by Mandy Wiener
Nel: Because you are in the room, sir! Mr Pistorius, you are now in the room, you are shouting. She is three metres away from you behind that particular door. There is no way that you will convince the court that she stood there, saying nothing.
In an effort to show that Oscar’s version was a lie, Nel picked apart every detail, every step Oscar said he took that morning. It was relentless cross-examination that often took its toll on the accused, but elicited little sympathy from Nel.
Oscar vacillated from confidence when dealing with the firearm-related charges to tears when pressed on the moments he killed his girlfriend. It was widely believed that Nel was going to be tough on the athlete, but the prosecutor’s tactics proved to be ruthless and devoid of any sensitivity whatsoever. Oscar would have to sustain this scrutiny for five long days in the witness box.
Contaminated, Disturbed, Tampered
Questions surrounding the police’s handling of the crime scene emerged in the bail application mere days after the shooting and cast a shadow over the police’s integrity. In light of the South African public’s cynicism about the capabilities of the police service, this wasn’t entirely surprising. Former investigating officer Hilton Botha was accused of entering the crime scene without the appropriate protective bootees covering his shoes. Although anyone close to the case would claim that this was not relevant because the accused had already admitted to killing the victim, it was the principle that was being tested. It was a ‘how dunnit’ rather than a ‘who dunnit’. But then more details of irregularities emerged, some by the police’s own admission and others voiced by Oscar himself. The accused stated in his plea explanation that he would use this to argue his innocence:
It will also be demonstrated during this trial, whilst Botha was the investigating officer and tasked with preserving the scene, that the scene was contaminated, disturbed and tampered with. This feature of the State’s case will be dealt with when Botha, amongst others, gives evidence.
At the time, the defence team assumed Hilton Botha would take the stand and were sharpening their knives in anticipation. But this wasn’t the way the trial ultimately played out. Instead, the state called the former Boschkop station commander and the first police officer to arrive on the scene, Colonel Schoombie van Rensburg.
The veteran policeman has a Friar Tuck-like appearance, with a shiny bald patch on the top of his head and neatly trimmed greying hair around the back and sides. Recently retired, he had subsequently followed his passion to coach sport.
Van Rensburg explained how it came to be that he and a Constable Christelle Prinsloo were the first police officers to arrive. He had found Oscar in a very emotional state in the kitchen, where he was being consoled by a woman later identified as Carice Viljoen, the daughter of neighbour Johan Stander.
Nel led the witness through his observations when he arrived on the scene: who was there, what were they doing, what did they say and how did he react? The answers set out the timeline of events, plotted the movements of key players in the police and the accused, and explained what had informed the police’s rationale to arrest Oscar on a charge of murder.
Van Rensburg said he confined Oscar to the kitchen, where he observed the athlete retching at times. When Hilton Botha arrived, Van Rensburg showed the investigating officer Reeva’s body, and together they followed the blood trail up the stairs, down the passage into Oscar’s bedroom, past the cupboards and into the bathroom. Nel referred to the crime scene pictures along this path, which the policeman described and confirmed was indeed the state in which he had observed them. He was asked to comment on specific items in the bedroom:
Nel: Now that view of the bedroom, can you still remember that as the view you got the day you entered?
Van Rensburg: That is correct, M’Lady. That is as it was.
Nel: When you got to the scene, was that door open or closed?
Van Rensburg: The door was open, M’Lady.
Nel: What was the condition of the curtains, when you got to the scene?
Van Rensburg: The curtains were drawn open as they were there. They were not closed.
Nel: Now before we carry on, Colonel, since the time that you arrived at the scene, did anybody go upstairs, up until the time that you and Botha went up?
Van Rensburg: After I had arrived on the scene, M’Lady, until I went up with Botha, nobody else entered that scene.
The state was pre-empting the defence case. Nel was also laying the foundations for a much later exchange with Oscar, when he would take the accused through the state of the bedroom in order to discredit his version.
Van Rensburg further confirmed that when he arrived the grey duvet was on the floor in front of one of the fans; a pair of denim jeans was lying next to the duvet; a pair of white flip-flops was found on the left side of the bed close to an overnight bag on a chair; a firearm holster was found on the left bedside table; the two fans were found as they were pictured; and a box of eight luxury watches was found on top of a speaker in the room.
With the photograph of the bathroom up on screens in the courtroom, Van Rensburg described the state in which he found the room: the shattered wood panels, bullet shells, the cricket bat, shards of bullet fragments, the open window, the silver pistol with the hammer pulled back, and two cellphones. A black iPhone, lying closest to the firearm, had come out of its silver case, which to Van Rensburg created the impression it was two phones on top of each other. He said it was only later, while he was not present and while moving items in the bathroom, that police discovered the second phone, a white iPhone, under a towel closest to the bath.
Van Rensburg stated that after inspecting the crime scene and establishing from Oscar that only he and Reeva had been in the house at the time of the shooting, he immediately viewed the athlete as a suspect. Oscar was then moved from the kitchen to the garage where his brother Carl and Advocate Kenny Oldwadge had access to him. The cop insisted that from the time he arrived at the house, access control was implemented and a barrier erected. In the days that followed, the house was locked up with numbered and tagged tamper-proof seals that were documented.
When the police’s photographer Bennie van Staden arrived, Van Rensburg and Botha led him through the crime scene, from Reeva’s body up to the bathroom where the shooting had taken place. He insisted only the three of them went upstairs and that no one else had access to the first level of the house. Only later did he allow Oscar’s sister Aimee and Carice Viljoen to go to the bedroom to fetch clothes, but Van Staden accompanied them.
Van Rensburg said he had specifically asked Van Staden to take a picture of the watchcase as he had realised that the watches were valuable and might be tempting for someone to steal. Because of blood smears on the mirror on the inside lid, the case was also considered evidence. At some stage after Oscar was removed from the scene and the forensics team was upstairs gathering evidence, Van Rensburg entered the room and noticed that one of the watches was missing. Van Staden had told him that Aimee had taken one. And then, a short while later when he was downstairs, Van Staden told him that another watch had in the interim been removed from the box. ‘Immediately I gave the instruction that everybody had to come to the garage,’ said Van Rensburg.
‘We body searched everyone. We searched all the bags each and every forensic expert had on his possession. We searched the whole house through again. Again went back to the main bedroom. We even searched the vehicles of all the forensic experts on the scene without giving anyone permission to leave. We could not find the watch.’
Van Rensburg said he opened a case of theft and personally returned the remaining six watches to Oscar some time later. The incident prompted stricter access control to the house; and every person entering and exiting was searched.
This, however, wasn’t the only incident of blatant police bungling, as Van Rensburg further explained. He said that after the photographer had finished in the bathroom, the ballistics expert, a lieutenant, was allowed in to conduct investigation
s and seize the firearm. While talking on his phone, Van Rensburg said he heard the firearm being cocked and turned his head towards the sound. ‘The ballistic expert had the firearm in his hand, without gloves. He took out the magazine. The magazine was in his hand and the firearm was in his hand,’ he said.
The lieutenant, realising what he had done, apologised before placing the handgun back on the floor, pulling on a pair of gloves, and picking it up again.
Technically, the error didn’t make much difference because there was no dispute about who had handled the firearm and pulled the trigger. But it was a reflection on the professionalism and conduct of the South African police. While a fingerprint-contaminated firearm would make no difference in this case, how many other cases were lost because evidence was damaged or altered as a result of an investigator’s negligence? The confession by the police officer contributed to the larger argument by the defence – what else was ‘contaminated, disturbed and tampered with’?
While this evidence was being led in court, top brass at police headquarters in Pretoria were ready for the backlash. Nel and the prosecution team had informed detective head Lieutenant-General Vinesh Moonoo, who had attended proceedings almost every day, what the witness would be asked to testify about. Moonoo, in turn, briefed his counterpart at the police’s Forensic Science Laboratory, as well as the national police commissioner, Riah Phiyega. The police were ready to spin. And yet, despite their preparedness, one investigator admitted that the revelations of theft and bungling did not receive the attention they had all anticipated. It appeared that the momentum of the trial and details relating to Oscar himself, the inside of his house and the police’s first encounters with the accused had overshadowed the conduct of the police. Of course, it also showed how blasé South Africans had become about such incidents.
The defence wanted Hilton Botha in the box and Roux was agitated that he didn’t get him. Instead, though, he tackled Van Rensburg on the reason he believed the state had called him to testify – that he was there to give evidence on matters far wider than he was able to, and that his evidence was designed to take the place of Botha. While the witness denied the claim, Roux was not wrong. The state was indeed doing everything it could to avoid calling Botha to the stand because they knew he would prove to be a liability.
Van Rensburg confirmed he and Botha were the first to venture upstairs and that no other policeman went upstairs before them.
Roux walked Van Rensburg back through his evidence about Oscar’s room; he repeated what he had told the court about the location of the duvet, the fans, the state of the curtains and the door. He said the pair moved carefully through the crime scene. ‘You did not disturb anything in the bathroom?’ asked Roux.
Van Rensburg: Nothing at all.
Roux: You did not see Mr Hilton Botha disturbing anything in the bathroom?
Van Rensburg: Nothing.
Roux: Picking anything up, or moving anything?
Van Rensburg: Nothing. We did not touch anything, nothing.
The suggestion from Roux’s line of questioning was clear.
Van Rensburg said the bathroom was photographed as they found it. ‘The first priority is to take photos as you receive it. Afterwards then you start with the investigation. Then you start touching in the room, because it has to be seized, you cannot just leave it there and you have to investigate further.’
Van Rensburg said he eventually left Botha and Van Staden to continue their investigation, but again made it clear that only he and the two others had access to upstairs until the photos were taken.
With the deft subtlety of an experienced advocate, Roux produced a piece of evidence to blow Van Rensburg out the water: an affidavit signed by another police officer, Sebetha, who had said in his statement he arrived on the scene together with a Constable Khoza. He said that when he arrived the paramedics were still working on Reeva. Sebetha was also responsible for writing the so-called A1 statement, usually made by the first person to arrive on the scene. So why didn’t Van Rensburg write it if he was first on the scene? The witness dismissed the contradiction, but provided no explanation for it.
Roux read from Sebetha’s affidavit: ‘I proceeded to the upper building where I noticed droplets of blood come from the upper building upstairs.’
‘Amazing,’ said Van Rensburg. ‘I say amazing.’
‘What is “amazing”? Could you explain?’
‘Because he did not went up there. He was not before me on the crime scene.’
‘Yes. Well, let us read …’
Sebetha described finding a ‘stainless 9 mm Taurus in the main bathroom’ – a claim that appeared damning in that it blatantly contradicted Van Rensburg’s version of events. ‘The only explanation that I can give to M’Lady is that he got information and he wrote his statement, the A1 statement on hearsay. He was not in the bathroom.’
In fact, Van Rensburg was so sure he was the first police officer on the scene he urged the court to obtain the AVL records from the police vehicles. The AVL system is a satellite tracking system that shows the exact location of police vehicles at any given time.
Despite Roux going to great lengths to raise questions as to whether Van Rensburg had been first on the scene, both Oscar and neighbour Carice Viljoen testified that Van Rensburg was the first officer to walk in and introduce himself.
Roux took issue with a number of the photos taken at the scene, adamant that they revealed aspects of police tampering during the investigative process. One of those images was of the colonel kneeling on the right side of Oscar’s bed fiddling with the cables – one that would become crucial later in the trial.
Roux also had problems with the photos taken of the white iPhone and that they did not state in the caption that a towel had had to be moved in order for the phone to be visible. The problem for the advocate was the defence’s ability to rely on photos presented by the state as a true reflection of the crime scene in its untouched state. He referred to pictures of the duvet – the first merely listed the date, while the photo of it folded out made it clear in the caption that it had been moved. Without an explanation in the caption, who was to know that a scene had been altered?
Van Rensburg took pains to emphasise, however, that these were not part of the first set of photos taken at the scene and were thus not representations of the untouched scene. The scene was preserved for the original photos and then the investigation started. ‘So then you move stuff to complete your investigation,’ he stated.
Nel was quick to correct the discrepancies. After all, his case against Oscar relied heavily on the photographs. He showed that all electronic photographs contain metadata, an electronic signature. And the photos the defence was using were not from the official photographer. This metadata proved key to leading police photographer Bennie van Staden through his evidence-in-chief and the timing of his movements that morning.
Bennie van Staden’s fair hair is thinning on the top. He has 21 years’ experience in the police service, eight of these years as a photographer. When he arrived on the scene he found Oscar in the garage with his brother Carl.
Van Staden’s evidence was a tedious exercise, but necessary in a criminal trial in order for the prosecution to gather details of each photograph on the record. The photographer had put together a total of 1 147 photos spanning 15 albums, and he had retrieved the metadata for just about every album he compiled.
Van Staden was also responsible for collecting a primer residue sample from Oscar to establish whether the accused had in fact discharged a firearm. Despite Oscar confirming he had washed his hands – after obtaining permission from Van Rensburg – Van Staden attempted to retrieve samples from Oscar’s hands and arms. He then proceeded to photograph the accused.
Starting with photo 155 in the first album, which covered the untouched crime scene as police claimed to have found it when they arrived, the photographer walked the court through the images.
Van Staden took his first photo that morning
at 05:12am, depicting Oscar standing in the garage, his shorts soaked in Reeva’s blood, and his prosthetic legs spattered too. The next few pictures in the album, focusing on the prosthetic legs, were taken at 7:39am – two and a half hours later. It became clear that while the pictures appeared in a numbered sequence, they were not necessarily in chronological order.
The series of pictures from here followed from the entrance to the house, into a sitting area and then to where Reeva’s body lay at the bottom of the staircase. There were close-up photos taken of Reeva’s head, bruised eye, elbow and hip as well as the marks on her back. The timeline shows it took nearly 15 minutes for the police to roll her body into different positions to get the shots. The tour of the house following the blood trail resumed and Van Staden carried on up the stairs, snapping photographs as he went. At 5:58am the photographer captured an image of the bedroom looking towards the balcony door. In the foreground was the grey duvet crumpled on the floor and a pair of denim jeans folded inside out. A silver tripod fan could be seen blocking the exit to the balcony – Van Staden stated that when he found it, it was switched off. There was light outside, dawn had arrived.
Picture 68 became the centre of a contentious argument between the state and the defence and was key to allegations of crime-scene tampering, as well as alleged discrepancies in Oscar’s version. It was a tight frame of the grey duvet lying on the floor, the pair of denim jeans and, to the right in the picture, a small black fan, unplugged with its cord coiled up next to it. The next picture in the sequence, with the caption ‘duvet cover spread open by me in the main bedroom’, was taken at 7:34am. Subsequent pictures show close-ups of blood spatter on the duvet.
