Life for soldier who sabotaged parachute in bid to murder wife

THE wife of a former Army sergeant sat in court yesterday to see her “wicked” husband jailed for life with a minimum of 18 years for attempting to murder her by tampering with her parachute and sabotaging a gas valve at their home.

Emile Cilliers, who has been sacked from the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, was convicted by a jury of two attempted murder charges and a third count of damaging the gas fitting, recklessly endangering life, following a retrial at Winchester Crown Court.

Victoria Cilliers, an experienced parachuting instructor, suffered near-fatal injuries when her main and reserve parachutes failed as she took part in a jump at Netheravon, Wiltshire, on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015.

The 42-year-old was permitted to sit in the well of the court to see her husband sentenced and led away to prison.

Sentencing the 38-year-old, Mr Justice Sweeney said he was a “danger to the public” and add-

Convicted: Emile Cilliers

ed: “This was wicked offending of extreme gravity.

“Your offending was extremely serious with your two attempts to murder your wife. They were planned and carried out in cold blood for your own selfish purposes which include financial gain.

“You have shown yourself to be a person of quite exceptional callousness who will stop at nothing to satisfy his own desires, material or otherwise.

“Nor have you shown the least sign of remorse.”

Describing the effect on Mrs Cilliers, the judge said: “That your wife recovered at all was miraculous. She undoubtedly suffered severe physical harm and she must have suffered psychological harm in the terror of the fall and since.

“She appears to have recovered from the physical harm but not, having seen her in the witness box in length, from the psychological harm.”

The trial heard Cilliers, who had “out of control” debts racked up by taking his lover, Stefanie Goller, on expensive holidays, first attempted to kill his wife by tampering with a gas valve at their home in Amesbury, Wiltshire, at the end of March 2015.

After his wife discovered the gas leak, Cilliers, who was also in contact with prostitutes and seeing his former wife for sex, made a second attempt on Mrs Cilliers’ life by sabotaging both her main and reserve parachutes, causing her to fall 4,000ft to the ground, which she “miraculously survived”.

Following the conviction, police and prosecutors described the defendant as “very dangerous, coercive and manipulative”.