A YouTube "livestream" that wasn't live after all helped convict a Northern Ireland man of murdering his pregnant girlfriend. The BBC reports that Stephen McCullagh has been found guilty in the 2022 killing of 32-year-old Natalie McNally, after prosecutors revealed that the gamer and content creator had prerecorded a six-hour session of himself drinking, vaping, and playing Grand Theft Auto and other games, then scheduled it to appear "live" on Dec. 18, 2022—all while he traveled 20 miles on foot and by bus to kill McNally at her home in Lurgan.
A digital forensics expert told the court the stream—which McCullagh called the "Violent Night Christmas Live Gaming Stream," per the Guardian—had actually been recorded four days earlier and manually stopped and deleted just after midnight on the night of McNally's killing, shortly after CCTV captured McCullagh's late-night journey home via taxi, per the BBC. McCullagh, now 36, initially convinced police he was cleared by his online alibi and even pointed them toward one of McNally's ex-partners, who was later ruled out.
In the weeks after the murder, McCullagh attended vigils, made tribute videos, and stayed close to McNally's grieving family—at one point even secretly recording their conversations by "forgetting" his phone in their home. Jurors also heard that McCullagh had likely read messages on McNally's phone about her apparent plans to end the relationship. McCullagh didn't testify, leaving his precise motive unexplained, but the jury found him guilty after a five-week trial. "We got him," one McNally family member said after the verdict, per the Irish Times. "We've lost over three years of our life to McCullagh." YouTube, meanwhile, has removed all of McCullagh's channels.
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