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To get away with murder, Stephen McCullagh planned an audacious alibi: he would trick the world into thinking he was at home livestreaming a video game when in fact he was 17 miles away, extinguishing a life.
He prerecorded a six-hour session of him playing Grand Theft Auto and uploaded it on the night of 18 December 2022, to give the impression to his YouTube channel’s 37,000 subscribers that he was at home in Lisburn, County Antrim, wearing a Santa hat, eating snacks, sipping Guinness and making jokes. “I am not leaving the house tonight,” he said.
While the recording played, McCullagh donned a disguise and travelled to Lurgan, County Armagh, where he killed his pregnant girlfriend, Natalie McNally, by stab wounds to the neck, strangulation and heavy blows to the head.
Prosecutors said it was a “sophisticated, calculated and cool-headed plot” by a man “capable of deception beyond imagination”. A deception, however, that failed, because on Monday a jury of six men and six women convicted McCullagh, 36, of murder.
The five-week trial at Belfast crown court gripped and horrified Northern Ireland by laying out the intricate preparations behind a savage killing. McCullagh denied the charge. Mr Justice Kinney presided over the case.
McCullagh “lied and lied again”, to his victim, her family and police, and the unravelling of those lies deterred him from taking the stand, the prosecutor Charles MacCreanor KC told the court. “There’s no answer he could ever give that could stand up to scrutiny in the witness box.”
Relatives and friends paid tributes to McNally, 32. From the age of three she had lived with type 1 diabetes but she lived a full life, did marketing for the public transport provider Translink and was looking forward to becoming a mother. Her family said she was kind, generous and fiercely independent.
McNally met McCullagh, a part-time audience editor at the Belfast Telegraph, on the dating app Bumble and they started dating in August 2022. To subscribers of his YouTube channel, Votesaxon07, McCullagh was an ebullient figure who reviewed robot toys and merchandise, and that appeared to be the man McNally fell for.
“Hey Nat, it’s that robot weirdo from Bumble,” said an early message. They went bowling, played crazy golf and discussed pets, work, hobbies, according to WhatsApp messages. When McNally told him she was pregnant, three months into their relationship, McCullagh appeared to take the news well. He called the unborn baby “little squish” and they discussed moving in together.
However, the court heart that McCullagh had been controlling, possessive and menacing with a former girlfriend, who testified that he hit her and covertly recorded her counselling sessions.
By December 2022, McCullagh and McNally were having arguments, but she had no suspicion he envisaged murder. On 13 and 14 December, he recorded the Grand Theft Auto session. On 18 December, he told his YouTube subscribers there would be a live broadcast at 6pm that evening. During the broadcast he provided commentary and said a technical glitch prevented interaction with viewers.
McNally, from her home, tuned in, unaware that McCullagh was taking a bus to her home. Prosecutors showed CCTV footage from the 35-minute journey of a passenger with a hood, face covering, bag and black gloves, beneath which yellow gloves were visible. After the murder, McCullagh, wearing different clothes, took a taxi back to Lisburn, prosecutors said.
After the discovery of McNally’s body, police arrested McCullagh, but they released him after learning of the broadcast, which provided an alibi. He suggested a previous boyfriend had committed the murder. McCullagh, appearing grief-stricken, was welcomed at McNally’s wake and given time alone with the coffin to say goodbye.
On a later occasion, McCullagh left his phone at McNally’s parents’ home and returned 40 minutes later, claiming to have forgotten it. It had been recording, apparently to check if the family suspected him.
Police seized McCullagh’s computers and analysis established that the purported livestream had been prerecorded. McCullagh admitted this in a written statement but maintained his innocence and said he was asleep at home during the murder.
His defence barrister, John Kearney KC, told the court there was a possible financial motive to capture audience interest by passing off an event as live. He said the prosecution case was circumstantial and had “inconvenient, troubling, nagging” flaws. “It just doesn’t add up, it is the stuff of reasonable doubt,” he said.
The jury disagreed.
