One Tragic Night (79 page)

‘It was really tough because, obviously I loved Oscar and I wanted things to work but I knew at that time it just wasn't going to work for me. So while he was over at the Olympics, he was obviously very upset and he invited me to go over to the Olympics and he wanted to organise me a visa and a flight and everything, but I just felt at that time I definitely wasn't in the right place to give him a chance.

‘We were communicating over email but I was just so angry that I didn't want to speak to him, so he was phoning my family all the time. He was phoning my sister, probably ten, twenty times a day. He was phoning my mother in the middle of the night and messaging my brothers. He was checking up on me, he was asking my friends where I was and who I'm with. It was really exhausting. We had broken up, but he wouldn't acknowledge that we had broken up. I think on everyone's behalf it was very exhausting,' said Taylor.

It was around this time, during the Paralympics, that teammate Arnu Fourie moved out of the room they shared. Fourie told broadcaster David O'Sullivan that this was because Oscar was constantly screaming on his phone. Fourie later denied this, but Taylor confirmed that it was indeed her on the other end of Oscar's telephone tirades.

Just two days after Oscar's blowout over the length of Brazilian sprinter Alan Oliveira's blades at the Paralympics, he sent several more BBMs to Taylor. In the exchange, Oscar appeared to raise his concerns about Taylor seeing Van der Burgh and admitted to cheating on Taylor with Jenna Edkins during their relationship:

The last messages between Oscar and Taylor were sent on the same day that the athlete and his 4 x 100 metres relay teammates, including Arnu Fourie, celebrated winning gold and breaking the world record.

Trish also allegedly bore the brunt of the emotional outpouring over this time, fielding phone calls from Oscar at all hours. ‘He was so emotionally unstable. By this stage I also knew that he had an angry streak in him, I'd seen and heard about things that had gone wrong. He cried continuously. I was worried … I was worried … I thought he was going to commit suicide when he was away, and so often on the phone I'd keep him in the phone until he stopped crying, or … he calmed down and we'd often end up laughing or joking … or I'd say to him, “Your race tomorrow is going to be okay, it's going to be fine,” and then when I felt he was okay, then the conversations would end.'

For Trish, it was difficult to reconcile the Oscar who was the face of the Olympics and riding the wave of international celebrity with the man on the other end of the phone.

‘I couldn't speak to anyone about it. If it got into the media, we were just going to be trashed and my daughter would just be so badly trashed by the media. We were trapped in his secret. We were actually trapped. It was terrible – this started before the Olympics and carried on all the way through the Olympics and all the way through the Paralympics. It carried on for months. You know what it's like, everyone loved Oscar, so we had to keep everything a secret.

‘I kept saying, “Oz, you have to see a psychologist, you have to.” He used to promise all the time, “No, I know I need help, I promise you, Trish, I promise you I will go to a psychologist.” He never did. In every conversation, he'd promise me he'd see a psychologist. He did book one in London, but he never went to the appointment.'

When Oscar returned from the Olympics, he and Samantha got back together again, despite his behaviour while he had been away. ‘Towards the end of his London season, we were contacting each other again and we were just trying to work through issues more than anything, so we were going back and forth speaking to each other about everything, and the both of us decided, if we're going to make this work, it's got to work from both sides, so both of us have to put the work into the relationship, and that's when I decided, you know what, I'm not going to be half-hearted about a relationship, and I had ended things with Quinton,' explains Taylor.

It was a few weeks later that the couple went to the Seychelles to be featured on
Top Billing.
Despite presenting a picture of happiness, Taylor and her mother were still terribly concerned. Trish said the phone calls continued and Oscar's
behaviour became increasingly volatile. She thought Oscar was going to combust.

‘What would happen is he would cry, cry, cry for like a week and then out of the blue, when things went well, he would go on an absolute high and then suddenly he'd be with women, drinking, fast cars, and then a few days later he would go on with this crying – it was too extreme. His emotions were too extreme,' said Trish, completely identifying with the defence concept of the ‘Two Oscars'.

Towards the end of October, the relationship between Taylor and Oscar was on the skids. It was around this time that the now infamous confrontation between Oscar and Van der Burgh took place. As Taylor explained, it was on the morning before the couple went to Sun City for a weekend during which the relationship really fell apart.

‘The altercation had happened that day that we had left for Sun City. I was actually, I was at his house, I was packing for the both of us to leave for Sun City for the weekend, and he told me he would be home by about three o'clock. I think it was about four o'clock and we had to be in Sun City by six o'clock. So by four o'clock I had phoned him and his phone was off and then I got a phone call from a friend of mine who was at the race track, and he said to me, “Do you know what happened with Quinton and Oscar?”

‘I sent Oscar a message and I said to him, “Why are you causing shit in our relationship. Why … why did you feel the need to confront Quinton?” He went crazy, you know, he told me, “I'm your boyfriend, you should have been sticking up for me but you turn around and you're sticking up for Quinton.” It definitely caused another issue and that's why Sun City was just a rough ride for the both of us because all those past issues came up again.'

Although Oscar later testified in court they broke up that weekend, Taylor believed they formally remained a couple. ‘I think we both just had a very rough weekend and he flew back with me to Cape Town because he had a meeting in Cape Town and I came to see my family in the winelands. I think we were emailing back and forth up until that night of the Sports Awards, so I think in our minds we both kind of knew the relationship was over, but there was no … there was no confirmation because our emails were so back and forth.'

But Taylor knew it was over once and for all when she switched on the TV and saw Oscar and Reeva on the red carpet at the awards. ‘I was so heartbroken. I mean, obviously in my mind, we were fighting and I think we both knew the relationship was coming to an end again, but I never knew he would go to that extreme to spite me and take another girl to the awards, so I think at that moment I knew I never wanted to see him again.'

It was then that she also claimed to have received a phone call from Darren Fresco, ‘threatening' her and warning her to stay out of Oscar's space.

This infuriated and terrified Taylor's mother. ‘I said to him, “Something is going to go wrong before the end of this year.” And that was already, I think it was already October or November,' recalls Trish.

‘I said, “Something is going to go wrong and it's going to go wrong soon.” In my mind I thought he's either going to commit suicide or he's going to have a car accident, because he was speeding everywhere. And I said to him, “It's going to go wrong soon and I can't see a way out for you because you are sitting in the middle of your own web of lies, and everything around you is collapsing.”'

Trish's forecast, of course, proved to be prophetic. Something terrible did go wrong. And when she heard the news on Valentine's Day, she said it broke her heart.

‘I thought he had committed suicide. Then when we found out that he had shot someone, I was just … I was so sad. I just thought, why did no one … why didn't his family stop this? Why did no one – I couldn't have been the only person that knew that things were so bad. His family must have known. His coach must have known. His manager must have known. Why was no one getting him help? People must have known.'

‘Your version is so improbable that nobody would ever think it is reasonably possibly true.'

This became the state's dictum when attacking Oscar's version of events, and was repeated by prosecutor Gerrie Nel when he questioned elements of the timeline of events on the morning of Valentine's Day. Nel cross-examined Oscar for nearly five days and jumped around to the various themes and topics raised in Oscar's evidence-in-chief; it was never chronological or tackled in the manner it was presented by the accused.

In one session Nel would question Oscar on the moments in the bathroom just before the shooting, and then jump to the scene at Tashas; on another occasion he would quiz Oscar on the dinner he said he had with Reeva the night before the shooting, and then switch to dealing with crime in the area. The technique was designed to throw the witness off, to test his memory.

Nel was clear about what he thought of Oscar's version of events. ‘I am saying that your version of events is in fact untrue. Mr Pistorius, I say that you have a concocted version, which you have tailored to fit the state's case and you are tailoring your version as you are sitting there.'

Amongst the difficulties Nel had with Oscar's version was how he was able to recall fine detail about everything he did leading up to the shooting – what he saw and heard, how quickly or slowly he was moving, where his hands were placed – yet when it came to that critical moment in the bathroom when he pulled the trigger, his memory wasn't nearly as reliable.

Nel argued that to believe Oscar, one would have to accept that Reeva got out of bed without saying a word to the accused; that she slipped down the passage without him seeing her; that she took her phone with her; and that she never once screamed when he shouted at intruders.

The prosecutor seemed puzzled that the couple who had allegedly just spoken to each other about their sleep troubles did not communicate further. In answering Nel's persistent questions, Oscar asserted that Reeva never asked where he was going when he got out of bed, or why he was getting out of bed, and he never told her he was going to collect the fans. Perhaps most importantly, he says Reeva did not say she was going to the toilet.

Nel did not believe Oscar's explanation that fetching his firearm and confronting the threat was the only option available to him. Nel suggested that Oscar could have called Reeva and then fled the bedroom, or even hidden from the intruder.

Nel explored what had often been the topic of public debate – why would Oscar believe that an intruder who had just broken in to his house would hide inside his toilet?