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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lucy Mangan

Confessions of a Parent Killer review – a grisly tale of the murderer who lived with her mum and dad’s corpses

Virginia McCullough, who pleaded guilty in 2024 to the murder of her parents Lois and John in 2019.
Virginia McCullough, who pleaded guilty in 2024 to the murder of her parents Lois and John in 2019. Photograph: Paramount

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.

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