Read an Excerpt

One Tragic Night

The Oscar Pistorius Murder Trial

St. Martin's Press

Valentine's Day

The battered meranti door stands ajar, a crude gap stretching from its mid-point towards its upper reaches. Three of the four panels in the top two-thirds of the door are missing, leaving a gaping hole in the structure. A key with an apple-green plastic tag dangles from the brass lock next to the handle. One long shard of wood lies inside the toilet cubicle, a half-moon bullet hole along the spine of the plank and a chip on the side. Several splinters litter the floor of the tiny space, which measures only an arm's length in each direction.

A large rectangular piece of meranti – the bulk of the missing panels – lies discarded on the bathroom floor, where it had been flung in a moment of desperation. It has come to rest next to a buckled silver plumbing access panel of the corner Jacuzzi bath, and squares of broken tile have fallen off the wall adjacent to the hinge of the door, testament to the force with which the door was bashed down.

The deep reddish-brown grain of the wood is marred by bullet holes, bloodstains and garish cracks. What appears to be a tiny fragment of human bone has come to rest on the timber. Later, as they reassemble the broken pieces, investigators will tack strips of police marking tape near the holes as indicators of where the bullets cracked through the wood.

Behind the door lies the real horror. A congealing Rorschach-like pattern of crimson has formed on the mottled beige marbled tiles. On the wall tiles, rivulets of blood have trickled down to the floor where more wood splinters and bits of black metal from the bullet jackets came to lie, the detritus of the devastating events that played out in this bathroom pre-dawn. On the back wall, three separate ricochet points mark where bullets struck the ceramic and shattered the tiles. An old-fashioned dark-wood magazine rack with a heavy, curved handle, packed with glossy titles, stands against the wall, one leg resting in the puddle.

The square porcelain toilet is on the left of the space, the lid up against the cistern. The right half of the seat is smeared in a thin film of red, cascading into the bowl below in thick ribbons, separated by strips of white where it appears running water has washed it clean. The macabre sight of the dark red water in the bowl, where one would expect to see sanitised blue, jars. Floating on top of the water are globules of varying sizes, creating the appearance of oil in the water. So murky is the liquid in the bowl that a spent bullet projectile would not be visible to investigators and would be missed during an initial inspection of the site.

The trail leads out past the toilet door, alongside the shower, across the tiles towards a crumpled charcoal bathmat and a pile of soaked pebble-grey towels and on to a worn cricket bat with its perished rubber grip partly torn from the handle.

The trail has settled in various shapes – there are smears, drops, crowns and larger puddles where it seeps away into the grouting. There are flecks on the screen of a black iPhone 4 and its metallic cover, partially hidden under the bathmat, and droplets on the handle of the silver-and-black Taurus 9 mm firearm, which has been abandoned on the mat with its hammer cocked and the safety off. Droplets crowd around the cricket bat, itself marked by squiggled wisps along the blue-and-yellow 'Lazer' text and the chevron logo. The signatures of famous cricketers along the face of the bat have not been saved from the indignity of being tarnished, but investigators only discovered that when turning the bat over hours later.

Nearby is a fragment of a hollow-point, strands of hair entangled in its jagged metal claws. There are three spent cartridges on the tiles in the bathroom: one near the bath, one near the cricket bat and a third at the entrance. A fourth lies in the passage near the cupboards, its copper casing marked by the black residue of spent gunpowder and its distinctive head stamp 'WCC +P+' identifying the bullet as Winchester-produced hollow-point ammunition.

There are dark red spots on the two square white basins, where his and hers toothbrushes rest neatly alongside each other, and on a toilet roll parked in the cabinet of the dark-wood vanity. While the flecks on the basins could be missed at a glance, there is no ignoring the blatant smear on the tiled pillar alongside. The streaks mark where her soaked blonde hair swept past as he carried her out of the bathroom, her head resting on his left arm. He had to navigate his way over the towels, wood panels and splinters as he rushed through the doors and then down the passage lined with clothes cupboards into the bedroom. The trail bears testament to this journey that was her last.

At the end of the passage, the trail makes a sharp turn through the bedroom after passing a tall four-tiered bookshelf, a washbasket and a pair of smart black suit shoes. On the left it avoids a chocolate-brown leather couch, her white flip-flops and her black-and-white Virgin Active kitbag, a black bra peeking out from the unzipped opening. There is no spatter on the side table that holds an extreme sports magazine, a silver damask lamp, a squeezed tube of Voltaren gel, and a white coffee mug holding the dregs of the previous night. But, inexplicably, there are a couple of stray drops on the wall above the bed and the ebony headboard.

The spatter also does not make it as far as the right side of the bed alongside the sliding doors that lead out to the balcony, where an iPad, its cover and a grey T-shirt have been left on the floor next to a pair of men's hair clippers. The contents of the drawer on this side of the bed include an array of sexual lubricants, pellets for a pellet gun, playing cards, Mickey Mouse plasters, a USB stick and a spare firearm magazine containing Ranger ammunition.

His rushed exit from the bathroom, with her in his arms, left several marks on the contents of the bedroom. Experts suggested this was the result of so-called arterial spurt – sprays from the devastating wounds to her body as her heart continued to beat. One spurt, likely occurring as he rounded the bend from the bathroom passage towards the bedroom door, reached around a metre and a half along the carpet onto a grey duvet, which had a pair of inside-out jeans resting on a corner.

An open leather-wrapped watchcase containing eight high-end timepieces was spattered and four streaks of red, resembling cracks in the glass, show where her hair flicked past, while speckles are visible on the watches themselves. The box rests on a dark chest of drawers, next to a silver amplifier with an iPhone cable dangling from it, two BlackBerry phones, a silver Tiffany & Co. bracelet, a packet of syringes in a plastic bag and a plastic container, along with several boxes. Spatter also landed on the tall aluminium-and-glass Oakley stand next to the drawers, housing in excess of 40 pairs of sunglasses in varying shades and shapes. Next to the cabinet rests a black air rifle and a small blue baseball bat, indicators perhaps of his heightened security awareness.

The trail is more obvious again where carpet meets tile at the doorway and there has been no opportunity for it to soak away. The bedroom door itself is damaged – not only from speckles of blood but there is also a small hole in the top third of the door caused by a projectile, scuff marks near the spine and a section of the wood is cracked at the bottom near the latch.

The horrifying path of arterial spurts – vertical lines on the walls and tiles – trace the route he followed out the double doors of the bedroom, across the upstairs lounge past the TV unit, the flat screen, surround-sound amp and headphones on the left and the tawny faux-suede couch and ottoman on the right. A red line stretches from the ottoman across to the L-shaped couch. It follows his route past an open linen cupboard stacked with towels and sheets that have been left dishevelled as a result of a scramble to find something, anything, to stop the haemorrhaging. A blue hand towel lies abandoned on the floor next to the cupboard.

The trail follows his route across the landing towards the stairs, past two paintings of bushveld savanna in heavy wooden frames and a tall wooden sculpture on a metal stand. All along the cream eggshell-coloured walls are sprays in a serpentine pattern. The splotches are reminiscent of cuttlefish, with their bulbous heads and long twisted tentacles.

Some of the spray reached over the silver balustrade down to the lounge below where drops landed on the beige leather bucket chairs and couch, raw-wood wine rack, animal-skin ottoman and pillow, and Nguni-hide rug. It is in this room that the trophies are paraded, witnesses to years of success and achievement. Their polished sheen has escaped blemish.

There are maroon drops on every step leading down to the ground floor – on the mottled tiles, the walls and streaked on the balustrade as if a paintbrush has been flicked deliberately and violently. Finally, the trail stops at the bottom of the stairs where the body lies. The woman, once a paragon of beauty and grace, now lies broken and damaged, drained of life.

She lies on her back, stretched out with her head closest to the main entrance of the house. Those who were amongst the first to arrive on the scene were met by this harrowing sight as they threw open the doors. Her legs are splayed, revealing the cursive 'Lioness' tattoo on her left ankle and the shimmering pink polish on her toes. The light-grey Nike basketball shorts are soaked red on her right side where a bullet struck her hip. Her head is cocked to the left, away from the staircase, and her left hand rests on her exposed navel, showing the wound on the webbing between her index and middle fingers. Her black vest has been pulled up to below her chest and a white ECG electrode pad peeks through on her right breast. The white stickers from the ECG pads have been discarded near the staircase where paramedics left them in their haste. Her right arm, destroyed by a wound to the elbow, is bent unnaturally at her side and a light towel has been draped over her bicep – a hasty tourniquet abandoned when it became clear that any attempt at stemming the flow was in vain. There is another towel at the wood skirting and several black plastic bin bags to the side. Her head, devastated by the wound high above her right ear, lies on a black-and-white patterned towel. Her right eye is bruised grey over the lid, reminiscent of the smoky eye shadow she was painted with for model shoots. Her manicured eyebrow has halted a trickle of blood from her forehead onto the bridge of her nose. The rim of her nostril is bright red and a thick line runs at a 90-degree angle across to her left cheekbone, as if it has been drawn across her face with a stick of lipstick gone awry. Her lips are pale.

She lies where he left her. It is here, at the foot of the staircase, where others tried to help her, where the paramedics came, scrambled and then had to walk away. In the pre-dawn hours following her death, police officers arrived on the scene to investigate. They made their way through the house following the trail from her body up to the primary crime scene in the toilet cubicle where she was shot. A photographer recorded the images for posterity. The spatter, the bullet jackets, the cellphones, the cricket bat, the gun and the door would all later be scrutinised as investigators hunted for the truth.

And then finally, only once the sun was already high in the sky over Silver Woods estate, would members of the pathology services arrive to remove her from where she had died, leaving a bloody chaos at the bottom of the stairs where the trail had gone cold.

* * *

The narrative that follows up to here is based on the court testimony of witnesses and is in line with each individual's interpretation of events, not necessarily fact.

Estelle van der Merwe glanced over at the clock. It was 1:56am and she was irritated. She had had barely five hours' sleep and knew that her 11-year-old son was writing an exam in the morning and was probably also being kept up by the disturbance. Her husband Jacques lay asleep in the bed alongside her, apparently oblivious to the voice wafting over the warm night air across the Silver Woods estate.

Estelle couldn't hear what the fight was about or even what language the woman was speaking, but to her it sounded like an argument. The voice was loud and the breaks and pauses suggested she was speaking to someone else – who was it? Estelle couldn't hear a second voice.

She got out of bed to peer out of a window, looking towards the Farm Inn, a small nature reserve neighbouring the estate, but she couldn't see anything and went back to bed. Out of desperation and annoyance, she folded a pillow and put it over her head, hoping it would shut out the persistent voice. She heard it go on and on for about an hour before she finally dozed off.

An hour later, four 'plof geluide' ('thuds' or 'bangs') shook her awake again. Then there was silence.

This time her husband had also been jolted awake and Estelle anxiously asked him what the noise had been.

'Gunshots,' he responded. Jacques got out of bed to look out of the windows, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. He climbed back under the covers next to her. But then the sounds of a commotion caught their attention once again. Jacques called the estate security to establish what was going on and moments later they both heard what sounded like someone crying in the distance.

'Who's crying?' asked Estelle. She was in shock, felt paralysed and too scared to get up herself to see what was happening.

'It's Oscar,' said Jacques, which confused her because it sounded like a woman who was sobbing.

The couple didn't know Oscar well, but Jacques had occasionally chatted to the athlete when they happened upon each other in the street. He was a friendly neighbour, always willing to offer a smile and a wave when leaving his house. When the men did talk, the topic was usually cars.

Terrified, Estelle slowly climbed out of bed and joined her husband at the window. Together they watched as several cars began to arrive at 286 Bush Willow Crescent. Eventually an ambulance pulled up and they saw it drive off again minutes later, lacking the urgency with which it had arrived.

* * *

Michelle Burger shot up in bed just after 3am, jolted awake by what she believed to be the blood-curdling screams of a woman in distress. Her husband Charl Johnson heard them too and lifted his head from his pillow to make sure what he had heard was real and not a dream. Charl leapt out of the bed and ran onto the balcony to focus his ear on what had pierced the early-morning silence. The couple had left the windows wide open – it was a warm evening and the lack of air conditioning made the bedroom stiflingly uncomfortable.

They had lived on the Silver Stream estate, adjacent to Silver Woods, for about two years and their house was 177 metres from Oscar's home. Standing on the balcony, Charl heard what he thought to be a terrified woman calling into the night, clearly distressed and in trouble. 'Help ... Help,' he heard. Then what sounded like the voice of a man, also calling for help three times. Was this an armed robbery gone wrong? Both Charl and Michelle wondered.

'Charl! It's no use standing there, call security!' shouted Michelle to her husband out on the balcony. As he rushed back inside, Michelle reached for her cellphone on the bedside table. Frantically she scrolled through her phone's contact book and dialled the number saved under 'Security'. It was 3:16am when she passed the handset to Charl.

They hoped the estate's security officers could call their colleagues at the neighbouring complex to alert them to what seemed to be a terrible attack in progress.

When the call was answered, Charl rapidly explained that there were people being attacked, but he was met with confusion on the other end of the line. The guard who had answered handed over to a colleague and Charl repeated the story. When the second guard still didn't respond, the penny dropped. Charl realised that the number Michelle had dialled was for security at the Strubenkop estate, several kilometres away, where they had previously lived. Realising the error, Charl ended the call, which had lasted 58 seconds, and ran back out on to the balcony.

All that separated their house from the source of the noise was a few spindly poplar trees and an open field, and from the bed, Michelle could hear the screams becoming increasingly intense. She could only think about how scared the woman sounded. Charl sensed the fear in the voice escalate and to him it was clear that the woman was in imminent danger.

And then, just as the screaming reached a climax, it was brought to an end by four cracks.

First one shot, a slight pause, and then three more.

Bang. Bang, bang, bang.

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Excerpted from One Tragic Night by Mandy Wiener, Barry Bateman. Copyright © 2014 Primedia Broadcasting. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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