Parachute fall victim lied ‘to get her own back’
Victim of near-fatal fall tells court she was distressed after discovering her husband was having affair
Victoria Cilliers, whose husband is on trial for allegedly tampering with her parachute, admitted she lied to police about how long he had been alone with her equipment. Mrs Cilliers, pictured outside court yesterday, said: ‘I wanted to get my own back’
A WOMAN whose Army sergeant husband is accused of tampering with her parachute has admitted she lied to police and wanted to get back at him after he cheated on her.
Victoria Cilliers, 40, said that she “despised” her husband, Emile, after learning he had had an affair, which had pushed her to suicidal thoughts.
Mr Cilliers, 37, is on trial at Winchester Crown Court on two counts of attempting to murder her. He is accused of tampering with her parachute and also with a gas fitting at their home in Amesbury, Wilts
The trial heard that the defendant had taken her parachute into the lavatories at Netheravon Airfield on April 4 2015, where he is alleged to have tampered with it prior to it malfunctioning during a jump the following day. Mrs Cilliers, who was pregnant at the time and suffered a broken vertebrae, ribs and pelvis, admitted that she had given differing accounts in police interviews of the amount of time her husband was alone with her parachute. Saying she was generous with the “timescales”, she said: “I said he was away for a couple of minutes then the second time was of five minutes which was probably an exaggeration. It was probably somewhere in between.” When asked if she had always told the truth, she replied: “Not always. The extent of his lies and deceit had been disclosed to me and I just wanted to get my own back.” Mrs Cilliers, who walked into court unaided and chose to stand to give her evidence, said that she had later wanted to amend her statement but had been told by a police liaison officer that she would not be allowed to and that “no one would believe me”. She said: “You have to remember I had been dealing with this dayin-day-out for months, it was horrific, I was injured with a baby, I had had enough at that point, I wanted everyone out of my life.”
The court was told that Mrs Cilliers sent a message to her husband in Feb 2015, that she thought he would “be happier without her”.
She said: “I was trying to threaten him, if you do not take a grip, I was threatening suicide.” When asked if she meant it, she replied: “I am not sure.” She added: “I do not think anyone would understand.”
Mr Cilliers, a physical training instructor, denies two counts of attempted murder and one of criminal damage recklessly endangering life.
Mrs Cilliers said their marriage began to fail in Nov 2014 when she realised her husband was having an affair, believed to be with Stephanie Goller, a woman he had met on Tinder. She said: “Cracks were starting to show, I was aware around that time, I had suspicions before that he was having an affair.”
She changed her will, taking her husband out of it and leaving the house to the children. She said: “I needed to redo my will primarily because I had children, I owned the house, and Emile was bad with money. I needed to be sure that if anything happened to me, the children would be well looked after.
“So I wanted to make the will to leave everything with the children and I was starting to feel insecure in the marriage. I knew he was having an affair, I wanted to get it done sooner rather than later.”
She said that her husband would still be the recipient of her life insurance policy and the contents of the house.
In a letter to the defendant to accompany her new will, which he was not
‘The extent of his lies and deceit had been disclosed to me and I just wanted to get my own back’
shown, she wrote: “I do hope Emile you understand my reasons. I love you and you are an amazing father, I just want to ensure that they have the access to education I had.”
Mrs Cilliers had joined the Army as a physiotherapy officer in 1998 and went to serve at several hospitals and rehab centres and also served at a field hospital during the Kosovo conflict. She said she met the defendant while based at Tidworth and introduced him to parachuting and taught him to pack them.
She said: “He was fast-tracked through the early part of parachuting because he lived with an instructor. It helped me, I could jump, he packs.”
She said she did her first jump at the age of 16 for charity and had later taken a parachuting course when she became addicted to the sport.
Mrs Cilliers said: “I did one jump and was absolutely hooked, it became an obsession […] it takes over your life and for 15 years that’s pretty much all I did.”
She described herself as a “reasonable” parachutist who jumped at national level but said her “strengths lay on the ground with the students”.