Parachute trial wife relives moment she jumped
A SKYDIVER whose parachute was allegedly sabotaged in a murder bid by her husband said yesterday she knew something was ‘not right’ immediately after leaving the plane.
Scots freefall instructor Victoria Cilliers said the parachute began to twist, with the ‘world becoming pear-shaped’ as she spun around.
The 42-year-old, from Haddington, East Lothian, survived the 4,000ft fall but suffered multiple injuries including a broken pelvis.
It is alleged that her husband, Emile Cilliers, who had around £22,000 of debts, carried out the murder bid in an attempt to benefit from her £120,000 life insurance.
At Winchester Crown Court, Elizabeth Marsh, QC, defending, asked Mrs Cilliers to recount the jump, which took place on April 5, 2015. Mrs Cilliers said: ‘I wanted to get straight out of that plane. I did not talk to anyone, I was quite tired and emotional by that point. I just put my goggles and helmet on and put my head down. I remember the pilot giving me a smile as I went out.
‘Usually that’s the part that I love, the cold rush, the smell. And it just did not hit me.
‘I pulled the parachute, immediately it was not right – there was a lot of twists. It did not feel right.
‘I do not really understand my thought process at the time. I did not want to be there and I did not want to be under the parachute.’
She cut the main parachute away but on deploying the reserve knew that it, too, was not right.
‘Immediately the world went a little bit pear-shaped – the spin was going one way and the twists were the opposite way,’ she said.
‘I could not figure how to slow it down – it was just getting faster and faster and faster.
‘The speed was unreal – of the spin – and there was just a big almost bang and black.’
She told the court she did not tamper with her own parachute, and denied feeling suicidal.
The jury heard the couple made wills and a post-nuptial agreement in 2014, several years after they married, in order to protect their children’s future. ‘If you die, the house and all your savings go to the children and he is on his uppers,’ Miss Marsh said. ‘Yes,’ Mrs Cilliers responded. Mrs Cilliers told the court she believed any life insurance payout on her death would go to her husband. But Miss Marsh said the policy ‘makes it plain’ that payment would go to a legal representative or executor and not necessarily her spouse.
She added: ‘If you died the money would not go to your husband it would go to your estate, did you know that?’
Mrs Cilliers replied ‘no’, adding: ‘I assumed wrongly it was most likely it went to him.’
Miss Marsh asked: ‘Emile would have been better off with you alive than you dead, wouldn’t he?’ ‘Yes,’ the witness replied. Cilliers, 37, denies two counts of attempted murder and a third charge of damaging a gas valve at their home in Amesbury, Wiltshire, recklessly endangering life.
The trial continues.
‘It was just getting faster and faster’