Free One Tragic Night by Mandy Wiener Page A

‘I was having dinner with Reeva and Oz very recently after an event. I’ve never seen Oz look so happy like that night. Reeva is beautiful beyond words in a naturally sexy way – and she asked me about TV presenting. She was interested in branching out beyond
FHM
and modelling, and to do more TV work. We made a lunch date for next week where I was going to take her to the studio and make some introductions.’
    It was at a Daytona Group corporate ‘track day’ at the Kyalami Race Track towards the last quarter of 2012, that Reeva met Oscar Pistorius properly. Reeva had been invited to the event by Samantha and the Paralympian was there as a guest of Sam’s boyfriend, Justin. The two men share a passion for fast cars and Oscar was in the process of purchasing a McLaren from the Daytona Group. The car, valued at R3.5 million, was a gift to himself for Christmas following what he called a ‘good year’. Samantha and Justin were both friendly with the athlete, who had been to their house for dinner and they saw each other socially. Samantha was impressed by how well-mannered and kind Oscar was, considering his fame and status. ‘I thought he was great guy. I’d still say I’d never come across a guy who was so well-mannered in this day and age. Polite, considerate. I thought he was a lot of fun. I thought he was a great guy, that’s why I hung out with him. I didn’t see anything … I was never in a situation where I thought to myself, you know, this guy is cooked.’
    By the first week of November 2012, Oscar’s relationship status was already complicated. He and his girlfriend Samantha Taylor had just returned from a weekend away at the Sun City resort. Taylor later testified in court that there was ‘a lot of commotion’ in the relationship at the time. She did not, however, consider what had transpired between them at Sun City to be a break-up. Thetrue extent of the problems in the relationship would only be revealed to us after the trial had been completed.
    Oscar opted not to take Samantha Taylor as his date to the South African Sports Awards. But he did need a date – and it was Justin who suggested he take Reeva. On the afternoon of the event, 4 November, Justin called up his girlfriend’s friend and asked her if she would accompany Oscar to the awards. ‘Justin phoned Reeva and asked, “Do you want to go to the Sports Awards tonight?” She said, “Uh … in like an hour’s time? But okay.” She scraped her hair back, put a dress on and went,’ recalls Sam.
    Much-publicised photographs of the couple on the red carpet belie the lastminute request and any accompanying awkwardness – Reeva, statuesque in a cascading tasselled peach dress with shoestring straps and her blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, beams as she glances up into the athlete’s smiling eyes.
    That night Reeva told
City Press
newspaper, ‘We’re just friends. I promise I’ll tell you if there’s anything more … It’s just a coincidence that we’re sitting at the same table and arrived in the same car.’ She also told an interviewer on the red carpet: ‘Oscar is a very, very sexy boy. He doesn’t do it in an arrogant, obnoxious way. He does it in a very classy, understated way. He’s a gentleman.’
    â€˜The next day,’ says Sam, ‘she was like, “Jeez, what an amazing guy.” She said, “We sat and spoke for hours, we liked the same things, he seems like a lot of fun.” I was very happy for her!’ but Samantha adds that Reeva was worried about Oscar’s youthfulness. ‘She said, though, that he’s very mature for his age. Obviously with what he’s had to deal with and being in the public eye since he was so young. You know, achieving what he’s achieved, he must be more mature for his age.’
    Inconveniently, Oscar was friends with