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 Virginia woman who admitted she intentionally shot her 90-year-old father in the head after accusing him of years of abuse was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years in prison, with the judge telling her that while she received due process, her father "got a bullet in his head."
Second Judicial Circuit Judge Afshin Farashahi ordered Jennifer Mulligan to serve a sentence of 43 years with 26 years suspended, leaving 17 years to serve in a state correctional facility.
Mulligan previously reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony in the 2025 slaying of Woodard McClure. As part of the plea, the state agreed to reduce the original charge of first-degree murder.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Virginia Beach police responded to a home on Rodney Lane on May 7, 2025, after Mulligan called 911 and told a dispatcher, "I just shot my dad." When asked whether the shooting was accidental, she replied, "It was on purpose."
Officers found McClure, 90, dead inside the residence with a gunshot wound to the head. During a preliminary hearing months later, prosecutors said the gun had been pressed against his forehead when it was fired.
In an interview with detectives following the shooting, Mulligan said she "did what I had to do to take care of the agony" and accused her father of physically, emotionally and sexually abusing her and her siblings throughout their childhood. Investigators said McClure had moved into Mulligan's home about two years earlier after the Texas nursing home where he had been living closed, leaving her to become his caregiver.
Tuesday's hearing shifted from the killing itself to the years leading up to it.
According to a report from The Virginian-Pilot, Mulligan's two half-brothers testified that McClure physically, emotionally and sexually abused them as children and also abused Mulligan after abducting her for several years during her childhood. Her husband, Brian Mulligan, testified that despite his father-in-law's past, his wife insisted on taking him into their home because he was family, but caring for the man she blamed for years of trauma eventually became overwhelming.
Prosecutors said Mulligan spent the morning of May 7 thinking about what her father had done to her and her siblings, drank three beers, retrieved a .380 Ruger pistol from the garage and shot him once in the head while he sat in bed, according to Portsmouth, Virginia, NBC affiliate WAVY.
Defense attorney Roger Whitus said after the hearing that the support Mulligan received from family members reflected "the person Jennifer has shown herself to be despite the great adversity she has suffered throughout her life," Norfolk, Virginia, CBS affiliate WTKR reported.
Farashahi said he considered the extensive mitigating evidence and acknowledged that Mulligan negotiated what he described as "a great result" through her plea agreement, which significantly reduced her sentencing exposure. But he said the killing could not be justified.
"You got due process and your father got a bullet in his head," Farashahi reportedly told Mulligan, adding, "That's not how we do things."
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