Soldier’s ‘will you be my nude cleaner’ text to lover a day after wife’s skydive
‘The soft touch of your skin’
AN ARMY sergeant asked his lover to be his ‘nude house cleaner’ just a day after he allegedly tried to kill his wife by tampering with her parachute.
As his wife lay badly injured in hospital, Emile Cilliers, 37, sent a series of lewd texts to Stefanie Goller.
South African-born Cilliers is accused of trying to murder his Scots wife Victoria, 40, by removing vital ‘slinks’ from her parachute before she jumped from 4,000ft.
It is claimed that days earlier, he had attempted to murder the Army physiotherapist by tampering with a gas pipe at their home in Amesbury, Wiltshire.
Winchester Crown Court has heard Cilliers allegedly wanted to get his hands on her £120,000 life insurance to pay off his debts.
At the time of the accident, in April 2015, he was having affairs with Miss Goller, who he met on the dating app Tinder, and his 38-year-old ex-wife Carly.
Jurors were yesterday shown thousands of text exchanges between Cilliers and Miss Goller in the months leading up to the incident and the days after.
On the day of the fall, April 5, 2015, Cilliers texted Miss Goller: ‘Sorry can’t talk right now.
‘Vicky has had an accident and been flown to Southampton. They asked me to go there.’
In the early hours of the next day, he told her: ‘Don’t want to say too much but apparently one of the slinks on the reserve failed.’
Miss Goller replied: ‘Tell you one thing. Slinks don’t fail. Not if they have just been inspected by a rigger.’
Asked what she means, she then adds: ‘It was human error.’
Cilliers then told her Mrs Cilliers would probably walk with a limp for the rest of her life. Later in the same conversation, Cilliers said: ‘What we have is far more special.’
Later that day, Miss Goller said she was cleaning to earn money, to which Cilliers said: ‘Will you be my cleaner? I only like nude house cleaners.’
Miss Goller replied: ‘Haha, I like naked cooking. I will wear an apron and an apron only.’
Similar messages were sent around the time of the gas blast plot. The night before Mrs Cilliers smelt gas in her kitchen, Cilliers texted Miss Goller: ‘Your body against mine and the soft touch of your skin.’
Half an hour earlier, he had texted his ex-wife Carly and suggested they have sex that night.
Jurors were also shown exchanges between Mrs Cilliers and her husband.
On April 12, as the police investigation began to focus on him, Cilliers texted her: ‘The more I think about it the more I feel sickened that they would automatically point towards me!’
She replied: ‘It’s not automatic. No one thinks you would actually do it but want it investigated.’
The texts show that Mrs Cilliers, originally from Haddington, East Lothian, and Cilliers had marriage difficulties in the months before the skydive.
On January 7, after Cilliers returned from a trip to Austria, Victoria wrote: ‘I found it very hard to be separated from you. I counted the days until you came home. It was a massive blow to realise that you came back a different person. You seemed so detached.’
On February 17, after Cilliers returned from a holiday to the Czech Republic with Miss Goller, Victoria texted: ‘Feels like you keep trying to push me away.’
It is alleged Cilliers tampered with her main and reserve parachutes before storing them in a locker the night before she made the jump over Salisbury Plain.
Witnesses have told the court Mrs Cilliers fell to earth ‘like a rag doll’.
She survived but spent three weeks in hospital with a broken pelvis, broken ribs and fractured vertebrae.
Cilliers denies two counts of attempted murder and one charge of criminal damage reckless as to whether it endangered life.
The trial continues.