One Tragic Night (78 page)

Taylor said Oscar spoke about his mother often, describing her as his rock. ‘I actually joined him and his brother and his sister on his mother's birthday and we had a dinner in the garden and just prayed in remembrance of her. He loved his mom very much. He said she was such a strong woman, she used to empower all of them, so I think that definitely affected the family a lot.'

It was an idyllic picture, but under the surface, the Taylors experienced a different Oscar. Taylor's mother became suspicious.

‘Something inside me often worried and early on I could see he was lying about where he was or what he was doing. That didn't sit well with me. I used to get a knot in my stomach,' said Trish.

She suspected he was cheating on her daughter. ‘In the beginning I gave him the benefit of the doubt. One of my other daughter's friends was at the house early in the relationship and she said, “Oh no, Samantha's got to be careful, he's such a cheat. He cheats on all his girlfriends,” and I still said, “I'm sure he'd never, he's so mad about Samantha, he'd never cheat on her,”' she said.

Taylor didn't need prompting to reveal what she euphemistically referred to as ‘problems' experienced by the couple. ‘Our relationship in general was really amazing, we both loved each other a lot, but like every relationship, there were problems and our problems grew over time. There were quite a lot. He's got quite a short temper and he gets irritated very easily, so it was always like walking on eggshells. I didn't know what to do or where to go in case he didn't agree with it,' said Taylor. She carefully selected her next words.

‘I think it was … I don't know how to describe that … I think it was very … almost possessive. It was a bit obsessive.' She said she could ‘definitely' relate to Reeva's emotions in the messages she sent to Oscar, which were read out in court, saying he scared her at times.

‘He was so protective. You know, when I was away from him or when he was overseas he was always asking me, “Where are you? Who are you with?” If he didn't believe me, he would make me send photos or he would phone my home phone to see if I'm home or he would phone my sister to see where I am. Often I used to see his friends at the same restaurant I was at, so I don't know if maybe he wanted them to check up on me and who I was with, but definitely, you know, it was very strange to me.'

And Taylor spoke about Oscar's gun as if it was a third party in their relationship. ‘He's very stringent with his gun. He keeps it on him all the time, he's
always got it around him; he sleeps next to it, so he was obsessive with his gun, he always had it on him,' she said.

Did she ever think he was capable of shooting another human being with it?

‘There were many times, like I said in my statement, where the gun was a little bit scary. I think that even though it's a very dangerous weapon, he often handled it like it wasn't really much and there were times that I hid his gun from him. So, I didn't ever think he would shoot someone, but I did know that having a gun around, anything can go wrong.

‘There was a time that I did hide his gun under his bed when he was drunk because he got quite aggressive, so I needed to just be cautious, if anything,' she said, referring to an incident that she had detailed in her affidavit. ‘We had some friends over that night and he was a little bit drunk and he jumped onto his friend's back, but the floor was wet and they both slipped and Oscar chipped his tooth. So his mouth was bleeding. We said, “It's time-out now, let's all go to bed,” and by the time we had gone to bed, he didn't realise that he had fallen, I think he thought that I had beaten him up,' she said astonishingly. ‘I hid the gun from him and the next day he was looking for the gun and I had to tell him what happened but I don't think he had any recollection of what he had done.'

When asked if she thought he was capable of physical abuse, Taylor said she took the view that it was safer to indulge and ignore, than to stand up and provoke him.

‘You know, I think any man that's angry or has a short temper could be abusive and every woman would react differently. In my position, I'm the type of girl if I'm shouted at, I wouldn't retaliate, I wouldn't provoke someone because I know that it would only get worse. I would probably cry if I was shouted at. And another woman's perspective would be to retaliate or become abusive, so in my position, I definitely would not have provoked someone who is already angry.'

Another ‘problem' Taylor said recurred throughout her relationship with Oscar was the persistent presence of his ex-girlfriend Jenna Edkins.

‘She kept contacting him and eventually she ended up contacting me. She was a very big problem in our relationship. That girl was such a problem. I've had contact with Jenna, I've told her to back off, I've told her … I've had to, as the girlfriend of Oscar, I should not have to be messaging his ex-girlfriend, saying, “Leave my boyfriend alone; stop contacting him.” And as much as she was contacting him, he was obviously contacting her back.'

Taylor's voice rose in pitch as she exclaimed that she had to send Jenna messages ‘all the time!'

She elaborated: ‘She sent me messages saying he cheated on her all the time.
It's normal in their relationship. So for her, it's normal for him to be with other girls because she knows that she'll still have him when he falls back … I know she had a connection with his mother, so … she kind of … probably feels that she needs to be supportive there.'

Taylor painted a picture of a relationship between Jenna and Oscar that would not be extinguished, despite its turbulence – one that she claimed ran in parallel to any other relationship that Oscar entered into.

‘I think they had a problematic relationship, if anything. I think it was one of those relationships that you are stuck in for years and you never get out and I think every time he had a girlfriend and, like in my case it was a year and a half – he was with Jenna before me, he was with Jenna during me, he was with Jenna after me. He was with Jenna before Reeva, he was with Jenna while he was dating Reeva and he's probably still with Jenna now. So … that girl is always going to be in his life and … you know, that's why he can't be with other women, because that's cheating!'

It didn't surprise Taylor when we revealed to her that Jenna was present in Oscar's life the evening before he shot Reeva. That Oscar had spent nearly ten minutes on the phone to Jenna before the shooting. And that he had made telephonic contact with her on several occasions after he had a fallout with Reeva.

‘Typical!' Taylor exclaimed. ‘I would not be surprised. At all. At all!' It was as if a missing piece of the puzzle had dropped for Taylor.

‘You know, we both suffer from insomnia. Often I would wake up and he would be sitting on his phone. I often saw her name, although it was not saved under “BabyShoes” at the time. It was “Jenna Edkins”. I often saw her name. If he was showing me a photo on his phone and her WhatsApp message would pop up – we fought over that a lot. She was a very big problem in our relationship, a huge problem,' Taylor repeated.

And then, as if a floodgate had been opened, she detailed her thoughts on the extent of the relationship. ‘I can confirm that she was at his house. I used to find products that only ladies would use. We bought a puppy, well he wanted a puppy and I was with him at the time so it kind of became like our little baby and at the time I found a photo of Jenna with the dog and I know when we got the dog so I know it was when we were together. So that's caught red-handed. Lying on his bed with our dog. I had problems with Jenna our whole relationship.'

But surely Oscar and Jenna could simply be friends and there might be no romantic involvement? After all, they shared a powerful history together and one that linked Oscar to his late mother? Was Jenna only an emotional crutch or was there more to it? Taylor claimed it was the latter.

‘When we started dating he told me that they were kind of still friendly. They had just ended their relationship, they were kind of still friendly and the reason why they spoke was because she was there to support him. Her mother knew his mother and obviously which I understand and which I respected – is that his mother passed away while he was very young and if there's any attachment to your mother, you would want that in your life. So I think having Jenna, always there in his life, he just knew that his mother was still kind of in his life, which I respected. I said to him, “If you want to be friends with her, that's fine with me.” But again, in my eyes, if you are messaging your ex-girlfriend, or seeing your ex-girlfriend with intentions, that is cheating. He didn't want me to know that he was in contact with Jenna, which was already sneaky. If they were just friends, why was Jenna never around? With me, I said, “If you are just friends with Jenna then why can't I come with you to see her?”'

During Oscar's holiday to Cape Town in December 2012 – before Reeva flew in to join him and their friends Justin and Samantha – Taylor claimed that Edkins posted a photo of herself and the athlete to her Instagram feed and then apparently took it down hours later. Taylor pointed to this photograph as evidence of her claim that Jenna and Oscar were still involved, although the photograph could also simply be evidence of a good friendship, as Edkins insisted in her response to our questions.

Taylor laughed at the ‘Babyshoes' term of endearment Oscar used to refer to Edkins on his phone contact list. It was a moniker he had used for her too. ‘I know we always used to joke because my feet are so small compared to his.' But the most common term of endearment they had shared was ‘Baba' – the same name Oscar and Reeva adopted for one another.

Towards the middle of 2012, Oscar left South Africa for four months to train in Italy and compete in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. He had been dating Taylor for a year and their relationship could not have been better.

‘Things were good and I think the first month he was over there things were really good with us. Obviously it's like dating over Skype and it was quite tough but it was okay, it was working. And then … thereafter … after about a month, I think, I started realising he was acting a bit weird,' said Taylor.

Her mother Trish elaborated. ‘Before he went away, everything was fine. He came to stay with us. He used to come stay with us quite often. It was probably the best their relationship was, before he left, it was really, really going well.'

But then, all of a sudden, everything changed. ‘Early on while he was still in Italy, long before he went to London, he phoned me out of the blue one day. Crying and crying and crying on the phone. And it took me a while to realise like, shit, Oscar's crying, and then from that phone call onwards it was just ongoing phone calls, SMSes, emails,' revealed Trish. ‘He was literally crying for help in so many ways.'

In one of the emails Oscar sent from Italy to ‘Samantha and the Taylor family' in July 2012, he poured out his heart and apologised for the pain he had caused. He explained that the email was difficult to write as he was confronting issues he had been denying to himself for years:

On 17 July, just a few days after sending the email, Oscar sent an extended BBM message to Taylor, which featured these lines:

Once he was in London, the situation deteriorated even further. Taylor switched on her phone one morning to see on Twitter that her boyfriend allegedly had a new girlfriend. UK tabloid reports had splashed that the Blade Runner was dating Russian model Anastassia Khozissova. The pair had reportedly met in New York and was spotted holding hands while out and about in Chelsea.

‘I saw oh, Oscar has a girlfriend and it wasn't me. So that was when I ended it with him the first time. I didn't really want to speak to him because I was angry, so we were emailing each other all the time and … that's when I started dating Quinton,' she said, referring to her highly publicised relationship with the TV producer and mining billionaire Quinton van der Burgh.