One Tragic Night (73 page)
Authors: Mandy Wiener
Oscar and Jenna had broken up three years later, but she maintained a significant presence in his life. Samantha Taylor names her as being at the centre of her own break-up with Oscar, just weeks before he met Reeva and took her to the sports awards.
Jenna had vehemently defended the athlete on social media a day after the shooting and was the only ex-girlfriend to be interviewed by the panel when Oscar was later referred to Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital.
On the day after Reeva's death, Jenna posted a series of comments on Twitter:
People must stop jumping on the bandwagon with such hurtful allegations. Os is the loving, amazing inspirational person we know him to be..
You have all my familys love and support #loveandsupportoscar
All I am saying is let him speak, let his side be heard without jumping to conclusions.. Love and thoughts to Reevas famiy..
I would just like to say, I have dated Oscar on off for 5 YEARS, NOT ONCE has he EVER lifted a finger to me, made me fear for my life..
Jenna was not questioned by the police, nor was a statement taken from her. And Oscar made no mention of their conversation lasting 522 seconds on the evening of 13 February 2013 in his evidence-in-chief â although he was never asked to detail all his telephone calls. The focus of his testimony was the near-30-minute conversation he had had later that evening with his cousin, Graham Binge, in Port Elizabeth.
The unavoidable question is why the state never pursued the possible relevance of this phone call and the other communications with Jenna.
The independent digital forensic expert says the police should certainly have followed up this lead. âThey had to very seriously analyse his movements and every activity of that day and they trace it to a person and then they just ignore it. This was one of the last calls on his phone. I know that the police would look at the 24 hours before the shooting, they scanned the whole phone but for me the crucial period would have been from the previous morning when he woke up through to the next morning.'
It is understood that Hawks cellphone expert Captain Francois Moller had provided investigators with a list of the identities of the numbers on the service provider list, but no one had made the connection between Jenna's father's name and Oscar. The prosecuting authority declined to comment on questions we sent to them about this revelation.
âIt would be wrong to infer that the state erred in not leading that info,' a member of the state's team suggested. âIt would deal with character evidence which the state is not entitled to lead. If there is no SMS or WhatsApp communication, how do we infer from the phone calls where we don't know the content that something untoward was taking place. I don't think it's a big piece of evidence. Let's say we did pick it up â we can only pick up phone calls but who would tell us what they're talking about?'
A source close to the defence team is also at pains to explain that this is no great revelation, that Oscar's lawyers always knew about Edkins and had consulted with her, and this is certainly not the âsmoking gun' the public and the media have so desperately been searching for.
âThere is a very good, friendly relationship between them now. He often called her. Reeva was well aware of the friendship. It became a genuine friendship. Previously it was romantic but there was no romantic connotation at all. It's not the smoking gun. The defence was well aware of the phone call to her and had in
fact consulted with her and confirmed the friendship and not a romantic relationship. It was never raised by the state. If it was raised by the state as a smoking gun, the defence would have called Jenna and she was willing to testify,' insists the source.
Evidence of the continued contact and friendly relationship between Oscar and Jenna was also found in Oscar's house. In Police Album 10, which documents amongst other things, âphotos of portraits and photos in the house', there is evidence that the athlete kept reminders of his special bond with Jenna.
In the upstairs TV lounge the police took photographs of an A2 framed canvas picture collage featuring about 40 black-and-white pictures of Oscar and Jenna. Dozens of photos of the couple together, sometimes kissing and being playful, surround an A4 picture of the blonde and the athlete staring into each other's eyes. On the reverse side is an intimate and affectionate message written in black pen from Jenna to Oscar in celebration of their relationship and his 22nd birthday:
To My Baby
Happy Birthday
You are so precious to me and 22 years ago on this day the most Special Person in my life was born!! I am always here for you and as time goes on I hope to add many more Happy Memories to this board (the most amazing memories⦠even tho a lot of them consist of you biting me
my starfish who poo in pants! Babyshoes have a wonderful day!
âWhat can I give you, my Sweet, my Lover, you who have given the world to me, showed me the light and the joy that cover, the wild sweet earth and the restless sea â¦'
Jen xxx
(BabyPop)
22! Yay!
Oscar turned 22 in 2008, the year of the Beijing Paralympics. The games had taken place in September, two months before his birthday. The athlete took gold in the 100 metres, 200 metres and 400 metres sprints, setting Paralympic and world records in each race.
Four years later and another Olympic Games was on. Oscar was dating a different blonde â Samantha Taylor. By July 2012 the relationship was collapsing
when the athlete sent an email not only to Taylor, but to her mother as well, addressing the document to âSam and the Taylor Family'.
Babyshoes featured prominently in this email. Gerrie Nel referred to the email in the murder trial when he questioned Oscar's manager Peet van Zyl about plans to take Taylor along to the London Games. However, the full contents of the email were not read out in court.
In his outpouring of emotion to his then current girlfriend, he revealed his deep-seated feelings towards Jenna Edkins and the powerful history that they shared:
Everyone has their darkness, yet everyone has a burning desire to need to find that one person that understands them. There thoughts without saying a word. There emotion without a flinch. Jenna and I started dating when I was 20, I met her and fell for her pretty quickly. I had grown up with her cousins and on the weekends that my brother sister and I were able to see my dad, my mom being friend with Jennas mom and aunt would take Jenna to church. It was [surprising] that we had only met some years after my mom had passed but this immediately drew me closer to her. I don't talk about my mom and my dad to anyone as it wasn't a pretty picture, not the one that I became accustomed to portraying as a kid anyway. The fact that my mom had known Jenna [meant] a lot to me and was one of the base notes of our relationship, which maybe kept it together long after it [should've] ended. Jenna and I started dating and in the [beginning] everything seemed like it was perfect. She understood me and was willing to support me no matter what.
When Oscar returned from Beijing in 2008, he and Edkins began having problems and the relationship ended:
I found myself struggling to make sense of the things around me. Some of it went to my head and looking back, I regret a lot of the decisions I ended up making ⦠I had to deal with a lot of traveling and found myself wondering away from her. I met a girl later that year and in my mind I made myself believe that this is what I had been looking for. I fell quickly and I fell fast for this girl but within a couple of weeks I realised that I had been so desperate to chase something that wasn't there that I had made myself believe it was. Jenna and I got back together. After months of trying to make it work I realised I had broken her trust and
called things off. A couple of weeks later I found what I thought I had been looking for but it didn't take me long to realise that it was my desperation and loneliness coming back to get me. I had all the money a 23 year old could spend and as fast as I was making it I was spending it. Trying to buy happiness, surrounded by fake friends, who although as time went on I knew were just there for the good made me feel better about myself.
It was then, in 2009, that Oscar crashed his boat on the Vaal dam and the situation with Edkins changed again:
I ended up in a coma for 6days after being airlifted. It breaks my heart when people joke about it and me being pissed because I can't remember everything about that night like it just happened and I thought I was going to die ⦠I called my brother and sister and thanked them for always staying by my side and called Jenna even though we hadn't spoken in weeks to apologise for being a lost [dumb] fuck and playing with her heart. It wasn't my intention to hurt her but like I have so many times by being selfish done so. When I woke up in Milpark Jenna had slept next to my bed for 6days, she was in the middle of varsity exams and had her books all over the room.
When he recovered, he thought he had been blessed with a second chance. But months later when Oscar went to Europe for the athletics seasons, the relationship with Edkins fell apart again.
It was evident from the email to Taylor that while the athlete realised the relationship with Edkins was apparently over, he still wanted to be friends with her because âshe had been there with me through a lot'. âAt times I wanted it to be still there, Sam. I'm sorry, as I know you're hurting. I don't want to tell you what I think it is you want to hear, but the truth.'
Taylor would also reveal to us the full extent of her âproblems' with Edkins during the course of her time with Oscar.
So, while Oscar's relationship with Taylor had ended and he had moved on to Reeva, who he would claim to have fallen in love with, he still maintained contact with another ex-girlfriend: Babyshoes.
While there is no evidence to suggest that their relationship was anything other than friendship, it is nevertheless noteworthy that Oscar kept in touch with Edkins, made contact with her on occasions when he and Reeva appeared
to have disagreements, and called her the day before that fateful Valentine's day.
