A man accused of murdering a pregnant Co Armagh woman told police a former partner had been harassing her in the days before her murder.<\/p>\n
Natalie McNally was found dead in her Lurgan home in December 2022.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old had been beaten, strangled and stabbed at her Silverwood Green home on 18 December 2022.<\/p>\n
She was 15 weeks pregnant.<\/p>\n
Her former boyfriend, 36-year-old Stephen McCullagh of Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, denies her murder.<\/p>\n
He was the father of Natalie’s unborn child.<\/p>\n
His trial heard that he’d been interviewed by police for the first time on 20 December 2022.<\/p>\n
He had been arrested the previous evening on suspicion of involvement in the murder.<\/p>\n
He gave “no comment” answers to most of the questions he was asked about his movements and his relationship with Ms McNally.<\/p>\n
But he told police that a former partner, who he claimed she’d broken up with nine months previously, had called Ms McNally in the early hours of the Friday before the killing as they lay in bed together.<\/p>\n
He said he was aware this man was “harassing her”, calling her from a private number and emailing her “a bunch of abuse” about her appearance.<\/p>\n
He said he was aware the former partner had been “aggressive” and that Ms McNally had always been “very upset” to hear from him.<\/p>\n
When asked by police whether he’d had anything to do with the death of Ms McNally the defendant replied “no”.<\/p>\n
A police officer told the trial that on 20 December 2022 at 10.45pm Mr McCullagh had created a Word file on his computer called ‘000Natalie Timeline’.<\/p>\n
It set out a detailed timeline of his movements and interactions with Ms McNally including the time they spent together on the morning of Sunday 18 December 2022.<\/p>\n
Police believe she was murdered later that evening.<\/p>\n
In it he listed what he did after she left his home and how he’d prepared for an online streaming session.<\/p>\n
He recorded how the next day he’d apologised to Ms McNally by text as he’d been drinking during the stream even though he’d promised he wouldn’t while she was pregnant.<\/p>\n
He recorded that he didn’t get a reply.<\/p>\n
He went on to say that he was getting worried about her and how he’d gone to her home to check on her and found her dead.<\/p>\n
“Blood everywhere. Cold to touch. No pulse. Face down in dog bowl. Blue lips,” he recorded.<\/p>\n
The prosecution claims the video stream was presented as a live event but in fact had been pre-recorded and played out as live in order to provide an alibi.<\/p>\n
The jury was also shown a 32-minute video recorded by police of the journey on foot from Lurgan town centre to Ms McNally’s Silverwood home.<\/p>\n
It went past seven locations where investigating offices had seized CCTV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man accused of murdering a pregnant Co Armagh woman told police a former partner had been harassing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-364265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116160925895532256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}