Cape Town - In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, Reeva Steenkamp’s sister Simone Cowburn described Amazon Prime Video as ‘insensitive’ for using grim images of her late sister taken at the crime scene.
It’s been almost five years since 29-year-old model Reeva Steenkamp was tragically murdered by her partner, South African Paralympian athlete Oscar Pistorius on 14 February 2013 at his Pretoria home.
Speaking in an interview with MailOnline Reeva’s older sister Simone Cowburn, questioned why Amazon Prime – the creators of the new ‘Pistorius’ four-way-series – chose to use graphic images taken the night of her sister’s death.
The documentary apparently added images of Reeva’s dead body lying on the floor shortly after the incident occurred, which Simone described as insensitive.
"My parents are not young at all. I am worried this will have a terrible effect on them. My father has been really unwell recently and has heart problems,” Simone said.
“What I would like the world to see are the wounds inflicted onto Reeva and the pain she must have gone through,” said Barry Steenkamp, father to late the late Reeva.
Simone raised her concerns about how the Amazon Prime managed to get photographs that were strictly meant to be used by the authorities.
“My question is how did these documentary people get their hands on police photographs of my sister's body?”
The four-part documentary series also consist of archived video footage and never seen before images from the crime scene,
“'I don't believe it is necessary to show blood stains on the walls. All this was told as evidence at Oscar's trial,” said Simone.
Simone also expressed how, if the documentary was an attempt to get Oscar, who is currently serving 13 years in prison a reduced sentence.
“I hope it fails. He needs to stay in prison for a long time for the way he killed my sister,” she said.
Sean Richard the documentary's writer and producer also weighed in defending his work,
“These are truly tragic events, which took place in front of the glare of the world media. As filmmakers we set out to tell the story as objectively as possible, “said Sean speaking to MailOnline.
REEVA'S FAMILY REFUSED TO BE INTERVIEWED
In the documentary masses of archive footage is melded with new sit-down interviews with the Pistorius family, including siblings Aimée and Carl, his uncle, Arnold Pistorius, the state prosecutor, Advocate Gerrie Nel, forensic experts such as David Klatzow, former teammates, as well as journalists who had covered the case since the start.
Of course, there are people that Welsh-born director Vaughan Sivell wanted to interview and involve in the documentary that declined to participate, including the Steenkamp family, as well as Roux.
“A lot of them had had enough of talking about this, and had given interviews for things that came out and weren’t the quality they had thought it would be or was biased in some way,” Sivell said. (Read more here)
Sources: Sport24, Channel24,MailOnline, HeraldLive
Read more: New four-part Oscar Pistorius documentary to air on Amazon Prime Video
