Olympian sobs in court after being charged with girlfriend’s murder

>>> pistorius sobbed openly in a south african court today as he formally was charged in had the murder of his girlfriend. a sports icon in hits country, pistorius made history as the first double amputee track athlete to compete in the olympic games . joining me now is mary core i willo with nbc sports who knows him well, profiled oscar pistorius at his home last summer for "rock center" and has been following this case. mary , what we now know is that the prosecution is claiming it is premeditated murder . pistorius ' manager and family are all objecting saying that that's not what happened. how do you sort through this?

>> boy, it was tough. it was a 40-minute bail hearing early this morning in south africa , andrea, and, yeah, they're calling it premeditated murder . at that point that's when oscar pistorius really began to sob, weep openly in the court. his defense team is disputing it. they say they're disputing the charge in the strongest possible terms, so the story from pistorius aside clearly is that this was a terrible tragic mistake, but, you know, the fact remains that he had a semiautomatic weapon. he fired. it sounds like for shots. there are reports now not from the police, but reports that oscar was found in the bathroom of his home, his girlfriend in a pool of blood, that he had shot through the bathroom window. again, the story is still coming out, isn't it? but to see the images of oscar weeping openly in the court and then they delayed it now. it's not now again until next tuesday that they will continue with this.

>> and his girlfriend, of course, the tragic victim in all of this.

>> yes.

>> it's unclear whether the defense is going to claim that this was some accident or mistaken identity, but from what you knew of him had you ever seen this side of him? you spent your time with him and you know his reputation.

>> i did. you know what, and i would never have guessed that he would be capable of such violence, andrea. i went back to reading his autobiography, something i had read on my way to south africa last year, because i wanted to see how much he mentioneded -- i wanted to remember what he said about former girlfriends, and there was one great love of his life, and he said they -- they both had fiery tempers, that they went at it, and it seems -- again, this book is a couple of years old, but he kind of wrote about it that maybe she was the one who got away, and then had he they had reconciled again. look, oscar was very rich, very famous, very good-looking. he had a lot of girlfriends, and clearly this was a beautiful looking couple. i would never have manualed that he would be capable of anything like this, but we're iffing to find out. there are reports now coming out from former, you know -- some other girlfriends saying -- a mother of one of the girlfriends saying i'm glad she got away from him, that sort of thing. clearly, i got to know this guy for a couple of days, and i really -- i was so impressed by him. more probably than any other athlete i had ever met. i'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. i'm still hoping that it was an awful tragedy. we're iffing to find out more and more as this unfor the latests e folds.

>> it is all shocking and still to be determined next tuesday, the mechanics court date. mary , thank you very much for joining us again.