A British woman who murdered her parents and then spent years living with their corpses at their family home as she lived off their savings has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Virginia McCullough, 36, was given a minimum jail term of 36 years by a British court after it heard of how she hid the murders for four years, lying to friends and family to hide what she had done to her parents.

Chilling bodycam video released by the Essex police following sentencing revealed how she told officers who came to arrest her in September 2023 “cheer up, at least you’ve caught the bad guy”.

In the video, McCullough told police officers “I know why you are here, my father is in there, I murdered him.”

“I did know this would kind of come eventually. It’s proper that I serve my punishment,” she can be heard calmly telling the officers, as she explains where she hid the bodies and murder weapon.

McCullough poisoned her father, a University lecturer, with a cocktail of prescription drugs she hid in his drinks.

She found him dead the following morning, and immediately turned on her mother, who was in another room lying down and listening to the radio with headphones on.

McCullough first beat her mother with a hammer and then stabbed her eight times. She then hid the bodies inside the house, wrapping them in sleeping bags.

What followed was a years-long deception to prevent her siblings or parents’ friends from discovering the truth. All the while, McCullough spent her parents’ pensions and used their credit cards.

The court heard that McCullough had already been defrauding her parents before she killed them, and was motivated to kill them to prevent them from discovering the truth.

As it concluded she had psychopathic traits, the court sentenced her to a life sentence.