One Tragic Night (43 page)

While Burger could not say what an English willow bat striking a meranti door sounded like, she was adamant that what she had heard that morning were gunshots. Roux was trying to show the court that Burger was unable to rule out this possibility because she was unfamiliar with the sound of the bat striking the door. But Michelle Burger wasn't biting.

Burger also could not confirm or deny the claim that Oscar screams like a woman when he is anxious, and yet persisted with her evidence that it was a woman she had heard screaming that morning. She further denied the suggestion that it was the gunshots, on Oscar's version of events, that could have woken her up.

Roux also suggested that it would make no sense for a man who is about to shoot his girlfriend to have called for help – hearing the man scream for help is inconsistent with the version of a man about to kill his girlfriend. Roux, of course, was pushing for the concession but Burger remained resilient, refusing to budge.

She remained convinced that what she heard were the desperate screams of a woman shortly before her death. No matter how many times Roux put it to her that what she had heard was Oscar shouting and a cricket bat hammering the door, there was no persuading her that anything other than her own version was the truth. Burger would not make even the slightest of concessions to Roux. So moved was she by the sound of the blood-curdling screams that what she heard that morning still haunts her. The trauma of the experience seeped through on the stand when her guard dropped momentarily, and she cried as she spoke of how the screams have stayed with her.

The prosecution was satisfied that it had played a strong opening hand with Burger testifying first. The evidence of her husband Charl Johnson and other neighbours would, they hoped, cement this.

Charl Johnson picked up his camera fitted with a zoom lens, fetched a step ladder and made the precarious ascent to the roof of his double-storey house in the Silver Stream estate. It offered him an unobscured, 360-degree view of the houses and gardens of the people living around him, but more importantly, he could see over the tops of his neighbour's poplar trees to the grey-coloured house where Oscar had shot and killed his girlfriend – the source of the screams that had woken him up barely 12 hours earlier.

Johnson had told friends and colleagues of the horror he and his wife experienced, and had seen aerial footage on 24-hour news channels of the neighbouring estate. Still believing that what he had heard was an armed robbery – contrary to what was emerging as a case of Oscar mistaking Reeva for an intruder – he had to check for himself how close he was to the crime scene. Once he was finished on the roof, Johnson used a measuring tool on Google Maps to establish that he was about 150 metres from Oscar's house. It all became clear to him – he believed it was Reeva's last screams that woke him.

The IT project manager is a soft-spoken man. Unlike his wife, who exudes confidence and asserted her position in the witness box, he appeared timid and very uncomfortable on the stand. In the opening minutes of his evidence, he
was asked to speak up several times by Nel, Roux and even the judge. Johnson recalled the events of 14 February as his wife did: waking up to the screams of a woman, standing on the balcony hearing both a man and woman calling for help, a failed attempt at calling security, and then hearing gunshots that brought the screaming to an end.

But there was one major difference between his evidence and that of his wife: Johnson remembers hearing about five or six gunshots. Nel had told the court early on in the trial that he would deal with discrepancies in witness statements – this was one of them. But for Nel, Johnson's second set of ears simply confirmed what Burger had heard and thus bolstered his case that there had been a fight before Oscar shot Reeva.

The main thrust of Roux's cross-examination was, by contrast, that this was not in fact a corroboration of the facts, but rather collusion between the couple in order to incriminate his client. Johnson said he had done his utmost to ensure he was not exposed to any reporting or information about the trial prior to his testimony, even telling friends that once the trial started, he would only speak to them after he had testified. He also told the court that he had not read the statement his wife had given to the police, nor had she seen his; they'd spoken to each other about the incident after the fact as a means of supporting each other, he said; and that he had avoided media reports, TV and newspapers in order to block out the trial while Burger was testifying.

Roux argued that the couple had discussed Burger's evidence, and that it was just too remarkable for it to be mere coincidence for there to be so many similarities. Johnson was shaking his head in disapproval of the advocate's claims, but also in apparent disbelief that Roux would accuse him of being part of such an elaborate plan to frame his client.

But Roux came down hard on Johnson, stating that the court deserved witnesses who were uncontaminated and could provide independent versions of events to allow the court to make a decision.

‘Witnesses are not always reliable,' said Roux, sounding genuinely affronted that the witness would mislead the court. ‘Sometimes they are not lying, but many times, many times the only way to satisfy yourself about reliability is to maintain a strong independence in versions.

‘You have not favoured the court with that, Mr Johnson. You and your wife. I am sorry, I put it to you. You could just as well [have] stood together in the witness box.'

Here the judge intervened before Johnson could respond. ‘Are you not going a bit too far, Mr Roux?' asked Masipa. The advocate withdrew his question.

Roux then introduced the defence team's timeline to Johnson, suggesting again that the sounds he heard were in fact Oscar hitting the cricket bat against the door. Using as reference points the 3:16am call Johnson made to security shortly before hearing what he believed were gunshots and Oscar's 3:19am call to Johan Stander, Roux stated that the only sound Johnson could have heard was the cricket bat striking the door because it perfectly coincides. But like his wife, Johnson wasn't moved: he was adamant that the sounds he heard were gunshots – later adding that he owned a firearm himself, had shot at firing ranges and was familiar with the sound of a handgun discharging.

The advocate finally narrowed his argument down to three main facts that he felt did not fit in to Johnson's version: the man screaming for help; the timeline, which according to Roux, indicates that the noises Johnson heard could only have been the cricket bat striking the door; and that Johnson did not hear the bashing of a door after the shots.

Johnson, however, dismissed Roux's suggestion that the voices he had heard were only of Oscar, adding that it had been easy for him to distinguish the male from the female voice that morning. He also challenged the claim that what he believed were gunshots were the bat hitting the door because of how quickly the shots were in succession, far quicker than someone was able to wield a bat.

Wrapping up his questioning, Roux stated that with Reeva locked in the toilet cubicle with the window closed, there was no way Johnson could have heard her screams, even if he was closer to the house. Johnson disagreed, and explained how it could have been possible. ‘One of the, let us call it scars that my wife and I have after witnessing this incident is, often we hear jackal calls from the veld in Farm Inn – a neighbouring small wildlife reserve – and it reminds us of the screams that we heard.

‘So it also reminds us how far and how clearly the sound travels in our area, and when it is deathly quiet at three o'clock in the morning, I do believe that I heard a lady screaming and that it is possible for the sound to travel that far,' said Johnson.

The state would have been satisfied with Charl Johnson's performance in the witness box. Despite Roux's best efforts to force concessions on the timeline of events and the possibility that the screams he had heard were those of his client, the witness held out and supported his understanding of what had happened with rational arguments.

The last place Estelle van der Merwe wanted to be was in court, in front of the packed gallery and the world's cameras. She'd dressed for the occasion in a brown jacket and matching top, and sported white highlights down the length of her long brown hair. Van der Merwe had waited anxiously in the witness holding room for her turn, even being allowed to testify earlier than planned – ahead of Johnson. In the first few minutes she was asked several times to slow down and relax. Her nerves were showing.

Van der Merwe lives diagonally across the road from Oscar and her balcony, as measured by the police, is 98 metres from the house. She told the court about waking up just before 2am on the morning of Valentine's Day to a woman's voice. It sounded as if the person was having an argument, she said – the only witness to have heard what sounded like a person having a fight, her testimony thus bolstered the state's case, especially when weighed up against other evidence. Annoyed at the disturbance, she said she looked out of the windows to see if she could see anything, but eventually went back to bed without having identified the source.

This was crucial for Gerrie Nel. The state pathologist would testify that the food found in Reeva's stomach was consumed no more than two hours prior to her death shortly after 3am, which put her up and awake and eating from about 1am – within the timeframe and contrary to Oscar's contention that the couple was in bed sleeping.

Van der Merwe said she eventually fell asleep again, but this wasn't to be for long – just after 3am she was woken by what she believed were four gunshots, followed by what sounded like someone crying. After several minutes of listening in the dark and wondering what was going on, she and her husband peered out of the window at Oscar's house – several vehicles, including the ambulance, had arrived.

Oscar's neighbour also told the court about being woken up in the early hours of the morning about a year after the shooting by what sounded like two men having an argument. She noticed some activity at Oscar's house, but had gone back to bed.

So it was that Roux started his cross-examination by explaining that on the morning of 21 February 2014, the defence team was at Oscar's house to conduct a sound test – a man and a woman screamed as loudly as they could to establish how far the sound would travel. While the Van der Merwes' bedroom balcony faces Oscar's house, the athlete's balcony and bedroom were on the opposite side of the house, and the advocate suggested that it would be highly improbable that the voice Estelle van der Merwe heard was in fact emanating from his client's house.

Roux questioned Van der Merwe's recollection of the talking she had heard that night – the pauses between voices, that it was barely recognisable, that no language could be discerned, and the fact that she believed it was emanating from the Farm Inn side of her house – which is the opposite side to the direction of Oscar's house – because that is where she checked first. Van der Merwe was, however, adamant that the voice she heard was that of a woman.

She further confirmed that despite hearing what she believed to be an argument, when her husband established later in the morning that the noises had in fact been gunshots, she did not tell him about the argument and the voice she had heard. Roux argued that if Van der Merwe really believed there was a connection between the woman's voice and the shooting she would have immediately raised this with her partner. But Nel addressed this point in his re-examination of the witness, and Van der Merwe said she had made the connection and told her husband of this after she had learnt that it was their neighbour Oscar who had shot his girlfriend.

Van der Merwe wrapped up her evidence in under two hours. While there was no disputing she had heard something at that odd hour, there was no certainty either that it emanated from Oscar's house or that it was, in fact, the voice of someone having a fight. It's the inferences that the state drew from her evidence that the defence challenged.