Stephen McCullough is staring down a long prison sentence.
The 36-year-old will serve a minimum of 31 years in prison for the 2022 murder of his pregnant girlfriend Natalie McNally.
McCullough was found guilty of McNally’s murder earlier this year after a five-week trial, according to the BBC. McNally’s family attended the sentencing on June 3, hugging each other and crying, the paper said.
But Mr. McCullough almost came close to being exonerated. On December 18, 2022, McNally, who was 15 weeks pregnant at the time of her murder, was strangled and stabbed to death at her home in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, in a six-hour livestream on YouTube.
Mr McCullough was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) the day after the crime, but was initially released and YouTube confirmed that his broadcasts appeared to be live, giving him a seemingly ironclad alibi. In the days and weeks that followed, he attended Ms McNally’s wake, accused her ex-boyfriend of her murder, and recorded conversations with Ms McNally’s family to get updates on the case, according to the BBC.
