The man accused of murdering pregnant Lurgan woman Natalie McNally “did believe and does believe always and forever” that her ex-boyfriend killed her, a court heard today.
The 32-year old was 15 weeks pregnant when she was beaten, strangled and stabbed in her Silverwood Green home on the evening of Sunday December 18, 2022.
The father of her unborn child, 36-year old Stephen McCullagh from Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, has been accused of and has denied her murder.
Now in its fourth week, evidence in the murder trial at Belfast Crown Court has now concluded and today McCullagh’s barrister John Kearney KC addressed the jury with the defence’s closing speech.
Mr Kearney told the six men and women it was their role to “step back” and “bring surgeon-like objective scrutiny” to the case and to the evidence they have heard.
The barrister spoke of several pieces of the Crown’s “jigsaw” not fitting together and said “there are multiple pieces” that pointed away from McCullagh.
Instead, he said told the jurors that when they “scratch the surface” they will find “nagging, reasonable doubt.”
Reminding the jury that at this point McCullagh was “an innocent man unless or until you find otherwise”, Mr Kearney said the real issue was the identity of the killer.
He told the jury: “If you think he (McCullagh) probably is, that is not enough. If you are almost sure, that is not enough.
“If you are left with a reasonable doubt that someone else … could have been the killer, your job is to acquit. Not because I say so, but because these are the rules.”
Describing the evidence against his client as circumstantial, Mr Kearney said: “We suggest there are holes in this case, there are gaps in this case, there is reasonable doubt in this case, there are missing pieces of the jigsaw in this case.”
This, he said, included “missing CCTV evidence” regarding a motion sensor camera on Woodland Gardens which didn’t pick up anyone leaving McCullagh’s home and passing the camera on the evening of the murder.
This, the defence say, is because “he wasn’t there” which he described as a “big problem for the prosecution.”
Mr Kearney also said there was “no identification evidence in this case”, nor any clothing comparison or gait analysis.
Regarding the hat worn by the suspect who got into a taxi in Lurgan after the murder, Mr Kearney said the Crown had asked the jury to compare this with a similar hat worn by McCullagh in pictures on his social media.
Suggesting “they are different hats”, Mr Kearney spoke of contrasting stitching and ear flaps. He also mentioned the suspect caught on CCTV wearing a “big black coat” and “distinctive trainers”.
Mr Kearney said: “The prosecution have not been able to provide any evidence indicating that this defendant on any occasion appeared on CCTV or social media or in any way in a big black coat. The house was searched, there was no coat.”
Other areas which raised doubt, according to the defence, was a lack of evidence about whether or not McCullagh accessed Ms McNally’s phone.
Turning back to reasonable doubt, Mr Kearney spoke of the “elephant in the room” – Ms McNally’s ex-boyfriend.
Describing this man, who can’t be named due to a reporting restriction, as “walking, talking reasonable doubt”, Mr Kearney reminded the jury he was “interviewed as a suspect in this case.”
The barrister said it was McCullagh’s case that he didn’t kill Ms McNally, adding his client “did believe and does believe always and forever that the killer” was Ms McNally’s ex-boyfriend.
Mr Kearney said that when McCullagh was arrested on suspicion of murdering Ms McNally there “wasn’t a mark on the hands of the defendant.” This, he said, compared to the ex-boyfriend whose hands were swollen when he was arrested.
He told the jury: “We ask you to think about that very very carefully when you decide whether you can be sure this defendant and not (the ex-boyfriend) killed Ms McNally.”
The barrister also spoke of a 498-page document which contained all the WhatsApp messages exchanged between his client and Ms McNally during the course of their 133-day relationship.
Mr Kearney pointed out there was “not a word of violence or fallouts or misogyny” in the exchange.
Instead, he suggested the messages were of the “normal banality of life” including pets and work, all of which indicated “this was a real, loving relationship.”
He then asked the jury to compare the contents of these messages against the “disgraceful correspondence” from the ex-boyfriend.
Some of these messages, the barrister suggested, indicated he was a “hot-headed man who cannot take rejection.”
Mr Kearney also spoke of the ex-boyfriend doing a factory reset on his phone prior to his arrest in December 2022, lying to police about the last time he saw Ms McNally and being accused of domestic incidents by his former partner.
This former partner gave evidence at the trial and said Ms McNally’s ex-boyfriend didn’t commit the murder as he was with her in his flat all night.
In her evidence, she said that he fell asleep after drinking, that the World Cup final was on and that he didn’t leave the flat all night.
Mr Kearney asked the jury to “scrutinise the evidence to see whether they were telling the truth or telling a tale.”
He concluded the defence’s closing argument by telling the jurors that when they scrutinise the evidence they “could not, we suggest, extinguish reasonable doubt that this defendant killed Ms McNally as opposed to some other person.”
Following this, Mr Justice Kinney addressed the jury and said “what remains for you now is to hear from me”. He told the jurors to return to court on Friday morning when he will begin his charge, with an anticipation that they will begin deliberating next Monday morning.
At hearing.
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