Johannesburg - Whichever police officer leaked the video footage of Oscar Pistorius’s blood-spattered bathroom, made a fortune.
On Friday morning, Hilton Botha, the original lead investigator on the case, said the footage – broadcast by Sky News – was shot before investigators removed the bathroom door two days after the crime.
Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine’s Day earlier this year.
The police have denied leaking the footage to journalists.
Botha, who was publicly humiliated for his conduct on the case and then quit the police force,
said a lot of police officers were on the scene at the time. It would have been easy for them, he said, to take footage with their cellphones.
On Friday morning, Pistorius’s defence had written to the National Prosecuting Authority demanding to know how the footage was leaked.
Lawyer Barry Webber said the report was distressing, considering they had asked for the crime scene photos on five occasions and not received them.
“It would be very interesting to see where this came from,” said Webber. “This is a terrible invasion of privacy, seeing that blood. A woman died here.”
National police spokesman Brigadier Phuti Setati denied Sky News had received photographs and footage from the police.
“I don’t know where they got the footage from, but it is aimed at confusing people. This is a criminal case and the police’s main aim is to secure a conviction,” Setati said.
He said Sky News’s report that one of Pistorius’s watches had been stolen from the scene was a lie.
“This is just speculation,” he said. “Nobody has the evidence, nobody knows what we are preparing. That will all be revealed in court.”
Setati said the crime scene leaks to the media were fair neither to Steenkamp nor Pistorius.
“These are human beings and a woman was killed – we remember that as a responsible police force.”
The images show a bloodied bathroom floor and tape marks indicating where bullets went through the toilet door, low down below the handle.
The report says this appears to prove the defence’s case that Pistorius did not have his prosthetics on when the shooting happened and was walking on his stumps.
The pictures show a trail of blood from the bathroom: the path the paralympian took as he carried Steenkamp downstairs after shouting for help.
There are also images of blood on the wall, on the landing and on the couch downstairs.
There is an image of the gift the model had wrapped for Pistorius. Attached, is a card with just one word – Ozzy, her nickname for him. There’s a container of heart-shaped sweets too.
Other photographs show bloody footprints.
Botha conceded during Pistorius’s bail hearing to walking through the scene without wearing protective foot covers, potentially contaminating the evidence.
Botha was then taken off the case.
He said while the leaking of the footage was worrying, what has been released will not damage the State’s case.
“Everybody knows that Reeva was killed, everyone knows who did the shooting. The case rests on one thing: why did he shoot?”
Botha
told The Star in March that foreign media had been offering $50 000 (R513 000) for a photograph of the toilet door.
The toilet door is critical because it will show the height from which the four death shots were fired.
Pistorius’s defence contends that he was standing on his stumps when he shot, because he thought an intruder had locked himself in the bathroom.
The prosecution will argue that Pistorius first put his prosthetic legs on, showing premeditation, before he went to the bathroom and murdered his girlfriend.
Setati said the video would not harm the police investigation and prosecutors remain confident of the case they are building against Pistorius.
* Pistorius is due back in court on Tuesday when the case is expected to be transferred to the Pretoria High Court.
The Star