Reeva to Pistorius: ‘I’m scared of you…how you snap at me’
Private text messages between Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp are read out in court, revealing that the athlete could be jealous and short-tempered.
Police Captain Francois Moller told the Pretoria court that he was able to access messages that Pistorius had deleted by jacking his iPhone.
In one long message from Steenkamp to Pistorius, dated 27 January 2013 – weeks before she was shot – she said: “I’m scared of you sometimes, and how you snap at me.”
The long message continued: “We are living in a double standard relationship. Every five seconds, I hear about how you dated another chick. You really have dated a lot of people, yet you get upset if I mention one funny story with a long-term boyfriend.”
In the same message (see below), she referred to the engagement party of her best friend that the couple had been to, and said he had become angry after accusing her of flirting with her friend’s husband: “You have picked on me incessantly… it’s nasty,” she wrote. “I feel sick that you suggested that and made a scene at the table, and made us leave early.”
In response, Pistorius apologised, and acknowledged that he was jealous when she had spoken to another man.
Another message from Steenkamp read: “I regard myself as a lady but I didn’t feel like one tonight after the way you treated me.”
The accused was crying in court as the messages were read out by Captain Moller.
#OscarTrial copy if Reeva’s text in which she says she gets scared of Oscar pic.twitter.com/2f8Oarr8D0
— Debora Patta (@Debora_Patta) March 24, 2014
#OscarTrial Lots of little arguments between Reeva and OP – constant misunderstandings and Reeva upset by OP’s criticisms of her
— Debora Patta (@Debora_Patta) March 24, 2014
South Africa’s most famous athlete, 27, is charged with the premeditated murder of Steenkamp on 14 February 2013, and faces 25 years in prison. He denies the charge, and says he killed his then-girlfriend, aged 29, because he thought she was an intruder who had crept into his bathroom in the middle of the night.
His fate will be decided by Judge Thokozile Masipa and two assessors, as there are no jury trials in South Africa.
The murder trial heard that 1,709 messages were sent between the couple on the messaging platform Whatsapp, and Captain Moller said that around 90 per cent reflected a normal, loving relationship.
Another message from Pistorius to Steenkamp refers to a lesser charge that he also faces: discharging a firearm in Tasha’s restaurant. His friend Darren Fresco testified that Pistorius asked him to take the blame – something that Pistorius denies.
However a text message from the double-amputee athlete to Steenkamp, revealed in court on the 14th day of the trial read: “Angel please don’t say a thing to anyone. Darren told everyone it was his fault. I can’t afford for that to come out. The guys promised not to say a thing.”
‘I heard a lady screaming… terrified screaming’
Earlier on Monday, Anette Stipp – a neighbour of Pistorius, and wife of Dr Johan Stipp, who has also testified – told court that she heard a woman’s “terrified” screams, and two bursts of gunshots.
She also said that Pistorius’s bathroom light was on during the incident – something that contradicts his version of events: during his bail hearing, Pistorius said it was “pitch black”.
Ms Stipp said: “it was moments after the shots I heard a lady screaming, terrified, terrified screaming. We went out onto the balcony to see if we can ascertain where the screaming was coming from, but we couldn’t, we could only still see the two houses, the lights were on…I said to my husband it sounds to me as if there is a family murder.”
Click on the numbers to follow Oscar Pistorius’s account of what happened in the early hours of 14 February, 2013, based on his application for bail, alongside key testimony from prosecution witnesses.