One Tragic Night (80 page)

Nel did not believe for one minute that Reeva had remained silent throughout the time the accused said he was calling out to her to warn her about the intruder and to call the police. Oscar recalled standing at the entrance to the bathroom shortly after peering inside to check whether he could see anyone. With his firearm out in front of him, he said he again screamed for Reeva to call the police and kept on shouting.

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.

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:

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:

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 investigations 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.