One Tragic Night (42 page)

Oscar finished his plea explanation by answering to the gun-related charges:

For the duration of the reading of the plea explanation, Oscar stood in the dock, his hands clasped in front of him. Oldwadge carefully enunciated each sentence, regularly clutching his robes with both hands in front of his chest and adjusting them.

Judge Masipa asked Oscar to confirm the explanation, referring to him as ‘Mr Pistorius'. He leaned forward, placing his mouth close to the tall microphone in front of him and answered, ‘I do, My Lady.'

Gerrie Nel then proceeded to read several ‘admissions' into the record – issues not disputed by the defence, such as Oscar's blood tests taken on the day of the shooting and the photographs taken by the police photographer.

And then, with the formalities out of the way, the prosecution called its first witness, Michelle Burger. The so-called trial of the century was underway.

The radio in the car was tuned to a news station as the couple headed off on a much-needed weekend away. The young professionals, he an IT project manager at Citadel Investment Services, and she a lecturer in Construction Economics at the University of Pretoria, were driving to the small town of Sabie in Mpumalanga in the east of the country, where he was to compete in a mountain-bike race. Like so many others in South Africa, the couple had been following the proceedings in the Pretoria Magistrate's Court where Oscar Pistorius's bail application was being heard. But unlike others, they had a vested interest in developments and were listening to the radio with a careful ear.

Michelle Burger and her husband Charl Johnson live 177 metres away from the Olympic athlete's house, in an adjoining estate called Silver Stream, and had been awoken by screams on the morning of the Valentine's Day shooting. But, media shy and assuming others who lived closer to the scene would prove to be more beneficial witnesses, the couple had not approached the authorities. But during that drive to Mpumalanga what they heard on the radio forced them into action. During the bail testimony it was claimed that only one person shouted that morning – Burger and Johnson believed they had very clearly heard two people. Investigating officer Hilton Botha spoke of witnesses being up to 600 metres away – Burger and Johnson were so much closer. The couple felt obliged to act.

On TV they had seen aerial photos of the two estates and realised they lived a lot closer and would be in a better position to assist the police. Ironically, as it would emerge, they would be the witnesses farthest from the scene. Burger contacted an attorney friend and an advocate, Nicky Maritz, who advised them to write down whatever it was they could remember from that night into
statements to be handed to the police. The couple was, however, hesitant to give affidavits at a local police station because of the media attention that it would draw; they wanted to do this privately. Burger and Johnson wrote down their statements – but before they accompanied Maritz to a police station, investigators came knocking at their door.

As they prepared for trial, Gerrie Nel and his prosecuting team looked at the evidence that had been collected over the course of a year's investigation. Together with his junior Andrea Johnson and the investigating officer Mike van Aardt, Nel had been consulting with Oscar Pistorius's neighbours who had heard screams and gunshots on the morning of 14 February 2013. Since the bail application the previous year, two key witnesses had come forward to strengthen the state's contention that an argument, a fierce fight, had led to Oscar killing his girlfriend intentionally.

Like other luxury residential complexes in the area, the Silver Stream estate on which Burger and Johnson live featured high walls topped with electrified fences, 24-hour security patrols and a guarded, access-controlled entrance. These enclaves for the new-rich and privileged provided sanctuary from crime as well as added privacy. A neighbour's house, an electric security fence, a scattering of poplar trees and open stands separate them from Oscar's dwelling and they have direct line of sight of his house. The prosecuting team believed the witnesses would be crucial pillars in their case, a strong opening hand to play. Only two people were present when Oscar shot Reeva. One of them was dead and only one person's version existed, that of the accused.

Of the dozens of houses dotted around the crime scene, in the same plush estate as well as in neighbouring complexes, the state relied on only five people to testify. Their testimony challenged Oscar's claim of mistaken identity, and submitted to the court the story of a fight that started at least two hours before the athlete used his firearm to shoot and kill his girlfriend.

The two men and three women were the closest Nel had to eyewitnesses – they could provide timelines and a recollection of the noises that roused them from their sleep. While one couple attests to the noises at 177 metres from the crime scene, neighbours who live right next door to Oscar, whom the state did not call to testify, were unable to support their claims. Burger and Johnson, the couple who live in a neighbouring estate; Dr Johan Stipp and his wife Annette who live in Silver Woods, with their bedroom overlooking the back of Oscar's
house where his bathroom windows are located; and Estelle van der Merwe, who lives with her husband diagonally across the road from the athlete, and was woken up two hours before the shooting to the sounds of a woman arguing.

From the evidence of these five witnesses, the state built a timeline of events that it believed reaffirmed the claim of an argument leading up to the shooting. This was, however, contested by the defence, casting doubt on, firstly, the order of the events that morning and, secondly, the interpretation of the sounds heard by the neighbours.

Michelle Burger was given the unenviable task of opening the state's case as its first witness – media attention was peaking, the public gallery packed. In the chronology of events on the morning of the shooting, she wasn't the first person to hear something suspicious, but on her strength of character and conviction, she was Nel's strongest witness. Burger is a petite woman who arrived at court in an all-black outfit, with her brown hair neatly pinned back. Fastidious and well-prepared, the lecturer at the University of Pretoria had visited the courtroom a week earlier to familiarise herself with the surroundings. Like all the other neighbours who testified, she opted not to have footage of herself testifying broadcast – the world only heard her voice.

Burger described to the court being wrenched from her sleep by the distinct blood-curdling screams of a woman in desperate distress, which wafted across the open stands and through the wide open windows of her house, 177 metres from the crime scene. The same noises roused her husband, Charl Johnson, who immediately rushed to the balcony to better hear the commotion in the distance. In the still of the early morning, Burger could hear not only the screams of a woman calling for help, but then also a man calling for assistance, which immediately brought her to the conclusion that there was an armed robbery underway. Nel used this claim to argue that this was, in fact, Reeva calling out for help as she fled from her enraged boyfriend, who was pursuing her with his firearm.

In her scramble to summon help, Burger incorrectly called the security of the estate where she had previously lived, before handing the phone to her husband. The call was made at 3:16am and lasted 58 seconds. Johnson realised his wife's mistake and cut the call. He returned to the balcony where the screams continued, but were soon snuffed out by what Burger described as the distinct cracks of four gunshots. As the shots came to an end, so did the woman's screams.
Feeling helpless, but believing neighbours closer to the source of the incident would help, the couple went back to bed but had a restless night.

Burger told the court that it was only days later that they decided to approach the police and offer their story because they had heard Oscar's claim in the bail application that he had mistaken Reeva for an intruder. This did not correlate with their experience. Burger sobbed in court when Nel asked her about how she felt giving that statement to Van Aardt. ‘It was quite raw still. It was awful to hear her shout before the shots. It's very difficult for me. When I'm in the shower I relive her shouts,' she said emotionally.

Burger's evidence showed that, crucially, there were screams before the gunshots. She had heard a female and a male before the four shots were fired – a claim that buttressed the state's suggestion of a fight before the shooting.

Like an opening batsman to face a new bowler, Burger was the first to experience Barry Roux's cross-examination. She proved to be resilient and firm on the stand, refusing to concede under intense questioning from the defence advocate. It was crucial for Roux to cast doubt on Burger's version of what she had heard and the order in which she had heard it. The defence needed to show that what Burger and her husband thought were gunshots were, in fact, the sounds of Oscar breaking down the door with a cricket bat.

So it was that Roux introduced the court to the defence's explanation for what witnesses had heard that morning. There had been two sets of sounds – the first volley being the gunshots, followed by a pause and screaming, and then the second set of noises being the cricket bat as it struck the wooden door. What Burger had thought to be gunshots were in fact the cricket bat.

Not surprisingly, Roux's suggestion immediately sparked public debate: could the sound of a cricket bat striking a door be as loud as and so similar to a gunshot that the sounds could be confused? The state was dealing with witnesses woken up in the dead night in a panic, who claimed to have heard shots, but could they have been mistaken?

‘Could there have been four shots when you were still asleep and you heard the screaming afterwards?' asked Roux, as he proposed this new timeline to the witness – that it was the gunshots that, unbeknown to her, had roused her. Burger maintained that what she had heard was screams.

On the face of it, Roux's timeline seemed to make sense – it would later explain how some witnesses heard two sets of bangs – but could he convincingly explain how a cricket bat striking a door could be confused for a gunshot?

Roux's focus turned to what Burger had heard. She had claimed that the woman was screaming during the four shots and that the voice faded away after
the final shot. Could this have been Reeva inside the toilet cubicle, wounded and in pain from the first shot to her hip before being killed by the final three shots? Burger said that the last she heard of the petrified woman's screams that woke her was briefly after the final shot rang out. The defence, however, worked at dismantling this claim by making yet another startling revelation: the screams were not Reeva's – rather they were the accused's.

‘If Mr Pistorius is really anxious and he screams,' said Roux, ‘it sounds like a woman.'

He was suggesting that the noises the neighbours had heard that morning were not Reeva screaming for help, but Oscar shouting in desperation as he attempted to break down the door to get to his girlfriend. This would become a point of ridicule in the public debate of the trial – Oscar screamed like a girl.

Roux continued: ‘He was beyond himself, he was screaming after that [the shots], higher and lower and that is why you hear what you, that time of the morning, associate with a very anxious woman screaming and a man screaming, you heard both,' said Roux. ‘It was the same person.'

The defence advocate also went on to question how the witness could testify with such certainty about the facts – at 177 metres away from the house, with a man who sounded like a woman when he was anxious, not hearing the voices simultaneously, and the cricket bat striking a door from inside the bathroom. Burger's only experience with firearms was hearing shots on the odd occasion at night, and visiting a shooting range twice in her life when she personally shot a firearm. Roux referred to the statements made by neighbours who lived considerably closer to his client who had heard only the sounds of a man crying – Burger did not hear these. The advocate was determined to drive home the point: there were at least four more witnesses that the state did not include in its case who do not corroborate what a witness living in a neighbouring estate claimed to have heard. It was the probability of her claims that he was testing.