Reeva's mother tells the story as she sees it

Reeva Steenkamp.

Oscar Pistorius was "gun toting", "trigger happy", "jealous" and "combustible".

And if he hadn't killed Reeva Steenkamp, it would have been someone else "sooner or later".

That is the searing verdict on the "Blade Runner" from June Steenkamp, mother of his slain girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

Speaking to the Times, Steenkamp, 68, said Pistorius shot Reeva in a jealous rage, then finished her off with three more bullets so she "couldn't tell the world what really happened".

In the 20-month trial Pistorius argued he had mistaken Reeva for an intruder. He was sentenced last Tuesday to five years' jail for culpable homicide.

But June Steenkamp said she was convinced he lied in court because he knew who he was aiming at when he fired four hollow-tipped bullets through a locked bathroom door and "blew the brains out of her skull".

It's an uncharacteristically vitriolic outburst from a woman who - alongside her 71-year-old husband Barry - remained tight-lipped through most of the trial. She was so impassive that the South African press dubbed her "Stoneface".

But June Steenkamp's innermost thoughts are revealed in her book Reeva: A Mother's Story, due out next month. In it she constantly refutes Pistorius's defence. In one part she says: "He said pulling the trigger was 'an accident'. What? Four times an accident?"

She attributes every negative adjective imaginable to Pistorius, including "arrogant", "moody", "volatile", "combustible", "gun toting", "trigger happy", "possessive", "vague", "evasive" and "shifty".