One Tragic Night (44 page)

Dr Johan Stipp is a radiologist based at the Jakaranda private hospital in Sunnyside, Pretoria. He lives in a house behind Oscar's, that at the time was across a vacant stand on which houses have now been built, a distance of exactly 155 metres from the athlete's bathroom window. Stipp's bedroom looks on to the back of Oscar's house where the bathroom and toilet windows are visible with a direct line of sight to where the shooting took place. Despite his bland grey suit, the doctor spoke as confidently as he would when wearing a white coat in front of a lightbox, and later even referred to his profession when his memory was questioned. ‘So you must remember, I am a radiologist, so I look at an image. While I am looking at that image, I am talking, I am talking, I am looking, I am seeing. It all happens at once. I am trained to do that,' he said.

The doctor described being woken up by three bangs, which he believed to be gunshots, before walking on to the balcony to establish what was happening. From here he saw a house in which the bathroom lights were on, as well as lights at the neighbouring house, belonging to Mike and Rontle Nhlengethwa. Oscar
would tell the court that he only switched on the bathroom lights some time after shooting at the door. Stipp described the time it took him to get to the balcony from when he heard the shots as mere ‘moments'.

While outside on the balcony, Stipp said he heard a woman scream about three times. ‘The screams were very loud,' said Stipp. ‘She sounded extremely fearful. I would imagine those would be the type of screams you would hear if someone was in fear of his or her life.

‘There were repeated screams, like I said, three or four times and yes, she sounded in severe emotional anguish, scared, almost scared out of her mind I would say.'

Just like Burger and Johnson, Stipp was adamant that the person screaming hysterically was a woman.

He said he went back inside and tried to call estate security, but there was no answer. Stipp said that while he was calling the police, he heard another three bangs, which he believed was a gunman opening fire again. When he eventually got through to security he explained what had happened and asked them to send someone immediately. He walked back on to the balcony to look again at Oscar's house, which was when he heard a man calling for help three times. When the security guard arrived he told them where the shooting had come from. After directing security, he said he looked at the windows of Oscar's house and saw someone was moving in the bathroom, from right to left.

The problem for the prosecution was to explain the two sets of bangs – did this not fit with the defence version that the first set was the gunshots, and the second set the cricket bat striking the door? Nel said consistently throughout the trial that he would deal with this in his closing argument, and yet when it came to that his focus was instead on the suggestion that witnesses aren't perfect rather than providing an explanation for the first set of sounds. In fact, his argument centred around the second set of sounds, which he said was preceded by screams.

After a brief discussion with his wife, Stipp decided to go to the house because he feared this was a family murder and that there might be children involved. When he arrived he found Oscar kneeling over Reeva, trying to stop her bleeding from the hip wound and clearing her airway.

For the first time in the trial the court and the public was hearing a first-hand account of what was happening in Oscar's house on the morning of the shooting. Stipp was amongst the first people to arrive on the scene and provided a detailed description of what he saw and heard. The doctor distinctly remembers Oscar's first words to him: ‘I shot her, I thought she was a burglar and I shot her.' The doctor immediately assessed Reeva's vital signs, and once he realised she
was mortally wounded, went back outside to where another neighbour, Johan Stander, was standing. It was then that Stander called an emergency service number before handing his phone to Stipp. While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Stipp said Oscar went upstairs and returned a few minutes later. Despite Stipp's claim, however, Nel never questioned Oscar about it when he was in the witness box, but it would emerge that the accused had gone upstairs to collect Reeva's identity document for the paramedics after she was declared dead.

Stipp confirmed to the court that he was confident that the bangs he had heard were gunshots, that the screaming started moments after the first shots, that the person screaming was a woman and that the bathroom lights were on when he looked over at the house. And when Nel asked about the time difference between the second set of bangs, the doctor stated that they were right on top of each other, in quick succession. It became clear that Nel would argue that this set of noises, which took place after the screaming, were the gunshots that killed Reeva and not the sound of a cricket bat striking a door.

Dr Stipp appeared to be a valuable state witness for the defence because Roux believed that the radiologist's version of events supported the timeline offered by his client – hearing two sets of noises was consistent with the first set being the gunshots and the second being the bat striking the door. But, as would soon become clear under cross-examination, the state had a different interpretation of the noises Stipp claims to have heard.

Roux questioned the doctor's depiction of time lapses, suggesting that it could not have been ‘moments' after the shots that Stipp heard the screams and saw the lights on in the bathroom. The advocate used Stipp's testimony about a conversation he had with his wife to prove that it must have been a longer period than simply moments. This was important for Roux because, according to Oscar, he fired the shots in the dark, first retreated, tried to find Reeva and only once realising that it could have been her in the bathroom did he start calling for help and later switched on the light in the bathroom.

Roux turned his attention to what would be the focus of his criticism of Stipp in closing argument: the doctor's timeline when set against the objective facts. Stipp said that he heard the cries for help after he attempted to call security, but there had been no answer. He then, he claimed, tried to call the police, before calling security for a second time – at which point he finally connected and spoke to the guards. Roux, however, showed that the security call log proved that Stipp did in fact connect to and talk to security at 3:15:51am for 16 seconds, and that it was the second call that went unanswered at 3:27am. This accorded with other evidence that put the three bangs – the cricket bat sounds – at about 3:16am, and that Stipp
was already with Stander outside Oscar's house when the 3:28am call was made to an ambulance service. According to Roux, this proved the witness was tailoring his evidence, and that this – in the larger context of his evidence – cast doubt on his perceptions of time.

In further revealing evidence, Stipp agreed with Roux that Reeva sustained mortal wounds, including a devastating head wound that would have rendered her non-responsive and unable to scream. So, for the witness to accept that a person was unable to yell after sustaining those wounds, it must then follow that it could not have been Reeva screaming, and the only other person who could have been making a noise was Oscar. And yet, despite his concession on Reeva's wounds, Stipp remained adamant that the screams he had heard sounded like those of a woman.

Roux said that decibel tests had been conducted and an expert witness would testify that when Oscar is anxious, he screams like a woman. In fact, no such testimony was actually ever led by the defence.

While Stipp's testimony appeared to support Oscar's version of events, the duel between counsel during cross-examination saw the state disclose exactly how it would argue the events unfolded – the second set of noises, which Roux said was the bat striking the door, was, according to the state, the gunshots that killed Reeva. And the screams that the defence said were from Oscar, the state argued were in fact the last screams of a desperate woman fearing for her life.

But again the problem Nel faced was having to reconcile the two sets of sounds on the timeline, which appeared to be in favour of the accused. The state still did not, and would never have an explanation for the first set of sounds.

But perhaps a greater concern for the state was the apparent incompatibility of the witnesses' timeline against the available facts. While Stipp appeared confident throughout his testimony, the questions the defence posed surrounding his version, as set out in his evidence against the call logs, raised questions about his reliability. The defence would invest an extraordinary amount of time and energy focusing on Stipp and his version. They would build a timeline for the events of that morning and show the court how what Stipp said simply did not fit in with it. They would argue that when tested against the ‘objective facts', Stipp's account could not possibly be accurate. The timelines were all out of kilter and what Stipp believed to have occurred, could not have.

This would, of course, raise significant questions about Johan Stipp's credibility as a witness, his version of events and his perceptions of time.

Annette Stipp, an occupational therapist by profession, was witness 19 out of the total of 21 state witnesses called, and she reflected on events as they occurred for both herself and her radiologist husband. Despite the uncomfortable position in which she found herself, she addressed the court with confidence.

Stipp remembered feeling ill that night and was suffering from a nasty cough that woke her up. She testified that she checked the clock – it was 3:02am shortly before hearing three bangs which she believed to be gunshots. She also noted that this clock usually ran a few minutes fast. She immediately asked her husband whether he also heard the noises and whether he knew what they were. Stipp said that from the bed she could see out her balcony window, with its curtains pinned back, and the lights on at two houses in the distance – one of them Oscar's bathroom light and the other at Mike Nhlengethwa's house.

This was the second witness to testify about the bathroom light being on shortly after the first set of noises, which was then followed by screaming.

Four weeks into the trial, the defence decided on a change and put junior counsel Kenny Oldwadge in to conduct the cross-examination of Annette Stipp – a move that surprised many. People watching the live feed of the trial immediately started speculating what the reason for the change could be, but at the lunch break Oscar's attorney Brian Webber explained that they were merely ‘spreading the load'.

With Oldwadge, the court was introduced to a new style of delivery. When he delivers his questions he starts off in a rather low pitch that steadily creeps up to a crescendo when he makes his point or concludes. When the witness answered a question the way he wanted it answered, he simply said, ‘Wonderful', before continuing. Commentary on social media focused on how pompous and erudite Oldwadge was in his presentation, using verbose language and tucking his thumbs into his gown for effect.

Right from the outset of his cross-examination, Oldwadge focused on issues related to her version of events: the period between hearing the gunshots, whether she would indeed be able to see Oscar's house from her bed and, not surprisingly, the source of the screams she claimed to have heard.

The advocate also suggested to Stipp that from her bed she did not have a clear line of sight to Oscar's house. She disagreed, but Oldwadge pointed out that in the police photos of the Stipps' bedroom, contained in Album 11, the right-hand curtain was held in place with a tie-back, but the left curtain was being pulled back by her hand. ‘Is it not to provide you with a clearer view of our client's home, madam? Is that not perhaps what it is?' he said, grilling the witness.

‘I think for the photograph, yes,' agreed Stipp. ‘But I must say, I think, if you
lie in my bed, you have a very, very clear view of both the houses on the opposite side.'

Stipp was adamant, like the previous witnesses, that the screams she had heard were those of a woman, and the shouting she heard was at an entirely different pitch, so she believed the latter to be a man. She was also convinced that the two sets of noises she heard were gunshots. In her first statement to the police Stipp had claimed that she saw a man walking in the bathroom at Oscar's house – but she had testified that she did not see the man. She explained that she later corrected her statement with the police – she had not seen a man walking behind the window. Oldwadge was not appeased. Why would she have signed the affidavit if it was not correct?