The prosecutor in Oscar Pistorius’ murder trial on Thursday accused the Olympic athlete of telling outright lies in his version of what happened the night he fatally shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
“Your version is so improbable that nobody would ever think it is reasonably possible. You are trying Mr. Pistorius, it’s not working,” prosecutor Gerrie Nel barked during a withering cross-examination in a South African courtroom. “Your version is a lie.”
Nel listed discrepancies between what police crime scene photos showed and Pistorius’ description of what happened when he shot Steenkamp, 29, on Valentine’s Day 2013.
Pistorius, 27, had said a quilt from his bed was never on the floor as the photo showed; that the curtains were never as wide open as they are shown; and that a fan could not have been where it was shown because it would have blocked him from going onto his balcony and shouting for help, as he claimed he did.
“Is this one big conspiracy? Why would the police do all this to you?” the veteran prosecutor asked in a mocking tone.
Nel brought up an incident at a Johannesburg restaurant a month before Steenkamp was killed in which a shot went off after a pal passed the Blade Runner a loaded pistol under the table.
Pistorius said he didn’t have his finger on the trigger when the gun fired.
“We have you in possession of the gun, a shot went off, but you didn’t discharge the gun? … I’m putting it to you, you fired that gun. There is no other way. You are lying,” Nel said.
Pistorius also said a former girlfriend and a friend both lied about a 2012 incident when they said he fired his gun out the sunroof of a moving car.
Nel also grilled Pistorius about unlicensed .38-caliber ammunition found in a safe at his home.
Pistorius had said it was his father’s ammo — though his father refused to admit the ammo was his.
“You just don’t want to accept responsibility for anything,” Nel said to Pistorius, who faces three weapons charges in addition to murder.
Earlier, the prosecutor said the athlete was an egomaniac who never even told his girlfriend that he loved her.
“Your life is just about you,” Nel said, adding that he had checked all of Steenkamp’s text messages and that the phrase “I love you” appeared only twice — and only in messages she sent to her mother.
“Never to you and you never to her,” Nel said.
“I never got the opportunity to tell Reeva that I loved her,” Pistorius replied in a soft voice.
Nel also charged that Pistorius was mean to Steenkamp after she complained about him playing “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” a cut by American rapper Kendrick Lamar, on a car stereo.
“You make me happy 90% of the time and I think we are amazing together but I am not some other bitch you may know trying to kill your vibe,” she wrote in a cellphone message that had been entered as evidence.
The prosecutor said Pistorius had repeatedly humiliated Steenkamp.
“What you did by criticizing her accent, by brushing her off when she brushed your neck, when you told her to stop chewing gum,” Nel said. “Those were experienced by her at least as humiliating, that you were humiliating her, am I right? Especially in public.”
The defendant denied any cruelty, replying, “I didn’t treat her badly.”
Nel also accused Pistorius of ignoring the Steenkamp family’s feelings by apologizing to them in court rather than expressing his condolences in private.
“Why would you create a spectacle in court, in the public domain, in the public eye,” Nel said. “Why did you put them through this?”
Pistorius said he believed the family was not ready to meet him.
“I completely understand where they’re coming from,” he said. “It’s not that I haven’t thought about them.”
June Steenkamp, meanwhile, unloaded on her daughter’s killer in an interview published Thursday, saying “he’s gone from hero to devil” and mocking his courtroom histrionics.
“I look at Oscar the whole time, to see how he is coping, how he is behaving. I’m obsessed with looking at him, it’s just instinctive, I can’t explain it,” she told the Daily Mirror.
“I keep thinking: ‘Let me see how he’s taking this.’ He has been very dramatic, the vomiting and crying. I think he’s just about keeping himself together. I don’t know whether he’s acting,” she said, adding that the two had never met.
Pistorius did not acknowledge her on the first day of the trial but did eventually look at her and say good morning, she said.
“My presence unnerves him, I’m sure of it. He’s answerable to me. He must see me there in the court, he must feel my eyes boring into him, I think it makes a lot of difference,” she said.
The double amputee, she said, was used to having everything his way before his arrest.
“He has an aggressive persona, he’s used to having people adore him, so it must be pretty different for him now. He’s been spoiled by other people, that’s why he struts around and looks superior,” she said. “He’s gone from hero to devil.”
Steenkamp, 67, said attending the trial was “hell” but she was “compelled to be there.”
Her husband, Barry, is also determined to attend but has been too ill since suffering a stroke.
She said she did not care whether the Paralympics multiple gold medallist was convicted.
“What difference is it going to make to me if he goes to prison for 25 years or is allowed to walk free? I’m not a person who wants to punish him. I want my daughter back, but it’s never going to happen,” she said.
“She was the most wonderful, beautiful person, inside and out, and she was everything to Barry and me — our lives are destroyed.”
Pistorius claimed he shot his girlfriend by accident, mistaking her for a dangerous intruder. The prosecution insisted he intentionally killed her after an argument turned violent.
Judge Thokozile Masipa will deliver a verdict because there is no jury system in South Africa. Pistorius faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted on a premeditated murder charge.