by Mandy Wiener
This proved two things for Nel: the crime scene upstairs was being preserved and the police didn’t allow unaccompanied people to wander around the bedroom; and that an item like the towel had not been moved. This was contrary to Oscar’s claims of at least six items being moved by cops after the shooting.
Nel questioned Viljoen about her understanding of Oscar’s state of mind that morning. She confirmed that he was able to tell her that the towels were upstairs when she asked, and that he specifically asked her to keep her fingers in Reeva’s mouth while he fetched black bags.
‘He is the one that constantly asked when the ambulance would arrive, so he was following what is going on?’ asked Nel.
‘Well, he asked questions, but he was … everything was in a frantic state, My Lady, so I would not know if he was following what was happening.’
‘But if you gave him an instruction, he would follow it?’
‘Yes, he would, My Lady,’ she said.
In the meantime, the defence was slowly constructing the timeline of events that would form the backbone of its case when it came to closing argument. Viljoen’s evidence would prove to be crucial in this construction.
Her evidence supported the timeline as set out by her father. Stander received the call from Oscar at about 3:19am and, according to Viljoen’s evidence, it took them about three minutes to get to the house. The defence used this to estimate the time that the first witnesses arrived on the scene at about 3:22am. The defence would also look to Viljoen’s testimony about the time that she heard the three calls for help, to corroborate the testimony of other neighbours who had heard the same calls. They matched up, slotting another block of the overarching timeline in place. And while Roux continued to build the timeline, he believed that Stipp’s version – and with it the state’s case – would crumble.
Michael Nhlengethwa, a self-employed civil engineer, lived next to Oscar on the other side of a shared wall. If you were to face the athlete’s house, Nhlengethwa’s home would be to the left in the same street. He shares the house with his wife Rontle, who also testified, and his children.
Nhlengethwa met Oscar in 2009 when he was considering buying the house – the developer introduced them to each other so he could inspect the athlete’s house to get an idea of the types of finishes intended for his own home. Oscar was also the first person to welcome the new resident to the estate, and they struck up a neighbourly relationship. Oscar usually made the effort to get out of his car, come over and greet him properly, but they did not socialise together.
It was during one of their impromptu sidewalk encounters that Oscar introduced Reeva to his neighbour as his fiancé – a moment Nhlengethwa said he would never forget. ‘When she came towards me, I raised my hand to greet her and she just opened her arms, she just came and hugged me.
‘I could see the person that she was because, you know, when a person brings you closer to her, that means something,’ he said.
So impressed was Nhlengethwa with Reeva, he told Oscar, ‘This one is for keeps.’ The athlete told his neighbour that he would soon be moving out of the estate to a house in Joburg because he wanted to be closer to Reeva.
For Roux, this demonstrated the loving relationship between his client and Reeva. It showed that Oscar was a friendly, courteous neighbour who was well liked by those around him. But it also exposed a potential lie: Oscar later told a psychiatrist that the reason he wanted to move to Joburg was because he was scared for his safety at Silver Woods.
On 14 February Nhlengethwa recalled being woken by his wife who said that she had heard a bang, which she thought could have been inside their house. He got out of bed to check on his daughter in a neighbouring bedroom, and then walked around the house checking doors and windows for anything suspicious, before returning to the bedroom. It’s then, he testified, that he could hear a man crying very loudly, as if he needed desperate help, and realised something was wrong.
He said the noise was very high pitched. Roux had told state witnesses that when his client is anxious, his screams sound like those of a woman – and this neighbour confirmed that it was a man’s voice – albeit high pitched – that he had heard.
This was an absolutely critical statement from the witness. Here was a neighbour, who lived considerably closer to Oscar than any of the witnesses who had been called to testify. While the others had claimed to have heard what sounded like a woman screaming, Nhlengethwa believed it to be a man. It was a clincher for the defence. They would later argue that they did not believe it necessary to call an expert to prove that Oscar sounds like a woman when he screams because Nhlengethwa, and others, had testified to this. This statement also questioned why, perhaps, the state had not called Nhlengethwa – because his testimony would have undermined their case.
Roux referred Nhlengethwa to the security phone records that showed he called security twice at about 3:16am when he told security that there was an emergency and someone urgently needed help. He said that as the crying continued, he peeked out of his window waiting for the guards to arrive. While his wife, Rontle, would testify to hearing a man call for help three times, Nhlengethwa said he did not hear this, possibly because he was on the phone at the time.
Nhlengethwa watched as the security vehicle briefly stopped outside the Stipps’ house, before speeding off and a car from that same house speeding away a short while later. He saw them all come to a stop outside Oscar’s house. It was then that Nhlengethwa went outside to offer assistance and he stayed until the paramedics left, when he realised there wasn’t much he could do. Nhlengethwa said he looked inside the house from the front door and saw Oscar kneeling over the dying woman, but never ventured into the house. ‘I could not take watching what I saw in that point in time,’ he said.
Under cross-examination Nhlengethwa admitted to Nel that he had followed every word of the trial as it happened in court from day one, but he was satisfied that his statement to the police was accurate. He admitted, too, that he found it hard to believe the testimony of the Stipps and Burger and Johnson. They lived much further away from the crime scene than he and yet claimed to have heard so much more, but he conceded that he might well have slept through the commotion.
Nhlengethwa said he did not hear any shots or loud bangs, and clarified that he and his wife did not hear anything that sounded like a door being broken down with a cricket bat. This immediately called into question the value of this witness, because even on Oscar’s own version, he first shot at the door before hitting it with the bat – and this witness hadn’t heard a thing.
‘You never heard anybody scream?’ asked Nel.
‘I heard a man that was crying,’ Nhlengethwa said, adding that he also could not establish exactly where it was coming from.
Rontle Nhlengethwa was one of two of Oscar’s neighbours who re-enacted the screams as they heard them on the morning of the shooting. She said she was woken up on the morning of 14 February by a ‘bang’, which is the only way she was able describe the loud noise. She didn’t know what it was or where it came from, but it was enough to startle her and prompt her to wake up her husband. Rontle’s recollection of events mirrored her husband’s, except for the point where he left her in the room to inspect the house when she heard what sounded like a man calling for help three times very loudly. She then heard a man crying, which she described as sounding as if the person was hurt and needed urgent help.
Roux asked Rontle to demonstrate to the court what she had heard. She composed herself, taking a few seconds and clearing her throat, before she let out a loud, long wail in the courtroom. ‘But in a voice of a man,’ she was quick to qualify. The court sat silent, imagining this scream breaking the silence in the dead of night.
But why hadn’t Roux asked the previous witness, a man, to demonstrate what he had heard? Rontle did, however, state that the crying was high pitched, as had her husband.
‘It is interesting that more people heard: “Help! Help! Help!”’ said Nel to Rontle in cr
oss-examination. ‘Stipp,’ he continued, ‘heard: “Help! Help! Help!” after the second of the shots he heard.’
It was now clear that the state would argue that these witnesses’ versions of events followed the second set of noises heard by other neighbours, which would explain why the Nhlengethwas only heard Oscar crying and no screaming.
Nel: Now you never left your room?
Rontle: Not at all, M’Lady.
Nel: And you never heard further ‘bang’ shots?
Rontle: No, only those that I told the court about. If I would have heard such sounds, I would have informed the court about that.
Nel: If one takes into account Dr Stipp’s evidence, about when he heard ‘Help! Help! Help!’, the bang sound you heard was the last bang sound you heard.
Rontle: Well that is the only sound I heard.
The question thus remained: could a bang loud enough to wake a neighbour have been the cricket bat, as argued by the defence, or a gunshot as contended by the state?
Another neighbour who shared a wall with Oscar is Rika Motshuane, who lived to the right of the athlete’s house. She woke up on the morning of 14 February hearing a man crying, and subsequently roused her husband. ‘The crying was very loud and it was very close,’ she said.
Just as he had done with Rontle Nhlengethwa, Roux asked the witness to demonstrate to the court what she had heard. Motshuane let out two long wails, which she said were continuous on the morning in question. Roux had now asked two female witnesses to demonstrate the crying they had heard – again, why had he not asked the male witness who had also heard it?
Motshuane, she says, peeked out of her window towards Oscar’s house when she heard a commotion from that direction. Her husband called security, who explained that whatever was happening at Oscar’s house was being taken care of.
The witness told Nel in cross-examination that in her statement to police, she had estimated that she heard the crying at about 3:20am – this was squarely after the second set of noises that the state believed were the gunshots. Motshuane didn’t hear any gunshots.
In early May 2014, while Oscar’s closest neighbours were testifying for the defence, a sideshow erupted in court, drawing attention away from the content of the witness testimony, much to the defence legal team’s frustration.
Oscar was accused of trying to intimidate Kim Myers by going up to her in the public gallery and asking, ‘How can you sleep at night?’ The exchange was reportedly heard by those around her, including a warrant officer who reported the incident to prosecutor Gerrie Nel. Myers, through her attorney Ian Levitt, also lodged a complaint with the National Prosecuting Authority.
In a statement, Levitt suggested that Oscar may have been upset by comments made by the Myers family in media interviews. ‘My client, Kim Myers, was approached by Oscar Pistorius in court today and in a very sinister tone was asked, “How can you sleep at night?” My client views this unwelcome approach as extremely disturbing and I have been in communication with the National Prosecuting Authorities as well as the Investigating Officer. All other parties have also been informed. My client however will remain focused on the trial and will continue to attend court in support of Reeva.’
But when reporters in court questioned Oscar about the claim, he replied: ‘No, I haven’t spoken to her.’ He insisted: ‘I haven’t spoken to them for a year and a half. I walk past them in the corridors and hold doors open for them but they don’t look me in the eye.’
Oscar’s attorney Brian Webber dismissed the allegation as ‘grossly untrue’. A source within the defence team told us that they were annoyed that on a day when their witnesses had made significant strides in countering the state’s neighbours’ testimony, the media focus was only on the alleged incident between Myers and Oscar. There was very little reporting on what the neighbours had told the court.
Ten neighbours – five for the state and another five for the defence – testified in total. Add to this the evidence of the guard who was in charge of security at the estate on the morning of the shooting.
The opposing sides in the murder trial had presented starkly contrasting versions of events. On the one hand, there was the evidence of what sounded like an argument, then the blood-curdling screams of a woman, the image of a man walking in Oscar’s bathroom, the light on in his house and then bangs. The state believed that the terrifying screams before the shots could only have been Reeva fleeing her boyfriend in the moments before she was killed and that it was compelling testimony of an argument between Oscar and Reeva, which led to him shooting her intentionally in a fit of rage.
On the other hand, there was the evidence of a man screaming not a woman claims from neighbours living far closer to Oscar’s home. There was also the testimony of those who arrived first on the scene, who told of the athlete’s distress and insistence that he had believed his girlfriend to be an intruder. Crucially, the defence had now also collected all the building blocks of its timeline, which it would construct to show that the state’s version, particularly that of Dr Stipp, was simply impossible.
Both sides were saddled with significant problems – holes poked during cross-examination. The greatest difficulty for the state was to explain the two sets of noises heard at about 3:12am and at about 3:17am – even by the state’s own witnesses. According to the defence’s version, the first set of noises was, in fact, the gunshots and the second sounds were the cricket bat – this appeared to undermine the state’s version, particularly as it failed to explain the first sounds.
Roux was, however, left with the challenge of proving that his client’s screams could have been mistaken for Reeva’s, an issue that the last three neighbours he called addressed in their testimony. While these people heard screaming, they were adamant it was a man in a high pitch. This would support the claim that the shouts were from Oscar as he desperately tried to break down the bathroom door with his cricket bat in order to save his girlfriend.
It would, however, be left to Judge Masipa and her assessors to decide whether the state’s witnesses had convinced them of their version of events beyond a reasonable doubt. If they found that the defence’s witnesses gave a version that was reasonably possibly true, it would be difficult to convict Oscar of murder.
The Last Meal
Nel’s first expert witness, the lanky, wire-haired state pathologist Gert Saayman, presented something of a change in tone after the first week of testimony from neighbours, friends and security guards. Professor Saayman had been listening in on testimony for the first week, sitting amongst the ballistics, forensic and blood spatter analysts behind the prosecution team.
Going in to the trial it was well known that the cause of Reeva’s death was several gunshots, but the specifics and the finer details of her last moments remained unknown because the postmortem was one aspect of the investigation that had been kept well under wraps.
A pathologist’s job is to study the deceased – both externally and internally, by means of dissection – and describe to the court the nature of the wounds, what impact such wounds would have had on the subject while still alive, and offer an explanation of what might have caused the wound. A study of the organs also provides insight into other factors that may have affected the deceased; in the case of Reeva, a study of her stomach’s contents was to prove useful for the state.
A pathologist’s report and testimony is by its nature graphic, and includes descriptions of wounds and procedures that leave nothing to the imagination. So when Nel called the professor, he told the judge that there was an objection from the witness to his testimony being broadcast, which was an exception to the order that all state expert witnesses should be televised: ‘He has an ethical issue that he would want to raise about the evidence he is about to give,’ said Nel. ‘M’Lady, he will give evidence in graphic detail about the postmortem on the deceased.’
While a temporary blackout had no real bearing on the trial itself, there was however a battle of public opinion worldwide. On on
e hand, the public who supported the deceased wanted to know how Reeva had died, while those siding with the accused agreed that such testimony would be an affront to her dignity, and do nothing but fuel the voyeuristic appetite the trial had cultivated.
Reeva’s mother hadn’t been in court for the last week, but the doctor’s concerns went beyond the courtroom to where the world was watching. ‘I believe that by such public and contemporaneous streaming of information of this nature,’ said the professor, ‘it is almost inevitable that we will impinge upon, or harm the rights of remaining relatives and friends of the deceased.’
While there was considerable debate as to the merits of this compromise, Judge Mapisa eventually ordered that there would be no live broadcast of Saayman’s testimony; a package of Saayman’s testimony was to be compiled by the media team and submitted to the prosecution and defence legal teams to approve prior to broadcast.
The judge also provided clarity on her prohibition of social media, showing how unfamiliar she was to this new phenomenon in courtrooms. ‘Someone was kind enough to give me more information about blogging and tweeting. As a result of that, in respect of this witness, blogging and tweeting is allowed.’
‘I hold concurrent appointments as Head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Pretoria,’ started Professor Saayman. ‘That is an academic and teaching appointment, and concurrently as the Chief Specialist or Head of Forensic Pathology Services in the Gauteng Department of Health in Pretoria.’
The professor, who has more than 30 years’ experience and has conducted thousands of postmortems, has held that position since 1998 – he’s responsible for wide-ranging investigations of death, whether natural, unnatural, unexplained or sudden and was no stranger to high-profile cases and the glare of the media. In the trial of Fred van der Vyfer – accused of murdering his girlfriend Inge Lotz and controversially acquitted – Saayman testified that it was highly unlikely that an ornamental hammer caused the extensive injuries to the woman’s head, neck and chest, as contended by the state. He also testified for the state in the case of Pretoria mother Chanelle Henning, who was shot dead in 2011 by gunmen moments after dropping her son off at school.
