and branded 'stupid' and 'useless' by her parents after a poor school report. As for her parents' problems, she says she was the 'buffer between my dad's drinking and mother's mental health'. 'A number of months before the end, my mother was getting more and more emotionally cruel, telling me I was worthless and there was growing toxicity from my dad's drinking. Night time was my only respite, and even then I would cry and feel hopeless. I felt emotionally desperate and trapped. I got to a point where there was nothing that I wanted more than a normal quiet life at almost any cost.' We, of course, now know what that cost was. Detective Superintendent Rob Kirby, of Essex Police, described McCullough as an 'intelligent and adept manipulator' who perpetrated fraud and betrayal on a 'monumental' scale. Years before she killed them, she'd gained control of her parents' finances, and frittered away thousands on shopping and online gambling, which she covered up by telling them they'd been victims of fraud. By June 17, 2019, she was £60,000 in debt, so that night she enacted a plan she had been hatching for months – a plan she describes in harrowing detail in her letters. She poisoned her parents' drinks with a cocktail of prescription drugs. The following morning, she found her father dead in his bed. But, as she says in her letters, her mother, who slept separately from her husband, was still alive. 'One worked and one did not,' she writes, chillingly matter-of-fact. 'I'd given less drugs to my mother. I quietly went into the doorway and found her. As it turned out, she was in a deep sleep. I pulled the door back closed again and went to get gloves, a knife and a hammer. 'I went back in, and she was facing away from me. I hesitated, and then I carried out the act.' The 'act' was appalling – McCullough hit her mother on the head with the hammer and stabbed her eight times with a knife. Defensive injuries contradict McCullough's account of her mother being asleep: the elderly woman fought for her life. That same day, McCullough purchased sleeping bags, into which she placed her parents' bodies, wrapping them in layer upon layer of plastic and then constructing the makeshift tombs in which they would eventually be found. The next day, she posed as her mother to apply for a new credit card and PIN, which she would use to buy clothes and jewellery. The subterfuge that followed was swift. That afternoon, she sent a text message from her mother's phone to one of her sisters. It read: 'Your dad and I are at the seaside in Walton this week. Mum x.' Later that night, there was another message: 'Good night. Mum. X.' Over the ensuing months and years, McCullough sent numerous messages pretending to be her mother. She made phone calls to her siblings, to the GP and to her father's pension provider. There were birthday cards, and postcards to neighbours filled with anecdotes about their life by the sea. Meanwhile, McCullough plundered her parents' bank accounts and pension payments, spending almost £150,000. To those on the outside – neighbours, shopkeepers, the postman – McCullough, with her peroxide hair and two-tone fingernails, was viewed either as an annoyance or an eccentric. She would stand outside for long periods sweeping away six or seven leaves; she would arrive unannounced at neighbours' homes with gifts – steak, doughnuts, or a takeaway. McCullough's own written account of that time, living with her terrible secret, is extraordinary, to say the least. 'I spent the first six months mostly indoors. I did not sleep upstairs, but in the lounge, on the couch,' she wrote. 'Having my parents in the house but without any mental abuse or drinking, I admit, in a strange way, was a silent comfort. 'I was just living normally and quietly . . . but it's all I wanted at the time I committed the crime.' She claims, to have spent money only on 'every day' things, insisting her gifts were because she was 'addicted' to the smile it would put on people's faces. Those the Mail have spoken to revealed there may be kernels of truth in that. 'Ginny did what she did, but deep down she was trying to prove she was not a bad person,' says one villager. 'She was trying to endear herself to people by giving them presents, so much so that she became a bloody nuisance. She went overboard. It was too much.' In Great Baddow, there remain mixed emotions about the killer who lived among them. One friend says: 'When you boil it down, what Ginny did, you cannot condone. You do not go around killing people, least of all your parents. But you can understand why. It leaves a lot of unanswered questions. 'Something had to give. Maybe if she could have got the support from her family when she was growing up, maybe this whole wretched thing wouldn't have happened.' Life in prison, however, seems to suit McCullough, and she says she's happier than she ever was on the outside. And she continues to profess her remorse. In her letters to the documentary makers, she writes: 'Not only do I think I deserved life without parole, but felt that even that was not punishment enough to ease my guilt or remorse, even mildly. 'I have made so many mistakes in my life through deception, secrecy and self-sabotage. The worst of all is the crime that I killed my parents.' Certainly McCullough's siblings and uncle would agree. At Chelmsford Crown Court, Richard Butcher, Lois's brother, who lives in India, said he had been manipulated into thinking his sister was alive and that the truth was still incomprehensible. 'Virginia is very dangerous,' he said. 'Her ability to kill her parents undermines my faith in humanity.' Meanwhile, her other siblings released a statement, in which they said: 'Mum and Dad always enjoyed the time they spent with us. Family was their pride and joy. Our family has been left devastated and heartbroken at the deaths of our parents who were taken from us so cruelly.' Only Louise – who didn't attend court, nor even her parents' funerals – can begin to understand. She says of her youngest sibling: 'I think I know why she did it. I forgive her, but I feel nothing for her. I do not want to see her. I will never see her.' Additional reporting: Stephanie Condron Confessions of a Parent Killer is on Paramount+ now
The Guardian
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Confessions of a Parent Killer review – a grisly tale of the murderer who lived with her mum and dad's corpses
Well, what do you think a 90-minute documentary entitled Confessions of a Parent Killer is going to be about? That's right, well done! It's the story of a murder by an (adult) child of her parents. Virginia – Ginny – McCullough killed her mother, Lois, and father, John, and confessed immediately to police when they raided her home in 2023 that she had done so four years previously. The twist was that she had been living with their bodies ever since. 'She was weird at school,' says a childhood friend. 'But not 'kill your parents and hide the bodies' weird.' You can probably tell from such unimpeachably phlegmatic commentary that this case occurred in England. Great Baddow, Essex, to be exact, and the film paints a portrait of quintessential small-town, almost-rural life in these sceptred isles that has gone unchanged for generations and, you suspect, will survive for many more. Everybody knew the family, yes. Grocer Paul; Alan, who rented John and Lois various bits of kit from his electronics shop on the high street; florists Rachel and Debbie and, of course, a number of thirtysomething women – 'Ella', Bethan, Kirsty, Lisa – knew Ginny from school. Everyone thought the family was a bit odd, yes. There were rumours that John, a university lecturer who liked a drink ('very curt, brusque', never said goodbye to Alan after he paid his monthly rent), was relentlessly strict with his daughters and that was why they all left home as soon as they could, though Ginny kept having to come back when her various jobs left her short of cash. And Lois was strange, quiet, unsmiling, 'subdued', 'withdrawn'. Ginny was more outgoing. She started coming in instead of her mum or dad to pay Alan. Spent a lot of time and money in the florist, too, since she came back to sort the house out four or five years ago. Always full of stories ('a bit of a fantasist', 'always some drama going on'), perhaps a little needy and annoying; you can see in the descriptions of her as an adult the shadow of the bullied, friendless child Bethan et al remembered. 'I don't like my mum at all,' young Ginny once told Bethan, on whom she lavished presents that 'she'd obviously just nicked from around the house' when they sat next to each other in year 2. But, well, every community has these people, don't they? It takes all sorts. You just accommodate them, make allowances, they don't hurt anyone. Until. Unless. Then you look back and, you wonder, don't you? Ginny returned the equipment to Alan in 2021 – she said her parents had moved to Clacton. People do. It was their GP who first contacted the police, after becoming concerned that John and Lois had missed numerous appointments. It turned out that no one had seen them for years. Investigations resulted in the raid. Bodycam footage shows an unfazed Ginny assuring officers of her cooperation and telling them that her father's body is in the sitting room. And mum? 'That's a little bit more complicated,' says Ginny, delicately. Mum is in a sleeping bag in a wardrobe upstairs, the doors taped against the flies and maggots that had been struggling to escape. 'Cheer up!' she cajoles the shocked officers. 'At least you caught the bad guy!' But why did she do it? Here, the programme becomes as manipulative as any psychopath. Numerous suggestions are trailed. 'Exclusive' letters (written, it seems, to one of the film-makers) from McCullough herself suggest an abused child of a mentally unwell mother and alcoholic father, who finally cracked. Some of the Great Baddowan testimonies appear to back this up. But a detective insists that she is a cold-blooded killer. A forensic psychiatrist – not the one on her case – does the intensely annoying thing of dressing up common sense as professional insight (she may have kept the bodies because she felt connected to them, or it may have been because it is so hard to dispose of corpses. Either way, it must have been 'psychologically taxing'). It is not until the final minutes that all the facts are laid before us. The new ones make it clear that psychopathy and a financial motive should have been given more weight, and that the viewer has been kept in a state of much greater uncertainty and intrigue than we would or could otherwise have been. A narrative must be shaped and an amount of storytelling leeway granted – but this goes far beyond that and taints the overall endeavour to an unpalatable extent. Confessions of a Parent Killer is on Paramount+ now
