Here it is – the full video of Oscar’s reenactment for his Defense team as shown on the Australian TV show, Sunday Night.
This program is lacking many details that are relevant to the full account of the events. It also has some inaccurate information and is heavily biased in favor of Oscar’s innocence.
For the past week in court, Oscar’s team has painted a picture of a man who can barely balance on his stumps and cannot stand on them for long. It is a terrible vulnerability that would not have allowed him the ability to run away when faced with danger. However, throughout this video, Oscar appears to be walking forwards and backwards unaided on his stumps. He is also able to walk quickly, almost jogging for a brief period of time on his stumps. While he is talking to the team making the film, he is standing on his stumps. He doesn’t take a break to sit; he seems to be somewhat comfortable standing on his stumps talking to them.
Perhaps most shocking to me is his flat affect throughout the reenactment. In court, he has been sobbing, throwing up, and has been seemingly inconsolable at times. But in this video, he speaks very calmly and bluntly about what happened that night. He appears to be emotionless. The complete opposite of what we have seen in court. He has been medicated since last year, including in court, so that can’t be used as an excuse. It just appears to me like he’s two different people in private and in public.
Oscar’s reenactment of yelling “call the police – get out of the fucking house” in the beginning of the video definitely sounds like a man to me! Nobody would confuse that for a woman’s voice or a woman’s terrified screams.
The “please god” and “helps” that he yells a little later in the video do sound more high-pitched but they still don’t sound like a woman’s blood-curdling screams, in my opinion. More importantly, his account of what he screamed, how he screamed it and when he screamed it still doesn’t match what the witnesses heard. It was only after the State’s ear witnesses testified that Oscar started adding in to his story that he screamed loudly immediately after shooting his gun. He also added in that he was screaming in his bedroom while searching for Reeva. That was some of his finest tailoring in court.
Another huge problem I have with this program is that Oscar says he heard the noise of the magazine rack moving and fired 4 shots. There are multiple issues with this statement.
On the stand, he claimed that he didn’t mean to fire any shots. He acknowledged having his finger on the trigger and pointing in the general vicinity of the door, but refused to admit that he meant to pull the trigger or that he aimed the gun. He considered those particular actions to be an “accident” due to being startled. He claims he never meant to shoot anybody. But in this video, he states matter of factly “I fired four shots”. No waivering, no lame explanations, no “I didn’t have time to think” rehearsed lines… just, “I fired four shots”.
Also, the sound of the magazine rack moving (“wood moving” as Oscar called it in court) was not mentioned in direct examination. It was only mentioned in cross-examination as an after-thought when Nel pressed him about what “wood moving” sounds like. He originally testified that he thought the “wood moving” was the door opening because of the particular sound that his toilet door makes, but in hind sight he said he realizes it was probably the magazine rack that he heard.
This is impossible. The magazine rack didn’t move until Reeva fell on it, after she was shot in the hip. So that noise can’t be what prompted him to shoot. It was proven by ballistics that Reeva was standing up near the door when the first shot hit her in the hip. After that shot, she fell backwards on to the magazine rack that was against the wall on the other side of the toilet. Witnesses described hearing a pause after that shot, which again is supported by the ballistics. Oscar repositioned his aim and shot 3 more times hitting her in the arm, hand and head. One bullet missed.
His claim that a sudden sound caused him to shoot rapidly 4 times, without conscious thought, is not supported by the physical evidence, primarily the injuries that Reeva sustained, and what the ear witnesses heard.
One item that the narrator got incorrect was how Oscar and Reeva’s relationship began. He states that initially they first kept their relationship quiet, but at the red carpet sporting event on November 4, 2012, they went public for the first time. This is not accurate. They had just met that same day through a mutual friend, Justin Devaris. They hung out during the day and on a whim, Oscar asked her to go with him to the event that night. They had not been secretly dating prior to this.
Another problem I have with the animated reenactment is that it shows the duvet on the bed. Oscar got himself in trouble on the stand when he tried to insist that the duvet was on the bed and the police moved it. Nel was able to prove that the duvet was found on the floor due to the blood spatter pattern on top of it. That blood spatter was caused by Oscar carrying Reeva out of the bathroom after the shooting.
Also in that animation, when Oscar is getting off of the bed (after looking for Reeva), it shows his figure getting off at the front of the bed. On the stand, he said he got off on the right side of the bed closest to the balcony (where the cords, iPads, shaver, etc. were all on the floor), he felt around the curtains to see if Reeva was hiding there (then quickly changed that to he was balancing himself with the curtains), he then finally screamed for the lord to help him repeatedly, then went back to the bathroom. None of this was depicted in the animation, which means that Oscar never relayed it to the animator because it never happened. He was making it up on the stand.
The animation also shows Oscar walking toward the balcony (after he realizes the toilet door is locked) and the fans can be seen off to the right. On the stand, Oscar testified that when he brought the fans in, they were still on and he moved them to the front right corner of the bed. We know this couldn’t be possible because that is where the duvet was found on the ground We also know that the fans were not on, and the small fan wasn’t even plugged in. The large fan was found directly in the middle of the balcony doorway. Oscar would not have been able to run out on to the patio with the fan in that position.
The last issue I’d like to address is the sound test of wood banging on wood, versus the gun shooting the door. Dixon’s evidence about this in court was a joke and in my opinion, so is this comparison. The sounds are completely different. Scott Roder from the Evidence Room claims that due to the distance of the witnesses, they could have mistaken the bat noises for gunshots. He mentions that some witnesses were 300 and 500 meters away, which is not true. The furthest witnesses were the Standers and they were 212 meters away. Everybody else was between 70-170 meters away.
I took a bunch of screen grabs to illustrate some of these points above, and so you can see the reconstructed bedroom and bathroom (which was built exactly to scale). It’s shocking how small those areas look with people standing in them. Some other pictures that I grabbed are just more crime scene photos of interest and photos of Oscar throughout the reenactment. Sadly, we see another picture of the deceased Reeva, this time a full body shot at the bottom of the stairs where she was found when the police arrived.
Juror13 
How come it won’t let me play the video? I live in the UK! Kind Regards
Lawrence Dovey
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The first link I tried posting had an error, but I have corrected it. Did you try going to my site directly to click on the link (rather than clicking on it thru the email notification)? Give that a try.
I agree with everything you say about the video including the obvious bias in favour of Oscar’s innocence. It is full of inaccurate information which makes me wonder just how closely the irritating Scott Roder (“I know he loved her”) followed the evidence in court, e.g. Reeva was depicted crouching behind the toilet before she was shot. There was no dispute that she was standing behind the door.
There is speculation in the press here in SA that the video could lead to a possible mis-trial. I believe that is utter nonsense and is just the press typically trying to squeeze out a controversial story. It may be different if we had a jury system.
A whole month to wait for final arguments! How will we bear it?
I don’t see how it could possibly lead to a mis-trial when it was not presented in court. It doesn’t matter what is circulating out in the public. What matters is what’s presented to the Judge.
Also, I agree the whole bit about Reeva crouching behind the toilet was nonsense. Doesn’t match the evidence at all!
Hi Lawrence
Looks like we are unable to play it in the uk yet, poss blocked.
Great post again, thank you! Yes, it certainly is very biased. But the animators were invited by Arnold and no doubt paid for by Arnold so how could they possibly be objective? Would have been interesting to have the ear witness accounts included in the reenactment.
It’s breathtaking how his composure is so calm in the reenactment compared to the sobbing and vomiting we saw in court. There is no doubt in my mind that he killed her knowingly and that his remorse is for himself. To that point, I often wonder, is he sad for her parents or sad that he has to carry the weight of being her killer?
Juror13, they also stated on the film that Oscar woke up at about 2ish. that night..however he said it was at about 3 in his evidence..so which one is it? I still cant understand why he found it neccessary to lie about the location of the magazine rack upon finding her? how would it hurt his case to say it was where it was found?
It’s a little complicated to give a quick answer on the importance of the magazine rack but check out Days 28 & 29 – the Wolmarans evidence (specifically day 29). In my opinion, it has to do with the rapid succession and how/where Reeva fell. The defense wants you to believe that the shots were fired so fast, all 4 in a row, that Reeva essentially received all the shots while standing up but in various stages of falling down. She landed straight on the ground, which would be possible because according to Oscar, the rack was all the way to the right.
Interestingly enough, in the animation by the Evidence Room, they contradict some of the evidence. Scott Roder states in the video that they believe Reeva kicked the rack out of the way so she could crouch behind the toilet to hid from the supposed intruder that Oscar was yelling at. We know that is not true because she was standing upright in front of the door when she was shot in the hip. Apparently this Roder guy didn’t find it important to consider the ballistics/medical examiner evidence. But then in another image from the animation that they created, when you see an aerial view of how Reeva’s body came to rest, the rack is behind her. So they are a little all over the place in their accounting of the story.
Mangena, very convincingly, testified that after the hip shot, Reeva fell backwards on to the rack. The next shot missed. This is important because time has to pass in order for her to fall and land on the rack, and then the shot miss her. That means there was time to scream and time for Oscar to stop shooting. This was likely the pause that was witnessed by Burger/Johnson. Reeva landing on top of that rack and the shots hitting her where they did imply that some time passed after that first shot, and there is a real potential that Oscar aimed those last shots to hit her. All my opinion of course, based off of the evidence.
Oscar said he could run on his stumps but all the coverage of him standing he is leaning against something. If it were intruder he would be no match for them and unable to protect himself. It also clearly shows a total inability to lift. Bat above his head let alone break down a door. If you have ever walked on stilts it is far easier to walk or move quickly than to stand still so his comment about hardly being able to stand still in his stumps is correct. It also doesn’t explain how witnesses were able to hear a woman scream after being shot in the head as state witnesses said the woman stopped screaming moments which they described as up to two seconds after the last shot.
How does it clearly show a total inability to lift? I didn’t see that anywhere in this video.
Also, yes he does often lean on things which I’m sure is easier for him, but there are also parts of the video where he is standing in the middle of the room talking to the camera and he’s not leaning on anything. Now don’t get me wrong, I would never try to claim that for any disabled person things are easy, my point rather is that in Oscar’s case, they are not impossible. His experts have painted a scenario of it being impossible for him to escape his bedroom, so much so that he was forced to first retrieve a gun from under the bed and then enter the next room and violently confront a potential threat. The reality is, it would have been way easier to just walk a few steps and go out the door. It is completely illogical to me to make an argument that it was a better or more appropriate option to get a gun and go in to the bathroom than it was to simply go out the bedroom door.
Also, as for the woman’s voice fading out after the last shot, I don’t see any problem with that. Sound waves travel. Sound does not stop the immediate second that the person stops making it. Traveling over a distance, they most likely did hear her voice fading out up to a second or two after. That’s not a stretch for me to believe. It’s not like she was making noises 15+ seconds after.
Another lie of Oscar’s that this video exposes is the fact he said in his testimony that he needs to stretch his legs out fully in front of him in order to put his prosthetics on and that’s why there’s no way he could have done it on the side of the bed nearest the balcony doors.
In the video we see quite clearly that it is not the case. In fact he has his legs bent the entire time.
This is something that he has done his entire life – putting his prosthetics on – there is absolutely no way he didn’t say that as a bold lie. And his family members just sit there, looking on, knowing he’s obviously lying about those small facts.
I can’t imagine how it must place doubt in their heads over whether he’s telling the truth about what happened that night – as much as they might want to believe him – if he’s openly lying about insignificant things like that.
Is the photo taken on 13 February actually reeves body or a stand -in?
Do you mean the Feb 14, 2013 photo, of her body laying at the bottom of the stairs? That is an actual crime scene photo (not a stand-in).
we must not forget that this re-enactment was done in 2013 when all the facts of the trial had not been revealed to the accused..am I correct? Nel questioned Oscar if after he shot the first shot that is when he heard the ‘movement’ of the mag. rack and that is why he changed his aim by the last 3 shots…which does fit the evidence.
Why didn’t Nell ask for this video to be showed in court? Do you think the judge has seen it anyway?