BIB. The phone did contain information. OP refused to give the police his WhatApp password. Apple and the police (separately) ran three programs to recover deleted data and they were successful.
Just because what we have seen of the data does not include a message that says, "Im going to shoot you the next time I see you," does not mean that OP wanted the police to see the messages that were used by Nel to show discourse and fear by Reeva in the the relationship and showed OP admitting to the Tasha's incident.
So the phone he didn't know the password to, had all the messages deleted? Those messages are the ones Nel read out?