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I thought that there was a burglar that was scanning entry into my home. Before I knew it, I'd fired four shots at the door.
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He is struggling a lot with what has happened. He has to live with the weight of it.
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I sat over Reva and I cried. She wasn't breathing. The story that stunned the world.
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Murder and the Blade Runner. Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius charged with the murder of his girlfriend.
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You realize that she's not coming back and then it hits you and then... You can't deny that Riva was killed by himself at his house.
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What everybody will be watching for is whether you can prove he intended to kill.
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Absolutely. I did not find Riva. You want to believe him. You really, really, really, really want to believe him.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with The Rise and Fall of Oscar Pistorius.
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Such a time it was. Like a different world, looking back at this now. This was London.
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The year was 2012. And Olympic history was about to be made. The moment was electrifying.
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In 45.44 seconds, a South African double amputee running on carbon fiber legs was transformed from global nobody to international superstar
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with a superhero nickname, the Blade Runner. He was Oscar Pistorius. He was just this amazing, amazing icon.
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And in South Africa, he was adored. Not just as a remarkable athlete, but as a man of apparently flawless character.
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Modest good manners. And many good works. Irresistible. Of course, what with endorsements and all, he was almost instantly wealthy.
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And certainly A-list. For a glorious eight months. And then... four bullets at close range through a closed door a woman was dead and the myth of the blade runner
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was blown away it was 3 20 a.m on February 14th 2013 Valentine's Day when police arrived at Oscar's
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house, he told them a heralding story. Oscar Pistorius, according to him, has suffered death
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threats, has been a victim of serious and violent crime. The dark side of wealth and fame, he said,
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which is why he always kept a pistol handy. Karen Mon covered the story for South Africa's 24-hour
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news channel, ENCA. Literally walked around with a loaded 9mm gun with him at all times.
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That night, said Oscar, the gun was in his bedside table when he was suddenly startled awake.
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And hears a noise in the bathroom. He then gets what he describes as the sense of horror overcoming him.
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He grabbed his gun, he said, got out of bed without putting on his prosthetic legs
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and went looking for the source of the noise. On his stamps, walks over to the bathroom, screams at this person who believes to be an intruder,
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get out of my house, get out of my house, and then opens fire. Right through the bathroom door.
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And then, he told the police, he went back to the bed where he'd been sleeping with his new girlfriend,
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a 29-year-old model and aspiring attorney named Riva Stienkamp. That's when, Oscar said, he made a horrible discovery.
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Riva wasn't in bed. And it immediately dawns on him that she could be the person in the bathroom.
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He puts on his prosthetic limbs and tries to break down the door. He then picks up a cricket bat, which he also kept in his room
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for protection against burglars or intruders or whatever, bashes down the door with the cricket bat.
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Inside, he said, he found Reva bleeding. She's slumped over, but she's still alive.
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He picks her up in his arms, carries her downstairs. She's still breathing. She'd been struck by three bullets,
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and by the time the police arrived, she was dead. Oscar sobbed as he told the story.
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He didn't mean to kill her. It was a horrible accident. And to quote his words, he is mortified to have taken the life of a person so loved by so many people.
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Detectives collected evidence, the bullet-riddled door, the cricket bat. They found security camera video showing Reva arriving at Oscar's gated and walled subdivision at 6 p.m.,
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followed, ten minutes later, by Oscar. On the coffee table, they found a Valentine's Day gift and card,
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from Reva to Ozzy, as she liked to call him. It was all such a terrible, tragic mistake, said Oscar.
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But two little details didn't seem quite right. They found Reva's cell phone in the bathroom.
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Why would she take that in there, middle of the night? And more important, why was Reva dressed as if preparing to leave when she was shot?
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An accident? Oh no, thought detectives. This was no accident. Double amputee Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius was charged overnight with the Valentine Day murder of his girlfriend It was like an explosion a huge nationwide shock Oscar Pistorius charged with murder How was it possible
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A true hero, their international star, in court like a common criminal, pleading to be released on bail.
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He walked into the dock and he was shaking. His entire body was shaking. He was overcome, sobbing, struggling to breathe.
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And they seem to be absolutely genuine as far as you can tell. It did seem to be because it was over three days.
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I don't think it would be physically possible for a human being to fake that over that length of time.
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Was he telling the truth? Was Rivas Genkamp the victim of a terrible accident and he of a miscarriage of justice?
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Millions hoped so. because if Oscar was lying, their Olympic hero must have been hiding
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a very dark side indeed. When we come back, the Oscar Pistorius that the public didn't see.
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And Oscar walked up to him and just started swearing at him and going off at him.
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Fights, threats, and the fast crowd. Is that world at all dangerous? Are there sharks out there?
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Yes, everywhere there are sharks. When Dateline continues. It was like grief, in a way.
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First, shock. Then, here in South Africa, denial. As their Blade Runner sat in the dock, charged with murder.
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That Rivas Jan Camp, a young woman just beginning to make a name for herself for fighting against domestic abuse, had been killed by her boyfriend?
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No one could change that. But all around, a country still in love with its shining hero tried to hang on to belief that her death was a nightmarish accident.
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Nothing more. This is a very conflicted narrative. Because you want to believe him.
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You really, really, really, really want to believe him. It was a common desire. He must have thought he was firing at a burglar.
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The support has been overwhelming from all across the world. Pete Van Zyl, Oscar's manager, spoke to us two weeks after the shooting.
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It's not support just for Oscar as the athlete. It's support for him having lost someone really dear and close to him.
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Then, then the questions. Could they believe him? Really? Who was he, anyway? Cheers.
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Cheers. Bottoms up. NBC's Mary Carilla was there with Oscar when few beyond South Africa even knew his name.
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Is my face turning as green as this tree? He was religious. He was happy. Apparently all the time.
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You've never had terrible days? Not really. I mean, I think I've got to a point that I'm very happy.
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Oscar was born without key bones in his feet and lower legs. His parents could have opted for years of reconstructive surgery,
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but instead they decided to have Oscar's lower legs amputated when he was 11 months old.
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It was a good decision in the end, said Oscar. I believe certain things in my life have changed my personality in a positive way due to having a disability.
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As NBC cameras followed Oscar around South Africa in the weeks leading up to the 2012 Olympics,
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he seemed grounded, humble, salt of the earth. He had joined charities, this one dedicated to helping landmine victims.
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Yeah, I've been very lucky to be involved in two projects in Mozambique in the past
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where we've been able to get funding to make them prosthetic legs. I really had exalted this guy.
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He seemed very aware of his personal power and what he could do with it. I really felt that he could, he was a game changer.
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New York Times reporter Michael Sokolov spent a couple of weeks with Oscar back then, and he too was impressed.
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In Oscar's home, there's almost an entire shelf of Mandela biographies, and Oscar reads them.
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He's a smart guy. He's an illiterate person. But just before those triumphant Olympics, Sokolov witnessed a disturbance in Oscar's life.
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He broke up with his longtime girlfriend, Samantha Taylor. Here's a selfie Oscar took of the two of them in happier times.
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Olympics came first, he told Samantha. He was too focused, too intent on this goal,
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and he didn't feel that it was something he could maintain. He broke it off with her.
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After the Olympics, by that a world celebrity, Oscar flew to the Seychelles to tape an episode of the South African talk show called Top Billing.
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Oscar's companion on this September trip was Samantha Taylor, his old girlfriend,
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the one he broke up with before the Olympics. Certainly looked here as if Oscar had patched things up with her now.
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It makes my life a lot easier spending time with someone that's very caring. You're both blushing.
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My face is the color of her dress. At home, of course, Oscar was an item everywhere he went.
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When he ordered a brand new McLaren sports car, it was noticed. Like everything he did was noticed.
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Oscar clearly enjoyed the attention and began to spend more time with new friends.
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The solid, stoic coaches who raised him, taught him humility, gave way to pals like billionaire financier Quinton Vanderberg,
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seen here in his reality TV show Clifton Shores. And there was nightclub owner and ex-convict Kenny Cunady.
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I was a gangster. I was a gangster People don usually say that Look if you out of it it easy to say that Kuenenny loved Oscar Loved showing him off to a whole new cast of characters
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Not all of whom necessarily had Oscar's best interests at heart. Is that world at all dangerous for a newbie to become involved in?
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I mean, are there sharks out there? Yes, everywhere there are sharks. Many, Kanani said, behind the wheels of fast and fancy cars.
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In Johannesburg, there's Ferraris, there's Lamborghinis, there's Porsches, there's McLaren's, there's Rolls-Royce's.
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Yeah, Johannesburg is very fleshy. Thing is, Oscar loved speed of all kinds, fast people, fast cars.
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And here at the local Formula One racetrack, he met a fast crowd, too. rent the whole place for their private races and their parties up there in the clubhouse.
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Here, Oscar met the kind of people he might never have met had he not been Oscar Pistorius.
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Here he met the people who pulled a thread from the carefully woven fabric of his life.
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In particular, his new friend Clifton Shore's producer, Quentin Vanderberg. Oscar allegedly accused Quentin of having an affair with Samantha Taylor,
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during the Olympics, that is, after Oscar first broke it off with Samantha. Oscar walked up to him and just started swearing at him and going off at him.
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And you f*** my girlfriend while I'm running for my country. This is South African soccer star Mark Batchelor.
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He told us Quentin denied ever dating Samantha Taylor, and he was so upset by Oscar's outburst,
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he asked Bachelor to speak to him. So he was still shaking up, so he asked us, asked me, could I find out what's going on?
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But, said Bachelor, when he phoned Oscar. You know, he said, oh, what's the problem, boy?
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Have you got a problem with me? And, you know, I'm not scared of you. And I said, no, just boys talk.
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So I said to him, listen, Oscar, you're a bit out of your league, but if you think you're, Gene, he said, hey, f***, I will break your f***ing legs.
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So I actually just laughed it off. I didn't think anything of it. Bachelor, by the way, had a checkered past himself.
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And so he said he knew the signs of a man losing his balance, hanging out with the wrong people.
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I know the crowd that they were all in with. And Oscar got sucked in there and, you know,
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I just think it all became too much too quickly for him. There was a final breakup with Samantha.
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Friends said she complained Oscar was not pleasant at all. Samantha's mother said she was afraid for her daughter's safety.
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But the public knew none of that. As far as his fans were concerned, Oscar was on top of the world.
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And so when Oscar Pistorius walked the red carpet in November 2012 at the National Sports Awards show with this woman on his arm,
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the entire country wanted to know, who is she? Coming up. Riva had a brilliant mind.
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She was smart and funny and all those things, but she was brilliant. Oscar and Reva's new romance enter an old flame.
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Could jealousy be a motive in this shooting? When Dateline continues. In police reports of the shooting, she is described as the victim.
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But according to her friends, that is altogether the wrong word to describe Reva's young cat.
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Reva's brief journey to her tragic end began with a last-minute phone call to the most sought-after celebrity in South Africa.
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Hi, I'm Oscar's date tonight. He needed a date at the last minute so it's like Reva
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just throw your stuff together and come and be my date. Reva was 29 when she lit
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up the red carpet with Oscar at the South African Sports Awards ceremony in November 2012. Reva had looks, no question there, but according to her
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friends. That might have been the least of her attributes. Reva had a brilliant mind.
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She was smart and funny and all those things, but she was brilliant. Gina Myers was Reva's roommate,
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which may be understating their relationship. Reva actually lived with Gina and her parents,
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did it to save money. But also, being far from home, she missed her family, and it was comforting to be part of somebody else's. She often told me how grateful she was
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for her upbringing. Her families are very down to earth. They're the salt of the earth. They're
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very humble and Reva was exactly, exactly the same. Reva grew up tough on a small farm near the
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factory town of Port Elizabeth. Tough enough to come back from a serious fall from a horse.
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She broke her back, spent eight months in the hospital, had to learn to walk all over again.
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She attended a devout and diverse Catholic school, St. Dominic's Priory, where students are taught to
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of service to the poor. By the time she entered the pre-law program at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University,
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Riva was primed to make a difference, to be part of the new South Africa. But then a relationship with a man,
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her first serious boyfriend, turned abusive, frightening, destroyed her self-confidence.
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She had spoken about having a previously abusive relationship. After graduation to break free,
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Riva moved far away, to the big city. Johannesburg. She had an unbelievable personality.
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She had an unbelievable heart. Warren LaHood met Reva soon after she arrived in town,
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and the two quickly fell in love. We shared everything together. We did everything together.
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How long did you go out together? It was four and a half years. During which Reva became determined to do something
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about the kind of domestic violence she'd experienced at the hands of that first boyfriend And Warren encouraged her shared her outlook her down sensibilities He was a normal run guy In one of life weird twists
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Mark Batchelor knew Reva back then, too, when she was dating Warren. She was in love, so we're talking about
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when they're going to have the wedding. But before then, Reva wanted to live out a fantasy.
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She had dabbled in modeling as a teenager, decided to give it another try before going on to law school.
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She was looking for what was going to take her places. Reva's career took off. She appeared in ads, TV commercials, videos,
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like this one for the men's magazine FHM. Did she get a big head? No, never. But by July of 2012, Reva broke the news to Warren.
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She wanted, for the first time in her life, to be on her own. I mean, I was very busy. She was very busy.
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So I suppose you start growing a pot and sometimes you need a break. By then, Reva was speaking out publicly about domestic violence.
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She only knew Oscar the way everybody knew Oscar, as the electrifying blade runner in the Olympic Games.
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And then, pure coincidence really, four months later, the car dealer from whom Oscar ordered that McLaren showed him a picture of Reva,
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suggested he might want to take her to the sports awards. It was like they were made for each other, both disciplined, hardworking, well-read,
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hoping to put their fame to use for the betterment of others. Oscar for landmine victims, and Reva for victims of domestic violence.
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Did you ever meet Oscar? I did, yes. I mean, he seemed like a gentleman. And like a gentleman, Warren graciously accepted his role as Reva's ex.
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And as an ex-boyfriend, Warren would occasionally meet Reva at a cafe to talk about old times.
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One of those passing encounters, though, will forever be replayed in Warren LaHood's mind.
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What did she tell you she was up to? She told me how well she was doing and she seemed like she was happy.
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Perfectly innocent, said Warren. But did Oscar think so? Mark Batchelor had seen, he said,
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how jealous Oscar could be about his former girlfriend, Samantha. He told us Reva's friends believed Oscar
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and now felt the same way about her. There was talk about him trying to see, you know,
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if she was contacting her ex, Warren. Was Oscar jealous of Warren? We don't know.
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But we do know this. That little coffee date Warren had with Reva, It was on February 12, 2013, 36 hours before Oscar killed her.
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Coming up, prosecutors lay out the case, iPhones, bullet holes, Riva's clothes, neighbors' stories.
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What everybody will be watching for is whether or not you can prove he intended to kill her.
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We would not have charged him if we didn't believe so. When Dateline continues. Four shots through a door.
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No question, Oscar Pistorius fired them, and that he killed Riva Stienkamp. But was it murder?
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Police and prosecutors thought it was from the very first night. As the trial began, everyone was wondering how the state was going to prove the killing
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of Riva was premeditated, that Oscar actually meant to kill her. I think the state has put a huge amount of work and a huge amount of money and a huge amount of effort into making their case.
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A case that the prosecution argued was just as simple as it looked on day one. We can't deny that Riva was killed by himself at his house and that four shots were fired at her.
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Attorney Nate Makumbe worked for South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority. He previewed cautiously the prosecution's case against Oscar.
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What everybody will be watching for is whether or not you can prove he intended to kill her.
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And you sound like you're pretty confident the prosecution has enough to be able to prove that.
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We would not have charged him if we didn't believe so. He knew that Riva was in the bathroom and he intended to kill her.
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Riva was dressed when she was shot as if she intended to leave. She'd taken her cell phone with her when she locked herself into the bathroom,
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said Amdupe Samsuko, then a spokesperson for South Africa's prosecution authority.
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We believe that Rieva was probably running away and she locked herself in the bathroom.
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What's the prosecution's theory about the fact that she was wearing white shorts and a black top?
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It cannot be explained as of now. until such time the accused can actually take up a stand and say,
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she decided to put on clothes to go to the bathroom, or she decided to say, I'm going to sleep on clothes,
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I'm not going to put my nighties on. Tipsters told investigators in the months before the Riva shooting,
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Oscar had recklessly fired his pistol twice before, once through the sunroof of his car while driving,
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another time while having lunch at this crowded upmarket cafe. He accidentally shoots it. He then asks his friend to take the fall for him, saying that, you know, I'm a well-known person. The media will be all over this.
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You say you shot the gun. Help me out. The state is arguing that he's never taken responsibility for anything, ever. Everyone keeps making excuses for him. And now a woman is dead.
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Weirdly, this happened at the very same restaurant where Reva met with her ex-boyfriend Warren,
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a day and a half before Oscar shot the show. death. In addition to murder, prosecutors added those firearm charges. Nickel and dime stuff,
00:24:07
you might say, but the prosecutors had their reasons. And what they essentially are is part
00:24:12
of a strategy by the NPA to present Oscar Pistorius as a trigger-happy cowboy who reached for his
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firearm in moments of stress. Like the time when, four months before Reva's shooting, Oscar tweeted
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about going into full combat recon mode when he heard a noise in the laundry room.
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What's interesting in that account is what Oscar did not do. He did not fire four shots through the door.
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So what about the time he actually did fire his pistol? During that awful night he took Reva's life.
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We made a replica of Oscar's bathroom door, thick, solid wood. On the target range, we fired the same type of 9mm round
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from the same type of pistol Oscar used. Bullets ripped right through the door as if it was nothing more than gossamer.
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We also learned there's something unique about this 9mm. It's not only powerful, but exceptionally loud.
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So much so it's impossible to convey without blowing out your speakers. 160 decibels, louder than a jet engine at takeoff, makes your ears ring.
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According to prosecution spokesman Natty Mukumbe, Many of Oscar's neighbors heard those gunshots and something possibly more damning.
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Screams. And it's not just, by the way, the screams. It's whether did people actually hear arguments prior to that.
00:25:43
You know, did you hear a woman shouting, sounding irritated and annoyed and angry,
00:25:49
and men screaming, shouting and so on. The prosecution named more than a dozen neighbors as potential witnesses.
00:25:57
Five of them, according to the pretrial report, said they heard arguing and shots followed by the screams of a woman
00:26:04
and then further shots. And if people said we heard gunshot scream, gunshot scream,
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it's going to be pretty much hard for you to argue that you still didn't know that the person was screaming was your girlfriend.
00:26:18
How would Oscar ever be able to explain that away in court? Coming up, a shining Olympic hero hiding a secret terror.
00:26:30
This is a person who was living essentially in a state of fear. You kind of buy Oscar's story then that he thought there was an intruder in the bathroom.
00:26:38
Yes. When Dateline continues. Oscar Pistorius' story about shooting Reva never changed, never wavered.
00:26:53
Over and over again, he said he thought he was acting in self-defense when he fired through his bathroom door at what he believed was an intruder.
00:27:04
The story that resonated in South Africa, where home invasion robberies are common
00:27:09
and the murder rate more than seven times greater than in the U.S. Everybody knows about gated communities, of course,
00:27:17
but this one is called a security village. In there somewhere is Oscar's house. Behind the high wall and the 220-volt wire
00:27:26
that's strung up across the top, which would give you a heck of a shock if you touched it.
00:27:31
But on this side of the wall, in case you're an intruder thinking of coming inside,
00:27:36
is a place called the Farm Inn. It's a wild animal place, and you have to run into a cheetah or a lion
00:27:43
if you're an intruder. In South Africa, there's no safe place because if criminals target you
00:27:49
and they want you in your house, they will get you in your house. Oscar's acquaintance, Kenny Kunene,
00:27:56
is both a man of wealth and a robbery victim. A lot of people have been robbed of money in their houses.
00:28:02
You kind of buy Oscar's story then that he thought there was an intruder in the bathroom.
00:28:07
Yes. Makes sense to you. It makes so much sense Oscar attorneys said crime reporter Karen Maughan could argue Oscar had been fearful his entire life and for good reason I think there is an awareness from his defense team that they
00:28:22
cannot present Oscar Pistorius as this perfect human being who was so idolized by so many people.
00:28:30
There has to be an acknowledgement, a real acknowledgement of the kind of issues that
00:28:36
he's had that have always been brimming under the surface. In fact, Karen Mons said she learned Oscar planned to ask the court to hold him to a
00:28:45
different standard of justice. But he can't be judged according to the standards of the reasonable man.
00:28:53
South Africa's self-defense law is based on how a reasonable man would react to an attack.
00:29:00
But Mons said Oscar's defense team would portray him as something other than that.
00:29:05
You need to take into account that this is a person who has persistently said that he felt the most vulnerable on his stumps and was living essentially in a state of fear and a state of terror.
00:29:17
And you need to judge him by that standard. Oscar Pastore has fought for years to get into the Olympics to be treated like everybody else there.
00:29:26
But now he was expected to make the opposite argument in court, that he was different.
00:29:32
a double amputee who lived in constant fear of the dark. Oscar didn't sleep well. Oscar didn't sit still.
00:29:41
He was restless all the time. Journalist Michael Sokolov, while working on his New York Times Sunday magazine cover story,
00:29:49
said he observed that in private, Oscar was often afraid. He seemed to have a great deal of fear, reasonable or not, of people breaking into his house.
00:29:59
One day when I was with him, we came back to the house, and he said, by the way, there was a noise in the house last night.
00:30:07
And I thought it was an intruder, and I came downstairs with my gun. Armed and afraid. A dangerous combination.
00:30:17
The account Oscar gave the night he shot Rivas Jankamp seemed very telling. That his portrayal of himself was a far cry from the heroic Blade Runner.
00:30:26
I heard a noise in the bathroom. I felt a sense of terror rushing over me. I believed that someone
00:30:32
had entered my house. I was too scared to switch a light on. I grabbed my 9mm pistol from underneath
00:30:38
my bed. I fired shots at the toilet door and shouted to Reva to phone the police.
00:30:43
I was still too scared to switch on the light. Too scared to switch on a light, but not too scared to pull the trigger on a pistol. As this footage from Sky News Video reveals,
00:30:55
Oscar was very comfortable with a gun in his hands and knew quite well the damage they could do.
00:31:02
Which, Oscar Pistorius, would the judge see? Coming up... Her shouts, her screams were petrifying.
00:31:10
It was clear that this person's life was in danger. Neighbors tell their stories, and Oscar tells his.
00:31:18
I sat over Reba and I cried. She wasn't breathing. Who would the judge believe when Dateline continues?
00:31:34
The trial of Oscar Pistorius in the spring of 2014 was an international event streamed live to the world.
00:31:44
Do you understand the charges, Mr. Pistorius? I do. I do, my lady. How do you plead?
00:31:50
Not guilty, my lady. It was all so dramatic. There were the neighbors, five of them, who testified off camera.
00:31:59
They heard the gunshots when Reva was killed, but not just gunshots. They heard Reva, terrified.
00:32:06
Her shouts, her screams were petrifying. I knew something terrible was happening in that house.
00:32:12
The neighbor's husband gave an identical account. She started screaming again. At that point, the intensity and the fear in her voice escalated.
00:32:21
and it was clear that this person's life was in danger. That when the first shots were fired Oscar next neighbor testified she heard a loud argument more than an hour before the shooting
00:32:35
I heard sounds. It seemed like somebody was involved in a fight. And these people were talking in loud voices to my lady.
00:32:45
And around about 3 o'clock in the morning, I heard four gunshots. which went through the door behind which Reva was cowering, said the prosecutor.
00:32:57
He brought the door to the court, bullet holes and all. And then the state's ballistics expert described how,
00:33:05
shot by shot through that door, Oscar took Reva's life. Now, came to the conclusion that most probably the wound on the hip
00:33:13
was when she was in a standing position between the door and the toilet seat. That shot shattered Riva's hip.
00:33:23
She fell back onto a magazine stand, put her hands up in a futile attempt to protect herself
00:33:28
as a second round passed through her upper right arm. The third shot missed, but the fourth one struck Riva in the head.
00:33:38
If you look at the defensive position, it's like if you see in this position, the wound on the left hand, just between the two fingers.
00:33:48
Bullet perforated here, and she was a bit facing down. It comes in here. It also penetrated the head of the deceased.
00:33:58
Pistorius responded to this testimony by covering his head, plugging his ears, and vomiting into a trash can.
00:34:07
Prosecutors made the case that Oscar was a man governed by his emotions. Not just grief and guilt as seen in court, but also jealousy and rage.
00:34:19
To make that case, the state submitted a string of text messages sent three weeks before the shooting.
00:34:26
Reva to Oscar. I was not flirting with anyone today. I'm scared of you sometimes and how you snap at me.
00:34:33
Oscar responded. I was upset that you just left me after we got food to go and talk to a guy and I was watching you touch his arm and ignore me.
00:34:42
Then, with six days to live, here was Reva again, to Oscar. I can't be attacked by outsiders for dating you
00:34:51
and be attacked by you, the one person I deserve protection from. But Oscar's lawyer said the texts were nothing more than a lover's spat.
00:35:02
So, what really happened that night? Well, only one person survived, and he, Oscar Pistorius himself, took the stand off camera to tell the world his version.
00:35:18
I heard a window open in the bathroom. I thought that there was a burglar that was scanning entry into my home.
00:35:25
The first thing that ran through my mind was that I needed to arm myself, that I needed to protect Riva and I, that I needed to get my gun.
00:35:32
And then I heard a noise from inside the toilet. what I perceived to be somebody coming out of the toilet.
00:35:44
Before I knew it, I had fired four shots at the door. My ears were ringing. I couldn't hear anything.
00:35:50
So I shouted. I kept on shouting for Reva to phone the police. Then I unlocked the door and I flung the door open.
00:35:57
I threw it open and I sat over Reva and I cried. She wasn't breathing. South Africa does not have a jury system, so Oscar's testimony was for an audience of one.
00:36:13
The judge would determine Oscar's guilt or innocence. And five months later, when judgment day finally arrived,
00:36:29
Mr. Pistorius, please stand up. The judge made it clear she believed Oscar. Shooting the deceased dead was a genuine mistake as he thought he was shooting at an intruder behind the toilet door The accused is found not guilty and is discharged
00:36:51
Not guilty of murder. But the judge did find Oscar guilty of a lesser charge, culpable homicide.
00:36:58
In U.S. terms, manslaughter. Reva's parents, June and Barry's gen camp, were devastated.
00:37:04
I wanted the truth. I don't think we got the truth. That's the whole point. We did not get the truth.
00:37:11
That's not what I believe or Barry believes happened. That's not justice. And that's not justice.
00:37:20
For them, the news only got worse. The sentence was much more lenient than expected five years.
00:37:26
And then, just a year into the sentence, this happened. There's late news tonight from South Africa.
00:37:32
NBC News has learned one-time Olympic hero Oscar Pistorius has been released from prison.
00:37:37
Oscar was allowed to move into his uncle's compound to serve out the rest of his sentence.
00:37:44
It was a strange ending to a strange story. Except that wasn't the end of the story.
00:37:52
In South Africa, the rules are a little different. Prosecutors can appeal verdicts, which they did.
00:37:58
And after the trial, after Oscar was sent home, a higher court upgraded his conviction.
00:38:04
The accused conviction and sentence on count one are set aside and replaced with the following.
00:38:11
Guilty of murder. Then later, the court increased Oscar's sentence to 13 years and five months.
00:38:17
And so, Becky went to prison. But that wasn't the final chapter either. We are following breaking news overnight in a case we've followed for more than a decade.
00:38:28
In January 2024, nearly 11 years after murdering Rivas Dienkamp, Oscar Pistorius was released on parole.
00:38:38
As required under South African law, he had served more than half his sentence behind bars.
00:38:44
He'll serve the remainder of his time at his uncle's compound in Pretoria under strict supervision.
00:38:50
The former Olympian's release came four months after the death of Rivas' father, Barry,
00:38:55
who spent years working to keep his daughter's killer behind bars. In a statement, Reva's mother, June, said,
00:39:04
There can never be justice if your loved one is never coming back. We who remain behind are the ones serving a life sentence.
00:39:15
There is a postscript to this story, and it has to do with Mark Batchelor, that one-time soccer legend.
00:39:22
what's that like to have a huge crowd of 100,000 people and they're all cheering your name
00:39:27
sometimes they're doing your name as well on the evening of July 14th 2019 as he sat in his car in front of the home where we had met him
00:39:37
two gunmen unknown fired into Mark Batchelor's car police are investigating a case of murder
00:39:45
his murder was national news South African broadcasting company was all over it A targeted hit, the police called it.
00:39:54
There were rumors that Batchelor had got mixed up with a fast crowd out to settle an old score,
00:40:00
which got us to thinking about the time this sports god told us how, like Oscar, he struggled to stay grounded
00:40:08
as his own fame and money soared. It was just getting too fake and too much about who's got more money
00:40:15
or who's got more better cars and who can do this and who can't do that. and I pulled away from it.
00:40:22
There's an eternal truth to the ancient myth about flying too close to the sun, whether once celebrated footballer
00:40:31
or shining star of the London Olympics who flew on his flashing blades and fell so fast and so far.
00:40:41
That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.