The Manila Times
BELFAST — A Northern Ireland man was jailed for 31 years on Wednesday after investigators uncovered that a gaming livestream he relied on as an alibi had been pre-recorded before the killing of his pregnant partner. Stephen McCullagh, 36, told detectives he could not have carried out the murder of 32-year-old Natalie McNally because he was broadcasting live on his YouTube gaming channel at the time. But police forensic specialists established that the six-hour video had been recorded four days earlier and then streamed as if it were live on December 18 last year. Sentencing him at Belfast Crown Court, the judge said the broadcast had been "carefully curated to appear as if it was streaming live and to provide the defendant a carefully-planned complete alibi to the murder". McNally was 15 weeks pregnant when she was fatally attacked in her home in Lurgan, west of Belfast, in December 2022. Following the killing, McCullagh appeared before the victim's family as "devastated, distraught and shocked", the judge said. He had also made a "concerted effort" to shift suspicion for the murder onto McNally's former boyfriend, the court heard. Handing down what is among the longest prison terms imposed in Northern Ireland, the judge described the crime as a "brutal senseless murder", planned "in remorseless detail".
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