I can’t tell the children Daddy tried to kill me... they think he’s at work
THE Scots mother who cheated death when her army sergeant husband sabotaged her parachute has revealed she has not told their children he could face life in jail for attempting to murder her.
Victoria Cilliers has acknowledged that she will have to tell her two young children that their father, Emile Cilliers, ‘has done a bad thing’, but cannot bring herself to reveal that he tried to kill her twice.
In a startling exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, during which she lost the composure which has seen her through two dramatic trials, the 42-year-old physiotherapist also insisted that she does not believe her husband’s guilt.
‘Yes I’m hurt and angry. But can I see Emile as capable of murder? No,’ she told the paper, adding: ‘My family, friends, everyone seems to think they know more than I do. They see different evidence to me.’
Mrs Cilliers, who is originally from Haddington, East Lothian, also suggested she has no immediate plans to divorce her husband, who had been conducting an affair behind her back, although she has vowed to confront him in prison to ask: ‘What the hell? Why? Why is this all happening?’
She admitted she had spent the past three years since her husband’s arrest telling the couple’s son and daughter that their daddy has gone away for work.
Her priority now was to ensure they have ‘a happy, well-adjusted life’, adding: ‘I want boring and normal for us now, for them to grow up untainted.
‘One of the hardest things to deal with has been our daughter’s questions and her hurt. She still asks regularly, “Where’s daddy? When am I going to see him? Why can’t I speak to him on FaceTime?”’
Cilliers, who had ‘out of control’ debts racked up by taking his lover 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.
Their young daughter and son were both in the house with their mother at the time.
Cilliers, who was also in contact with prostitutes and having sex with one of his ex-wives, made a second attempt on her life by sabotaging both her main and reserve parachutes, causing her to fall 4,000ft to the ground.
Mrs Cilliers, a highly experienced parachuting instructor, suffered near-fatal injuries in the failed jump at the Army Parachute Association at Netheravon, Wiltshire, on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015, but ‘miraculously survived’.
She told the MoS that she does not believe her husband tried to kill her: ‘He was my husband. Yes, things might have been breaking down. He’d been unfaithful, he’d had issues with money, but that is not attempted murder.’
She said she accepted her husband was a serial philanderer and a skilled liar, that he had a sordid appetite for sex with swingers and prostitutes and that he had pressing debts.
She knows he wanted to leave her to start a new life with his blonde mistress and that a life insurance pay-out would have helped fund it.
But she still cannot bring herself to believe he was willing to kill her in such a cold-hearted, premeditated way and leave their daughter, now six, and son, now three, motherless.
She has not spoken to Cilliers since he was charged three years ago and says she does not love him any more but wants to visit him in prison adding: ‘Perhaps I’ll parachute in.’
She said she dreads the day that their son discovers Cilliers lied to his mistress and said he was not his biological father. ‘I can live with his lies, it’s the betrayal of my children which is the hardest to bear,’ she added.
Physically, Mrs Cilliers has made a full recovery, although her pelvis is held together with metal pins. ‘Bones heal, but hearts, probably not,’ she told the paper.
Cilliers, 38, of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, is awaiting sentence for two charges of attempted murder and a third of recklessly endangering life.
He was convicted following a retrial at Winchester Crown Court and has been remanded in custody until sentencing on June 15.
‘Why? Why is this all happening?’