She was 15 weeks pregnant with his child, a baby boy who was to be named Dean, and had suffered a \u201chorrendous and savage beating\u201d, prosecutors said. <\/p>\n
On Monday, it took the jury of six men and six women two hours to find \u2013 unanimously \u2013 that the YouTuber<\/a> and former Belfast Telegraph employee was guilty of her murder<\/a>. McCullagh was sentenced to life imprisonment. <\/p>\n The crime was a \u201cplanned, calculated, premeditated murder\u201d which McCullagh \u201choped to get away with\u201d, jurors were told at the outset of a trial that lasted five weeks at Belfast Crown Court.<\/p>\n An \u201celaborate\u201d alibi \u2013 a six-hour YouTube gaming session that he claimed was live but was, in fact, pre-recorded \u2013 was initially accepted by police, with McCullagh told he was no longer a suspect. <\/p>\n So convincing was his \u201cdistraught\u201d state that Natalie McNally\u2019s parents welcomed him into their home for her wake on Christmas night where he spent 20 minutes alone with her remains. <\/p>\n For weeks after her murder, he played the grieving partner and father-to-be, telling McNally\u2019s family of his excitement about the baby, their plans for the future and his feelings for Natalie. <\/p>\n \u201cHe said he treated her like a princess,\u201d said Ann Anderson, an aunt of McNally\u2019s, of a conversation she had with the killer in the McNally home after her murder.<\/p>\n McCullagh, of Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, Co Antrim, had denied the charge of murder from the moment he was first arrested the night after McNally\u2019s death on Sunday, December 18th, 2022. <\/p>\n He declined to take the take stand in the high-profile case and the defence offered no evidence. Throughout the trial he claimed an ex-boyfriend had murdered her. <\/p>\n But prosecution barrister Charles MacCreanor said, as to motive, some friendly and \u201cflirty\u201d messages between McNally and some males, including some of a \u201csexual nature\u201d, have been found on her phone, and these may have \u201cenraged\u201d McCullagh, who had the passcode to unlock her device. <\/p>\n A law graduate who was a marketing executive at transport company Translink, McNally loved animals \u2013 she had an Alsatian dog, River, and two cats \u2013 and her passions were reading, music and travelling with her family to Everton and GAA matches. <\/p>\n She spent her final hours at her parents\u2019 home in Lurgan, on the sofa with her father Noel, watching the World Cup final before returning home to her own house in Silverwood Green in Lurgan. <\/p>\n The jury agreed with the prosecution\u2019s case that McCullagh beat, strangled and stabbed her to death and \u201cpeddled a false alibi\u201d while he carried out her murder, and then claimed to have discovered her body. He raised the alarm with a \u201cfalse\u201d emergency call to police. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an act, it\u2019s put on by him, part of his plan to do the murder and get away with it,\u201d MacCreanor told the trial.<\/p>\n During the 10-minute call, made at 9.55pm on Monday, December 19th, 2022, McCullagh was heard sobbing as he asked for paramedics. <\/p>\n He screamed: \u201cPlease come as soon as you can; she\u2019s pregnant, she\u2019s cold. There\u2019s blood everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n In the dock, McCullagh wiped tears from his eyes as that 999 call was played to the court during the opening day of evidence last month. <\/p>\n Behind him the public gallery of Court 13 was packed with Natalie McNally\u2019s family and friends.<\/p>\n Her mother Bernadette McNally broke down towards the end of the recording when she heard her daughter\u2019s dog, River, barking.<\/p>\n McNally had been dead for about 24 hours; the jury was told she was murdered between 8.50pm and 9.30pm the previous night, December 18th. <\/p>\n She suffered \u201cserious and multiple fatal injuries\u201d, MacCreanor said, including three stab wounds to her neck caused by a \u201cbladed weapon\u201d, \u201cblunt-force trauma\u201d in the form of five lacerations to her head and compression of her neck \u201csuggestive of fingertips grasping\u201d. <\/p>\n It took 40 minutes for Northern Ireland\u2019s State Pathologist James Lyness to outline the dozens of injuries to McNally\u2019s head, face, neck, mouth, hands, arms and lower body she suffered during a \u201cprolonged assault\u201d, pointing as he did so to each part of his own body to demonstrate how widespread they were. <\/p>\n McCullagh listened, showing no emotion. <\/p>\n It seemed \u201clikely that the foetus died as a result of the assault\u201d, the pathologist said. <\/p>\n The photographs of McNally\u2019s body taken by police at the crime scene were deemed so graphic, they were not shown to the jury. <\/p>\n A police officer who attended the scene of the murder described seeing a dog bowl filled with blood beside her head. \u201cIt looked almost like it had been used to collect the blood,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n McNally and McCullagh met on the dating app Bumble; they began messaging each other on August 7th, 2022, before their first date in Belfast later that week. <\/p>\n She stayed over at his house in Lisburn the night before he murdered her, watching a sitcom and Christmas episodes of The Office. Unbeknown to McNally, McCullagh was also researching bus and train timetables for the journey to Lurgan to kill her later that day. <\/p>\n At about 1pm on December 18th she left for her parents\u2019 home. McCullagh was captured on a neighbour\u2019s doorbell camera waving her off. <\/p>\n Later, she messaged him about the World Cup result: \u201cArgentina win it, I\u2019m crying …\u201d and McCullagh responded: \u201cRight, I\u2019m off to stream the night away. Wish me luck.\u201d<\/p>\n Her last message to him was sent at 5.59pm: \u201cGood luck. I might have a peek at your live stream later.\u201d <\/p>\n Police analysis of her YouTube account showed she had indeed logged on to watch him, at 8.24pm, just as McCullagh was making his way to her house to kill her. <\/p>\n Footage of that purported live stream was played to the jury during McCullagh\u2019s trial. Watching from the dock, McCullagh laughed at his own jokes and expletive-ridden commentary about how he was a \u201cvery angry gamer\u201d.<\/p>\n It showed him drinking and wearing a Santa hat as he played Grand Theft Auto on his \u201cViolent Night Christmas Live Gaming Stream\u201d, announcing: \u201cI\u2019m not leaving the house tonight.\u201d <\/p>\n McCullagh continued to message McNally. He told her: \u201cI love you and I don\u2019t want to do anything to hurt or upset you,\u201d in a message sent at 4.09pm on Monday, December 19th. He later claimed he was \u201cgetting a little worried\u201d when she didn\u2019t reply.<\/p>\n At 9.31pm he messaged to say he was going to her house.<\/p>\n McCullagh was arrested that evening but was released the following day. Police believed his \u201cfalse alibi\u201d that he had been playing the online game from 6pm to midnight on the evening of the murder, and his deception was not discovered by cyber-experts until late January 2023 when he was rearrested. <\/p>\n In the meantime, McCullagh visited the McNally family home and attended her wake. He showed her mother Bernadette an engagement ring and an image, saying: \u201c\u2019This is what baby Dean would have looked like\u2019 … taken from a photograph of Natalie and a photograph of himself.\u201d<\/p>\n McNally\u2019s mother said at the time she felt \u201cdevastated\u201d and worried for McCullagh, and broke down when the prosecution barrister asked her how she had coped since the murder. <\/p>\n \u201cNot very good \u2013 it has been devastating,\u201d she replied. <\/p>\n Natalie McNally\u2019s father Noel said McCullagh had been treated \u201cwith the utmost respect\u201d and was regarded as \u201ca grieving partner and a grieving father-to-be\u201d with people hugging and consoling him when he became upset at the wake. <\/p>\n McNally\u2019s brother Brendan said he remembered McCullagh \u201cconstantly checking media\u201d during the wake, telling him the prominence of his sister\u2019s murder on news websites was \u201cdropping down\u201d and it should be \u201can international news story\u201d.<\/p>\n Another brother, Declan McNally, later took McCullagh to visit her grave. <\/p>\n \u201cHe appeared completely distraught. He was saying: \u2018How could anyone do this to her?\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said he found her with her head in a dog bowl. He said someone had left her like an animal.\u201d <\/p>\n McCullagh had not attended her funeral. Bernadette McNally said he told her \u201che didn\u2019t want to be recognised\u201d and was worried he would lose his job \u201cjust for being arrested\u201d.<\/p>\n On January 5th, 2023, he accompanied the family to a vigil at Stormont organised by Northern Ireland\u2019s First Minister Michelle O\u2019Neill to call for an end to violence against women and girls. He was \u201chappy to be introduced as Natalie\u2019s partner\u201d and showed people a photo of a baby scan, Declan McNally said. <\/p>\n Natalie McNally\u2019s cousin Gavin Haddock described to the court how he tried to comfort McCullagh who told him: \u201cI should have been there to protect Natalie. No man would have got past me.\u201d <\/p>\n The prosecution argued that McCullagh travelled by bus to McNally\u2019s house to carry out the murder before returning home in a taxi, changing clothes and disguising himself with a long, dark wig while doing so. <\/p>\n Jurors were shown CCTV clips and Ring doorbell footage which tracked the route of a \u201cperson of interest\u201d \u2013 which they were told was the defendant making his way to McNally\u2019s house to kill her. The individual boarded a bus in Dunmurry, Co Antrim, and travelled to Lurgan on the evening of December 18th. <\/p>\n Further footage showed the person, wearing different clothes, walking from McNally\u2019s street to get a taxi. <\/p>\n A taxi then arrived at McCullagh\u2019s house and a figure \u201cappears to throw two objects over the hedge\u201d before \u201cwalking into the front gate of the defendant\u2019s home address\u201d, a detective told the court. <\/p>\n In a police interview read to the court, a detective put it to McCullagh that the male on the CCTV had gone to \u201cextensive lengths\u201d to plan the murder and it appeared to be \u201cpremeditated\u201d.<\/p>\n She told him that the male was inside McNally\u2019s house for 39 minutes and in that time \u201cNatalie is killed by injuries consistent of compression of the neck, stab wounds of the neck and blunt force injuries to the head.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything from our inquiries tells us you are the male in the CCTV and we believe that male in the CCTV is the person who murdered Natalie.\u201d<\/p>\n McCullagh replied: \u201cNo comment.\u201d <\/p>\nREAD MORE<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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