Stephen McCullagh is staring down a lengthy prison sentence.
The 36-year-old will serve a minimum of 31 years behind bars—his sentence for the 2022 murder of his pregnant girlfriend, Natalie McNally.
McCullagh was found guilty of murdering McNally earlier this year, per the BBC, following a five-week trial. According to the outlet, McNally’s family was present for the June 3 sentencing, hugging each other as they cried.
But McCullagh almost got away with it: On Dec. 18, 2022, he appeared to have been livestreaming on YouTube for a six-hour period during which McNally—who was 15 weeks pregnant at the time of her murder—was strangled and fatally stabbed in her home in Lurgan, Northern Ireland.
And while McCullagh was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) the day after the crime, he was initially released, with YouTube confirming his stream had appeared to play out as a live broadcast and giving him a seemingly ironclad alibi. In the days and weeks following, per the BBC, he attended McNally’s wake, accused her ex-boyfriend of murdering her and even recorded conversations he had with McNally’s family in an attempt to learn about updates in the case.
