'We didn't plan out any sort of alibi', Natalie McNally court told
PacemakerThe former partner of a man who Stephen McCullagh has accused of murdering Natalie McNally has said they did not "sit there and plan out any sort of alibi".
McCullagh, 36, from Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, County Antrim, has denied murdering his pregnant partner Natalie in her Silverwood Green home in Lurgan on 18 December 2022.
For the last three days the trial has been exploring a suggestion by the defendant that a different man, a former partner of Ms McNally was, in fact, responsible.
This is something that man, who completed giving evidence on Wednesday, strenuously denies.
In court on Thursday a woman who was in a relationship with this man at the time of Ms McNally's death completed her evidence.
Neither she nor the man can be named due to a reporting restriction.
'I didn't want him talking to other women'
The woman said she had, at one time, deleted Natalie and other women's numbers off her then partner's telephone.
"I didn't want him talking to other women," she said under cross-examination.
When asked what she understood about her former partner's relationship with Ms McNally she said: "Initially I was told she was like a platonic friend, like a flatmate, but over time I picked up there was more to that."
The woman confirmed that she had tracked her former partner to Lurgan on at least one occasion when it is suggested he was meeting up with Ms McNally.
The woman told the court that on the evening of Natalie McNally's death she was watching the World Cup Final with her then partner and that she had recorded a video of him sleeping during the game.
She acknowledged that he had been texting on his phone prior to falling asleep but told the court that he texted "24/7" and " he was really decent at deleting his messages".
She told the court that she had checked his phone after he had fallen asleep.
The defence then asked her to read messages sent between the man and Ms McNally on the evening of her death.
'I didn't know someone was dead'
Some of these messages were explicit in nature, with the woman telling the court she hadn't seen them before and didn't want to read them.
Some of the messages referenced a potential meet up between the man and Ms McNally the following day.
The defence also asked the woman about differences between different statements she had made in relation to what she and the man had been doing on the evening of Ms McNally's death.
This included different references to the time the man had gone to bed and what they had watched after the World Cup final. It was put to the woman that there was more detail in her second statement.
The woman told the court: "I didn't understand the gravity of the situation when I gave the first statement so I didn't think I needed to go into that level of detail. I didn't know someone was dead at that point".
However, she told the court that she believed her first statement was more accurate than her second statement because the second was, "made in the middle of the night. He had just been arrested. My memory was not in a good place at that point".
However, the woman stressed that she and her former partner had not discussed a shared version of events.
"I know he didn't do it, so I thought there was no chance of him getting arrested," she said.
"We didn't sit there and plan any sort of alibi."
The woman was then asked about details about more recent issues with her ex-partner, something she refused to engage with.
The trial continues.
