Relatives described a troubled childhood and difficult caregiving relationship before Jennifer Mulligan received 17 years in prison for second-degree murder.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Jennifer Mulligan once traveled to Texas to bring her elderly father into her Virginia Beach home, relatives said, despite a childhood in which she and her siblings accused him of years of abuse. That complicated family history ended in a homicide case and, on Aug. 4, a sentence requiring Mulligan to spend 17 years in prison.
The punishment followed an unusually personal sentencing hearing in which Mulligan’s relatives described why a daughter who had been estranged from Woodard McClure would later become a caregiver for him. Mulligan, 44, had already pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony for shooting the 90-year-old McClure on May 7, 2025. Circuit Court Judge Afshin Farashahi imposed 43 years, suspended 26 and left 17 years to serve. The hearing therefore was not about whether Mulligan had killed her father. It was about what weight the court should give to allegations that the man she killed had abused her and other children in the family for years.
Two of Mulligan’s half-brothers testified that McClure physically, emotionally and sexually abused them when they were children, according to accounts of the sentencing. They also supported Mulligan’s description of abuse she said she suffered. The defense said McClure had abducted Mulligan when she was young and kept her away from other relatives for several years. Those accounts were not offered as a claim that Mulligan had been defending herself from an immediate attack when she fired. Instead, attorney Roger Whitus relied on them as mitigating evidence — circumstances he argued should help explain Mulligan’s conduct and reduce the punishment imposed for a killing she had already admitted.
Her husband, Brian Mulligan, described the later family decision that put McClure back under the same roof as his daughter. McClure had been living in Texas before the facility housing him closed. Although Mulligan blamed her father for deeply painful experiences from childhood, her husband said she insisted on taking him in because he was family. She traveled to Texas, brought him to Virginia and became involved in caring for him. That arrangement lasted for roughly two years and, according to the defense, exposed Mulligan repeatedly to a man whose presence brought old trauma back into her daily life.
The defense also described more immediate household tension. Whitus said after an earlier hearing that conflicts involved the way McClure allegedly treated Mulligan, her family, their dogs and other people, along with problems involving cleanliness and daily care. Mulligan told detectives after the shooting that she had suffered physical and emotional abuse from her father as a child and accused him of sexually abusing family members. Whitus said he had spoken with siblings who supported her claims. In his account, the years of alleged mistreatment and the pressures of caring for McClure were not separate stories; they were part of the same background that eventually surfaced in the criminal case.
What happened on the morning of May 7, however, gave prosecutors a sharply different basis for describing the crime. At an earlier bond hearing, prosecutors said Mulligan had consumed about three beers before going to the garage and retrieving a .380-caliber pistol. She then walked to McClure’s bedroom. He was in bed when she shot him once in the head, according to the evidence presented in court. Prosecutors said the wound was a contact wound, indicating the firearm was pressed against his forehead when it was fired. Those facts led Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney David Talmage to describe the killing during the bond proceedings as an “execution” and to argue that Mulligan should remain jailed.
After the shot, Mulligan did something that removed much of the uncertainty about who had fired it: She called 911 herself. A recording later played during a September 2025 preliminary hearing captured her telling the dispatcher, “I just shot my dad.” When the dispatcher asked whether she had done so accidentally or intentionally, Mulligan said, “It was on purpose.” She then accused McClure of being a rapist and child predator and said he was not a good person. The call became significant because it contained both an admission to an intentional killing and Mulligan’s immediate description of the history she said lay behind it.
Her interview with investigators continued the same pattern. Mulligan did not portray the gunshot as an accident. Asked why she had killed her father, she said, “I did what I had to do to take care of the agony.” The statement would later be repeated in coverage of the case because it condensed the competing themes facing the court: a defendant who described profound suffering but who also admitted choosing to use lethal force. Defense lawyers said such statements had to be evaluated together with the family history. Prosecutors relied on the same admissions, alongside the physical evidence and Mulligan’s actions before the shooting, to show that the killing was deliberate.
Police had arrived at the home in the 500 block of Rodney Lane at about 11:11 a.m. after the shooting was reported. Officers found McClure inside with a gunshot wound, and emergency medical personnel pronounced him dead at the scene. Mulligan was taken into custody without incident. The Virginia Beach Police Department initially charged her with first-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Police called the case domestic-related in their first public statement, but the depth of the family’s allegations and Mulligan’s explanation did not become widely known until later court hearings.
The first-degree charge also shows how much the legal posture changed before sentencing. A preliminary hearing sent the case forward, and Mulligan remained in custody after prosecutors successfully challenged an earlier bond decision. By April 2026, however, prosecutors and the defense reached a plea agreement. Mulligan pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and the Commonwealth reduced the original first-degree count. She also pleaded guilty to the firearm offense. The agreement meant she would be convicted without a trial and that the sentencing hearing, rather than a jury verdict, would become the place where the family’s allegations and Mulligan’s personal history received their fullest consideration.
Whitus argued that the relatives who appeared for Mulligan showed the person she had been despite what he called substantial adversity. Their support created an uncommon dynamic: Members of the same family as the man who had been killed were also providing testimony meant to lessen the sentence of the woman who killed him. The testimony did not make McClure’s death legally permissible, and the court did not treat it that way. But it gave Farashahi a record that went well beyond the basic elements of murder and forced the sentencing decision to account for the relationships inside a family whose members described a decades-long history of harm.
Farashahi said the mitigation mattered, but he drew a firm boundary around what it could accomplish. He noted the benefit Mulligan had already received through the plea agreement and acknowledged the extensive material offered on her behalf. He then focused on the difference between understanding a person’s actions and legally excusing them. “You got due process and your father got a bullet in his head,” the judge told Mulligan, according to reports from court. “That’s not how we do things.” The remark framed the sentence as a rejection of private punishment, even in a case where the person convicted said the victim had caused years of suffering.
Mulligan’s sentence totals 43 years, but 26 years are suspended, producing the 17-year active prison term. Authorities said she must surrender her gun and have no hostile contact with her siblings. After she is released, she will be subject to supervised probation, meaning the suspended portion of the sentence will continue to carry legal consequences. The case now ends its trial-court phase with both sides of its central record intact: Mulligan stands convicted of intentionally killing McClure, while the sentencing record also documents relatives’ allegations that the relationship between father and daughter had been marked by abuse long before they shared a home again.
Author note: Last updated September 9, 2026.