Effiong Eton: Oscar Pistorius Rekindled Romance With His Ex-Lover...?

Wednesday 15 June 2016

Oscar Pistorius Rekindled Romance With His Ex-Lover...?

One of Oscar Pistorius’ former girlfriends has appeared to support him in court for the first time this week, prompting speculation that the depressed sprinter is drawing comfort from their past romance during his final days of freedom.

Jenna Edkins, for whom the convicted murderer has confessed to having a lingering affection, looked entirely at home among the ranks of Pistorius’ extensive family as she took her place next to his sister, Aimee, on the hard, wooden benches of Pretoria’s High Court.

The 26-year-old bank worker has maintained a deliberately low profile since her name was first linked to Pistorius, 29, at the height of his celebrity following his historic appearance at both the Olympics and Paralympics in London in 2012.

With a comforting hand outstretched to Aimee, who recently left South Africa to begin a new life in London, Jenna regularly looked with concern at the back of the double amputee’s bowed head as he sobbed quietly in the dock when the crucial hearing to decide his punishment yesterday got underway.

Unlike Samantha Taylor, the girlfriend who followed her into Pistorius’ life in 2012, Jenna has never spoken publicly about her relationship with the track star who is facing a lengthy jail sentence for the murder of model Reeva Steenkamp, who was 29.

Jenna briefly broke cover in the chaotic hours after Pistorius’ arrest for the murder of Reeva, which took place in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 2013, to express her unqualified support for him with a string of empassioned tweets.

Tellingly, Jenna’s message appeared to hint that there had never been a final break in the romance, which began in 2008, when she was aged just 17, two years younger than the double amputee.

Her unequivocal backing was in stark contrast to the reaction of Samantha and her family to Pistorius’ arrest. Trish Taylor expressed her relief on facebook that it had not been her daughter who had died at Pistorius’s hands. ‘I’m so glad Sammy is safe and out of the clutches of that man,’ she told her friends.

Samantha’s sister, Kerri-Lee, also waded into the on-line war of words, attacking Jenna personally, labelling her a ‘walk over’ and demanded to know ‘How can you support a guy that has taken an innocent life?’

According to friends, Pistorius’s deep connection to fair-haired Jenna far pre-dates their adult romance. Their mothers were close and the pair were often thrown together as children. Both families were reasonably well-off – at least until the athlete’s parents’ bitter divorce - and Jenna and Pistorius were both educated privately, winning places at university.

In early 2008, by which time the pair’s innocent childhood friendship had grown into an adult romance, Jenna was excitedly campaigning for her talented boyfriend’s historic inclusion into able-bodied athletics, as her Facebook feed reveals.

Pistorius’ references to Jenna, a business school graduate, in his autobiography ‘Blade Runner’, are both affectionate and flattering. He describes her as ‘delightful’, ‘sweet-natured’ and remarks on her ‘sparkling’ blue eyes.

But the athlete’s enduring affection for the younger woman he called by the nick name ‘BabyShoes’ became the source of bitter conflict during his romance with Samantha, a would-be model.

In a frank interview, Samantha, 25, who gave evidence against Pistorius for the state at his original murder trial, claimed his ongoing contact with Jenna during their relationship had been a factor in their eventual break-up.

‘Often I would wake up and he would be sitting on his phone. I often saw her name, although it was not saved under ‘BabyShoes’ at the time. It was ‘Jenna Edkins’. If he was showing me a photo on his phone and her WhatsApp message would pop up — we fought over that a lot. She was a very big problem in our relationship, a huge problem,’ she told journalists Mandy Weiner and Barry Bateman.

The athlete’s enduring affection for the younger woman he called by the nick name ‘BabyShoes’ became the source of bitter conflict during his subsequent romance with Samatha Taylor.

In a frank interview, Samantha claimed her jealousy over his ongoing contact with Jenna had been a major factor in their eventual break-up.

‘Often I would wake up and he would be sitting on his phone. I often saw her name, although it was not saved under ‘BabyShoes’ at the time.

It was ‘Jenna Edkins’. I often saw her name. If he was showing me a photo on his phone and her WhatsApp message would pop up — we fought over that a lot.

She was a very big problem in our relationship, a huge problem,’ she told journalists Mandy Weiner and Barry Bateman.