Shortly before 3.45pm on Monday, the public gallery of a Belfast courtroom erupted.
Family and friends of Natalie McNally (32) jumped to their feet and cheered the moment a jury foreman delivered its verdict; Stephen McCullagh, McNally’s partner and father of her unborn child, was guilty of her murder.
Muffled sobs echoed round Court 13 when judge Patrick Kinney told the YouTuber he will serve a life sentence.
In the glass fronted dock, McCullagh (36) showed no emotion.
As jurors took their seats, he sat stroking his beard, flanked by two custody officers.
Sitting directly behind him in the gallery were Natalie McNally’s parents, Noel and Bernadette.
They wept uncontrollably.
Other relatives punched the air and hugged.
Stephen McCullagh. Photograph: Facebook
The family has attended each pretrial court hearing since McCullagh was first charged with McNally’s murder three years ago; their “dignity” was singled out by the judge on Monday.
It took the jury of six men and six women just over two hours to reach its unanimous verdict.
Every person in the gallery stood to applaud the jurors as they left the courtroom; a court clerk wiped tears from her eyes.
Throughout the five-week trial there has been standing room only.
Documentary film makers were among the press pack; court security staff brought in extra seats for police and reporters.
At the back right hand corner of the court a team of PSNI detectives sat in the same seats each day.
They, too, were applauded by the Co Armagh family and their supporters.
But the loudest cheer was reserved for prosecution barrister, Charles MacCreanor and his junior counsel, Bobbie-Leigh Herdman.
On the enormous fourth-floor landing outside the courtroom, a circle formed around the pair as supporters clapped wildly.
MacCreanor and Herdman became emotional when relatives queued to hug them.
“We’ve lost over three years of our life to McCullagh … we got him,” one relative said.
Noel McNally said he was “pessimistic” right until the verdict was announced.
“We’re delighted, can’t believe it,” he said, holding his wife’s hand tightly.
Natalie McNally’s parents Noel (second from right) and Bernadette outside the court on Monday. Photograph: Mark Marlow/PA Wire
The couple have sat side by side throughout the trial; Bernadette McNally cried quietly when a pathologist spent 40 minutes demonstrating on his own body the extensive injuries her only daughter suffered.
Some of those injuries were suggestive of her trying to protect herself, Northern Ireland State Pathologist James Lyness told the court during his evidence.
McCullagh, a former Belfast Telegraph employee from Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, did not take the stand.
He rarely showed emotion during the 18 days of evidence; when he did it was to giggle at his own jokes when jurors were shown clips from his fake Grand Theft Auto live stream.
He repeatedly claimed during police interviews that an “aggressive” ex-boyfriend was the killer.
The motive, the prosecution said, was WhatsApp messages McCullagh had read on his partner’s phone; the messages were sent to other men (including the ex-boyfriend) in the weeks before her death, and had “enraged him”.
But it was McCullagh who travelled by bus to Natalie McNally’s home in Silverwood Green, Lurgan where he stabbed, strangled and beat her to death on the evening of Sunday, December 18th, 2022. He then travelled back to his Lisburn house by taxi wearing a disguise.
MacCreanor described the “horrendous and savage” beating McNally suffered at the hands of her partner; it was a “prolonged assault”.
Hours before the murder, McCullagh waved his partner off after she stayed overnight at his house where they watched Christmas re-runs of The Office and the US sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
The three stab wounds to her neck alone would have killed her, according to MacCreanor.
Jurors were not shown crime scene photos of McNally’s body because of the graphic nature of her injuries.
McCullagh’s elaborate alibi on the night of the murder – a six-hour gaming live-stream which had in fact been pre-recorded – was initially believed by police.
Natalie McNally’s mother Bernadette after the verdict was delivered. Photograph: Mark Marlow/PA Wire
Had he not missed a train after the murder and got a taxi instead, he could have got away with the crime, a prosecution lawyer told The Irish Times.
CCTV footage of a “person of interest” getting out of the taxi at McCullagh’s Lisburn home was again played to jurors at their request on Monday – an hour after they retired to consider their verdict.
McCullagh was re-arrested on January 31, 2023 and had his computer seized; cyber crime experts made the breakthrough that the live stream was false. It was the “cover story”, the prosecution said.
Outside the Laganside court complex in Belfast city centre, the McNally family emerged to a row of television cameras and reporters after 5pm on Monday.
Declan McNally’s hand shook as he read a handwritten tribute to his only sister.
Natalie was an “an inspirational person”, he told media.
“Having you in our lives was the greatest joy we’ll ever have. You would have been an amazing mother to baby Dean,” he said.
“We will love you forever and we hope you can now rest easy.”
Violence against women and girls – the North has one of the highest femicide rate in western Europe – is the “shame of our society”, he added.
Declan McNally said he did not know how his parents had managed to get through the past 3½ years.
“They’ve held us all together, it’s just amazing, we love you very much”.