HUBBY IS GUILTY OF CHUTE TO KILL PLOT
Rat’s wife survived 4,000ft horror fall
AN Army sergeant is facing life in jail for trying to murder his wife by tampering with her parachute.
Emile Cilliers, 38, was also convicted of trying to kill wife Victoria by sabotaging a gas valve at their home in a bid to poison her.
Parachute instructor Victoria, 42, suffered near-fatal injuries when her main and reserve chutes failed during a 4,000ft fall.
Prosecutors said Cilliers hoped to pay off debts of £22,000 with his wife’s £120,000 life insurance money and start a new life with lover Stefanie Goller.
A first trial collapsed after the jury failed to reach a verdict.
But after a retrial, Cilliers was convicted of two charges of attempted murder and a third of endangering life by damaging the gas fitting.
The judge, Mr Justice Sweeney told Winchester Crown Court, Hants, he would allow Victoria to make a victim impact statement before sentencing South Africanborn Cilliers on June 15.
Victoria survived the fall on Easter Sunday 2015 because she landed on a soft patch of a ploughed field near Netheravon Airfield, Wilts. Describing the final moments of her terrifying descent, she said: “The last thing I remember is trying to get some kind of control over it, trying to open as many cells as I could, then everything went black.
“I do not know if it was the G-force or the impact but everything cut out.”
Victoria suffered a fractured spine and pelvis, and broken ribs and her survival was described as a “near-miracle”.
Her light weight was also identified as a factor in helping to minimise her injuries. If she had landed just 16ft away on a nearby country lane she would have almost certainly died.
Victoria, of Amesbury, Wilts, told jurors she “despised” Cilliers and had planned to leave him.
She was pregnant with their second child when Cilliers met Stefanie on Tinder while skiing with the Army in Austria in November 2014.