A blogger is being investigated by police after they shared images of the abandoned home where killer Virginia McCullough stored her dead parents’ bodies.
McCullough was handed a minimum 36 year jail term for poisoning her father John, 70, – and placing him in a ‘homemade mausoleum’ – and killing her mother Lois, 71, in a hammer and knife attack in June 2019.
The evil daughter lived alongside their bodies at the family home in Pump Hill, Chelmsford, and stole almost £150,000 of money in their names.
The house is currently in possession of the police and has been boarded up with metal security barriers.
Footage posted by an urban explorer, seen by MailOnline, showed where John and Lois had been sickeningly hidden.
The video features highly intrusive images of the inside of the house, which has been left untouched since police sealed it off after concluding their investigation.
The disturbing photos included food items, cutlery and crockery left untouched on surfaces around the home.
It also lingers on the areas where her parents’ bodies were found.
The murder scene house in Pump Hill, Chelmsford, where killer Virginia McCullough live alongside the dead bodies of her parents for four years before her dark secret was discovered
Police arrested Virginia McCullough on September 15 2023 (pictured: bodycam footage of the moment she is arrested)
McCullough killed her parents John, 70, (right) and Lois, 71, (left) at their home in Chelmsford, Essex, between June 17 and June 20, 2019
Police have urged people not to share the footage, out of respect for the couple’s relatives.
An Essex Police spokesman said: ‘We are aware of footage, taken from within a private property, circulating on social media.
‘Whilst our enquiries into this footage and how it was obtained are ongoing, we ask people not to share it any further out of respect for the grieving family at the heart of this matter.’
McCullough admitted two counts of murder at Chelmsford Crown Court on June 4, 2024.
Essex Police released bodycam footage of McCullough’s arrest at the home in October 2024.
On October 11, 2024, McCullough was sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court and given a minimum term of 36 years.
Relatives who had been told for years they were away on lengthy trips or unwell pleaded with the judge to lock her away for good.
Her mother’s brother told the court she would have ‘a lot of time to plan something else’ while in prison.
Police said McCullough embarked on a ‘meticulous’ campaign of ‘deceit, betrayal and fraud’ after helping herself to her parents’ finances – which culminated in her decision to kill them and bury the crime so she could continue doing so.
The artist – described in court by a psychiatrist as exhibiting psychopathic tendencies – admitted to police who turned up to arrest her that she had murdered them before spending more than four years covering it up.
She had stuffed her father’s body in a ‘makeshift tomb’ disguised as a bed on the ground floor and secreted her mother’s remains in a wardrobe upstairs.
She would tell friends and relatives that her parents Lois and John (pictured) had moved away to Clacton to be by the seaside – all while they decomposed in the house
It emerged that McCullough had hidden her father’s body beneath a makeshift bed on the ground floor, while her mother’s body was in a wardrobe upstairs
This is the moment Virginia McCullough admits to police she hid her parents’ bodies in the house after murdering them
After confessing to police in full, and signing their notes, she callously told the officers arresting her: ‘Cheer up, at least you caught the bad guy’
Sentencing her, Mr Justice Johnson told McCullough she had engaged in ‘substantial planning and premeditation’ that saw her accumulate large amounts of prescription drugs, a knife and implements to crush the tablets into powder.
Her sustained ‘economic abuse’ amounted to domestic abuse, he said, adding that she had ‘robbed’ her parents of ‘dignity in death’ by concealing their murders.
While he recognised that she had symptoms of a personality disorder, her mental health did not ‘substantially’ reduce her culpability, adding: ‘There was no impairment of your ability to understand the nature of your conduct, to form a rational judgement and exercise self-control.’
Mr Justice Johnson told her: ‘You say you murdered them because you felt trapped. The reality is you were trapped only by your own dishonest behaviour.
‘You are described by one of your sisters as a compulsive liar, but that hardly captures the elaborate and enduring web of deceit you spun over numerous years.
‘These murders were done in the expectation you would gain financially from your parents’ deaths. They were murders done for gain. You think more of money than you do of humanity.
‘Your conduct amounted to a gross violation of the trust between parents and their children.
Footage from within the holding cells at a local police station shows McCullough revealing where she hid the weapons she used to kill her mother
Artist McCullough (pictured) admitted poisoning her father with prescription medication and stabbing her mother before hiding their bodies for years
‘The fact you concealed your parents’ bodies for so long and maintained the deceit that they were still alive robbed them of dignity in death.’
McCullough nodded as the sentence was passed and she was taken to the cells but showed no other emotion.
The court heard she gave her father a fatal dose of sleeping tablets, leaving him to die alone. McCullough found him dead the next morning – before deciding her mother could not be allowed to find out.
As Mrs McCullough lay in bed listening to the radio, unaware her husband was dead, her daughter struck her with a hammer and stabbed her eight times to her chest and neck, apologising to her as she lay bleeding out.
McCullough cut her own finger during the savage attack – and tried to pass it off as an accident from chopping vegetables after she went to the GP with the injury, which would not stop bleeding.
She frittered away £149,697 from credit cards, bank accounts, pensions and benefits attached to her parents – including over £21,000 on gambling.
Some of this happened before their deaths – which she would pass off as frauds, banking failures or the work of hackers, even creating fraudulent documents from financial institutions to cover her tracks.
Her trickery deceived everyone – including Mrs McCullough’s brother Richard Butcher, who told the court: ‘I have been manipulated over the years to think my sister was alive.’