Reeva Steenkamp: The Night Oscar Pistorius Pulled the Trigger

[EPISODE 135] Reeva Steenkamp: The Night Oscar Pistorius Pulled the Trigger

Kyle [New]: [00:00:00] in 2012, Oscar Pistorius was one of the most famous athletes in the world.

Adam [New]: We saw him at the Paralympics in 2012. And it was kind of a big deal

Kyle [New]: but everything changed On Valentine's Day in 2013 when Oscar shot and killed his girlfriend, Riva Steincamp, in the middle of the night,

Adam [New]: this sounds like it was a freak accident.

Kyle [New]: But Cracks Began to emerge when his behavior showed very concerning patterns of jealousy, volatility, and a deep rooted obsession with guns.

He completely flipped out because she had forgotten a mug in the sink.

Adam [New]: Surely that's emotional abuse. I mean, what more proof do you need?

Kyle [New]: Did Riva lock herself in that toilet to get away from him in a fit of rage, did Oscar fire four shots through that bathroom door?

Adam [New]: I dunno what to think at this point. Something doesn't add up here. Right.

Kyle [New]: ​ [00:01:00] Welcome to the Compendium and Assembly of Fascinating Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

Adam [New]: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

Kyle [New]: I am your ringmaster for this week's episode, Kyle Reese.

Adam [New]: And I'm Adam Cox, the lion litter tray cleaner for this week.

Kyle [New]: You've had a hard time this week clearing out litter trays with James Cameron and how much he shits,

Adam [New]: which is [00:02:00] a cat for the record, not a director. He's not cracking enough.

James

Kyle [New]: Cameron is dumping in our little trace.

Adam [New]: Yeah, two cats and that that cat just needs to land to go outside. Yes, I'm done cleaning his poos. The poo, it just keeps on coming.

Kyle [New]: I know. It's great and it stinks.

Adam [New]: It really does.

Kyle [New]: So you are going to be the litter tray cleaner for the lion, for the lions in the compendium. Yeah. I love it. We need one of those for sure. Especially if they're anything like James Cameron.

Adam [New]: We haven't cleaned them out once. No. This whole time.

Kyle [New]: They need cleaning, but you just haven't done it.

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Kyle [New]: oh God, this again, I keep forgetting to research what's in that back catalog.

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Kyle [New]: Absolutely, and there's been some really great ones this season so far, but Adam, today on the Compendium, we are diving into an assembly of locked doors and unanswered screams.

Oh,

Adam [New]: wow. That sounds

Kyle [New]: troubling, doesn't it?

Adam [New]: It does. Who's behind the locked door?

Kyle [New]: Well, do you know what? I'm not gonna give a whole preamble and tease this out. Today we are talking about the murder of Riva Steincamp at the hands of her boyfriend. Oscar Pastorius.

Adam [New]: Oh, okay. Interesting.

Kyle [New]: So you guys will definitely know this one.

But for anyone who doesn't, back in 2012, Oscar Pistorius was one of the most famous athletes in the world. They called him Adam, the Blade Runner. He was the first double leg amputee ever to [00:05:00] compete in the Olympic games.

He was a global icon, a seemingly unstoppable force inspiring both abled and disabled athletes all over the world.

And equally for South Africans. He wasn't just an athlete. He had become this symbol, a beacon of pride and possibility, proof that mindset, grit, relentless determination, can literally take you anywhere.

But less than a year later, everything changed. Went on Valentine's Day, 2013, Oscar shot and killed his girlfriend, Riva Steinkamp, inside their home in the middle of the night.

Oscar claimed this was a tragic accident and thought there was a burglar hiding in his bathroom. And at first, Adam, two South Africans. This made sense. They lived in a country with one of the highest crime rates in the world. Home evasions were a constant fear.

Statistics showed that around one in 10 South Africans owned a firearm for protection. So in a place where break-ins [00:06:00] are a very real everyday reality, tragedies like this for South Africans sound plausible.

But when the investigation started, cracks began to emerge. In Oscar's story.

Allegations surfaced, that his behavior showed a very concerning pattern of jealousy, volatility, and recklessness, as well as a deep rooted obsession with guns and safety.

Suddenly people started questioning everything. And that question was, did Oscar kill Riva in a blind fit of rage?

Adam, do you remember this story?

Adam [New]: Yeah. It, I mean, Oscar Pastorius, he was such a big celebrity at the time. Mm-hmm. And this was like someone that was quite high up on the pedestal.

Kyle [New]: Yeah.

Adam [New]: We saw him at the Paralympics in 2012. We did. Yeah. Um, you know, and it was a kind of a big deal because it was like, oh wow, we saw Oscar Pastorius race. Yeah. And I, I'm pretty sure he won. But yeah, it was huge. And we felt almost like quite proud [00:07:00] to say that we had seen him. Exactly. And then quite soon afterwards, after this happened, it was like, oh yeah, we saw a murderer.

Kyle [New]: I remember when this story broke, just how massive it was at the time. It was literally everywhere. As you said, we had just come off the London 2012 Olympics where Oscar competed, which is incredible feat in itself.

We didn't obviously see him at the Olympics. We saw him at the Paralympics. But that whole year was seismic for para athletics. It was the first time that so many of them became household names and Oscar was the biggest of them.

All this crossover star who straddled both the Olympics and the Paralympics. No one had ever broken through that barrier before. Mm-hmm.

And that was what was quite interesting about the Paralympics, because we've lived through so many different Olympic games, but the Paralympics wasn't really something that was as high profile as it was during 2012.

Of course, the UK set out to really kind of amplify the games. Mm-hmm. But [00:08:00] because of Oscar's. Partaking in the 20, 20 12 Paralympic games that just kind of brought even more eyes to the screen. Because of his performance during the Olympic games, right? Sure.

So when the story broke, less than a year later, it just felt really surreal.

Adam? It's now been what, like 12 years since all this happened and even after all the coverage, I realized the other day that I couldn't actually remember how it all ended. I remember when we were discussing this on our way back from iBio with our friends, Sarah and Nick and kind of none of us were really clear on what the facts were, which is kind of what pushed me to revisit this case, to remind myself. And of course now our compendium freaks what actually happened on that fateful Valentine's Day in 2013.

Adam [New]: Yeah. We were discussing it and I think, aside from obviously him being found guilty and then shooting Riva behind a door, I can't remember much else other than Yeah, he thought it was an intruder, but it didn't stack up.

There was so much evidence that suggested otherwise, but can't remember the detail, which I'm guessing we're gonna go into today.

Kyle [New]: Yes, that's [00:09:00] right. And I think in a sensational story like this, which centered around one of the most famous athletes at the time, it is very easy to forget the person at the center of all of this, that basically a bright young woman lost her life in this tragic incident.

Riva Steincamp wasn't just Oscar pastor's girlfriend, she was in her own right, a rising star. She was a passionate law graduate with a deep commitment to advocating for victims of domestic violence by every account. She was warm, she was funny, she was driven, she was beautiful, she was charismatic, all of it. Adam.

And her life, unfortunately, was stolen on that night. And like so many of these different tragedies that play out in the age of social media, the facts very often quickly get drowned out by a lot of the noise that surrounds it. The sheer flood of opinions people have on stories like this. It's easy for those facts to get twisted or depending on, in this case really interestingly, your political [00:10:00] leaning, some facts can just be completely left out altogether.

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: And that's kind of the challenge that I had when I was researching the story. There were so many documentaries that were made about the story and it was difficult to find one that felt objective. Most of them still were championing Oscar. So unless you were paying really close attention, you could easily kind of get swept up in kind of the misleading narrative.

Adam [New]: I guess with a lot of documentaries, there's always like a bias. Typically it's usually interviewed by the victim or whoever, a certain side of the story. Mm-hmm. It's It's very rarely interviewed by two sides of the story where you get to see everyone's perspective. So yeah. It depends

Kyle [New]: who's funding it as well. Sometimes.

Adam [New]: True. Yeah.

Kyle [New]: So today I wanna try and cut through that noise. I have been very deliberate about what I included kind of sticking to what's verifiable, keeping to the known timeline of the story. And honestly that's because this case divided people specifically along political lines, not just in South Africa, but everywhere.

And [00:11:00] that divide often comes down to culture, where you stand on issues like domestic violence, gun ownership, and the right to defend yourself in your home. It all shaped how people saw the story, and I found that deeply fascinating.

What's interesting is in this case, the judge presiding over this case was a female. And the prosecution for a time were really incensed by that because they felt, because she was a woman and because of how big of an issue domestic violence was in South Africa, they felt that Oscar might not get a fair trial because of that.

Most people, thank God are very much of the sense that, yeah, this is bad. But when you've gotta think, you've got the defense team who are trying to help Oscar in this case, of course, they have an agenda at play, right?

So they're going to look at certain aspects and go, do you know what the judge is a female? It doesn't bode well for us that she's presiding over a case, which the prosecution are saying domestic violence is at the heart of it.

Adam [New]: Yeah. The only way I feel, some sympathy towards a defense is [00:12:00] when obviously there's manipulation or something else is happening, and it's generally not, a domestic violence case, but they're using an angle.

Yeah. But aside from that, I can never be a lawyer. I could never side with someone. Mm-hmm. Knowing that, you did hit your wife or whatever it might be. That's just not Okay.

Kyle [New]: Well, that's a really interesting point that you bring up because in this case, I think more than any other story that we've done, you'll definitely get a sense of how these trials are just a game of chess. And very often there'll be evidence that will contradict each other, which will in effect. Cancel each other out. Mm-hmm. So, for example, the prosecution will have a piece of evidence that seems very, very damning.

The defense will then get another piece of evidence that deliberately and tactically contradicts that evidence. And then because of that, it's just poof. It can't use it now because there's too opposing sides to the evidence.

It's very interesting, and that's quite deliberate in some of the bits of evidence that we have in this case.

But do you know what I would love to hear from people who lived through this, especially our South African listeners, because it's so clear from the [00:13:00] research, the way that you experience this case does to a degree, depend on where you come from and the issues that are important in your country and in South Africa.

Those are the three big issues. Domestic violence, your right to defend yourself. Huge gun ownership they all play a real big part.

But Adam, before we get to Oscar, before we get tangled up in his trial and the timelines, I actually wanna start this episode with the person who's been most impacted by all of this.

Most of the documentaries in the articles out there all sent around Oscar, and I get it. He was a perpetrator but I wanna start by placing Riva at the very top, and who she was. Because that to me just felt right.

Adam [New]: Yeah, too often we spend too much time on the killer or the perpetrator, like you say. So, and I don't really know too much about Riva, to be honest. So what? What was she like?

Kyle [New]: So, Riva Steam Camp is born on August the 19th, 1983 in Cape Town, South Africa. And from the time that she's very little, she always knew that she wanted to be a lawyer when she [00:14:00] grew up.

Her entire trajectory growing up seemed to revolve around this. She excelled at school and eventually she earned a scholarship to the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth to study law where she essentially graduated at the top of her class.

But then Adam, something crazy happened that reshaped her entire life because not long after graduating, she ends up breaking her back in a horse riding accident where she ends up spending three months in hospital. And at the time, doctors were not even sure if she'd ever walk again.

So it's really interesting that she was dating this really high profile para athlete who was a double leg amputee. And then she's also in this situation where she may never, ever walk again. Mm.

So she has to basically go through a ton of physiotherapy and rehabilitation, literally learning how to walk again from scratch, overcoming a lot of the obstacles and the barriers that Oscar would've faced, especially him growing up. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

So how old was she at this point? She just [00:15:00] graduated university. So I imagine quite a young adult. Maybe 18, 19. Mm-hmm. And do you know what? Somehow through sheer determination, she does make a full recovery.

People that knew her said that that experience completely changes her coming that close to losing your mobility and then having to fight to get it back gave her this whole new perspective.

And so she decided that she was gonna quit her job as a paralegal. She put her aspirations of becoming a lawyer on hold, and it was just so that she could live just for a little bit, right? Enjoy her life because her entire life has all been about academics and studying and working really hard. It was now time for her to kind of say, do you know what? I'm gonna kick back for a minute.

And at the time she was stuck in a toxic, abusive relationship. But until then, she just didn't have the strength to get out of it.

So at this moment, she just decides, I'm gonna dump him. I'm gonna pack up my entire life in Port Elizabeth and I'm gonna move to Johannesburg to start over. And that's what she does.

And Adam, I have to say Reva is stunning. Have you ever seen a picture of [00:16:00] her?

Adam [New]: Probably at the time. I haven't looked at recent pictures.

Kyle [New]: Absolutely stunning. And ever since she was 14, she's always dabbled in modeling. But now that she was in Johannesburg, she decided to really give it a proper good go and things take off almost immediately. She lands a feature and a cover shoot for FHM Magazine. Do you remember FHM Magazine?

Adam [New]: What does FHM stand for?

Kyle [New]: For Him magazine, isn't it?

Adam [New]: Oh, okay. I know. Something like that.

Kyle [New]: It's a man magazine.

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: That was kind of the more classy one.

Adam [New]: FHM was definitely classier than nuts or zoo. I mean, it's still featured topless women.

Kyle [New]: Were they topless?

Adam [New]: I'm sure they were at some point. I think

Kyle [New]: they were just, it was way more classy. Okay. They wore bikinis and stuff, but more sophisticated young professional LAD magazine. They were scantily clad. Yes. In, in a classy, classy way

at the time. She also became the first face of Avon cosmetics in South Africa. She landed a bunch of modeling gigs for a diamond company and just like that, everything seemed to click in place for her in Johannesburg.

Even while her modeling career was taken off, she never really lost sight of that passion for law in [00:17:00] particular, because of her past experience with an abusive boyfriend, she really wanted to advocate for victims of domestic violence. It mattered to her in a visceral way. Mm-hmm.

And in South Africa, domestic violence was, and still is an epidemic because between 2011 and 2012, there were more than 64,000 reported Sexual assaults, the highest number that anywhere else in the world.

Adam [New]: It feels like it could be even more dangerous than, I'm not to say like there, there should be like levels of this, but if you've got guns and you've got more violent crime, oh yeah. It feels like it could be way more dangerous for a woman.

Kyle [New]: Oh, sure. And with that many guns in the country. Things escalate. Women get shots, they get killed. They lose their lives because of it.

Adam [New]: Yeah.

Kyle [New]: But there's a trade off there. I'm talking specifically about the guns. Because of course, people own these guns for protection. So in these situations of domestic violence, women get caught up in this. It's just, it's a tragedy basically. Mm-hmm.

Her friends Adam, they describe her as someone who was even better on the inside than she was on the outside. And [00:18:00] considering how breathtaking she was, that pretty much says a lot.

She was warm, funny, deeply charismatic. One of those people that filled a room with light, everyone said the same thing. She just. Cared.

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: In fact, On the morning that she was killed, she was actually scheduled to give an empowerment talk to a bunch of teenage girls that was going to focus on this idea of self-worth and valuing yourself.

And she called it the value of you. But as we know Adam, she never got to make that talk because on Valentine's Day, 2013, just four months into her relationship with Oscar Pastorius, Riva Steincamp was killed.

Adam [New]: Four months. That's, that's not really a serious relationship at that point.

Kyle [New]: That is the thing that I kept having to remind myself throughout the story, is that this is a very new relationship. So when we go through some of the troubling behavior, you've gotta frame that in that context of, hang on a minute. Yes, there was some questionable behavior, but it only makes it worse when you consider that's a four month relationship.

Adam [New]: [00:19:00] Yeah. You should still be in like your honeymoon period. You should be having fun going on holidays and this happened. And the fact that she came from an abusive relationship beforehand. Mm-hmm. you would think that there maybe were telltale signs early on. I get Yeah. I'm just speculating here.

Kyle [New]: So let's talk about when they met. So Riva and Oscar, they actually met in November, 2012. So after kind of the Olympic Games , their first date was actually spur of the moment after Oscar invited her to be his date to the South African Sport Awards, which is where South Africa for the very first time, connects the pair together.

And from there things move very fast to everyone watching. They literally look like South Africa's next power couple, like think Victoria and David Beckham, but like homegrown, if you will,

Adam [New]: South Africa, equivalent

Kyle [New]: South African equivalent. Mm-hmm. And honestly on the surface it's easy to see why Riva is drawn to Oscar. Right. He's handsome, he's charming, wildly successful

Adam [New]: and rich probably.

Kyle [New]: Exactly. And this wasn't just in South Africa by the time the Olympics was over, [00:20:00] like he was one of the most recognizable athletes literally in the world.

Adam [New]: Yeah. Although that's not to say that obviously she was after him for his money. No, I'm just saying like he had a lot of attributes, which makes him a good catch.

Kyle [New]: Sure. And so did she, hence why he was attracted to her.

Adam [New]: Yeah. Do you know much about Oscar's background? no. I mean that he ran and then he killed. That's literal life. Isn't that? Geez. Wow. That's, uh, that's Cutting it hard and

Kyle [New]: dry.

Adam [New]: Yeah. That's surmising it up pretty quick.

Kyle [New]: So our school was basically born with a rare condition

called fibula. Amilia, I believe that's how you pronounce it. Basically it means that he was born without fibula in his lower half of his legs.

Adam [New]: So they're, what bones are they then

Kyle [New]: the lower part of your leg.

Adam [New]: Right.

Kyle [New]: Basically Adam, it was just skin. Mm-hmm. At 11 months old, his parents had to make the decision to amputate both of his legs just below the knee.

But the thing is though, after making that decision, they were adamant that being disabled wasn't going to be the thing that defined him.

So from the very beginning, they raised him with this belief that he could do anything. Like they made sure that he was able to hike, cycle, even ski. So he grew [00:21:00] up doing all the things that his siblings and his friends did, and there were just no excuses. That was the general attitude that his parents had in bringing him up.

Oscar said he grew up not really even knowing that he was disabled. He tells a story about roughhousing with his brother one day when they were supposed to be kind of getting ready to leave the house, and his mom comes charging in and she's like, Carl, you put on your shoes. Oscar put on your legs. And so the last one to hear about it.

So to him, he literally grows up thinking that he just had different shoes.

Adam [New]: That's actually a really good way to bring up someone that has sort of disabilities, just get on with life sort of thing. Which obviously could be really difficult, whatever, but it seems like he had a good parents to try and give him this normal upbringing.

Exactly. Did he have, I'm assuming he didn't have blades at this point. This is just regular sort of feet that would attach to his legs.

Kyle [New]: These are just regular prosthetics that he's got at this moment in time. Yeah, but Adam, his childhood wasn't easy. His parents end up divorcing when he's six, and then when he's 15, his mother dies suddenly from allergic reaction to medication.

This leaves him absolutely [00:22:00] devastated because she was the motivation that he had to overcome a lot of these anxieties around him actually being disabled, right? Mm-hmm. But He says he always carried her voice with him. That unshakable belief that he could do anything that he set his mind to.

So he ends up, playing rugby with abled bodied blokes.

Adam [New]: That's

Kyle [New]: intense.

Adam [New]: That feels risky almost, because. I feel like you could get taken out a lot easier.

Kyle [New]: Oh yeah. 100%. But it gives you a sense of what he was willing to face, considering underneath he was fairly vulnerable.

Adam [New]: Yeah. If you take away what actually happened and don't think about that, obviously what he did then, it's quite an amazing kind of courage and kind of person to kind of be able to just kind of take on these things.

Kyle [New]: And it all seems to come back to how he was brought up.

But Adam, when he's 16, he does suffer a serious accident where part of his rehabilitation, his physiotherapist, suggests that he tries running. And as we know. That's what changes his entire trajectory in his life.

And by the early two thousands, he is literally [00:23:00] dominating all sorts of para athletic events. He's breaking records left and right.

His times are starting to literally rival those of able-bodied athletes. And this is when he starts requesting, demanding even that he gets to compete against them.

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: But resoundingly at the time, they all say no. Arguing that his carbon fiber blades would give him an unfair advantage against him, basically. Longer strides, increased length, increased spring, things like that.

Adam [New]: I was gonna ask, is there an advantage, with like the spring element? Mm-hmm. I just thought that could like push you forward.

Kyle [New]: Basically he sets out to start proving that this isn't the case. His coaches run a bunch of tests. They show that obviously all his body proportions with the prosthetics were similar to able-bodied runners.

And that the added spring from the blades is actually a disadvantage. The fact that he still manages to qualify on time showed that he was able to just through his technique and his strength, compensate to kind of overcome that disadvantage that the Spring was giving him.

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: And eventually out of after eight years, [00:24:00] they finally agreed. And in 2012, Oscar Pastorius became the first double leg amputee to compete against able-bodied athletes at the London Olympic Games.

How did he do? Well, he doesn't actually make the final, but that doesn't matter as a point, because being accepted shattered a barrier between the Paralympics and the Olympics that no one ever thought anyone could kind of cross

Adam [New]: Yeah.

To be able to compete in both. Is he the only person that done that up until that point? I guess he was

Kyle [New]: the first person. I dunno if anyone else has been able to do that in subsequent Olympic games. I think maybe 2012 from what I understand is the first and the only so far.

Adam [New]: That's a Wikipedia search later.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. So of course when the Paralympics comes around, all eyes are on his category and millions of intrigued people turn out to watch him win three medals across his events, which is incredible. And that's what brought us to the Paralympics in 2012, where we saw him compete.

Adam [New]: Yeah. Although not specifically just to see him. I mean, it's the only tickets we could get. Really? Oh, well, yeah, that's, that was all we could get. And he just

Kyle [New]: so happens to be running on that day.

Adam [New]: Yeah. [00:25:00] Um, yeah, we chose athletics as well 'cause we thought it'd be the most interesting. And then I remember there was a lady, was she from Azerbaijan? I can't remember. But I remember she was on the podium. Mm-hmm. And that was such a really touching moment because it really was, it meant so much to her. I think she was crying and everyone in the audience was kind of quite taken by her.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. I think it was more special watching the Paralympics than the Olympics because these are people that are going against the odds, going against everything that everyone is telling them, yeah, you are disabled. You cannot do this. So there's a even a greater strength in that, that determination that they're able to kind of go and compete in these games. Yeah. And win and sat in that podium. Really proud with. Thousands, tens of thousands of people cheering them on as well.

Adam [New]: Yeah. I absolutely loved it. It was amazing. I loved it. Yeah. And it was the day that we had the best McDonald's ever. It was like the hottest McDonald's I've ever had because it was that fresh, like literally it came down the little tray thing, once we'd ordered and then straight to us,

Kyle [New]: Uhhuh

Adam [New]: I remember thinking like, this is actually a good looking McDonald's. It doesn't look like roadkill. Mm-hmm. [00:26:00] And then, yeah, I think that was it.

And I just remember we were all sitting there with Miguel, our friend, yeah. And then we tried to recreate that moment by having another McDonald's, like at a 24 hour one. at 2:00 AM and it was nowhere near as good. And ever since then, no McDonald's has ever beat it.

Kyle [New]: Oh, that was fun. I miss Miguel.

Adam [New]: Yeah.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. That was our experience with Oscar Pretorius.

Adam [New]: Oh yeah. That.

Kyle [New]: And so basically at the end of 2012, Oscar is a global icon, a symbol of possibility. His face is literally on Billboards Magazine covers, endorsements are pouring in. Sports brands, they were literally salivating over him because essentially he's living proof of what you can do if you refuse to accept limits, which is the basis of every single sports brand marketing campaign.

By early 2013, Oscar had it all, global fame, money, good looks. And now he had a beautiful woman, Reva steering camp by his side, and to their friends, it looked like they were planning their future together.

Just a couple months into their relationship, Oscar is starting to talk about moving out of his [00:27:00] Pretoria house because he just doesn't feel safe living in the area. And it looked like Riva was part of those plans.

It's actually this fear and concern for his own safety that sits at the center of the story. And what his defense team lean into in order to build their case. And I think I get it, like Oscar, without a doubt was someone who never acknowledged the limits.

What he could achieve. But he was still deeply aware of his vulnerabilities, that he felt without his prosthetics when they were on. He feels invisible when they're off, which was daily, he feels deeply exposed.

And remember, he lives in the country with one of the highest crime rates in the world. Like many South Africans, probably Oscar even more so he owned a firearm for personal protection.

Adam [New]: Yeah. I mean, he's gonna be a target, so I can understand him perhaps being extra, cautious, extra concerned and everything like that to protect himself.

Kyle [New]: In an old tweet he wrote about coming home one day and hearing what he thought was an intruder in his pantry. So with his heart racing, he grabs his gun. He goes into what he calls full [00:28:00] tactical mode, creeping through the house only to discover is basically his washing machine in the pantry going off.

Adam [New]: So is he just a little bit,

Kyle [New]: he's hypervigilant basically because the reality is he is a disabled person whose legs come off at the end of the night. And so. You live in a country that's extraordinarily dangerous. Of course you would have those anxieties. They would be amplified within him.

Adam [New]: Had he ever been broken into before? I guess he must have suffered crime at some point, right? Yes.

Kyle [New]: Like many South Africans. Yes. And that of course is going to have an impact on you.

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: For him, security and survival weren't just abstract ideas.

They were paramount for the way that he lived his life.

Adam [New]: Yeah. I mean, I remember I was at university and. I have legs and I remember I thought we were being broken into. Mm-hmm. Um, 'cause I must have woken up, maybe half heard noises in my sleep and maybe a bit delirious. And I was too scared to go out the door Uhhuh.

'cause I, I lived under the stairs like Harry Potter. And so I called [00:29:00] my friend who was upstairs, one of the bedrooms and said, I think we're being broken into. Mm-hmm. I can hear voices. And he called the police. The police turned up. I just remember seeing like the flashing lights in our driveway.

Mm-hmm. And then they knocked on our door. Then what I thought were the burglars who were burgling us opened the door. And then I heard their voices and went, oh, that's my other roommate.

Kyle [New]: Adam, this is uncanny because when we go into what happened that night, what you've just described, waking up feeling kind of a little bit delirious, hearing noises, et cetera.

It is uncanny. I've got goosebumps. Look, uh, really? I can't see anything. Well, it is warm in here, but we are gonna fast forward to February, 2013.

Reva and Oscar had been together at this point for about four months. On Valentine's Day, they had planned to spend the night together at Oscar's home in Silverwood, which is an upscale kind of gated community in Pretoria, according to Oscar's own account, on the evening of February the 13th, Riva cooked them dinner and he described the night as quiet and romantic. They ate, they talked, and they went to bed [00:30:00] round about 10:00 PM

He said that the night was humid, and even though he had air conditioning in his room, he didn't like to use it because it sort of messed with his breathing and also the constant hum from the air conditioning kept him up.

Instead, before bed, he decided to open the sliding doors of the balcony and he set up two fans outside to pull kind of the cooler air in .

While Riva did her yoga stretches nearby, he said that he took off his prosthetics and left them to air out by the open door. This was something that he pretty much did every single night before bed. He also had a habit of sliding his nine millimeter pistol under the bed, so it was within arm's reach, and here's where the context really matters, like South Africa, and again, I've said it a bunch of times, but it's so relevant to this case. Has one of the highest crime rates in the world.

Home invasions are a constant fear. In the country of roughly 60 million people, there are an estimated item, 1.5 million break-ins every single year. Many South Africans keep a gun close at night. It's extreme, but it's [00:31:00] extremely common to us. It might sound strange, but to South Africans, and possibly Americans, this is just common sense, right? Maybe not under your bed, but within arm's reach, especially in a dangerous country.

Adam [New]: Yeah. It feels like it's something you'd have locked up, but yeah, to take it literally to bed with you every night. Yeah. That you've got some kind of either paranoia or sphere for your safety, and

Kyle [New]: we know that he sort of does, right?

Adam [New]: Mm.

Kyle [New]: Now, according to him, he woke up a little after 3:00 AM and he said that the room felt unbearably hot and stuffy. Reva woke up too because of his restlessness. remembered her asking if he was struggling to sleep, and he said yes, and he decided to get up to adjust the fans He got up outta bed on his stumps and he moved carefully across the room. He said that he'd light his sleep in almost near total darkness, and so between the drone of the fans, and the darkness in the room in that moment, he says that he felt disorientated. After adjusting the fans, he turned to walk back to the bed and said that he suddenly heard a loud screech noise coming from the bathroom. It sounded like the bathroom window sliding [00:32:00] open.

Okay.

He claimed that in that instance, his heart started pounding and panic set in. He instinctively reached for his pistol under his bed and whispers to Riva, who he assumed was lying next to him in the bed to call the police.

Right.

The bathroom is kind of part of the primary bedroom suite, but you have to kind of walk down a short hallway lined with kind of wardrobes on either side to get there, and at the very end is the main bathroom, which contained a bathtub, the sinks, but the toilet itself.

Adam is in a separate enclosed cubicle inside the actual main bathroom, which has its own door next to the cubicle, is the bathroom window.

Adam [New]: Right.

Kyle [New]: He says that when he reached the bathroom, the cubicle door was shut and the window was open, and that he said locks his fear in place. He was convinced that someone must have been in their cubicle toilet

Adam [New]: and had broken in through the window and then had snuck into the toilet to hide

Kyle [New]: Exactly. He says that he then shouted a warning, telling whoever was inside to get out of his house. He then yelled back to towards the bedroom again, telling Riva [00:33:00] to call the police.

According to his account, he heard movements coming from inside the cubicle, and that's when he fired four shots through the toilet door.

He later said that his only thought in that moment was protecting Riva and himself.

Adam [New]: Okay. So, so he's sheltered at Riva, so he still thinks it's in bed, but I've just thought like, well, obviously we know reva's in the toilet on the cubicle at this point. It's not a spoiler, but how would he have not have seen her go to the bathroom or would've heard her go to the bathroom? Would she not be saying, uh, it's me, Oscar?

What, what are you talking about?

Kyle [New]: Why does she not say anything? Right? Yeah. Could it be that she was in fear in that moment, thinking that he detected, uh, someone in the bathroom and maybe she thought the cylinder was in the bathroom with her. I don't know. She was trying to keep quiet. I don't know.

These questions won't make sense to the investigators as they start looking into the story, and we'll come onto that in a second.

But he says that after these shots rang out, he called back out to Riva again, with the gun still pointed firmly at the bathroom door he said that he slowly backed away [00:34:00] from the bathroom, and when he got back into the bedroom, that's when he realized Riva wasn't there and that maybe it might have been Riva in the toilets all along. Hmm. Yeah.

He said that she must have slipped outta bed to use a bathroom while he was moving the fans, but the murmur of the fans meant that he didn't hear her.

Adam [New]: Okay, that sounds plausible.

Kyle [New]: Oscar says At that point, he rushes back into the bathroom, tries the door, it's locked. He then says that he ran back to the bedroom to fetch his prosthetics. He then tried to kick the door down but when that didn't work, he says he ran back out to the balcony. He screamed for help and then grabbed a cricket bat in his bedroom and started smashing the toilet door over and over until one of the panels had splinted enough for him to reach in and unlock the door from the inside.

Adam [New]: Okay,

Kyle [New]: and that's when he says he found Riva in the toilet. She apparently was slumped over the toilet, bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds. Three of those four shots had hit her. One in the [00:35:00] arm, one in the hip, and Adam, one in the head.

Adam [New]: Oh my word.

Kyle [New]: According to Oscar, in that moment, she was still breathing, so she was alive. He says that he then rushed to the bedside table to grab his phone.

He then started calling for help. The records show that at 3:19 AM he phoned the estate manager for the gated community. That call lasts 24 seconds at three 20. He then called for an ambulance, and then at three twenty one he phoned the estate security office.

Adam [New]: Why did he call, the manager? Not the ambulance straight away first.

Kyle [New]: Not sure why. Who knows?

Adam [New]: Unless they've got first aid, maybe you'd call him first. I'm just trying to work out why you wouldn't Yeah. Get an ambulance.

Kyle [New]: I know that in a lot of these gated estates, you have to call through to the gate to say that you are expecting someone to arrive. Can you let them in? It could be that it's calling through to them to let them know that the ambulance is coming. But, but still, you'd call the ambulance first, right? Yeah, yeah. And then call the, I don't know why we can't really explain how people respond [00:36:00] during kind of these incidents.

Adam [New]: That's fair enough. You might be thinking logically, I need to do this first. This for someone to get in the place. So the point is,

Kyle [New]: he has called for help. Mm-hmm. And he has called an ambulance.

He says that after this he picks up Riva from the bathroom floor and carries her downstairs.

By now the neighbors and the security guards, they could hear him literally wailing as they approach the estate manager and his daughter along with the estate security manager. They arrive a few moments later to find basically Oscar cradling Riva in his arms sobbing at the bottom of the stairs. And he just kept repeating that he had shot her thinking that she was an intruder.

Adam [New]: I dunno what to think at this point. 'cause this sounds all very like it was a freak accident. Or at least from what you've said,

Kyle [New]: that's what a lot of South Africans thought because Adam, this is the reality of living in a country where you live in fear of home intrusions and you have a country where one in 10 people own a gun.

Adam [New]: Yeah. But I feel like there must be more to it because clearly he was found guilty. So [00:37:00]

something doesn't add up here. Right.

Kyle [New]: We'll get onto what happened at the trial. Another neighbor arrived. He's a doctor, a radiologist. He arrived soon after and he testified that he attempted to do a jaw lift maneuver on Riva, just to open up her airways. But he says that it was clear the second he touched her that her injuries were catastrophic. And at 3:50 AM Riva was pronounced dead at the scene.

It is awful, Adam. It's awful. If we believe Oscar's accounts, I just cannot imagine how awful that must have been. like I said, this is the trade off that South Africans live with the reality that devastating actions like this can and do happen.

Do you know what I mean?

Adam [New]: Yeah.

Kyle [New]: Not long after this, the police arrive.

The first detective on the scene was 24-year-old Hilton Bota, which is young to be a detective, right?

Adam [New]: Yeah. I just thought 24, but he must have done something really good.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. He describes finding Oscar distraught. He's sobbing. He's retching at times. He's completely beside himself.

He says that Oscar [00:38:00] admitted to shooting Riva, but insisted that he thought it was a burglar. But as the cops start inspecting the scene, less and less of Oscar's story seems to make sense. Of course, they have to treat the situation with at least a degree of suspicion at this point until they're confident of what happened, right?

Mm-hmm. But there was a tipping point where alarm bells started going off for them. For one, Oscar claimed that he had grabbed his gun from under the bed, yet somehow didn't notice that Riva wasn't in there.

Adam [New]: Well, that was one thing I did think, but I didn't say anything 'cause I, to see where the story went.

But if he, yeah. He would've seen like a body shaped person in bed. Right? Yeah. And I, I appreciate It's probably pitched dark, but you, your eyes would be enough to see something there.

Kyle [New]: Sure. Yeah. I can't explain that either. They also speculated that if he truly believed that there was an intruder, why fire four shots into a closed door without checking where she was first.

Like Oscar was supposed to be trained in handling a firearm. Mm-hmm. He should have known better, basically, is what their argument was. So to Hilton, this sounded [00:39:00] really reckless,

Adam [New]: I guess. Is he thinking that someone behind that door could have a gun, could shoot him? So I get it from that perspective, but I still would've expected someone from behind that door, either Riva stayed quiet because she was scared, or if he's saying like, I'm gonna shoot, or he come out, she's gonna go, what's me?

Kyle [New]: Yeah. Why did she not say anything? But did she potentially think that maybe the intruder was in the room and so she didn't wanna draw attention to herself, so she kept quiet?

Adam [New]: I mean, I can see that angle. Yeah.

Kyle [New]: The argument that Hilton is making is that he should be trained in using a firearm. He should have first been 100% sure that the threat was imminent. He didn't see a burglar. All he did is hear a rustling come from behind the door. He didn't physically see anyone charging against him. There is a responsibility that comes with handling a firearm, and he should have known better.

But the thing is though, I thought about this, and I'm not convinced that even with a ton of training, people always act rationally or responsibly when faced with a perceived [00:40:00] imminent threat.

Do you know what I mean? I mean, when we were kids. My stepdad was hijacked at gunpoint outside of a house at six o'clock in the morning. Six men with AK 40 sevens ambushed him as he was reversing out the driveway.

And we've all been taught what to do in those situations, and yet in the panic of it all, I remember my mother literally running out of the house armed with a fucking steak knife to try and protect her husband.

Right. So we know that that's not what you do. You don't charge over men with six AK 40 sevens.

Adam [New]: She So she wasn't in the car at the time? No, she was

Kyle [New]: in the house. She was in bed

Adam [New]: and could see what had happened through the window.

Kyle [New]: My sister screamed. My mom was like, what the hell's going on? I then saw these guys. I screamed. My mom then got outta bed the first thing she does is grab the steak knife and runs out the house. I mean,

Adam [New]: yeah. 'cause she could have been hurt by doing that. Right?

Kyle [New]: Yeah. Luckily they were gone by this point.

But also after this, we had panic buttons installed in literally every single room in the house. We regularly had drills on what to do. And then [00:41:00] Adam, just a year later when another incident occurred, none of us in the house thought to press that panic button.

Not one of us. My point is, even with training, when you are in the middle of a real threat, the rational part of your brain can sometimes just switch off.

Adam [New]: I think, unless you're doing this day in, day out sort of thing as part of your career or whatever.

Kyle [New]: Yeah.

Adam [New]: Yeah. This is hopefully a scenario you're in only once in your life. And so sometimes you just can't prepare for that.

Kyle [New]: Either way, the investigation moves on. One of the first things a police did was go door to door speaking to neighbors in the vicinity. This is when cracks start forming in Oscar's account, one neighbor told police that she'd been woken up more than an hour before the shooting at 2:00 AM by the sound of a heated argument coming from Oscar's house.

She couldn't make out the words, but the shouting was loud enough that she had to bury her head in the pillow just to get back to sleep.

Adam [New]: And is that two people she's hearing

Kyle [New]: an argument between a couple? That's right.

Adam [New]: Okay.

Kyle [New]: And she wasn't alone.

Five other neighbors also reported hearing a woman screaming from inside [00:42:00] Oscar's home. Shortly before the gunshots. One said she was convinced she was hearing a woman being attacked. Another claimed that the screaming continued after the first shots were fired.

Adam [New]: Well then this is a huge hole because we are saying like the only way that he could have continued to have fire is if he Yeah. Didn't hear anything coming from that bathroom. so we've now got witnesses now saying that yeah, they heard a woman scream. So he must have heard her.

Kyle [New]: So the police hearing this, of course it painted a very different picture from what Oscar had claimed. They also noted Adam that Riva was wearing white shorts and a black sleeveless top, not clothes that you're usually sleep in.

So to the police, it suggested that maybe she was planning on leaving in that moment and it end up locking herself in the toilet to get away from Oscar.

Adam [New]: Yeah, that sounds plausible. I mean, sometimes you might go to bed in your clothes, but yeah, this is quite odd At 2:00 AM

Kyle [New]: oscar also claimed that he hadn't heard her get outta bed and walk to the bathroom. Supposedly because of the drone of the fans. Yet he was [00:43:00] able to hear a window sliding open halfway down the hall in another room.

Adam [New]: Very good point. I didn't think of that.

Kyle [New]: By morning police decided that enough didn't add up, and so they took Oscar into police custody. The first stop was to hospital where they collected blood and urine samples. They found no drugs or alcohol in his system.

They then scraped under his fingernails to look for traces of DNA, maybe potentially revisits that indicated some kind of struggle.

Again, nothing.

But even without physical evidence of an assault, the neighbor's statements and the inconsistencies in his story was enough for them to charge him with reva's murder. And so on the 15th of February, that's exactly what they did. Mm-hmm.

Interesting, isn't it? Yeah. So while they waited for Oscar to attend his bail hearing, investigators started digging deeper into his past. They started speaking to friends, family, ex-girlfriends, anyone basically, who could help them understand who Oscar Pistorius really was as a person.

And what they started to uncover was a very different picture from this golden boy hero [00:44:00] still being plastered in all the billboards across the country.

The first thing that they discovered was that back in 2009, he was involved in a serious speedboat accident. After losing control and careering into a appear, Adam, it was serious enough that he has to be airlifted to hospital. Where he sustained a shatter jaw, a head injury, doctors had to basically put him into a medically induced coma so they could reduce the swelling on his head.

And even when he recovered, he needed 180 stitches and he had to have his jaw wired shut. So this was serious.

Adam [New]: Wow. I did not know that.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. But when police looked into the incident, they found a significant amount of alcohol on board that boat. Ordinarily he should have faced charges for that because of course that was him driving recklessly.

But somehow he managed to walk away without facing any charges. And was anyone else hurt? His mate was in there, but doesn't sound like he was seriously hurt. Mm-hmm. The assertion was that privilege and money can essentially get you out of anything basically.

Adam [New]: And kind of also made the news go away, I'm guessing. 'cause if it wasn't that widely known.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. Then in [00:45:00] 2010 it came out that he and his friends were pulled over by cops for speeding. A witness testified that afterwards Oscar got so angry that he fired shots at a traffic light out of his car sunroof. Nobody was hurt, but still it painted a picture of reckless behavior. Now with a firearm.

Adam [New]: And also it sounds like he's got a bit of a temper then.

Kyle [New]: Yes, exactly. So now we're gonna fast forward to January, 2013.

So just a month before Eva's death, Oscar was out having lunch at a busy restaurant when his friend showed him a new pistol that he just purchased as Oscar handled it under the table, it literally went off. The bullet, ended up grazing his friend's leg. It lodged into the floor of the restaurant. This is a busy restaurant, by the way. Miraculously, nobody was seriously hurt. But again, more recklessness, poor judgments, and yet another gun.

Adam [New]: Yeah.

Kyle [New]: Because of the time, he's literally at the height of his fame and worried about what this would do to his reputation and also sponsorship deals. He persuaded his friend to take the blame. So we don't actually find this out until the trial, but it never [00:46:00] looks good when privileged people seem to get away or kind of make things disappear. Do you know what I mean?

Adam [New]: Yeah. And the fact that this is his fault, but he's asked his friend to take, like, take the fall.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. then there was this reputation amongst his friends, family, and former partners, multiple people. Adam, describe him as being extraordinarily volatile. He was sweet and charming. One minute and then explosive the next.

Adam [New]: Had he always been like that, or are we saying the, it seems like it accident had done that, like the head injury, like maybe,

Kyle [New]: no, it seems like he's always been a bit volatile of a kid.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. They also spoke to his ex-girlfriend, a woman called Samantha Taylor. This is how fresh the relationship with Riva is, because when the news first broke there, Oscar had killed his girlfriend. People initially assumed this was Samantha.

Adam [New]: Oh, okay. So it was, they had, only dated like a few months before

Kyle [New]: I think so. Yes. I think at large the public believed that he was still with Samantha. Okay. Samantha said she met Oscar in 2010 when he was 25. She was just 17.

Adam [New]: Oh.

Kyle [New]: I mean, it's okay. I know it's legal, [00:47:00] but still, I think we live in a world now where we go. It might be legal, but actually socially it's a bit creepy.

Adam [New]: Yeah, it's a choice.

Kyle [New]: At first, he was incredibly affectionate he called her his little butterfly, which considering the age gap, that feels just a little bit creepy to me again.

Adam [New]: Yeah. Not, not liking it.

Kyle [New]: She said he fell for her hard and fast, orchestrating these really grand romantic gestures. For example, on their first Valentine's Day together, he tied like a hundred balloons around a tree in her front yard.

But she says that over time that charm curdled into control. When they weren't together, he'd often bombarded with texts, demanding to know where she was, insisting that she send him photos of her surrounding in order to prove where she was.

Adam [New]: Yeah. Behavior of a very controlling guy. Exactly.

Kyle [New]: She described one time that he completely flipped the fuck out because she forgot to put a mug away and she left it in the sink.

Apparently he would sock for days if he thought that she was wearing something too revealing or spending time with friends that didn't approve of, he would also call her a stripper or a hoe. He would often [00:48:00] demean her as well. Sometimes Adam in front of other people.

Adam [New]: And how long did these, they must have dated what, for a couple of years,

Kyle [New]: I think, by the sounds of it, the timeline. Probably a couple years. Yeah. Mm-hmm. She said it was a cyclical pattern of explosive anger, followed by profuse apologies, followed by over the top affection, and then grand gestures until kind of essentially the next time that he blew up.

Adam [New]: This is emotional abuse essentially. Exactly.

Kyle [New]: That is exactly what is happening here.

And so all of this was enough for investigators to argue that he should not be granted bail on his hearing in February the 19th, 2013.

When he was pulled in front of the court, he pleaded not guilty, but he doesn't deny shooting Riva, by the way. He just maintains that it was just a tragic accident.

Adam [New]: It wasn't murder. Okay.

Kyle [New]: Yes. His defense team requested that he be issued bail. But the prosecution argued that based on everything that they're uncovered in just a few days, that he was too much of a danger to remain free.

They tried to convince the judge that he was a domestic abuser, which I think if we believe what we've uncovered, it sounds like Yeah. He's got some [00:49:00] real questionable behavior, especially towards partners.

Adam [New]: Yeah. And his ex-girlfriend, I mean, if anything she's probably one of the most credible sources in this. Yes. They've broken up potentially because of his behavior. Mm-hmm. In some ways, she must be relieved to be out of that relationship because that could have been her.

Kyle [New]: Sure. So basically this pattern of reckless controlling behavior, coupled with the fact that he had an overseas bank account and property in Italy suggested that he might be a flight risk and

so they were like, don't give him bail please. But on top of this. they also said they had ballistic analysis carried out on the bathroom door, and that proved that he was lying when he said in his affidavit that he wasn't wearing his prosthetics at the time that he fired those shots.

If true, it basically implies that he didn't panic as he claimed, and that this was deliberate. It also seems to line up with what the neighbors had said about hearing an argument before the shots, right?

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: However, Oscar's defense brought in also their own ballistics expert who contradicted the [00:50:00] prosecutions, and he argued that the angles of the bullet holes did prove that Oscar wasn't wearing his prosthetics.

So basically you have these two experts that have come in that have said two completely different things, and now it creates a stalemate, which cancels out the two ballistic experts opinion.

Adam [New]: So, one saying he was wearing his prosthetics and the other one saying he wasn't

Kyle [New]: that's right. So now they can't use that because it's inconclusive. Mm-hmm. Crazy. This ends up looking really bad for the lead detective on the case Hilton that's the 24-year-old detective, and as a result, he's completely dropped from the case.

In the end, Oscar is granted full bail on the condition that he surrenders his passports. So he gets to remain free until his trial starts in years time. Seems sus right?

Adam [New]: Yeah.

Kyle [New]: Meanwhile, across the world, especially in South Africa, the judge granting Oscar Bale does not do anything, Adam, to convince the public at first.

A lot of people believe his story this notion of defending yourself against an intruder seems plausible, especially in South Africa. To us, we might be [00:51:00] like, oh, that's a bit bit weird. But we don't have that culture of crime and gun ownership as the South Africans do. Right. Or the Americans.

Adam [New]: Yeah. I mean, everything that you had said up until we start to hear more about that, what the neighbors heard, it sounds plausible. It sounds like that could have happened. It sounds like a strong enough defense case for him until

Kyle [New]: the stories come out.

Adam [New]: Yeah.

Kyle [New]: Yeah, and that's the thing. The second that there's even a sniff of allegations to possible domestic abuse, it felt like the entire country. Turns on him almost overnight. And I cannot understate how much South Africa has struggled with this long, painful history of violence against women. So these allegations tapped into something that was already deeply raw for millions of South Africans.

So across South Africa billboards and posters, that one showed Oscar's face, they started being ripped down, sponsorships started evaporating, and the debate and outrage towards him exploded across social media within hours. His golden boy image gone [00:52:00] in a flash.

But while the public was done with him, the prosecution still had a problem, right? They thought that they had landed this smoking gun with this evidence that they thought proved that he was actually wearing his prosthetics when he fired the shots, right?

They thought they could work with that to really kind of go after him, but now with that evidence contradicted by the defense's expert, they had to shift their strategy.

So instead of trying to prove intent outright, they decided to lean into probable cause, and they thought that if they could build a picture of Oscar as a reckless, controlling, volatile kind of individual, then maybe they might stand a chance. Prosecuting him.

Adam [New]: And is that when they start to draw on all his, like his ex-girlfriend, his other accounts, people that have worked with him, all that sort of stuff.

Kyle [New]: Exactly. So to do that, they basically bring additional charges against him. Those included the firing a weapon through obviously the car sunroof accidentally discharging the gun in a crowd or restaurant, but also for possessing unlicensed ammunition.

Now compared to obviously reva's killing, these seem minor, right? And ultimately the prosecution doesn't [00:53:00] actually care about these charges themselves.

What matters though was that they helped show a pattern, a man who lost control, a man who acted on impulse and a man capable of killing someone in anger.

And that's the only purpose they served. But it also meant that because they brought these additional charges, they could now bring Samantha Taylor, his ex-girlfriend, into the mix because she was present at one of those incidents and now they could bring her in when previously they couldn't because she could do two things.

She could testify to Oscar firing those shots through the sunroof, but also she could now tell the court what it was like living with a controlling volatile partner or to build this pattern of. Probable cause, essentially.

Adam [New]: Yeah. She's like a, is it a character witness? I dunno if that's the right term, but basically she can now not vouch his character, but basically mm-hmm. Back up, the prosecution.

Kyle [New]: That's right. So these testimonies could then be used to add credibility to a really big piece of evidence. Riva and Oscar's, [00:54:00] WhatsApp messages. Most of their messages were normal and affectionate. They discussed plans for the future. They shared in jokes all the things that you would expect from a brand new relationship. But Adam buried among them with some really horrible stuff.

Two weeks before Reva's death, they attended an engagement party for one of Reva's friends. Witnesses said that Oscar became convinced that she was flirting with another guy.

And then so he confronted her publicly about it and demanded that they leave after they got home Riva then texts him, and in those text messages she says, you've done everything to throw tantrums in front of other people.

Basically she's talking about his insistence on leaving.

She added, I was afraid to go with you later.

That same week, she sent another message. She said, I'm scared of you sometimes about how you snap at me and how you react to me.

To which Oscar rep applies with this really long excuse laden apology. He goes, i'm sorry. I'm sorry for the things I say without thinking. I'm sorry. I wanted to go. I was hungry and I was upset. [00:55:00]

Adam [New]: Okay. Don't blame it on Hanger.

Exactly. That's just stupid.

Kyle [New]: Reva then responds. I do everything to make you happy and to not say anything that will rock the boat with you.

I cannot be attacked by outsiders for dating you and be attacked by you. The one person I deserve protection from, and then she wrote, I just want to love and be loved, to be happy and to make someone so happy.

Maybe we can't do that with each other because right now I know you aren't happy and I'm certainly very unhappy and sad,

Adam [New]: I mean. What more proof do you need? I mean, when you've got that kind of written evidence to show that four months in they've got these problems. Yeah. He's violent, he's emotionally abusive, he's having explosive outbursts and he's scared her, and I don't know, is she fearful of her life? It sounds like that if she's scared.

Kyle [New]: It's not the kind of messages that you would expect from a four month relationship. In a lot of these messages, she puts quotation marks around the words that she uses, like hoe and stripper and bitch, right?

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: She'd say things like, I'm [00:56:00] not a hoe, I'm not a stripper in inver to comm. And that's because those words were direct quotes from what he's calling her.

Adam [New]: Yeah.

Kyle [New]: Do you know what I mean? They're not her words. He also has a massive issue with the fact that she'd had previous partners. He'd ask her how could he be confident he wasn't just like the other guys that she slept with. And she would say, listen, I wasn't approved. I dated around, but I'm not a hoe. I'm not a stripper. Again, in quotation marks, because that's what he's calling her behind the scenes, it's just not good.

But also the double standards, because he absolutely was putting it around even using his fame to get sex before he met Riva. So it's that kind of double standards kind of gender dynamics at play here. Do you know what I mean?

Adam [New]: Yeah. Absolutely. It sounds like she's walking on eggshells a lot of the time. Yeah, for sure. Around him. And I mean it's, it's sad because was this an opportunity for her to just get out of that relationship? Maybe? Remember

Kyle [New]: it's still very new, right? Yeah. And it probably hasn't escalated to the point where she would go, this is the line I'm [00:57:00] gonna leave,

Adam [New]: mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: It's just hard to overstate how damning these messages were. They lined up almost perfectly with what Samantha Taylor's testimony was saying. Right? They gave the prosecution exactly what they needed evidence of a troubling, escalating pattern of jealousy, of control. Volatile behavior, a pattern. The prosecution argued all culminated very quickly on Valentine's Day of 2013.

Do you think he's lying in his affidavit?

Adam [New]: I think there's enough evidence now that, from the ex-girlfriend, from other things that have happened to show that Yeah, he, he could have done this. It's, it's plausible. Yeah. It's likely whether he intended to kill Riva. That I'm not sure of. Sure. I think from what we've heard so far, it's a violent outburst where he's had an emotional response and he's tried to stop her from leaving potentially.

And that emotion that he displayed when, he called the ambulance and everyone turned, that sounded so genuine to me. Right. And I think he had probably did have genuine remorse. I think he [00:58:00] did really like Riva, but yeah, he did it. And he did. I think

Kyle [New]: he just couldn't control his emotions.

Adam [New]: That's what I think.

Kyle [New]: Interesting.

So, Adam,

oscar's trial started on March 3rd, 2014. And here's where South Africa's legal system differs from many others. They don't actually have jury trials. Everything comes down to the presiding judge. And in this case it was Judge Thil Mepa.

And this choice Adam is really controversial from the start a, she's a woman. And because the trial was going to orbit around kind of this theme of domestic violence, many people worried about unconscious bias, arguing that because the judge was a woman, because domestic violence was such a raw issue at the time in South Africa, he just wouldn't be given a fair trial, which I honestly must say, I think is absolutely bullshit.

Adam [New]: I completely agree. Like it doesn't matter if you're a man or woman, you're gonna go domestic violence, not good. Sure,

Kyle [New]: exactly. Everyone should agree. It's not good whether or not you're male or female, it doesn't matter .

When the trial opened, the prosecution went first. It was [00:59:00] led by state prosecutor Jerry, who in South Africa is known as the bulldog. Of all things,

Adam [New]: I'm guessing for good reason.

Kyle [New]: Nell has a reputation for being relentless, aggressive, and absolutely unafraid to push hard no matter who is on the stand. And in this case, he's facing Oscar Pastorius. The opening arguments are simple.

He says, Oscar BEUs had a violent temper, and on Valentine's Day 2013, he turned on Reva. It's as simple as that.

His first witness was Samantha Taylor, who testified about jealousy controlled behavior, the explosive moods. Nell then introduces Reva's WhatsApp messages.

He reads all of them out loud, one by one. There are tons of them. I'm scared of you. Sometimes I deserve protection from you. Nel then argues that Reva's experience with Oscar mirrors that of Samantha's.

From there, he starts to layer in testimonies from Oscar's neighbors. Five of them testified to hearing, shouting, and screaming, and a woman's voice before hearing gunshots.

[01:00:00] One neighbor even claimed to have heard screaming after the first shot was fired. Now, if that is true, that detail alone challenges Oscar's entire account. What happened because it indicates that he continued firing after he heard someone scream. And of course that does not fit the narrative that he didn't know that she was behind that closed door.

Adam [New]: Exactly.

Kyle [New]: From there. Nell then laid out what he believed happened that night. He said that he believed that Oscar and Riva argued Riva had locked herself in the toilet to get away from him. And then in a fit of rage, Oscar fired four shots through the door and Jerry Nell does not tiptoe around at all. He told the court straight up that Oscar did this intentionally.

Adam [New]: So I agree. I think he did do it intentionally. Do we know exactly where the shots were fired? Like if he was there to scare her, let's assume that maybe in the first instance, are they done at an angle whereby you think, although they're not gonna be there, they're gonna be like, is shooting down to the tiles or Sure.

Against the ceiling.

Kyle [New]: Well, we'll get onto the ballistics in [01:01:00] just a second. Mm-hmm. But at one point, Jerry Nell, he plays a video showing Oscar at a firing range, blasting a rifle into a watermelon.

The watermelon Adam essentially explodes on impact in the clip Oscar's heard laughing and then says, it's softer than brains.

Hey. But it's definitely a zombie stopper. Wow.

Jerry then turns to Oscar and says, you saw what that firearm did to that watermelon, didn't you? It exploded, didn't it? The same thing happened to Reva's head, and then in front of everyone, Adam is awful. Jerry Nell shows a photograph of Reva's injuries and demands that Oscar look at it, and he refuses.

He breaks down almost immediately. He's sobbing, he's shaking. He's just not able to compose himself.

Adam [New]: Reva's family that are also probably there, right?

Kyle [New]: I think in a way, if I believed that Oscar did this, I would want him to look at it. I don't, it doesn't matter if I'm there.

Adam [New]: Oh, no, I agree. Yeah, you'd want to sort of, you know him to do that, but the [01:02:00] fact that they have to, I don't know, just see the evidence and hear this is probably, horrific for them.

Kyle [New]: Jerry doesn't back off at this moment in time. He says, you don't wanna look at it because you do not wanna take responsibility for what you have done, but it is time. You need to look at it and take responsibility. Mr. Pastorius, through his tears, he says, basically, I have taken responsibility by not wanting to live my life by wanting my time on the stand to tell my story for respect for Riva and myself. I have taken responsibility, but I will not look at a picture where I'm tormented by what I saw and what I felt that night.

I picked her up, my fingers touched her head. I remember, I don't have to look at a picture. I was there and he just breaks down. He vomits. He is just o beside himself. And from there the judge has to call an adjourned to the court because Oscar he's just in pieces.

Adam [New]: I think he's generally showing remorse.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. I get that feeling. When I watched that, it was difficult to watch that. I dunno what I make of [01:03:00] it. It feels genuine

Adam [New]: if, I mean, he is a very good actor. If not, yeah, I, I think I buy it, but that doesn't mean I side with him by any means.

Kyle [New]: And like I said, multiple reports say that pretty much for most of the trial, he just cried. He's beside himself several times. He vomits, they have to have a permanent bucket so he can vomit into it every time. Wow. Some really horrible kind of evidences read out or testimony that just takes him back to what happened that night.

But then the prosecution, they bring in the reconstructed bathroom door complete with the original bullet holes, which they basically props up in front of the judge and Jerry Nell has their ballistics expert walk the court through the order in which they believe the bullets would've hit Riva and penetrated her body.

The experts said that the first bullet would've hit Riva in the hip if that was true. They argued that she would've definitely screamed, alerting Oscar to the fact that she was inside the toilet, and yet he continued to fire three more times. They said that if the shots were fired in quick, rapid succession, then that couldn't have left room for anyone to react quickly enough. Right? Mm-hmm. Because remember, she was shot in the [01:04:00] head on the third one.

Multiple witnesses describe hearing the shot says, bang, bang, bang. That pause between the first and the second shot would've been long enough for Reva to scream, right?

Mm-hmm. and for Oscar to realize that she was actually behind that door.

The expert also testified that based on reva's wounds, she was likely crouched inside the cubicle with her arms raised to kind of shield her head because one of the bullets hit her arm.

Adam [New]: Okay.

Kyle [New]: He should have, he should have known if that was true.

Adam [New]: Yeah. I

Kyle [New]: mean,

Adam [New]: would, I guess Riva could have moved after that first. Sort of flesh wound. Mm-hmm. maybe position herself in a way where she then got hit. But I'm just trying to work out. 'cause if it isn't quick secession, it'd all be in the same place. But she's been injured in several body areas. So yeah. It makes me feel like,

Kyle [New]: depends how far away he is as well. How steady he is on the ground.

Adam [New]: Yeah.

Kyle [New]: Who knows. But here's the thing, when it's the defense's turn, Oscar's lawyer, Barry Ru, he counters with his own ballistic experts who basically testified there is no [01:05:00] way to determine the order in which the bullets entered into that door.

So again, you have another situation where two independent experts have come to completely different conclusions. And this is what is so maddening about trials like this. If you want an expert to back up your version of events badly enough. You could usually find one. Which inevitably nullifies the other one's arguments because then they're like, two experts have said two different things. Which one do we go with? And so it feels like this is often like a game of chess.

Adam [New]: Yeah. Stalemate sort of thing.

Kyle [New]: Barry Ru also argued that because the bathroom was tiled, the sound of the first shot would've been so deafening that Oscar would've been temporarily disorientated and deafened maybe even unable to hear Riva screamed if she even screamed at all.

Adam [New]: Maybe. Or did he shoot her, realize he'd hit her and then was like, well, this isn't gonna look good for me. 'cause he's clearly so worried about his own sort of, perception and mm-hmm. And reputation. Did he then think there's only way out, way out of this? [01:06:00]

Kyle [New]: The very first thing that you said is the thing that's important and that is maybe ' cause all they need to do is cast doubt. Right? Yeah. Is it plausible that that could have happened? And if the answer is yes, then it's enough.

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: Jerry Nell then pushes on another point. Oscar claimed that he thought that there was an intruder because he heard the window opening, but there were no footsteps, no shouted threats, no sign of anyone physically moving around, just a noise behind a closed door.

Jerry argued that if that is what Oscar believed, then he still had a responsibility as a trained firearm user to act responsibly, firing four shots through a closed door, especially when you believe the woman that you love is asleep nearby, is not acting responsible.

Adam [New]: Yeah,

Kyle [New]: That really lands hard because South Africa has around 6 million privately owned guns, right? With one in 10 people owning one. It's not that unheard of for accidental deaths to happen due to carelessness. So when it comes to kind of acting responsibly with firearms, it's really important. And clearly he wasn't acting [01:07:00] responsibly.

Adam [New]: No.

Kyle [New]: At this point, things aren't looking good for the defense, and so Barry Ru has to pivot. He set out basically to dismantle the prosecution's, portrayal of Oscar as this abusive controlling partner.

He tells the court that out of the nearly 2000 WhatsApp messages between Oscar and Riva. Over 90% of them were loving and affectionate. Yes, they fought, he said, but all couples fight to him. Those few text messages didn't prove a pattern of abuse.

Adam [New]: That's absolute rubbish.

Kyle [New]: Absolutely. 100%. Honestly, when I read that argument, it almost fell off my chair

Adam [New]: because, it doesn't matter like how many there were. The fact that there was some, like the fact that there was one Yeah. And that she's saying, I feel scared. Yeah. And everything like that. It's not like an argument whereby, oh, you didn't put the washing out. This is something completely different.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. I don't remember. They've only been together four months at this point. So even just one message like that in such a short space of time does not bode well for their future.

Adam [New]: Yeah. I mean, that's just written evidence. What about the [01:08:00] arguments they've had?

Kyle [New]: Roe's next point was that there were no angry text exchanges on the day of the shooting. That does not land either, because that's not how living with a volatile partner works. Right. A fight doesn't just build gradually. It can literally spark from nothing. And escalate into something unthinkable. Like with Samantha's case, he blew up because it was a mug.

Adam [New]: If I blew up every time I see a mug in the damn sink,

Kyle [New]: we wouldn't have any mugs or a cat poo in the cat lit. Right? Yeah. Luckily, Adam, this does not get perceived well by the public by this point. The defense basically looks like a fall and good. Basically bar Ru then turns his attention to the five neighbors who said that they heard screams and shouting.

The first was Estelle Vander Merva. He asks her, am I correct in saying that you couldn't actually make out what the shouting was saying? And she says, of, yeah, I I couldn't work it out. I, I could hear shouting.

Could you say for definite where the screams were coming from? And she was like, well, no. Right. But at the same time, police show up. At this house. And so I heard shouting and I assumed it was probably [01:09:00] from the incident that's occurring and unfolding outside my house.

Yeah. To which he suggests, well, maybe it was another couple fighting. And the thing is though, all she can say at this point is yes. But the thing is though, she's still her shouting as far as I'm aware. There were no indication of another couple arguing that same night. Still, the point is that a seed is now being planted a seed of doubt that there's a possibility. It could have been another neighbor arguing.

Adam [New]: Unless they can prove that Oscar Pistorius screams like a girl, like Ned Flanders.

Then I, I, this is just stupid.

Kyle [New]: Okay, so Adam put a pin in that.

Adam [New]: Oh God. Don't tell me that's actually part of their case. Uhhuh.

Kyle [New]: Barry then went after the screams neighbor said they heard, followed by gunshots. He pushed this idea that the screams weren't Riva. Instead they were Oscars screams calling for help. He said that Oscar's voice naturally raised in pitch when he was emotional, which the court then heard essentially firsthand when Oscar broke down several times throughout the trial.

And I've gotta say, yeah, he does. His voice does go up. I dunno if I was [01:10:00] still mistaken that for a female's voice. Mm-hmm. But that's what he's saying here. He argued that even several witnesses when they arrived at the shooting, they described him wailing in a high-pitched voice. That was the estate manager, their daughter, the police as well. They all corroborated this idea that, yeah, his voice is really high pitched.

Adam [New]: I mean, yeah. Okay. I understand they're going with that as an argument.

Kyle [New]: What he's saying is that the neighbors had slept through the actual gunfire, only waking up when Oscar was screaming to which to them may have sounded like a woman screaming.

The gunfire that he's saying that they heard was actually him battering down the bathroom door with the cricket bat, to which he says they'd mistaken for gunfire.

Adam [New]: I feel like you know the difference between a gunfire and like someone banging on something.

Kyle [New]: I don't know. I, I've never been in that position before.

Adam [New]: Yeah, I've heard a gunfire and I heard a banging sound and the two are very different.

Kyle [New]: I think I would probably be able to tell the difference between gunfire and a cricket bat.

And the thing is that when he [01:11:00] questions these witnesses, a couple of them crumble under this, agreeing that yes, it was possible. Maybe I did sleep through it. Maybe I did wake up hearing Oscar thinking he was a woman. And then the gunfire that I thought was gunfire was actually the cricket bat.

A couple of them say, yeah, it's possible, but one is adamant that the pattern that they heard was bang, scream, bang, bang, bang, basically indicating that if they heard a scream, then Oscar like heard a scream too. Yeah. Which basically meant that he knew that she was behind their closed door and yet continued to fire before killing her with intention.

He basically ended up saying that the neighbor's testimony was confused and unreliable, that they'd even carried out their own tests with an acoustic expert who showed that it was impossible to distinguish anything from 110 yards away from that house, which I don't know if it's true.

It looks like they brought in experts and they've contradicted each other. I think that I would probably be able to hear screams a lot further than a hundred yards. One of the neighbors lived 200 meters away. Yeah. And she heard screams.

Adam [New]: yeah, it's, it is interesting 'cause I guess these people, they're half [01:12:00] asleep or whatever. You can potentially, you know, you could mishear things if you've just woken up. So I understand why the defense is saying this, but I dunno. I feel like there's just still so much evidence that is stacked up against Oscar. That I don't buy it.

Kyle [New]: With all this question from Barry Ru, the defense, they don't have any defensive proof of any of this, right? It's all speculation, but the point is that there are plausible seeds that have been planted, that have cast enough doubt in Judge Messer's mind.

The, that basically memory, distance, the timing, none of that could accurately be trusted and therefore it does something in, in, in his defense. Mm-hmm.

Another big thing that helped was Jerry Nell himself, because of how aggressive he is towards Oscar, he often causes him to break down under examination that the judge repeatedly has to tell him to kind of just back off.

You definitely get the sense that Oscar's reaction was striking, sympathy with the judge. The way that he just kept breaking down seemed to her like evidence that this was just a tragic accident.

Adam [New]: Yeah, [01:13:00] I mean, I still generally buy that. He didn't mean to kill her. Mm-hmm. I think,

Kyle [New]: so then they get to the part of the trial where the defense decides to bring in a psychiatrist named Dr. Meryl Stander, who basically initially evaluated Oscar's mental health.

She testified that he suffered from a generalized anxiety disorder, one that based on his disability, shaped his perception of danger and his extreme response to it, not just on the night that Riva was killed, but throughout his entire life.

It talks about how he lived in constant fear, that his general reaction, in certain situations were instinctive rather than deliberate. Which, if true, would completely undermine the prosecution's entire argument that he acted in an intentional rage,

but the prosecution pushed back. They argued that all you had to do was look into his background to see that that just wasn't true. His upbringing, by all accounts, was very normal with exceptionally supportive and loving parents. His family's attitude was that he was no different from able-bodied people, right?

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: That is how he was raised. That was his attitude towards [01:14:00] any limitation that he might have had. So this idea that he had spent his whole life crippled by anxiety just didn't quite land with the courts. Yeah. Jerry argued that the testimony from the psychologist was nothing more than a sought out expert, willing to align with the defense's agenda, basically.

And he requested that the trial be paused while Oscar be evaluated by an independent team of psychiatrists, which I think is smart at this point. Yeah. Good.

The judge, she agrees. She pauses the trial for 30 days and he undergoes evaluation in Pretoria, and when the trial resumes, the independent psychiatrist reported that Oscar did have clinically significant generalized anxiety disorder, but they also said that he didn't fit the psychological profile for men who commit domestic violence. He showed no signs of narcissism and no signs of abnormal aggression.

Adam [New]: Okay. That's interesting.

Kyle [New]: Yeah. What they did agree on was that Oscar often felt fearful and vulnerable, particularly when it came to [01:15:00] crime. This bolstered the idea that he was terrified of intruders to the point of obsession.

So as you can imagine, this backfires massively for the prosecution and the defense decides to run with this.

They highlighted previous instances where he came home that night and he heard a noise in the kitchen. He goes into full combat mode with his gun drawn, only to discover that it was the washing machine, basically.

But they also recounted another time where he was watching a movie with a friend. He had ended up nodding off. There was gunfire that erupted in the film. He bolts awake, he sprints out of the room in a panic.

So this is kind of behavior that seems to be a pattern.

He also told a story about when a friend stayed over one night at his house, that friend got up in the middle of the night to grab a glass of water, only for Oscar to burst out of his bedroom with his gun drawn. Convinced that there was an intruder.

Adam [New]: Yeah. Drawn. Not shooting.

Kyle [New]: But my point is, is that shows that there is an anxiety there. Whether or not that justifies his actions. I'm not saying that at all, but basically they trace his [01:16:00] anxiety all the way back to his childhood when Oscar and his siblings would sometimes be woken up in the middle of the night by their mother insisting that someone had broken in and she'd lock them in their bedroom until the police arrived.

And that happened a bunch of times.

this essentially shapes his fight or flight response. All of this was really persuasive for the defense and a complete blow to the prosecution.

Adam [New]: But can both things be true at once? Yes, they can. But yeah, that's what I'm thinking. He could be like this, but could he also have been aggressive as well?

Kyle [New]: So to drive the point home, the defense had Oscar walk around the courtroom without his prosthetics on to show just how unsteady he was. Like he stood like a good 12 inches shorter, unable to move with confidence. He was anxious, he was vulnerable.

Adam [New]: But what are they expecting for someone to walk around Like, is he gonna be like doing some kind of serenade? Of course he's gonna like try and look like he's

Kyle [New]: true.

Very true. So they're trying to show is that, especially in his role as a protector in his and Reva's relationship, this hypervigilance and this dependence on his gun they argued was how he kind of managed that anxiety that he [01:17:00] had that came with essentially not having legs or being away from his prosthetics at night.

Adam [New]: Like I say, I feel like both things could be true here.

Kyle [New]: Exactly. And remember, what's very apparent is that this is all a game of chess and it's all theater.

Adam [New]: Mm-hmm.

Kyle [New]: Right. But you definitely get the sense that Judge Mepa, she does empathize with him at this point.

And Adam, after all the evidence is presented, Judge Mepa, she rules that Oscar was not guilty of murder.

Really?

She rejects the notion that he intentionally killed Riva during a fight. She agreed that the neighbors like heard Oscar screaming, not Riva.

She dismissed the WhatsApp messages as evidence of intent. She says they show conflict but not premeditation. But she did find him guilty of the equivalent of manslaughter.

Adam [New]: Yeah.

Kyle [New]: While he hadn't intended to kill Riva, he did act irresponsibly and negligently with a gun, which directly led to a death,

Adam [New]: yeah. In fairness, I dunno why I was shocked at [01:18:00] murder. I didn't think he murdered well and premeditated.

Kyle [New]: It's 'cause it insinuated. I left. Left you on a cliff edge. Yeah. And basically insinuated that he didn't go to jail.

Adam [New]: Yeah. I think I agree with that statement.

Kyle [New]: He was also found guilty of the additional weapons charges for accidentally firing the epistle in a restaurant and at the traffic lights.

And Adam, he is sentenced to eight years in jail. Five years for reva's death and a concurrent three year suspended sentence for the weapons charges.

Five years for Reva's death. I know it's manslaughter. It

Adam [New]: still doesn't feel enough. He still did it.

Kyle [New]: Do you know what I mean? It's awful.

Adam [New]: Like you can butter the side of the bread or whatever that saying is.

The main thing is that Riva died at the hands of Oscar Pastorius. Yeah. It may not have been premeditated. Mm-hmm. But five years is just He was careless.

Kyle [New]: Yeah, he was, he ended up only serving one year in prison and after that he was allowed to serve the remainder under house arrest and his uncle's pool house.

Adam [New]: I did remember that. I remember thinking at the time, what a jammy bastard. [01:19:00] Yeah. Because of his fame or money or whatever.

Kyle [New]: Absolutely. This causes outrage. Cross country people said to prove that money and privilege can buy you anything. Judge Mepa herself received just a wave of death threats as a result of this ruling.

So I cannot understate the backlash enough. Like South Africa already had a poor track record with anti-corruption measures. And the justice system just wasn't any exception. This eventually led to the Supreme Court reviewing the case in 2015.

They overturn Judge Mesa's ruling saying that she had misapplied legal principles and so they upgraded Oscar's conviction from manslaughter to murder and increased his sentence to 13 years and five months.

Adam [New]: And so he went back to prison or is he still under the house arrest?

Kyle [New]: He went. Back to prison. And that's where he served essentially nine years before being released on parole in in 2024.

Adam [New]: And is he on parole, like he's free, like fully free or does he have to check in? What is it? He is on

Kyle [New]: parole right now, yeah.

Mm-hmm. And today [01:20:00] he's reportedly Adam getting his life back on track. He's training four triathlons. He has a new girlfriend. I try to find a picture of her until I realized I was looking at a picture of her all along because she looks eerily similar to Riva. Her name is Rita.

Adam [New]: Okay.

Kyle [New]: It's just weird. That is, yeah.

He clearly has a type, and I know we haven't talked about this yet, but throughout the case and ever since Reva's mother June has been really outspoken. Even after his release, she sent warnings to his new girlfriend saying that although he served his time, he's still the same volatile person that he was when he went in with untreated anger issues. She said that while he was in prison, Oscar was supposed to complete anger management courses tied to obviously his sentence, but he skipped many of them. And she argued to the parole board that he shouldn't be released back to the public because of this.

And I completely agree with that. He didn't finish his courses in anger management. Agree. Is he gonna do

Adam [New]: this again? That was, I thought that the whole point Yeah. Get rehabilitated everything.

Kyle [New]: Exactly. And since Reva's death, her family has created the Reva's Sink Foundation in her [01:21:00] name to raise awareness about domestic violence and support survivors.

They also released the outline of her speech that Riva was meant to give on the morning of her murder to those school girls that talked about kind of placing the value on you.

And in her notes, like it wasn't a finished speech, but in her notes she said, be brave. Always be positive. Go home and tell your parents, your siblings, your neighbor, that they're appreciated. You'll go to bed with a happy heart and an open mind for the future. And sadly, Adam, she never got to give that speech.

Mm-hmm. And Adam, that is the story. The killing of Riva Stamp at the hands of her partner Oscar Pastorius.

Adam [New]: I dunno what to make of it really? 'cause I still, yes. Okay. He got more time. Yes. I don't think it's murder, but I still don't feel satisfied it's just, it just still doesn't feel right.

Kyle [New]: Yeah, I agree.

I'm torn as well. I honestly don't believe that he killed her with intent based on his reaction when the cops stepped [01:22:00] in. He does seem to be really remorseful, especially his conduct in the trial.

When you see some of those videos of Jerry now cross-examining him and him vomiting ish, that is someone who's, sorry. In my opinion, I do think that he was probably an angry man. I do think that he probably was volatile.

I do think there was a degree of emotional abuse. I don't think that was the trigger in this incident, but I'm also not convinced that it couldn't have led down this route late down the line. Mm.

So, yeah, I'm torn, but. The point is, is that is the story of Ingham's killing without any of the noise and the sensationalism and the politics kind of getting in the way of it as best as I could.

And yeah, you do get a sense that you're left deeply unsatisfied with the outcome.

Adam [New]: Yeah, I just don't feel justice, I think at the end of the day, hopefully, perhaps he has learned, we don't really know much about him now, but he's got another girlfriend. I [01:23:00] hope she's safe. I hope he has learned from this. I dunno what else I can say.

Kyle [New]: Yeah, but I would love to hear what some of our listeners think, especially in South Africa, we share very similar cultures, but we have very different relationships when it comes to, gun ownership. How did this impact your perception of this story? We'd love to know,

But yeah. At the end of the day, a woman lost her life. She was beautiful. She was a great advocate for women suffering through domestic violence. So yeah, we lost a light in this world. Yeah. Unnecessarily, I think.

Did you learn anything new from this story?

Adam [New]: Well, it basically reminded me or refreshed me. I, I forgot that the fact that he got manslaughter or the equivalent and then murder. Yeah.

Kyle [New]: Called, I think they're called a culpable murder in South Africa.

Adam [New]: Yeah, I didn't know that. And I kind of, I didn't know about his previous relationship and I didn't necessarily know how, maybe anxious or paranoid he was about security to the level that it affected him. Sure. Um, so yeah, definitely some things learned. [01:24:00]

Kyle [New]: Yeah. Okay. Let's wrap up and run this outro.

And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Compendium and Assembly of Fascinating Things.

Adam [New]: If today's episode sparks your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people like you discover the show.

Kyle [New]: And as always, for our dedicated freaks out there, don't forget the next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon, and it is completely free to access.

Adam [New]: And if you want, even more than join our certified freaks tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek of what's coming next. We'd love for you to be part of our growing community.

Kyle [New]: We drop new episodes every Tuesday, and until then, remember, fear might explain an action, but it never excuses a choice. We'll see you next time.

Adam [New]: See you. [01:25:00]