The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot
Victoria Cilliers trusted her husband. Until he sabotaged her parachute so he could start a new life with his lover
Tuesday—Thursday 9.00pm C4
ON EASTER SUNDAY 2015, 38-year-old mother-of-two Victoria Cilliers leapt out of a plane on a skydive, a gift from her husband Emile following the birth of their son. An experienced parachutist, she expected to drift down to a safe landing, exactly as she had done 2,654 times previously.
Instead, neither her primary parachute nor the safety reserve worked and she hurtled 4,000ft to the ground at 60mph in front of her young family. She suffered a broken spine, fractured ribs and a shattered pelvis, but survived because the jump was made from a comparatively low height and because her small frame had a relatively soft landing in a ploughed field.
But as police would uncover, this was no accident. The day before her jump, British Army sergeant Emile Cilliers, 35, had sabotaged the parachute of his wife of four years, mother to his three-year-old daughter and five-week-old son.
“He’s a narcissist and a psychopath,” says investigating off icer DC Maddy Hennah, who can be seen in a new three-part docudrama charting the events leading to Cilliers’ conviction on two counts of attempted murder in 2018. “I don’t think he will ever admit his guilt.”
It was a difficult investigation, where all the evidence was circumstantial. There were no witnesses to the parachute sabotage, nor any CCTV; and because it wasn’t a murder enquiry, a team of just three CID detectives was assigned.
But the police enquiry soon started making a series of shocking discoveries, starting with a previous attempt on Victoria’s life by Cilliers just days earlier, when he caused a gas leak at their Wiltshire home that could also have killed their two children. With mounting debts, he planned to kill Victoria for her £120,000 life insurance.
Two days before sabotaging his wife’s parachute, he googled the phrase “wet nurse”.
Ultimately, he was found to have a string of lovers, including his ex-wife (with whom he has two older children), and to have used swingers’ clubs. Even on his way to see Victoria in hospital, he texted a sex worker to arrange a meeting.
“We were incredulous that someone could be so cold and callous,” recalls Hennah. “There was great sadness in each discovery, and that Victoria would have to be told. As a woman, how awful to have to live with knowing that your partner would do all these things.”
BUT CILLIERS’ hold over Victoria was so coercive that after two initial interviews with police, she didn’t speak to them again. And under oath in court, she contradicted her previous sworn statements. “She was trying to scupper the trial,” says Hennah. “The evidence she gave was what she wanted to believ
