A former partner of murdered Lurgan woman Natalie McNally today (Tuesday) recalled how he found out about her death.
He spent a second day in the witness box at Belfast Crown Court where a trial into her murder is being held.
Ms McNally was aged 32 and 15 weeks pregnant when she was beaten, stabbed and strangled in her Silverwood Green home in Lurgan on the evening of Sunday, December 18, 2022.
The father of her unborn child, 36-year old Stephen McCullagh, from Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, has been accused of and has denied her murder.
Before he was asked any questions, the witness reminded defence barrister John Kearney KC that he branded him ‘evasive’ during yesterday’s evidence.
The witness said he had been thinking about the word, had googled it and asked Mr Kearney “would it be evasive to make a six-hour YouTube video?”
Mr Justice Kinney intervened, told the witness to concentrate on the questions being asked and told him he was not permitted to ask questions.
Mr Kearney then asked the witness if he had problems with “previous partners moving on” and referred to his recent arrest regarding a complaint of a domestic issue as well as threatening messages he sent to a male.
Regarding messages he sent to this male, the witness said his ex-girlfriend had been cheating on him and suggested he had messaged more than one male connected to his ex but that only one of the males went to the police about his messages.
He was warned by the Judge about self-incrimination to which he replied, “I’m being as honest as I can. I have nothing to hide.
“If I sink myself and get myself in more trouble, I don’t care. This is about Natalie.”
Following a short break, he returned to the witness box where he denied ever assaulting his ex-partner or her teenage son.
Mr Kearney then asked the witness about finding out about Ms McNally’s death in December 2022.
He said he had been in work on the morning of December 20 and during a break he received a message from his then partner telling him police were at their home and it was ‘something to do with Natalie’.
Following this, he said he got a Snapchat message from one of Ms McNally’s neighbours asking ‘have you heard about Natalie?’
He told the six men and six women of the jury that after asking the neighbour what had happened, he was told ‘she’s been murdered.’
He said: “I think she said ‘Natalie’s been stabbed at the top of her stairs’ or something like that.”
Mr Kearney then questioned him about the wording of the Snapchat message and he replied : “She informed me Natalie was dead. The exact wording of it, I can’t remember.”
The witness then said he initially thought it may have been accidental, she may have miscarried or she may have killed herself.
He revealed that on the way home and before speaking to police in his flat, he pulled over and conducted a factory reset on his phone.
Asked by Mr Kearney if he reset his phone “deliberately intending to remove any trace of your contact with Natalie”, the witness said “no.”
He said he reset his phone for a “completely other reason” which had nothing to do with Ms McNally.
When asked what this was, he said: “Right, there were two sitting detectives in my flat. There’s a big bag of weed in my cupboard and I assumed that the detectives would have been able to smell it.
“And I thought, they’re gonna want my phone because they clearly would have smelt the weed in the house and they would have asked ‘where’s that weed smell coming from?’ but that didn’t happen.”
After being once again reminded of self-incrimination by the Judge, the witness said: “I know, I know but I don’t care. I’m here to tell the truth for Natalie and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Confirming again that the factory reset had nothing to do with Ms McNally, the witness said there were messages about drugs “and weed in particular”.
He added that “in hindsight” he didn’t need to reset his phone and he shouldn’t have done it.
Mr Kearney also asked the witness if he recalled telling Ms McNally’s neighbour there had been “nasty” and “dirty” messages between himself and Ms McNally.
The witness said he spoke to the neighbour “a lot about this murder”, adding he “probably did” tell her about the messages as he was “telling her everything, the truth”.
Following a break for lunch, the witness returned to the stand for further cross examination by the defence.
He admitted that he told “little white lies” to police in a statement he made to police just a few days after the murder of Ms McNally on Tuesday, December 20, 2022.
Asked if a female in his house had tipped him off about the police being in his house?
He replied: “She told me that there were detectives in the house and it had something to do with Natalie. I believe what happened was I was ringing her and she wasn’t allowed to answer the phone.
“She said (to police) that she needed to go to the toilet and she brought her phone with her. I think she texted me from the bathroom to say detectives were here, something to do with Natalie.
“She went back in and told them she had her phone and placed it on the table with the screen facing up. After I found out what had happened, I texted her to say Natalie had been murdered and she leaned into her phone and said: ‘Natalie has been murdered?’
“The detectives said to her: ‘How does he know that?’ She said: ‘I don’t know because you won’t let me speak with him.”
The witness said that by the time he had arrived at his flat, his girlfriend had told police where they had been for the past four days “hour by hour”.
“I was asked the same questions. We had not rehearsed anything because we didn’t need to. I said where we had been hour by hour as much as I could remember.
“Whenever they left, I said to her: “What have we done for the last four days?’ We said we had been here and here. She told the truth of where we had been for the last four days. We both told the truth of where we had been for the last four days. They matched up.
“After the detectives left, I said to her: ‘Am I a suspect here?’ And she said: ‘I think you are’.”
He confirmed that he did tell a few lies in his first statement to police two days before he was arrested on Thursday, December 22, 2022.
It was suggested to him that his first statement to police was to “help yourself, wasn’t it, and lying, and lying and lying again?”
He replied to Mr Kearney: “I wouldn’t agree with that, no. I want you to point out where I am lying.”
Mr Kearney said the witness suggested to police that he “did not see Natalie McNally nor had any other dealings with her in person that weekend.”
“What I want to suggest to you is that from this stage of your statement you engaged in a series of lies to cover your tracks on your telephone contacts with Natalie on the Saturday and Sunday.”
Added Mr Kearney: “I want to suggest to you that you lied to police in two ways: I am suggesting to you that you deliberately left out anything that you thought would be a problem to you, for example, your WhatsApp contact with Natalie. Would you agree with that?”
“I was arrested two days later and I fixed the little white lies in there,” said the witness.
“Little white lies? Is that how you would describe them?” asked the senior defence KC.
“To be fair, that is a description that I have never used. That just came out of my mouth. There was a little bit of lying about the contact I had with her.
“I had been texting Natalie during the (World Cup) football. I suppose that is a lie. I don’t know if I had left it out on purpose. Look, she had just been murdered. There was a lot going on. I didn’t know what was going on. There were detectives in my flat. I didn’t see Natalie that weekend. That’s not a lie.”
He said the last time he saw Ms McNally was during the Autumn rugby international matches either at the end of October or start of November 2022.
Mr Kearney pointed out that in his statement to police, the witness said he hadn’t seen Ms McNally since May of 2022.
“That’s inaccurate,” replied the witness.
The defence counsel put it to the witness that that was a lie. He answered: “I am not good with dates.”
He denied telling deliberately lies about the last time he saw Ms McNally, agreeing that it was an “accidental lie”.
In his statement to police, the witness said he did not have her numbers saved on his phone home and he “didn’t know her number at all”.
Mr Kearney said the witness didn’t have any numbers for the deceased as he had factory reset his phone.
The defence counsel said that according to his statement to police, the witness said he had sent “two or three text messages to Ms McNally on the Sunday during the football game.
“That wasn’t true, was it? Two or three text messages? I am suggesting to you there were a lot more than two or three text messages. Where did you get two or three from?” asked Mr Kearney.
The witness replied: “I remember talking to Natalie about Argentina winning and (Lionel) Messi being class.”
In his statement he also told police that prior to Sunday that the last time he had received texts from Ms McNally was “months ago”.
“That’s a lie,” the witness replied. “I had been texting her a lot.”
“Why did you lie to police about these telephone message?” asked Mr Kearney.
The witness replied: “I don’t know. I have no idea. Someone has just been killed. There’s detectives in your house. You don’t know what is going on. I got arrested two days later and I addressed all the lies in it.”
Mr Kearney put it to the witness that they were much more than “catch up texts”.
The witness agreed there were a lot more to the texts which included an ongoing sexual relationship and ongoing rows between them.
The trial continues.
