In this episode, Payton and Garrett explore the case of Oscar Pistorius and the fatal shooting of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
CBS News - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oscar-pistorius-shots-in-the-dark/
VanityFair.com - https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/06/oscar-pistorius-murder
People.com - https://people.com/where-is-oscar-pistorius-now-former-olympic-runner-8638022
CNN.com - https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/12/sport/oscar-pistorius-cnn-documentary-spt-intl/index.html
APNews.com - https://apnews.com/article/oscar-pistorius-reeva-steenkamp-murder-killing-9294912233465de6f9000da2372d8663
Reuters.com - https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/oscar-pistorius-south-african-blade-runner-turned-murder-convict-2024-01-05/
The Independent - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/oscar-pistorius-reeva-steenkamp-murder-b2473327.html
BBC.com - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67885713
The NY Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/world/africa/oscar-pistorius-released.html
Oxygen.com - https://www.oxygen.com/dateline-secrets-uncovered/crime-news/oscar-pistorius-story-release-date-now
Sky News - https://news.sky.com/story/who-is-oscar-pistorius-from-blade-runner-to-convicted-murderer-12846280
NDTV.com - https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/oscar-pistorius-murder-reeva-steenkamp-accident-or-rage-what-happened-night-oscar-pistorius-murdered-girlfriend-4804246
ABC News - https://abcnews.go.com/International/oscar-pistorius-ptsd-suicidal-psych-report-concludes/story?id=24395825
Wikipedia.com - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius
You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.
And I'm Garrett Moreland.
He's the husband.
I'm the husband.
So, I'm not going to lie to you. We attempted to film this episode yesterday, and we just—well, "we" is an understatement—we just couldn't settle down. Payton had the giggles, so we had to stop. And here we are the next day, recording again, attempting it again.
It'll be great.
All right, I don't think we have any obligations or duties we need to talk about, so I think we can jump right into your 10 seconds today.
Well, I don't know. I was trying to think. I don't have much. I will say, though, for anyone who did come to the Twitch stream on Thursday, we had some technical difficulties. It'll be fixed by next Thursday, so come! We'll be talking about Zach Bean.
For my 10 seconds, all I got is that we got some new trees. We got a bunch of big trees. They're really expensive. Don't buy big trees—not worth it. Actually, it's worth it because they look great, but trees are so expensive! It's insane how expensive trees are. You can get small trees for pretty cheap, but mature trees are so expensive. But we bought them, we got them, we bit the bullet, and they look great. That's my 10 seconds.
I guess that means I'm slowly getting older and I like my trees. That's all I got.
So, let's hop into today's case. Our sources for this episode are CBS News, VanityFair.com, People.com, CNN.com, APNews.com, Reuters.com, The Independent, BBC.com, The New York Times, Oxygen.com, Sky News, NDTV.com, ABC News, and Wikipedia.
All right, let's face it—fame does some pretty wild things to people. When you come from obscurity and then find yourself the center of attention, I imagine that it could get to your head. I mean, how couldn't it? Just think—people commenting about you all over social media, the news running stories and shaping the public's opinion about you, brands dictating how you should look, speak, even act. I mean, that's some pressure, especially when you're supposed to be playing the hero.
And I imagine all of these factors might change the way you see the world, too. Might change how you treat people, how you prioritize your values and your morals. But today's case will have you questioning—can fame really push someone to commit murder?
This was the question asked when 26-year-old Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius accidentally killed his 29-year-old girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Some who knew him said it was the pressure, the paranoia of fame, that led to one horrific, life-ending choice. But after you hear today's story, I'm curious if you will feel the same.
Okay, okay. So, today's story takes us on a journey around the globe to a city called Sandton, Johannesburg, in South Africa. And that's where, on November 22, 1986, a little boy named Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius came into the world.
But shortly after Oscar was born, his future became a little less clear. You see, Oscar lived with a congenital defect, one that caused him to be born without his fibula bones in his legs.
When Oscar was around 11 months old, he underwent a heartbreaking surgery—one that required the lower half of both of his legs to be amputated.
Shortly after his first birthday, though, Oscar received his first pair of prosthetics, and from that day forward, he refused to let anything hold him back. In fact, his mother, Sheila, always made sure to treat Oscar exactly the same as she did her other two children. In the Pistorius home, Oscar was never treated as though he had a disability, and this was something Oscar seemed grateful for, as he continued to live by a motto his mother set for him early on:
"The real loser is not the one who crosses the finish line last. The real loser is the one who sits on the side and doesn't even try to compete."
It was these words of encouragement that inspired Oscar to take up sports at school, and by age 13, he was proficient in water polo, tennis, and wrestling.
Oscar's strength increased just as rapidly as his competitive nature, but life continued to test him, throwing several devastating curveballs over the years. The first began with the divorce of his parents. Oscar, his siblings, and his mother moved to a smaller house and spent a lot less time with their father. Around the age of 15, things took an even worse turn—Oscar's mother, Sheila, whom he loved more than anything in the world, passed away unexpectedly.
As a way to cope with the loss, Oscar dedicated even more time to sports, using it as a distraction. But a year after Sheila's death, Oscar was dealt another blow: he shattered his knee while playing rugby. It took him a long time to recover from that injury, but once he was well enough, his doctors recommended he try running to help his knee joint recover. That bit of advice changed the trajectory of Oscar's life.
Just three weeks into running track, Oscar ran his first 100-meter race—and he broke the record for the fastest double amputee out there. Around the same time, Oscar was fitted with new prosthetics: carbon fiber blades called "Cheetah," which certainly enhanced his athletic performance. At 17, Oscar entered the Paralympics, and after traveling to Athens, Greece, in September 2004, he won the gold in the 200-meter race—which was insane, considering he had just barely started running.
That's when he earned a nickname for himself: he became known as the "Blade Runner."
Oscar continued to perfect his track skills while studying business management and sports science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. But Oscar's biggest challenge was still ahead. Sheila's words were constantly ringing in his head—he was never treated like he had a disability growing up, and he didn’t want to be treated as such on the track either.
This is why, in 2007, Oscar began running against non-disabled athletes.
And this is where things get interesting. It actually brought up a pretty significant question for the world governing body for athletics, known as the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). They began to wonder: did Oscar's prosthetics actually give him an advantage?
I've seen this discussed on other social media platforms, and I don’t know the science behind it, so I can’t say for sure. But it's a frequent topic of debate, and while I’m sure there is an answer, it’s definitely interesting.
Since he was placing—and even winning—some of these races, they ultimately decided there might be an advantage. We don’t know for sure, but everyone should be on an even playing field, which is why Oscar was banned from competing in non-disabled competitions for a while. This decision was something he fought in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and he ultimately won in 2007.
That was how, in 2012, Oscar Pistorius earned himself a place in the London Olympics. He was the first double-leg amputee to ever participate, representing South Africa. Oscar finished second out of five in the men’s 400-meter and advanced to the semi-finals. Though he finished last in the semi-finals, he still solidified his place in Olympic history.
Suddenly, Oscar was everywhere. Brands were competing to make Oscar’s face part of their campaigns, and reporters were falling over themselves to get interviews. He graced the covers of magazines, was invited to lavish parties, movie premieres, and rubbed elbows with celebrities worldwide. He even began dating beautiful models, including 29-year-old Reeva Steenkamp.
After the Summer Olympics in 2012, Oscar was introduced to Reeva in November of that year. They were both at a motoring event when a mutual friend made the introduction. That night, Oscar asked Reeva, who was also a reality TV star at the time, if she’d like to be his date to an awards ceremony. Reeva immediately said yes.
Like Oscar, Reeva was born and raised in South Africa. She started modeling around age 15 but also knew the importance of getting a good education. Reeva wasn’t just a pretty face; she was incredibly bright, passionate, and empathetic. She had a law degree from Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and was planning to take the bar exam.
Reeva also used her platform as an advocate against domestic violence—a cause she worked hard at and dedicated herself to, especially since she had experienced domestic violence at the hands of a former boyfriend. This issue was especially pressing in South Africa, which, in 2012, had the highest rate of domestic violence in the world.
Reeva and Oscar likely bonded over another detail from their pasts: they both had traumatic injuries in their early years. Reeva used to ride racehorses, but after being thrown from a horse, she suffered two crushed vertebrae. Doctors weren’t sure if she would ever walk again, but after six weeks, she made a full recovery. This injury put her life into perspective, and she focused heavily on modeling and TV rather than becoming a lawyer. She believed that life was too short not to pursue her dreams, and she became incredibly successful. She was the face of brands like Avon, KFC, and Toyota, to name a few.
After gracing the covers of magazines herself, Reeva went on to be a contestant on the BBC show Baking Made Easy and the South African show Tropika Island of Treasure. But Reeva's life would change entirely after agreeing to accompany Oscar to the South Africa Sports Awards in November 2012.
The 29-year-old model and the 26-year-old Oscar publicly announced their romance shortly after they were seen together at the event. Over the next two months, Reeva wasn’t shy about sharing their relationship on social media. By January 2013, the couple seemed to be getting serious. They were spotted together at a celebrity friend’s party, and one person claimed they looked really happy, maybe even falling in love.
At the end of January, they went to dinner with the married couple who had introduced them. Their friends said everything seemed great between Oscar and Reeva, though Oscar did mention that he was a bit unhappy in his current house. He said he felt unsafe, even though it was a high-security, gated community. He was actively looking for a new place in a different part of town, maybe somewhere he and Reeva could eventually share together.
Even though Oscar didn’t feel safe in his house, Reeva seemed secure in their relationship. A few days before Valentine’s Day, she tweeted, “I woke up in a happy, safe home this morning. Not everyone did. Speak out against the rape of individuals.” As an advocate against domestic violence and sexual assault, this message aligned with her passion for these causes.
On the afternoon of February 13th, Reeva spent the day practicing a speech she planned to give to local high school students about sexual assault awareness. That evening, she planned to spend the night at Oscar’s house, perhaps preparing to celebrate Valentine’s Day the following morning together.
At around 10 p.m., Oscar said Reeva did some yoga and then climbed into bed with him. The two of them reportedly fell asleep shortly after.
Now it’s around 3:20 a.m. in the early morning hours of February 14th. Oscar and Reeva were supposedly asleep together when Oscar woke up. He said he went out to the balcony to get a fan and, after returning and closing the sliding door, heard a noise in the bathroom. It sounded like a window was opening.
Oscar said that’s when he realized there were no burglar bars on the bathroom window and remembered that contractors working on the home had left a ladder outside near that window. His heart started racing as he believed someone was actively breaking into the house.
At this point, Oscar wasn’t wearing his prosthetic legs since he had been sleeping, but he didn’t think to put them on. Instead, he rushed to grab the pistol he kept under his bed and made his way toward the bathroom.
And this is where things get complex. It's important to note this account is from Oscar’s side of the story. One red flag, to me, is the choice not to put on his prosthetics, especially considering he had been using them since he was a year old. But we’ll dive more into that later.
So, it seems like putting them on might be second nature. I don't know. I'm wondering if, in his mind—well, I mean, hypothetically—does it take too much time to get them on when you're worried someone's actively coming into your home?
Yeah, I don't know. I have no idea.
According to Oscar, he says he goes into the bathroom. It's pitch black, he can't see a thing, but he started screaming for the intruder, who was shut in the toilet cubicle of the bathroom, to get out of the house. So, he says there's an intruder hiding in the toilet area, and he was screaming at him to leave. He says that's when he yelled for Reeva to call the police, and then, using his gun, he fired a shot through the bathroom cubicle door. Then another, and another, and another. So, that's four total shots that he fired through the door.
And, according to him, he again called for Reeva to phone the police, but realized she wasn't responding. So, he rushed back to the bed, and that's when he realized Reeva wasn't in the bed.
Oh, Reeva's in the bathroom! That's insane.
That's insane, yes. According to him, but this is his account, Reeva was the one he'd shot at through the bathroom door.
So, Oscar said at this point, "A wave of terror washed over me," as he grabbed a cricket bat and started banging down the door, only to find Reeva unconscious on the other side. He had hit her three out of the four times—once through the arm, the hip, and one through the head.
Oh, there's already so many red flags being raised right now. Even through his story, it just doesn't make sense. You know, sometimes when you listen to these stories, you're like, "How unlucky could you be?"
I just... I'm already confused, though. He said he was screaming for the person to get out of the bathroom, and she didn't respond?
She didn't respond. No way. There's no way she would have just not responded.
So, there's already... like, also, you just happen to grab your gun? No, they just happen to be hiding in the bathroom? Honestly, and you happen to actually shoot before even seeing them?
I think the majority of people wouldn't shoot until they saw the person.
I wouldn't. Freaky. I wouldn't until I saw. I don't know.
Let's keep going.
So, that's when Oscar called the manager of his community, asking him to call the police. Then, Oscar goes into the bathroom and carries Reeva down the stairs. When police arrived minutes later, they found a barely-breathing Reeva covered in bloody towels. Alongside her was an inconsolable Oscar, who had tied off the wound on her arm with a tourniquet in an effort to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, the damage was already done. Reeva was only alive for a few more minutes before she passed away, even before the paramedics could make it into the house.
Shortly after this, Oscar was obviously taken to the police station, and the question for investigators was this: once they heard his story, was this actually an accident, or did they need to look at it as a homicide?
Oscar was adamant that it was an accident. He genuinely thought someone had broken into his home, and he was trying to protect Reeva and himself from an intruder. But there was sufficient evidence at the scene to suggest Oscar might have known exactly who he was shooting at.
For starters, Reeva had been staying with Oscar for the last few nights. Police felt he should have been used to her moving around in the middle of the night, getting up to use the bathroom. Like, if you're sleeping with someone and you hear a noise, wouldn't you initially think, "That's the person who's in my house"? It didn’t make sense that he would just assume someone was breaking into the bathroom.
Plus, you have to admit, if he thought a third person was in the house, wouldn’t he have just checked Reeva’s side of the bed before firing gunshots through the toilet cubicle?
There were a few things found on Reeva that made police wonder if more was going on. For example, it was 3 a.m. when Reeva was shot and killed, but she was fully dressed—not in pajamas. So, they asked, "Was she leaving the house? Why wasn’t she wearing pajamas?" She also had her cell phone with her in the bathroom cubicle. Look, I’m glued to my phone just as much as the next person, but if I’m getting up in the middle of the night, unless I need a light, I’m not usually bringing my phone with me.
Police were thinking, did Reeva and Oscar maybe get into a fight? Did she get some sort of text from an ex-boyfriend that set him off? Maybe she ran into the bathroom to hide, and he came after her in a fit of rage.
Apparently, there were text messages sent from Reeva to Oscar in the weeks leading up to all of this that suggested the couple was maybe not as stable as they appeared. In one long text, Reeva called Oscar "nasty" and said, “I’m scared of you sometimes and how you just snap at me.” Interesting. Apparently, he even lost his temper recently while the two were out at an event—the fight was pretty public, as Oscar supposedly criticized her in front of a group of people.
Now, you have to wonder, since so many people said the relationship seemed to be going well, was Reeva maybe hiding the ugly side of it from her friends and family? Which, I mean, that's normal—it happens a lot, right?
And we have to consider the fact that Reeva was a very public advocate against domestic violence. So, how would it look if she were advocating against it, but then... you know what I mean?
Uh-huh.
There were plenty of people, however, who knew that Oscar was prone to fits of jealousy, and they came forward to tell police this. And just 36 hours before her death, it was confirmed that Reeva had met up with an ex-boyfriend for a coffee date.
So, that "text that set him off" theory could be kind of valid, but there was more. Apparently, less than an hour before the shots were fired, neighbors actually heard fighting coming from Oscar's house, and they heard a woman scream just before the murder.
One neighbor would later say, "Her shouts, her screams, were petrifying. I just knew something terrible was happening in that house." And again, this goes back to your point—if she was screaming, yeah, he would have known it was her. None of it really makes sense at all, actually.
Now, Oscar would later say that the screams the neighbor heard were actually his—that when he saw he had shot Reeva and not an intruder, he was the one who let out the high-pitched, blood-curdling screams.
But I want to pivot a little, actually, because as more people were called in to speak with police about Oscar and Reeva, the more they realized that fame had kind of taken a toll on Oscar in a way that seemed important to the case. This is what they were learning from people who knew Oscar really well.
So, we know that Oscar had a pretty good taste of fame by the time the murder was committed. I mean, it's safe to say he was having his "ten minutes of fame" at this point in his life. And with that came a good amount of cash, too. By 2013, he was reportedly earning about $2 million a year from sponsorships alone. He was sponsored by Nike, Oakley, and had deals with car and perfume brands.
But with that came a change in his friend group as well—the people he was around. According to one source, Oscar kind of stopped hanging out with his more wholesome group of buddies—his old group of friends—and began spending time with a, let’s just say, more popular, edgier crowd. People who were known to resort to violence and criminal means because they felt they were above the law.
But it was sort of a chicken-or-egg situation, because Oscar himself hadn’t been the same after the Olympics. It seemed like the pressure of fame had gotten to him, and ever since then, he had just been harsher and ruder to everyone. His diet consisted of a lot of energy drinks, and he was taking a lot of caffeine pills, which meant Oscar was also having a hard time sleeping at night. According to one reporter who did an exposé on Oscar, this led him to go to the shooting range multiple times in the middle of the night to blow off steam. This was his habit when he couldn’t sleep—that’s where he would go.
That's kind of insane.
He liked guns. He was collecting guns and practiced with any gun from his collection. He had three shotguns, a rifle, and two pistols.
Okay, so let’s just say Oscar knew his way around a gun.
Yeah, especially in the middle of the night. He was proficient when it came to using weapons like this.
But apparently, this reckless side of Oscar wasn’t necessarily a brand-new thing. It had just kind of escalated. I guess back in 2009, before he ever competed in the Olympics, Oscar was driving a speedboat with some other passengers, and that day, he crashed the boat into a pier, which actually landed him in a coma for three days.
Whoah, jeez.
And when he emerged, he had a broken jaw, several broken ribs, and a damaged eye socket. There was also alcohol found on board, but luckily, no one was killed.
And then there was another incident with a gun just a few weeks before Reeva was killed. One witness claimed to have seen Oscar dining out with some of his rougher friends when one of them passed a gun under the table to Oscar. The gun was cocked and loaded, and it literally went off right there in the restaurant. The gun went off while he was having dinner with his friends. No one was injured, but one of Oscar's friends had only missed the bullet by inches because it was a misfire.
But it wasn't just this careless attitude that worried the police when they were learning about Oscar. It was also his history with women.
Back in 2009, there was an incident at a house party that Oscar was throwing, where a woman named Cassidy Taylor-Memory got into a fight with Oscar. He slammed the door on her so hard that it left her with serious injuries. Cassidy ended up pressing charges, but Oscar—though he hadn’t been to the Olympics yet—was already becoming a famous athlete in South Africa. So, literally, he signed a few autographs at the police station, and then the case was dropped.
What the freak?
Then Oscar sued Cassidy for causing him to lose some of his sponsorships when his arrest came out in the news.
Oscar's biographer later recalled several instances from his love life where he would fight viciously with a girlfriend, usually because he was jealous of something small. Then, he would love-bomb them after to win them back. One girlfriend, Samantha Taylor, had been dating Oscar right before he met Reeva. In fact, she claims he actually left her for Reeva. But she confirmed that Oscar had a violent side and was obsessed with his firearms. She says there was one instance where they were pulled over by police and eventually let go, but Oscar was so mad that he actually pulled a gun from the glove compartment and fired a shot out of the car's sunroof.
Okay, this is getting to a point where I don't know how much guiltier he could look. The fact that he has obvious anger issues—it's all coming to fruition.
Which is actually interesting because Oscar not only denies that he killed Reeva on purpose, but he also denies being angry. Yes, he denies having any anger issues.
Have you seen Anger Management with Adam Sandler?
No.
Usually, angry people deny it. He's like, "No, I don't have a violent temper. I'm not angry. I just slammed a door on an ex-girlfriend, crashed a boat into a wall, fired a gun through the sunroof... but I'm not angry. I'm perfectly fine. I was just mad that I got pulled over. I'm perfectly calm."
Yeah.
So, in March of 2014, Oscar would have to tell a judge that he didn’t have a violent temper, because in South Africa, the jury system was abolished in the 1960s. Legislators were worried about the racial prejudices of citizens, so ultimately, it's up to the judge to determine Oscar’s fate.
Throughout his trial, I mean, he's going to trial either way, whether he accidentally killed her or purposefully killed her, right?
Throughout the trial, Oscar's team stood firm in the stance that he had acted completely out of self-defense that night and that fame had created a specific sort of paranoia in him, leading to a spur-of-the-moment, life-altering decision to shoot through the door.
It's no secret that South Africa has its fair share of violent crimes—some of the highest rates in the world, in fact. Oscar was definitely an outlier, probably even a target, in a country where more than half of the population earns an average of $65 a month.
Wow.
I told you how much he was earning, right? There’s also the fact that police corruption is pretty rampant in the country, so relying on the police in a time of need might not even happen. Oscar made sure to include these details in his testimony. He claimed that he had felt exceptionally paranoid since becoming famous and making money. "I couldn’t rely on the police to help me," he said.
He explained that he had moved to a high-security, gated community—one surrounded by electric fences—and that there had only been two burglaries in the last five years. Still, Oscar claimed he hadn’t felt safe since 2005, when his previous home had been broken into, which is why he had been sleeping with a pistol underneath his bed.
Which, I mean, seems reasonable.
His team argued that Oscar had a long history of anxiety that had been increasing over time, especially with his recent attempt at the Olympics. On the night of Reeva’s murder, they argued, anxiety was the real thing to blame.
This self-defense angle became the cornerstone of Oscar’s testimony, to the point that the judge felt the only way to validate it and gain a better understanding of the truth was to postpone the trial for a month so that Oscar could undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
And here’s what they found.
A report drafted by four different mental health experts concluded that Oscar had been living with depression and PTSD and needed continued psychiatric care. They were concerned for his well-being. However, they also said that Oscar did not show signs of being abnormally aggressive or having an explosively violent personality.
Interesting.
So it was more PTSD than anything else. They said he did not show signs of clinical narcissism, which is often associated with men who have committed domestic murder, but, and I quote, "He was aware of right and wrong at the time of the shooting."
So, basically, they said Oscar knew that shooting his girlfriend was wrong, even in a fit of rage, but he didn’t know she was behind the door. He just had PTSD, high anxiety, and depression.
While there was one witness who supported the defense by saying Oscar had once told him he mistook the sound of his washing machine for an intruder, the prosecution had a crucial piece of evidence to share with the judge.
They brought in the door from Oscar's bathroom as evidence. Even though Oscar insisted he didn’t have time to put on his prosthetics when he heard the intruder—this had been his story the entire time—the shots were fired at an angle that suggested the height of a normal man.
The shots were fired higher up on the door. If Oscar had approached the bathroom on his residual limbs, as he claimed, those shots would have been lower and at an upward angle, right
Mhm.
He also said Reeva had to have been crouching behind the door when she was shot, not using the toilet like Oscar claimed she was.
The way she was hit, she was actually in a crouched position—not going to the bathroom, but hiding.
They also pointed out that there was a delay between the shots—enough time for Reeva to cry out, possibly identifying herself as the one in the bathroom, before suffering the fatal blow to the head, which was the last shot fired.
By the end of the trial, 37 witnesses had been called to the stand, and finally, the judge delivered her verdict.
Oscar was found... I'm going to assume not guilty of murder?
Not guilty of murder, but guilty of culpable homicide. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
Manslaughter, essentially?
Yeah, pretty much. The prosecution tried to appeal the sentence, feeling it was too light and "inappropriate." But as they were filing appeals, Oscar became eligible for parole. He was released after less than a year and approved to finish his sentence under house arrest.
Despite his early release, the appeal continued. In 2016, his case was sent to South Africa’s High Court, where the original verdict was overturned and changed to murder. Oscar was resentenced to six more years in prison. In 2017, the sentence was increased to 13 years to get closer to the minimum recommendation for murder in South Africa, which is 15 years.
But in March 2023, Oscar became eligible for parole again. After serving a total of eight and a half years, he was released on January 5, 2024.
Holy crap.
Since his release, Oscar has been living a quiet life under house arrest at his uncle's lavish home in a suburb of Pretoria, South Africa. He sold the home where Reeva was killed to pay for his legal expenses. Until his sentence expires in 2029, he must adhere to several rules: he’s not allowed to speak to the media, not allowed to consume alcohol, and is required to undergo therapy to address his issues with domestic violence.
Oscar's future remains uncertain, as do some details in his case. Was he really suffering from anxiety and paranoia caused by wealth and fame? Or was this just who Oscar truly was? Unfortunately, that’s something only Reeva will ever know the answer to.
And that is the story of Reeva Steenkamp.
I think my opinion is he 100% did it on purpose.
Oh, because he acted out of anger?
Yeah, I think he did it. I mean, for sure, he had some mental health issues going on, but that doesn't mean he didn't do it. I think he was guilty. I think he did it. The story he told from the beginning was just sketchy. It didn’t make sense. I don’t know—if you take all the past evidence into account, I think he did it.
It’s interesting you say that because even if he was suffering from anxiety, depression, and PTSD, that could easily lead him into a fit of rage.
Yeah, for sure. Irritability and fits of rage aren’t uncommon with anxiety and depression.
And if he was naturally prone to violent tempers and then paranoid on top of that… I also think it’s weird that everyone said he was super jealous, and she just happened to have coffee with an ex. And then, according to the autopsy, she was crouching on the floor. Why would she be crouching unless she dropped her phone? There’s no reason to be on the floor.
Yeah, no reason. That’s interesting. I’m surprised I haven’t heard of this case before.
All right, you guys, that was our case for this week. We’ll see you next time with another episode. I love it.
I hate it.
Goodbye!