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”.
At hearing.
