General Discussion Thread #1 -Bail Hearing

[Cherwell]

"I felt trapped as my bedroom door was locked and I have limited mobility on my stumps."

And why exactly couldn't he open a bedroom door? I can't imagine a lock closing the door from inside that can not be opened-wouldn't that be a huge fire hazard?

Yes, I don't understand this. Surely he himself had a key within easy reach in the room. How else would he get out in the morning?

In fact, given the layout of the suite, the safest and most sensible course of action - once he had seen the open bathroom window - was to return to the bedroom (as he did), retrieve the key, wake Reeva and quietly leave the room, locking the door behind them - thus leaving any intruder with no exit but back through the window.

(Of course had he done this, he would have at once spotted that Reeva wasn't in the bed.)

Yes I was wondering about Reeva's clothes. Initial reports said she was in her nightdress. Now it seems she was wearing shorts and vest. Was it outdoor shorts and vest. Why would she be wearing outdoor clothes at 3 in the morning? Or was it a pyjamas set?

We've only got his word that they'd gone to bed at all. She could still have been wearing the same clothes she had worn earlier in the day. Sounds like the kind of casual outfit you might wear for lounging around on a hot evening, or maybe she wore them for yoga.

 

[NocturnalLady]

I don't understand why the prosecution is basically conceding that OP's version of events is the only reasonable one and that the facts do support his version.

Even going with just the facts that have been brought out in the bail hearing I have no trouble imagining various scenarios that fit the facts but do not support what OP says happened. Why is the prosecution so ready to pretend that OP's explanation is the only possible version??

 

[otyikondo]

Originally Posted by Snoopster
What kind of burglar locks themselves in the toilet? That just doesn't make sense to me.

Bingo! That is exactly what I keep thinking.

There are devious, tiresome burglars out there who will sit in your toilet for hours on end reading Proust or doing cryptic crossword puzzles and using all the paper, and leaving floaters and other debris, and there are very modest, diffident and nervous burglars who will slip in for a quick wee-wee before rifling your silverware and who will always lock the door in case they are caught with their flies undone, and then there are burglars who specialise in the shiny metal IKEA brush holders, which now fetch a premium, what with aluminium prices going through the roof.

And then of course there are narcissistic burglars who insist on popping into your WC during a caper in order to check their striped shirt and mask and bag marked "SWAG" in the vanity mirror.

Fortunately, very few of these burglars (and absolutely no "totally incontinent burglars" - the very worst kind of intruder) are known to carry military-grade automatic firearms, and they are therefore not usually THAT dangerous, and one doesn't need to drill them full of holes through a closed door.

Except...
if one is completely out to lunch on bad acid or crystal meth or similar, when it probably doesn't matter, as the burglars manifest themselves as giant flying lizards anyway.

Seriously, has the toxicology come back on OP yet? I can't help feeling, however hard I try to get inside the tingling skin of someone living in a scary place like this was alleged to be, that he must have been utterly bat-$h1t crazy at the time. Drugs will do that to you.

 

[NocturnalLady]

::
I know, it's very confusing....and I am being prone to being defensive...I so want to believe that it really was a horrible accident.

Anyhow, IMO..I think the noise he heard was either Reeva locking the door or maybe pulling her pants up...she could have been just about to flush when she heard him screaming at intruders to get out the house...and obviously she says and does nothing thinking there really are intruders in the house. He shoots.

Yeah what about the flush??

If there was no urine in the toilet then there must have been a flush (according to the version OP wants us to believe). If Reeva got up and went to the bathroom while OP was on the balcony bringing the fan in & the OP suddenly hears a (to him) scary an suspicious noise from the bathroom. He gets his gun, yells & goes in there & shoots.

When did Reeva flush the toilet??

I know that every toilet I have ever lived with can be heard when it flushes - especially if you are awake and in the same room or even and adjacent room. Why didn't OP hear a flush and conclude that it was Reeva using the bathroom???

IF, as the defense wants us to believe, the empty bladder equals an accidental shooting then I want to know how & when they account for the flush that OP never heard.

That just seems absurd.

 

[NocturnalLady]

If he's been out to the balcony first, as suggested, done the bit with the fan and the sliding doors and so on, and is - we must assume - pretty wide-awake and not "in half-asleep paranoid fear" mode, is there no point at which it might kick in that his bloody dogs haven't made a single peep and so it's kind of unlikely there is an "intruder" who has just climbed in the upstairs window that the dogs were allegedly parked under?

It all works a whole lot better in a state of darkness, interrupted sleep, and blind panic than it does when someone is wide awake and doing some chores on the balcony...

Also the fact that his affadavit makes no mention of his guard dogs made my eyebrows curl a bit...

Me too. It really bugs me about the dogs. Neither of those breeds would sit silently by and let an intruder get past them. No way.

 

[NocturnalLady]

There is merit in bringing up the dog which substantiates the tone of the environment.

Dogs are like children and will react like them. If the parents are arguing then some dog will slowly crawl some where out of the way.

If the dog is protective the it will enter the fight.

In either case the dog would be removed either on its own accord or by the owners. direction.

Inobu

Supposedly the dogs were outside in the yard that an intruder would have had to pass through in order to climb through the bathroom window.

 

[NocturnalLady]

Here is a article that's interesting to say the least:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2...imates_much_of_south_african_lives_kelly.html

ITA that is the mindset that is most likely being dealt with here.

 

[NocturnalLady]

How "strange" was the house? I mean, without going into graphic detail of the number of times they'd spent the night together there in pneumatic bliss, surely she'd been going steady with Pistorius for some months at least? Or not?

Yes but if it's so pitch black that OP can't even see if Reeva is in the bed or not then you would think that she would have made some noise on the way to the bathroom. He was already awake then so should have noticed that. IMHO.

 

[otyikondo]

ITA that is the mindset that is most likely being dealt with here.

Yes, but it will only help OP's case to a limited extent, since he will ultimately be tried by a judge and two others, rather than by a jury of his peers, all of whom might be similarly scared and trigger-happy paranoid survivalist goons like his defence team are trying to portray him.

 

[otyikondo]

Yes but if it's so pitch black that OP can't even see if Reeva is in the bed or not then you would think that she would have made some noise on the way to the bathroom. He was already awake then so should have noticed that. IMHO.

He was more than "already awake"... he'd been out on the balcony doing some housekeeping and had shut the sliding doors and whatnot... this is NOT (allegedly) some "wake up scared in the dark and hear noises" situation.

It's also a little hard to imagine that there was NO ambient light from outside - don't these urban gated communities run to street lights?

 

[Sarahlou]

There's too many things that don't add up with his story. Too many occasions where he supposedly misses things, like Reeva not on the bed, not hearing her get up to the toilet, not hearing her voice when he supposedly called out etc..
One you could write of as maybe happening, but a whole string of them?

Re: her empty bladder. I assume they know for sure she didn't wet herself from fear or as a result of her death?

 

[Cherwell]

Re: her empty bladder. I assume they know for sure she didn't wet herself from fear or as a result of her death?

I'm no expert, but I would be astonished to hear that the body of someone who had died, almost certainly in terror, from gunshot wounds, retained a full bladder. So I don't think it tells us anything really.

 

[otyikondo]

Not sure of significance of this, but certainly not very good housekeeping by OP's PR team...

http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2013/02/22/oscar-ready-to-kill

includes the following:

The Times has been informed that the Steenkamp family has not been contacted or offered condolences by Pistorius, his family or their representatives a week after he killed her.

"There have been no attempts to contact us ... maybe they are caught up in their own matters, but they have not had the nerve to phone or try to speak to us," said an uncle, Michael Steenkamp.

 

[CountryGirl]

Haven't caught up -- but how does him seeing the bathroom window open fit into his being on the balcony hearing a noise in the bathroom and getting his gun? Could he see the open window from the balcony?

How many intruders has he had? My first thoughts when hearing a noise in my house is it is my husband, not an intruder, even if he has gone to bed before me.

 

[Zinn]

There's too many things that don't add up with his story. Too many occasions where he supposedly misses things, like Reeva not on the bed, not hearing her get up to the toilet, not hearing her voice when he supposedly called out etc..
One you could write of as maybe happening, but a whole string of them?

Re: her empty bladder. I assume they know for sure she didn't wet herself from fear or as a result of her death?

BBM.

According to courtroom live tweets on day 3, Nair (Magistrate) suggested this scenario. Roux (Defense Lawyer) agreed it was a possibility.

 

[otyikondo]

Haven't caught up -- but how does him seeing the bathroom window open fit into his being on the balcony hearing a noise in the bathroom and getting his gun? Could he see the open window from the balcony?

How many intruders has he had? My first thoughts when hearing a noise in my house is it is my husband, not an intruder, even if he has gone to bed before me.

If I have parsed the diagrams aright, no, he could not see the window from the balcony. Only from the bathroom on entering it. If I have understood his affadavit correctly, he already had a gun in his hand at the point where he saw the window was open.

No idea how many intruders. Our first thoughts concur - Oscar's are clearly cut from a different cloth.

 

[jjenny]

I don't understand why the prosecution is basically conceding that OP's version of events is the only reasonable one and that the facts do support his version.

Even going with just the facts that have been brought out in the bail hearing I have no trouble imagining various scenarios that fit the facts but do not support what OP says happened. Why is the prosecution so ready to pretend that OP's explanation is the only possible version??

He admitted to killing her, and even if he didn't mean to kill her specifically, he still was going to kill that supposed burglar.
So, basically, prosecution is saying that what he admitted to amounts to murder.

 

[Sarahlou]

BBM.

According to courtroom live tweets on day 3, Nair suggested this scenario. Roux agreed it was a possibility.

Thanks.
I'd have thought they'd test her clothes for urine to see if she actually did wet herself. Because that seems quite a big thing to me, it'd show she was fearful and that she'd possibly not gone in there to use the loo, but hide. JMO.

 

[otyikondo]

Thanks.
I'd have thought they'd test her clothes for urine to see if she actually did wet herself. Because that seems quite a big thing to me, it'd show she was fearful and that she'd possibly not gone in there to use the loo, but hide. JMO.

We can only hope that this is among the very very long list of to-do things the prosecution has for the trial proper. To some extent this current phase is a very frustrating one, as there are so many unknowns flying around, and yet the coverage is such that one easily gets the impression we're in a full-blown trial with "real evidence".

 

[Cherwell]

How many intruders has he had?

Only the washing machine, as far as I've heard.