Johannesburg - A new book on Oscar Pistorius has answered one of the lingering mysteries of the athlete’s murder trial - and uncovered evidence allegedly ignored by the State and defence legal teams because it could have potentially undermined their cases.
Forensic experts have confirmed that Reeva Steenkamp flushed the toilet moments before Pistorius shot the four bullets through the locked toilet door that killed her.
The new details are revealed in Behind the Door: The Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp Story written by Eyewitness News senior reporters Mandy Wiener and Barry Bateman.
Pistorius had maintained from his bail application that, in hindsight, he believed that his girlfriend got up and went to the bathroom in the early hours of Valentine’s Day last year because she wanted to relieve herself.
While evidence was led pertaining to the minute amounts of urine in her bladder - that the defence said was proof she had urinated - public debate raged as to whether the young woman had flushed the toilet.
Among the photographs taken by the police and submitted as evidence is of the inside of the toilet bowl, which shows columns of blood separated by clear areas where water had evidently been flowing.
Private forensic expert Kobus Steyl, who was interviewed for the book, said it was clear the toilet was flushed and described the sequence of events as Steenkamp was locked behind the door.
“She must have flushed the toilet, received the gunshots, thereafter she covers the toilet bowl with the blood before the water removes some of the blood,” he said.
Steyl said the water that was still flowing from the cistern was towards the end of the flush, which is why all the blood was not washed away.
He said the flush could not have occurred after the shots because that would have washed away all the blood in the bowl, as well as the fine splinters picked up by the bullets through the door that had come to settle on the porcelain.
He is quoted further in the book, stating that by placing a dye in the cistern and flushing it, one could easily have established the flow pattern.
He is adamant that this should have been presented to the court.
“You never know whether it could play a vital role towards the end of the case when all the information is put together. It is for the court to decide what is important or not,” he said.
So why was this evidence not led by either the State or the defence?
A forensic expert who has followed the case closely said that if the State had presented evidence proving Steenkamp had indeed flushed the toilet, it would have undermined their version that the couple had had a fight and she fled to the bathroom to hide.
For the defence, he said the flush would have raised further questions over Pistorius’s belief that an intruder had entered the house and was hiding behind the door.
Defence expert Roger Dixon is also quoted in book, but says he made this discovery only after he had concluded his testimony.
“This was the third startle. It destroys the State’s case totally. With the third startle, his worst fears are confirmed. That’s the crux of the case,” he says, referring to the defence’s argument that Pistorius opened fire instinctively as a reaction to a noise emanating from the cubicle.
“It destroys the ‘I’m going to chase you and kill you because I don’t like you any more’ idea. It shows that she went to the toilet with her cellphone, under her own steam, no hurry, no rush. When he yelled, she reacted by locking the door,” Dixon says.
The Star