Reeva: A Mother's Story (21 page)

The trial resumed after Easter with yet more witnesses called by the defence. I understood this is how the criminal justice system works: that the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty and does not have to prove his innocence. I realised all the defence had to do was to argue a version of events that fitted the forensic evidence while the onus was on the state to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But what I also saw was that this would be a very hard thing to do when there were only two people present: Reeva, who was dead, and Oscar, who had admitting shooting her, and who now, by his own admission, was trying to save his own life. He knew his entire future was in the balance.

So I sat through witnesses who expanded on Oscar’s alleged distress after the incident. We heard Johan Stander, a neighbour, recall receiving a phone call from Oscar asking him to ‘Please, please, please, come to my house, I shot Reeva, I thought she was a burglar.’ The neighbour’s daughter, Carice Viljoen, said he was desperately asking for an ambulance as he held her body, ‘praying to God the whole time to save her life. He just kept on begging Reeva to just stay with him and not leave him. He was begging and pleading with Reeva to please stay with him. He was saying “stay with me, my love, stay with me”.’ She said that when Oscar went to get Reeva’s bag to prove ID for the paramedics, she feared he would get the gun from the bathroom and shoot himself, so she ran after him. Another neighbour, Michael Nhlengethwa, said he heard a man crying in a high-pitched voice with the words: ‘No, please, please, no.’ But how did he know for sure the ‘high-pitched voice’ was a man? The defence challenged the prosecution on the time Reeva would have last eaten, the position she was in behind the door when the bullet struck her arm and the rate of gunshots. A ballistics expert said he believed that four shots were fired in quick succession, supporting Oscar’s claim that he shot quickly in a state of panic. If that was the case, how did one miss her?

I felt very uncomfortable when a social worker and probation officer was called to the stand to say that, because the media had been reporting he had been feigning grief, she wanted to testify that Oscar seemed ‘a heartbroken man’ when she met him the day after the shooting. In my view, he may well have been crying, but who was he crying for? He could have been crying for himself and for the end of his life as he had known it. Then a psychiatrist, Dr Merryll Vorster, advanced her belief that he had an anxiety disorder that stemmed from his double amputation at an early age. She said: ‘Individuals with an anxiety disorder work hard to control their environment and be very prepared in order to alleviate their levels of anxiety.’

Gerrie Nel was quick to challenge her assessment, pointing out his lack of concern over a broken window and the fact that ladders, which could have allowed someone to enter his home, had been left unattended. But, with his mental state under question, Oscar’s defence team could claim diminished responsibility and so the prosecution asked that he undergo a psychiatric examination. Judge Masipa agreed: ‘It is necessary to emphasise that an application of this nature is never taken lightly, as it is an integral part of a fair trial, having regard to the above, I am satisfied… and I shall grant that order.’ And so, he was ordered to undergo a month of psychiatric observation at Weskoppies psychiatric hospital. In another concession that seemed to be unnecessarily lenient towards him, he was allowed to be an outpatient at the hospital for thirty days. He would be monitored seven hours a day, five days a week. He didn’t have to make the trip at the weekends or overnight – even though the moment his alleged anxiety issues caused him to shoot a gun came in the small hours of the night.

Another long break gave people more time to talk and analyse and offer their views. Each day in court was being televised with a further highlights package in the evening. The trial was coming into peoples’ sitting rooms and everyone had an opinion or a theory. People told me they’d heard Oscar had been coached to act distressed on the witness stand, that he’d even had acting lessons. Others informed me that all athletes know how to empty their stomachs before a big race and that was why he was able to retch and vomit so dramatically in court as if in grief. Others said he had a condition which meant he vomited whenever he became emotional. What was a Chinese Whisper or a rumour or a fact, I didn’t know, but the impression I got was that no one in the world beyond the courtroom bought into his version of events. They believed he’d hired the best legal team money could buy to back up a story that fitted around the forensic evidence.

If the defence had hopes that the psychiatric evaluation would assist its case, we were pleased to hear they were quashed when the report compiled by four mental health experts was sent back with a resounding and unanimous conclusion that Oscar Pistorius was perfectly sane when he shot Reeva. Gerrie Nel recited the findings into the court record: ‘Mr Pistorius did not suffer from a mental defect or a mental illness at the time of the commission of the offence that would have rendered him criminally not responsible for the offences charged… Mr Pistorius was capable of appreciating the wrongfulness of his act and of acting in accordance of an appreciation of the wrongfulness of his act.’ It seemed to me that Team Pistorius had introduced the argument to detract attention from Oscar’s dismal performance on the witness stand in an attempt to restore his credibility. But it had backfired. The defence now had a few last witnesses to call – including the surgeon who had amputated his legs as a child.

That same day, the judge examined Oscar’s stumps at close range. He was asked to remove his prosthetics and walk in the court to assess the mobility he has on his stumps. He looked so tiny, you know. It did prompt sympathy for him from everyone present. I felt sorry for him actually. I can’t believe I went through that emotion, considering he took my daughter from me, but I’m not a cruel person, I don’t want revenge. If he walks free, he walks free. If he goes to jail for a couple of years, what’s the difference? It’s not going to change my life. My beautiful girl is never coming back. She’s never going to have a baby, never going to get married, never going to have a wedding dress, never going to do all the good in the world that she had set her heart on. And I know that she was ready for all that. She was in the prime of her life. The sky was the limit – and she ends up a spirit in the sky.

Five more days of evidence ushered forward an acoustics expert who questioned whether neighbours 177 metres away could have heard screams coming from the toilet, or identified whether the individual screaming was a man or a woman, with Gerrie Nel arguing that ‘more often than not’ you could. The defence put up Oscar’s long-term manager Peet Van Zyl, to whom he is obviously close. He said a measure of the strength of the relationship was that Reeva was the first girlfriend Oscar ever asked to accompany him overseas, but the next day Gerrie Nel produced an email showing that in 2012 he had received passport details so that Oscar’s previous girlfriend Samantha Taylor could accompany him overseas. We also heard a professor talk about the challenges faced by disabled people generally, and athletes especially. These witnesses made me wriggle. Throughout the case, the judge had allowed so much discussion of him and his emotions because he has no legs and therefore can claim a vulnerability, but this is a man who became a sporting hero precisely because he does not consider himself ‘disabled’. He had proved he could compete against able-bodied athletes at world-class level. That requires the opposite of vulnerability; it requires phenomenal mental strength. There was nothing fragile about him. Besides, a lot of people have mobility problems.

We were nearing the conclusion of the first phase of the case now, and it was a day of dramatic talk and whispers outside the court. Luckily I didn’t see it but we heard an Australian television channel had aired footage of Oscar re-enacting the night he shot and killed Reeva. It wasn’t mentioned directly in court but both legal terms discussed it in private. Surely it undermined Barry Roux’s argument that Oscar could not have carried out the shooting on his stumps because of limited ability? It seemed he was much more stable and mobile on his stumps than had been argued by his defence lawyers in court. Wayne Derman, a professor in disability sports, insisted that running on stumps was difficult for him. Gerrie Nel asked him up front if he had considered that the accused might have been lying? ‘Of course I have,’ he replied.

At last the defence rested its case. We were not due back in court until 7 and 8 August for closing arguments.

6 August 2014

A month later it was time to leave the running of the Barking Spider to the team again and hand care of the dogs and cat over to Simone. For the first time, Barry was considered well enough to travel and attend court. Together, we would fly to Pretoria and take up position on the family bench of courtroom GD to hear the closing arguments of the respective legal teams. It killed Barry that he couldn’t be in court every day. He set out to watch every minute on TV, but walked away whenever it got too much for him. For a very long time he couldn’t even say Reeva’s name. To this day, it just wells up in him. We all handle our grief the way we can… We travelled with Dup, Truia and Tania Koen (Dup’s instructing attorney and Jennifer’s stepdaughter) and met up with Kim and other friends and family members in the High Court. Dup had explained that over two days we would hear Gerrie Nel, for the state, ask the judge to reject Oscar’s version of events and then it would be the turn of Barry Roux, for the defence, to wrap up their case, where they would try to argue that Oscar’s exaggerated response to the fear of an intruder was due to his vulnerability as a double amputee. The verdict would hinge on whether Judge Masipa believed the accused’s version of events. I warned Barry that the ordeal in sitting through a concentrated recap of thirty-nine days of court proceedings would be an intense emotional seesaw – hearing ‘our side’ on one day against Oscar’s on the next. We could bear sitting through the prosecution case, painful as it was, because it was the story we in our heart of hearts believed to be true; listening to a day of the defence would make our blood boil.

We had our armoury of little pills to help keep stress at bay. I was still worried about the impact on Barry of his first sighting of Oscar, but I was comforted to have him by my side. The one positive outcome of the trial has been that this whole gruelling experience has transformed our relationship. We were separated for fourteen years, which is a long time not to live under the same roof with someone, and it was a difficult transition after I’d returned to him. We’ve been in contact every day of our lives since our marriage in 1981. I never went out with anyone else. I wasn’t interested. It’s Barry I’ve always loved. We always had money worries and that was stressful and draining. It was a horrible thing. People would phone me because Barry would say, here’s my wife’s number, she organises everything. And I got tired of that. I do love him. He is a lovely person. Everyone loves Barry. And now we’ve become much closer again. In our grief, at first he’d pick on me or I’d pick on him, and that was hurtful to both of us when we only had each other to lean on. It became a habit. Many marriages do not survive this sort of tragedy, but Barry came to me one morning during this extended trial process and said he realised he hadn’t always been the best husband in the world but that I was going to see a different person from now on. He was going to be the husband I deserved. That was a big thing for me. Maybe what I’ve always wanted. And he’s so sweet, you know. He’s so considerate. He’ll make me a cup of tea in the morning and he’ll do helpful things. He’s like a different person.

During this recent adjournment, we heard reports that Oscar had been involved in an incident with a man in a nightclub, where he was allegedly drunk, unruly and boasting about the power of his family’s wealth. Yet another statement from the efficient Pistorius family PR machine claimed otherwise, stating he had been aggressively interrogated by a fellow club goer. The statement also dwelt on his ‘loneliness and alienation’. As Barry and I agreed, it is a sad situation all round. Here is a man who once had status and now everyone feels sorry for him. He cut a pathetic figure. And we have lost our beautiful daughter.

We arrived and found the media excited by the presence of the two fathers: Barry and Henke Pistorius, the father from whom Oscar was estranged and who was making his first appearance in court since 3 March. It emphasised just how high the stakes were at this crucial stage of the trial.

Gerrie Nel began with a quote from
Rumpole of the Bailey
. ‘With all due respect to your ladyship,’ he said, ‘I was thinking a criminal trial is a very blunt instrument for digging out the truth.’ He said this was a case where they had had to work very hard – but they would get to the truth. As he put the case to the judge, he maintained Oscar was guilty of murder. He argued that the accused’s actions in fetching the gun and walking down the corridor towards the bathroom indicates premeditation. Oscar had plenty of alternative courses of action if he truly feared an intruder: ‘He had lots of time for reflection. He made up his mind in the bedroom when he armed himself. That is pre-planning.’

He described him as an ‘appalling witness’ whose testimony was ‘devoid of truth’ and said he was ‘more interested in fending for his life than in entrusting the court with a truthful account.’ He went through a baker’s dozen of significant incongruities in the defence case, arguing that conflicting evidence about the position of fans and a duvet in his bedroom proved Oscar was tailoring his evidence to mask the fact that he knew it was Reeva in the bathroom when he fired through the locked toilet door. He maintained that there was no proof that the police tampered with the crime scene and that the position of items in the bedroom meant the defence version cannot be true. He told the judge that whether he believed the person behind the door was an intruder or Reeva, it was murder by
dolus directus
(premeditated murder) or
dolus eventualis
(when he must have known he was likely to kill the person by firing). He summed up: ‘The accused intended to kill a human being. He knew there was a human being in that toilet. That’s his evidence. He is guilty of murder. There must be consequences for it.’