In True Crime, patterns emerge in the ether.  The criminal mind tries its damnedest to shroud the truth, and yet patterns form in the dark matter like ripples of gravity expanding through time.  These ripples are the ripples of guilt, of a criminal knowing exactly what he/she has done, and the efforts to fill an absence with a false reality that doesn’t quite fit with the whole reality.  The interesting thing is how our minds, even when we consciously try to lie or deceive others, make little slip-ups.  Why?  Because our brains aren’t designed to tell false stories, our brains are designed to record reality accurately.

So let’s look at an instance of not merely a Freudian slip, but one of the mind.

Oscar Trial, Day 20, April 11, 2014. 

From YouTube: [27:25]:

Nel:  After you brought the two fans in, what happened then?

Oscar:  I placed the two fans on the floor and I closed the doors, and I closed the curtains my lady. 

The words “I placed”. Oscar’s first two words, are already indicative of a ruse.  Most people would say “I put” or “I moved”.  Imagine you’re moving chess pieces; would you “place” them or move them?  Placing them is a strategic intent.  What is the strategic intent behind “placing the two fans” anywhere?  Well, there’s a very clear strategic intent to deceive via distraction.  By Oscar “placing” objects, he’s also placing us where he wants us in his story, and Reeva too.  He’s playing us for a bunch of pawns.

Nel:  Yes, and then? 

Oscar:  I then went to the amplifier to cover the light with the pair of jeans, and it was at that point that I heard the noise coming from the bathroom my lady.

Besides “placing” Oscar is “covering” the light, and by inference muffling the thing making the noise too.

Nel:  Now, let’s just deal with that.  You, why did you want to cover the light?

Oscar:  Because it was distracting my lady.

Did you say DISTRACTING?  Don’t you mean disturbing?  Distracting is to divert attention, something disturbing you is bugging you, perhaps preventing you from sleeping.

Nel:  Why would that be?

Oscar:  I was trying to sleep.  If there was a light on, it would distract me my lady.

Nel:  So that was sharp enough light to bother you in your sleep?

Oscar:  It must have been my lady.

Ummmm…actually, I’m going to have to disagree with you.   When a murderer gives a version, everything is important, even the diversion.  So let’s look at this one and test it, shall we?

When somebody says something and it’s a lie, the psychology of the lie – what it’s revealing or not revealing – is a clue to what happened.  It’s dissembling.

Marc Batchelor, one of Reeva’s friends who’s occasionally attended trial proceedings, thinks that Reeva made a recording of an argument between Reeva and Oscar on Oscar’s phone.  Oscar in turn may have subconsciously been thinking about that act of getting rid of the phone by using the stereo light as symbolism for the phone. A stereo like a phone is something that makes a noise and shines a light.  

We know that in the true scheme of things, subsequently the phone was wiped by Carl in an elaborate cover-up.  So the sound and the light was covered up.

A parallel to all this is that Carl’s Twitter account was closed, and then later re-opened but made private, this past week at the request of Uncle Arnold.

It’s a shutting down of some type of leaking of information.  Is that what Oscar was doing?  Let’s face it, the story about the stereo and the jeans was certainly odd.

From Psychology Today:

Sigmund Freud, whose name is indelibly linked with such gaffes, called them Fehlleistungen(faulty actions) in his 1901 book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. He deemed them notable for revealing an unconscious thought, belief, wish, or motive. “Almost invariably I discover a disturbing influence from something outside of the intended speech,” he wrote. “The disturbing element is a single unconscious thought, which comes to light through the special blunder.”   It threatens to reveal passions and motives and problems that lurk so far below the surface that we don’t even know they exist. 

But when we know where to look not only do we find what exists, but the dark arts our murdering artist is actually engaging in…