Inset: Jennifer Mulligan (Virginia Beach Police Dept.). Background: The block in Virginia where Mulligan allegedly killed her father in May (Google Maps).
A 44-year-old woman in Virginia is accused of killing her 90-year-old father, allegedly shooting him in the head before calling 911 and confessing to the emergency dispatcher, saying that she killed him “on purpose.” Jennifer Mulligan is now facing first-degree murder and gun charges in the slaying of Woodward McClure earlier this year.
According to a news release from the Virginia Beach Police Department, officers responded to a 911 call at about 11:11 a.m. on May 7 reporting a shooting at a residence in the 500 block of Rodney Lane, about 100 miles southeast of Richmond. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they located an adult male, later identified as McClure, with a gunshot wound to the head inside the home. Emergency medical personnel pronounced him dead at the scene.
“A female resident, later identified as Jennifer Mulligan of Virginia Beach, was taken into custody without incident,” the release states. “Preliminary investigation indicates this was a domestic-related incident.”
Additional details surrounding the fatal shooting were revealed during a preliminary hearing on Tuesday in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, where prosecutors played a recording of Mulligan”s 911 call.
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Asked why she was calling, Mulligan responded, “I just shot my dad,” according to a report from The Virginian-Pilot. When the dispatcher asked whether the shooting was accidental, Mulligan reportedly responded, “It was on purpose.”
As the eight-minute conversation continued, Mulligan accused her father of being a “child predator” and a rapist, and made other accusations, telling the dispatcher he “is not a good person.”
One of the officers from the scene also testified that McClure was “obviously deceased” by the time authorities arrived, with a subsequent autopsy revealing that the gun was pressed against his forehead when he was shot.
In an interview with detectives, Mulligan accused her father of physically and emotionally abusing her and her siblings from a young age. That abuse allegedly continued about two years ago, when the Texas nursing home where he had been living closed and he moved in with Mulligan.
“I did what I had to do to take care of the agony,” she told one of the detectives, per a report from Portsmouth NBC affiliate WAVY.
Mulligan’s defense attorney, Roger Whitus, on Tuesday said the past abuse Mulligan suffered, which her family members reportedly corroborated, would be among the “significant mitigating and contrary evidence” to explain her apparent confessions.
“As we talked about in court, there were issues with just general day-to-day interactions with him, mostly just the way he would treat her and her family and their dogs and other people that they dealt with,” Whitus said after the hearing, according to a report from Norfolk CBS affiliate WTKR. “Issues with cleanliness, and then, like I said, I suspect at the end of the day, some of the long-standing issues involving abuse that were alluded to in court, were coming up to the surface.”
Mulligan is currently being held without bond. It was not immediately clear when she is scheduled to appear in court again.
