One Tragic Night (53 page)

Mangena bought three replica doors to test fire the 9 mm Black Talon ammunition as he understood that this was the ammunition used by the athlete.

Mangena wanted to establish just how far Oscar was standing from the door when he opened fire and he knew that the evidence would tell him. When a firearm is discharged, not all gunpowder particles inside the cartridge are ignited. The partially burnt and unburnt particles travel down the barrel of the gun and exit the muzzle at high speed, embedding on items within a certain range.

Starting at a distance of 10 centimetres, the captain fired shots at test sheets of paper and worked his way back to 60 centimetres – in all instances, propellant particles were discovered on the paper. He then moved back to 1 metre away – and no particles could be detected. This put Oscar no closer than 60 centimetres to the door when he pulled the trigger – the furthest he could go back was against the wall at the entrance to the bathroom. Mangena could make no finding on the location of the spent cartridges – test firing with this ammunition and Oscar's firearm provided such varying results there was
nothing conclusive to be drawn. During a deflection test – to see how much the bullet's trajectory changes when fired through the door – the captain found that the most deflection was 3 degrees, which is very little. Referring to his notes and the findings of the laser trajectory test at the crime scene, and comparing them to Oscar's measurements, particularly his shoulder height without his prosthetic legs fitted, Mangena concluded that Oscar was on his stumps when he pulled the trigger.

Having completed his investigation, Mangena wrote his report, coming to this conclusion as ‘the best possible and probable explanation':

Captain Mangena was the 16th witness to take the stand for the prosecution, giving his testimony on 18 March 2014. He had attended every day of the proceedings and sat amongst the rest of the experts behind the prosecution team. His shaved head gleamed light off it and he sported a neatly trimmed moustache. On the day he took the stand, he wore his regular dark suit, a light-blue shirt and white tie. His testimony was crucial for the state's case.

The door was what separated Reeva from Oscar. It was what prevented the shooter from identifying his target. A study of the bullet holes by an expert such as Mangena would provide the state with the location of the shooter as well as where the victim was positioned as the bullets passed through the timber. This evidence would present a timeline of Reeva's last moments – from which bullet struck her first, to the one that ultimately led to her death. Prosecutor Gerrie Nel led the expert through his evidence, taking the court back to 7 March 2013 when he received the door and the instruction to investigate.

Over 12 court days, Barry Roux had established himself as a fierce cross-examiner with each state witness before Mangena experiencing the sharp end of his skill. But the ballistics expert was ready for Roux and remained resolute and firm in the face of a barrage of questions. He refused to be sucked in to the silk's game and repeatedly responded with a firm ‘I disagree' to Roux's ‘I put it to you'.

Roux fired off questions at the ballistics expert on whether he understood
the term ‘douple-tap' – a process whereby a shooter fires two shots in quick succession. Of course Mangena knew what this meant; he shoots at competition level and is able to shoot at this speed himself. Roux suggested that this was what Oscar claimed to have done. ‘That is the version of the accused. It was two double-taps,' said Roux, revealing an element of his case yet to be made public.

There was a frown from the officer in the dock. ‘I tend to disagree with that.' He had just spent the last hour explaining how Reeva was shot in the hip, and how she fell back before being struck by two more bullets. If the shooter had in fact fired a double-tap, Reeva would have been struck twice in the hip area with the holes closer together. Mangena was having none of it. He explained himself once again to the court.

The advocate was quick to refer to Dr Stipp's evidence, saying that this supported the notion of a double-tap. Mangena did not dispute this, but was again adamant that because of the different locations of the wounds, there had been a break – although he couldn't say how long – between the first and second shots. This tied in with Michelle Burger's evidence of hearing a bang followed by three further bangs: Bang. Bang, bang, bang. Rather than Bang, bang. Bang, bang.

In a dramatic turn later in the trial, when Nel was cross-examining the defence team's first witness, Roux surprisingly withdrew the claim that Oscar had fired two double-taps. He said that his client had corrected him, but this was never put to the court. The question Nel raised with the accused during his own testimony was where Roux had come up with the term ‘double-tap', if his client did not provide it to him?

Roux moved on to the angle at which the bullet hit the hip wound, referring to the shape of the wound, and suggested that that was not a straight-on wound, but rather at an angle. Again, Mangena disagreed, adding that the shape of the wound could have been caused by a misshapen bullet having passed through the door.

Mangena did, however, admit to not testing the magazine rack against the
wounds on Reeva's back. Roux said defence experts – Roger Dixon and Wollie Wolmarans – would testify that she fell against it, causing the bruises on her back. Mangena also did not conduct a proximity test to establish exactly how far the victim's arm was from the door when it was perforated by the splinters, nor a test to establish the spread of the splinters. But he remained confident that such tests were irrelevant to his findings.

Roux pressed the witness on this. ‘I have not done the tests,' said Roux. ‘It will be the evidence of the ballistic experts that the right arm was in close proximity of the door.' The defence wanted to show that it was the right side of Reeva's body that was angled towards the door. This would allow them to suggest that she was walking out of the toilet when Oscar began shooting, rather than hiding away in the cubicle. Barely two weeks after Roux told the court this, the defence team dispatched its own expert, Wolmarans, to conduct this very test.

Once the trial was concluded, Wolmarans would highlight that he felt this was the biggest mistake of Mangena's evidence. ‘The splinter test is in my opinion very essential in giving an opinion on what the position in the toilet was at the time of the shooting. He just ignored it. He had one year to do it and all the exhibits was in his possession all the time. Including the firearm in question,' Wolmarans told us.

‘Roux cross-examined him on the splinters and he testified that it is his experience. He never conducted the test but he disagreed. Even with all the experience in the world you will conduct test to confirm your findings. Every case is unique and you cannot depend on your experience. The Black Talon is a unique type of ammunition and the door is solid meranti wood, and the shot was fired through the door at an angle. How he can be so sure that she was not near the door without proper testing? It is totally unacceptable,' argued Wolmarans.

However, Mangena did address this during his time on the stand: ‘In that position I am of the opinion it was more than one shot. Those splinters are not only here, if you can look at the arm also, there is also some marks on the splinters. Now these ones on the lower arm, where do they come from if she was in this position and the bullet came … then does it mean she was in the position but the palm has to be in front of the body, when this splinters … and the closer you get to that, the more groupings of those splinters will be there. The further away you move from the door, they more spreading, they start to open up,' said the state ballistic expert.

The defence counsel also zeroed in on why the state had claimed at the bail hearing that Oscar had fired the shots while standing 1.5 metres from the door and was wearing his prosthetics at the time. The state had done a complete
about-turn on this evidence and Roux wanted to know why. He suggested that this evidence had been cooked up during the bail application in order to bolster a case of premeditated murder. Mangena, however, could shed no light on this as he said he didn't know. Roux also worked to try to force Mangena to confirm that a cricket bat hitting wood sounds like gunshots, but Mangena wouldn't be drawn on this, insisting that he was not a sound expert.

There was a confidence to Mangena not seen in any of the other witnesses. And, despite Roux's efforts, he refused to budge. The advocate put his version to the witness, further proposing that the officer's interpretation of events could be wrong.

‘I will not change my theory,' said Mangena. ‘That is how I could determine the shots.'

On the morning the state's second expert witness was expected to testify, word reached the court's corridors that the prosecution team had a little surprise planned for the day. Once the courtroom doors were opened, it immediately became clear what this was: a 1:1 scale model of the toilet cubicle where Reeva was shot had been constructed inside the courtroom. The claustrophobic 1.14x1.4 metre dimensions accurately demonstrated how she had no place to hide. White chipboard frames made up the walls, which extended around the doorframe – the actual door from the crime scene had been erected in the frame. A light-coloured wooden brace on the inside of the door held in place the shattered panels, smashed out a year earlier by the accused. A toilet, similar to the one at Oscar's house, had been placed inside the cubicle, as well as a magazine rack.

The exhibit certainly caught Oscar's attention – he spent some time before proceedings started inspecting it closely, leaning forward with his head close to the bullet holes, peering on the inside and then outside as if he were tracking the projectile's trajectories.

The cricket bat also made its first appearance in the courtroom several days before it was formally submitted as an exhibit. Usually carried by the investigating officer Mike van Aardt, it was wrapped in a large clear, blue-printed police forensics bag. It caused whispers in the gallery amongst journalists who for the first time got sight of the object they'd all heard about.

The sporting implement emerged in some reports after the shooting, with allegations that Oscar had apparently used the bat not only to bash down the toilet door, but also to beat Reeva. Some British tabloid press reported that Reeva's family had been told her skull had been fractured after being struck by the bat.
But pathologist Gert Saayman confirmed during his testimony that it had been the bullet that struck her head that had caused the skull fracturing, and there were no signs of blunt force trauma, rubbishing these initial speculative reports.

The English willow Lazer cricket bat was found face down in the bathroom with drops of blood and spatter across its spine. It was positioned to the right of where Reeva would have been lying – if one entered the bathroom – and was close to the basins and cupboards. While crime scene photos showed it had a perished yellow rubber handle fitted to it, in police investigation photos and in court, this grip was no longer present. The wooden face displayed the signatures of 12 cricketers – when it was presented in court, former Proteas batsman Herschelle Gibbs remarked on Twitter that he'd identified his own signature:

Oscar's own name was written in black marker on the top-left side of the bat. The bat hadn't appeared to have seen much cricket action, and was probably used with a tennis ball or solely as an ornamental piece for its signatures. Oscar explained that he used it to bolster security in his room because he placed it between the sunglasses rack and his door as a stop if someone was able to break the door lock, which he locked every night.

The police's expert in this field of analysis, Colonel Gerhard Vermeulen, focused on three main marks – one on the bat itself and another two on the door, which he believed illustrated that Oscar was on his stumps at the time he struck the door with the bat. The mark on the bat, if looking at its face, was on the bottom right-hand corner: a set of etched-in lines starting in the midline of the bottom of the bat and going up at a 45-degree angle towards the right side of the bat. The mark on the door was about 150 centimetres from the ground, while the other was an actual hole through the door where the bat pierced through.

The defence did not dispute that the door was struck with the bat, but argued that their client was on his prosthetic legs when he did the hitting. This was the major discrepancy around the bat – the defence argued Oscar had already put his prostheses on when he hit the door, but the state insisted he was still on his stumps. This was important as it spoke to the timeline of Oscar's version of events and whether he would have indeed had time to put on his prosthetic legs. What did the evidence say?

Three weeks after the shooting, on 7 March 2013, Vermeulen received the instruction from his commander to investigate the Oscar case, and a day later
he was at the crime scene, together with Mangena, Van der Nest and Van Aardt. The defence's firearms expert Wollie Wolmarans was also there. Vermeulen, the commander of the Material Analysis subsection at the police's Forensic Science Laboratory in Pretoria, with nearly 30 years' experience, was tasked to investigate the bat and the door as well as the steel plate covering the inspection hole on the bath. On 26 April the metal plate and the bat arrived at Vermeulen's office in sealed plastic evidence bags.