The father of murder victim Natalie McNally has described his family’s “unimaginable pain and grief” after her former partner received a 31-year-prison sentence for the killing.
Speaking outside Belfast Crown Court on Wednesday, Noel McNally said “today we don’t celebrate” the sentencing of Stephen McCullagh as the family has “served a life sentence” since losing “our beautiful Natalie”
“Hopefully it will serve as a deterrent to help stop violence against women and girls in this country,” he told reporters.
McCullagh (36) was earlier told by Judge Patrick Kinney that he had committed a “brutal and senseless murder” of “someone you professed to love”.
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The former Belfast Telegraph employee will serve his full prison term for the “cold-blood and calculated” killing of the 32-year-old before he can be considered for release, the court head.
The murder of the pregnant Co Armagh woman in December 2022 was “frenzied” and McCullagh showed a “determination” to cover his tracks, the judge said.
McCullagh showed no emotion as the judge delivered his remarks before ordering him to stand. He nodded when the sentence was handed down.
Natalie McNally was 15 weeks pregnant with McCullagh’s son when she was murdered at her Silverwood Green home in Lurgan on the night of December 18th, 2022.
She was murdered in a “place of sanctuary”, Kinney said, adding that her killer was “someone she trusted” and her pregnancy made her “vulnerable”.
“Significant weight” was attached to the death of her child, Dean, as an aggravating factor in the sentencing tariff, according to the judge, who said it was “difficult to find words” to describe the “abhorrence” of the attack.
“The defendant was fully aware that Natalie was pregnant. He intended to kill her and he knew that her baby, at such an early stage of the pregnancy, would have no chance of surviving the attack,” Kinney said.
McCullagh, from Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, denied the murder but was convicted in a unanimous verdict following a five-week trial earlier this year.
On the night of the murder, McCullagh staged a fake YouTube live stream. However, the six-hour stream was in fact recorded four days earlier.
This was an “integral” part of his plan, the judge said. The online footage was “carefully curated to appear as if it was streaming live and to provide the defendant a carefully-planned complete alibi to the murder”.
Presenting himself as the “devastated, distraught and shocked” grieving partner, he said McCullagh “manipulated” the McNally family when he went to Natalie’s wake on Christmas Day. They allowed him to spend “extensive time” alone with her remains.
“Embellishing” his account to Natalie’s mother about how he found her body with her “head in a dog bowl” caused further anguish and was a detail the family found “particularly distressing”, the judge said.
Referencing the “degradation” of the attack, Kinney said McCullagh had intentionally placed Natalie’s head in a dog bowl as “part of her punishment and humiliation”.
A “particularly sinister twist” was McCullagh’s attempt to frame a former partner for the murder, the court heard.
The judge said the defendant “laid a trail of breadcrumbs toward an ex-boyfriend” and “embarked upon a plan” to lay the blame on him. Other aggravating factors included manipulation of Natalie herself, his own friends and the police.
McCullagh’s culpability is “extremely high”, the court heard.
Murder was the “most extreme form of domestic abuse”, Kinney said, adding that the killing of women by partners or former partners in Northern Ireland is a “grave and recurring phenomenon in our society”.
Addressing him directly, the judge said he had “no hesitation” in concluding the starting point in the sentencing tariff should be “high”.
“You planned this murder in remorseless detail. You attacked someone you profess to love in a frenzied assault, which was characterised by its excessive and gratuitous violence,” he said.
“Despite that frenzy, the killing was cold-blooded and calculated, as evidenced by the extensive planning leading up to the murder and your actions afterwards. Your behaviour towards the McNally family showed your absolute determination to cover your tracks.”
The judge noted that in his engagement with probation services, McCullagh referred to himself as a “monster”.
There was silence in court 13 as McCullagh was led away from the dock. When the door closed, McNally family members and supporters hugged each other and cried.
The judge singled out the “integrity and decency” of the McNally family throughout the trial process. He had received correspondence from them about the impact of the murder.
“The content is heart-rending ... the loss of Natalie has left a massive hole in that family,” he said, adding that they had played an “essential part in ensuring justice was maintained for Natalie”.
The judge paid tribute to Natalie, who he described as a “strong, loving and an independent young woman”.
“She knew what she wanted from life and was intelligent, passionate and funny.”
The sentence passed “cannot possibly reflect the value of Natalie’s life, or indeed that of her unborn child, Dean” or meet the family’s sense of “grief and loss”, Kinney said.
Outside the court, the head of the Public Prosecution Service Serious Crime Unit described the murder as “unprecedented” in the level of planning and sophistication.
“However, it is far from an isolated event. Violence against women and girls is a pervasive issue in this society that we all must work together to tackle,” Catherine Kierans said.
“Natalie’s family has bravely spoken out, not only about her murder, but this wider issue. Every victim is one too many.”
