Parachute fall wife ‘wanted revenge’ on cheating husband
THE wife of an Army sergeant accused of trying to murder her by tampering with her parachute has told his trial she gave police differing accounts of his actions because she wanted to ‘cast suspicion’ on him.
Victoria Cilliers was questioned over evidence she gave to police in an interview shortly after the jump on April 5, 2015.
The 42-year-old from Haddington, East Lothian, survived the 4,000ft fall after she cut away the main canopy and her reserve chute failed.
Husband Emile Cilliers, 37, is accused of twisting the lines of the main parachute and removing vital slinks from the reserve.
Army physiotherapist Mrs Cilliers told police she found it ‘odd’ her husband had taken her parachute kit into the toilet at Netheravon Airfield, Wiltshire, the day before the jump.
At Winchester Crown Court, prosecutor Michael Bowes, QC, questioned her over her description of the events, when she told officers he had been with the parachute for ‘five to ten minutes’.
The jury heard she knew by that point Cilliers had been arrested for attempted murder and also that he had been having an affair.
When Mr Bowes asked her if she was being truthful, she replied: ‘I was not particularly bothered.’ He continued: ‘I’m going to suggest it’s very, very unlikely that you could not be bothered to be accurate. What are you saying?’
Mrs Cilliers said: ‘I expanded on a truth but I knew potentially that was a key point that was going to get him into some hot water. At that point, I wanted him to suffer.”
Mr Bowes asked why she later appeared to go back on the implication he had been the cause. She replied: ‘I’m not going to be too blatantly obvious about it.’
When he questioned whether she was saying she had been trying to frame him, she said: ‘I’m saying I wanted to cast suspicion on him. I was wanting revenge. I had been ridiculed. I wanted them to investigate him. I did not know the full extent at that point.’
Mr Bowes then suggested she was in fact, by her nature, scrupulously fair and had been in the police interview.
Earlier, the court heard Mrs Cilliers told officers she requested a f urther i nterview because she had wanted to paint a ‘bad picture’ of her husband.
She said: ‘I feel angry about the initial interview – I felt like it was the worst possible time.
‘ Given that I had just been informed that everything I had suspicions of was a reality, as regards my husband, I was just out of hospital, on medication ... the red mist came down, I was gunning for him in the interview, but I did feel I brought out anything and everything.”
Asked by a detective if anything she had said was untrue, she said: ‘I don’t think I lied. There are certainly some aspects I don’t think he was involved with... it just painted a worse picture, which I think anyone would do in my situation.’
Cilliers denies two counts of attempted murder and a third charge of earlier damaging a gas valve, recklessly endangering life.
The case continues.
‘I don’t think I lied’