One Tragic Night (56 page)

Perhaps most interesting was what Van der Nest did not testify about – whether or not the toilet had been flushed. Intriguingly, it is this piece of evidence that private forensic experts thought most crucial before the trial began in March 2014.

Former senior policeman and author of numerous books on forensics, Hennie van Vuuren, stated that the analysis of the toilet bowl would be critical. ‘I would like to know whether the contents of the toilet has been analysed because that will tell us a story. What was the reason why Reeva was sitting in the toilet. Has the contents been analysed? Oscar never mentioned anything about hearing the toilet being flushed. So what was happening really? Physical evidence will tell us that story. If proper, complete, accurate analysis of all evidence has been made.'

Van der Nest did not make a finding in this regard in his report, so was not led on this from the state's side and there was no questioning on it from the defence. A cursory layperson's study of a photograph of the inside of the toilet bowl shows clear white sections of porcelain separating the ‘columns' of blood, like vertical stripes on a candy cane. The white stripes marked where water appeared to have washed away the blood.

A source in the investigating team said they'd established that at some point the toilet was flushed. The source said blood flow had in some areas been replenished, which meant that the water was flowing from the cistern, or at least partially, at the time Reeva's head was still over the toilet bowl.

It was thought that Reeva had already bled into the bowl, and when Oscar broke down the door and entered the cubicle, he might have inadvertently leaned on the flushing mechanism. But this cistern has a partially recessed button, with options for heavy and light flow, so whoever flushed the toilet must have done so purposefully. Did the accused literally attempt to flush evidence down the toilet? Or had Reeva been shot moments after having flushed the toilet herself?

Private forensic investigator Cobus Steyl believes that the latter is indeed possible. ‘Reeva could have flushed the toilet and that was the sound that caused Oscar to shoot. She fell in such a way that her head was bleeding over the bowl with some of the water still flowing towards the end of the flush. The initial shot to the head would cause the blood to gush out like a shaken bottle of Coke, but then it stops because she is bleeding from the wounds lower on her body,' he said.

Steyl stated that the flow pattern of the toilet water could easily be established by putting a dye in the water and test flushing it. He said it appeared that towards the end of the flush, after the valve had closed, there was still some water in the pipe, but that this tapered off.

He believes that while this fact may have been irrelevant to each side's case, it should still have been presented to the court. ‘You never know whether it could play a vital role towards the end of the case when all the information is put together. It is for the court to decide what is important or not,' he said.

Speaking after the closing arguments had concluded, defence forensic scientist
Roger Dixon was insistent that this was an absolutely crucial piece of evidence that should have been introduced to the court.

‘The toilet had been flushed! She sat and flushed. That trickle takes maybe thirty seconds to taper down. She flushed, he yelled, she slammed the door, she fell down and the last trickle of the toilet after the flush cut those runnels through the blood. The water ran over the blood. The blood didn't happen afterwards. She flushed the toilet. If she had been so scared and frightened she would have peed in her pants. Her bladder was almost empty,' said Dixon.

‘We didn't find very much urine in the bowl. It had been tested,' he revealed.

‘This was the third startle. It destroys the state's case totally. With the third startle, his worst fears are confirmed. That's the crux of the case. It destroys the “I'm going to chase you and kill you because I don't like you any more” idea. It shows that she went to the toilet with her cellphone, under her own steam, no hurry, no rush. When he yelled, she reacted by locking the door.'

Dixon said this wasn't part of his remit and it was something he only discovered after he had concluded his testimony.

A member of the prosecution team said Nel didn't introduce this evidence because there were simply too many possibilities to consider. ‘There was no realistic conclusion to reach based on the available evidence, we would have just been guessing.' The National Prosecuting Authority did not comment on questions sent to it about this.

Roux didn't touch on this either – flushing the toilet was not in his client's timeline and if Roux believed a police officer on the scene had inadvertently flushed the toilet he almost certainly would have pounced on it.

But the evidence appears to show that at some point the toilet was flushed. As Hennie van Vuuren said before the trial had even begun, this evidence would tell a story – a story that both sides have chosen to ignore.

In any event, the weight of the forensic evidence and how it slotted in to the version being offered by either party would ultimately have to be decided on by Judge Masipa.

Roger Dixon speaks with the authority and confidence you would expect from an expert witness with a Master's degree and nearly 20 years of experience in the police's Forensic Science Laboratory. A middle-aged man, neatly dressed in a grey suit and matching tie, with a grey beard and moustache, he stood upright in the witness box with his hands on the desk in front of him, one folded over the other. He rocked back and forth as he addressed the court, and tapped out the syllables of the words he spoke, enunciating clearly for all to hear what he had to say. Following each question his hands invariably left their resting position, taking flight in the space in front of his chest, with his fingers flexing and assuming all manner of positions to animate and emphasise what he was trying to convey to the court. Dixon liked to talk and often ventured off on a tangent before being reined in by Roux. This habit landed Dixon in trouble when Nel took over the questioning for cross-examination.

And yet, despite his confident and assuring demeanour, Dixon broke two cardinal rules of expert testimony in a court of law: don't testify on a subject you are not an expert in and don't talk more than is necessary.

He was the first witness to testify after Oscar stepped off the stand. On the morning of Dixon's testimony, Johannesburg daily newspaper
The Star
featured a headline reading ‘Oscar trial: Now for damage control'. There was an expectation that he would bring with him redemption.

Dixon was introduced to the court as a forensic geologist with degrees in Chemistry and Geology, who had previously headed up the Materials Analysis subsection at the SAPS, now being managed by Vermeulen. In his career in the police, he had obtained qualifications and attended numerous courses offered by local and internal organisations, including the FBI. He was responsible for ‘all types of trace evidence, forensic geology, fibres, all types of organic pollutants,
crime scene investigations which were varied, such as industrial accidents or theft, or break-ins and break-outs … it is a very wide generalist area'.

In this case, as Roux led him, Dixon testified on an incredibly wide variety of subjects, including ballistics, wound ballistics, pathology, sound and light levels and other fields, but in cross-examination he conceded he was not an expert on these subjects, but a layperson. An irresistible cliché crept into the headlines as it became apparent that Dixon was a ‘jack of all trades, master of none'. It also emerged that this was the first trial he had testified in as a private, independent expert and that he had not even ventured into this field in several years since leaving the police.

At first, Dixon gave evidence that seemed to support the case for the defence. He testified about how Oscar's bedroom was pitch dark when the lights were not on and that he would not have been able to see Reeva getting up and going to the bathroom. He also believed it would not have been possible for Oscar's neighbours, the Stipps, to have seen him through his bathroom window without his prosthetic legs on. Johan Stipp had testified he had seen a man without a shirt walking past the window. In addition, Dixon testified that a mark on Oscar's prosthetic leg was consistent with attempts to break down the toilet door while wearing his prostheses.

The geologist also attempted to bolster the defence's version about the bruises on Reeva's back and what had caused them. The prosecution's witnesses claimed that the bruises on her back came from a projectile but Dixon believed the abrasions were caused by the magazine rack in the cubicle. He believed they were consistent with horizontal abrasions as if she had fallen back onto the rack.

The state's witnesses had contended that Reeva was facing the door and talking to Oscar when she was shot. Dixon, however, contested this, claiming that she was standing at an angle to the door with her right arm slightly raised. This supported the defence's version that she was about to leave the cubicle and was reaching for the handle.

When Dixon moved onto ballistics evidence, it surprised many watching the developments in the courtroom. Experienced expert Wollie Wolmarans was expected to take care of this realm of evidence, but it became clear that Dixon and Wolmarans had worked on the case together and this seemed to prompt the geologist to step beyond the area of his own expertise and into Wolmarans's field.

Dixon and Wolmarans were at the crime scene together in March 2013, when Mangena and his colleagues rehung the door for them to inspect it
in loco
and a week later they visited the Forensic Science Lab for further inspection of the exhibits. Dixon identified the various marks on the door, as well as a critical
third mark higher up on the door, which he said was one of the three marks made when the bat struck the door. Vermeulen, however, had discussed only two marks and did not include the third one in his report.

Dixon took an identical door from Oscar's house – the pantry door, made of the same meranti wood – and conducted tests in which the door was struck with the cricket bat, as well as fired bullets through it, in order to replicate the effects that would arise when it is hit, damaged and abused, ‘in the fashion which is evident on the door'. He was responsible for hitting the door, and while testifying complained that he still had pain in his left forearm from the exercise – indicative of how recently the test had been conducted. ‘It takes a lot of force to break that door,' he said.

The defence forensics team conducted the tests at a shooting range at night. In a scene reminiscent of the YouTube video discussed during Vermeulen's testimony, microphones and recording stations were placed at 60 metres and 180 metres from the door.

With Dixon in the witness box, the recording made at the 60-metre spot was played to the courtroom. Oscar plugged his ears with his index fingers and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, looking down at the ground. After some awkward technical difficulties trying to get the sound clip to play on the laptop, three banging sounds were heard first, followed by four similar sounds in quick succession. They did seem to sound like gunshots, but what was also clear in the clips were the sounds of crickets or frogs chirping in the background.

Dixon explained that the first three strikes of the cricket bat were done by pulling the blade over his shoulder, but for the four shots in rapid succession he wielded the bat as if he were in the classical cricket batsman posture, striking at the bottom end of the door.

These clips were played again in court the following day, as were the gunshots clips, first at the 60-metre point and then at 180 metres. They sounded very similar to the bat striking the door, but what was notably different was the sounds of the bugs in the background, which were much less pronounced.

‘Does that accord with the test that you attended?' asked Roux.

‘The first ones were the cricket bat, at 60 and 180 and the second ones were the gunshots at 60 and 180,' said Dixon – an answer he came to regret in cross-examination.

Dixon's analysis of bullet hole ‘D' mirrored what Vermeulen had told the court weeks earlier – that the cracks on opposite ends – at the top and the bottom – of the hole indicated that the bullet pierced the wood before the bat striking it caused the crack. The defence experts had conducted tests of their own; they first
cracked the replica door and then fired a shot through the crack to prove that, if the crack came first, it would form a continuous line through the bullet hole.

Dixon's study of the mark in line with the door lock showed that the varnish had been abraded and, on closer inspection, white fibres were embedded into the door – a close-up photograph of the mark was shown to the court. ‘In reconstructing the sequence of events, the only material which is consistent with this white fibre, is the white socks worn over the prosthesis of Mr Pistorius,' said Dixon. It appeared the defence team had done its homework. This seemed to prove what Roux had put to previous witnesses: the mark corresponded with Oscar's version that he had kicked the door before taking the cricket bat to it.

The next photo showed the sole of Oscar's right prosthetic foot, on which Dixon pointed out dark vertical lines near the toe, which he said was varnish that had become embedded in the rubber covering. This photo had been taken by the police, so why hadn't Vermeulen or any of the state experts linked this evidence to the door? Dixon further rubbished Vermeulen's suggestion that the mark on the wooden panel could have been caused by Oscar kicking it on the floor after the panel had been knocked out of its frame because a significant amount of force – like a kick – would need to be applied for the transfer of materials to take place.

Dixon identified and explained the remaining two marks. He also presented photographs to the court of the bat and explained that these marks corresponded to those on the door. He further explained that the tiles that had come loose from the wall to the left of the door were probably caused by the first blow against the frame of the door, which would have sent shock waves through the outer frame and into the wall. These vibrations could have been strong enough to cause the tiles to fall off.