
On Valentine’s Day 2013, Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead by her Paralympian boyfriend, Oscar Pistorius, in his home in Pretoria, South Africa.
In a criminal trial that was live-streamed across the world, the South African sprinter and amputee – nicknamed the ‘Blade Runner’ for his racing blades – claimed he mistook his girlfriend of four months for an intruder hiding in the bathroom. He fired four shots through the locked door, killing her instantly.
Pistorius, 31, is currently serving a 13-year jail sentence for murder, but only after the outrage prompted by his initial sentence of six-years for culpable homicide in 2014.
Now five years after her death, a documentary has been made about Steenkamp’s murder – or more precisely the rise and fall of Oscar Pistorius – and it has angered her family.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Steenkamp’s sister Simone Cowburn has questioned why the four-part series called Pistorius decided to show graphic images of the 29-year-old model’s corpse on the floor of a bloodstained bathroom.
“I don’t believe it is necessary to show blood stains on the walls. All this was told as evidence at Oscar’s trial,” she said.
“My question is how did these documentary people get their hands on police photographs of my sister’s body?”
Cowburn also said she was bewildered as to why the doco has been created at all.
“I don’t understand why his film has been made. She was killed five years ago and you would think that everything that needed to be said has been said now,” she said.
“If his family are involved and trying to get him a reduced sentence, I hope it fails. He needs to stay in prison for a long time for the way he killed my sister.
The documentary’s writer and producer Sean Richards told Daily Mail that his team “set out to tell the story as objectively as possible”.
But Cowburn said her parents – June and Barry – do not need to relive the death of their daughter.