Shameless skydive murder plotter tried to win back wife he tried to kill twice

WHEN Victoria Cilliers met her husband Emile in 2009, she thought she had finally found her Mr Right.

The couple, who tied the knot two years later, appeared to have a ‘picture perfect’ marriage.

But the Army Sergeant was living a secret double life, visiting swingers clubs and cheating on mum-of-two Victoria with multiple women.

He had also racked up thousands of pounds of debt in a bid to maintain his playboy lifestyle – despite borrowing nearly £20,000 from his wife.

When a bailiff greeted pregnant Victoria at the door of their home, he tried to shrug off his rampant spending, telling her: “Why are you worried? They can’t do anything.”

Then, in a case that shocked the nation, callous Cilliers tried to kill his partner after sabotaging the experienced skydiving instructor’s parachute.

Victoria miraculously survived the 40,000 ft fall in Wiltshire in 2015, suffering a smashed spine and ­broken pelvis, ribs, leg and collarbone.

It was later revealed her husband had carried out the extraordinary murder plot in a bid to cash in on a £120,000 life insurance payout.

Cilliers was jailed for life in 2018 after being found guilty of two counts of attempted murder.

It emerged he had also previously tampered with a gas valve at their home in Amesbury, Wilts, days before her parachute plunge.

Now, she has revealed how her evil ex has even tried to worm his way back into her life from prison, bombarding her with calls and playing mind games with her.

Speaking in the Channel 4 docu-drama The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot, she said of his sick attempts to win her back: “He knew how to manipulate me right to the core.”

Debt, secret sex & mystery trips

Originally from South Africa, Cilliers moved to the UK in the early Noughties.

He met second wife Victoria, an Army physiotherapist, while getting help with his knee at the treatment centre where she worked.

She says in the three-part series, which continues tonight and tomorrow, that she “thought I’d found my fairytale”, but also admits that it “almost felt too good to be true.”

And her prediction was right, as their whirlwind romance quickly became rocky.

Cilliers, now 44, owed money to payday loan lenders, former work colleagues and Victoria.

Victoria, now 47, had leant him £19,000 and after helping himself to £6,000 from her savings account, Cilliers claimed her account had been hacked.

However, the bank traced the IP address used in the transaction back to the family’s home computer.

Such was her concern about her husband’s over-spending, she cut him out of her will in 2014, leaving all her money to their two children, April, now 13, and Ben, nine.

As a sergeant in the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, Cilliers would often volunteer to go on residential training camps abroad – even when his wife was heavily pregnant.

He even pretended he was away on work trips when he was really on holiday with his girlfriend Stefanie Goller, who he met on Tinder.

Cilliers also complained about his 45-minute commute to work, regularly sleeping at the army barracks in Aldershot, leaving Victoria and the children at home.

Cruel mind games

Victoria became concerned when her once attentive and charming husband became cold and distant, desperately trying to salvage the marriage.

She sent him numerous texts and emails when he was away, writing in one message: “I feel like a failure as a wife.”

Victoria talks in the documentary about how she longed to fix their rocky relationship.

She says: “It was an addiction. I wanted to go back because I felt great for the first 12 to 18 months.

“All I could think about was doing my best to get our relationship back to that. He made me feel I was The One. I didn’t want to burst that bubble.

“I missed what we had at times, when he could be this dynamic, amazing, loving husband. I wanted my original husband back.”

He’s quite a sad, sick individual

She also tells how her first marriage ended in infidelity. Callous Cilliers used this to his advantage, with him blaming her suspicions about his behaviour on her previous relationship, calling her “emotional”.

And while away on an Army skiing trip, as Victoria was close to giving birth to their second child, he sent her a bombshell message.

It read: “I need to decide whether I want to be in this marriage. I think we may have got married too soon.”

Murder plots

However, Victoria was given hope their relationship was improving when her husband suggested the 2015 jump at Netheravon airfield, with him buying it as a gift for her.

The experienced skydiver, who has completed more than 2,500 jumps, immediately knew something was wrong.

Airfield ground staff were so certain she had died they actually took a body bag to collect her.

She only survived the jump because she landed in a soft, recently ploughed field.

Police were called to investigate her fall, after an inspection of her kit by experts revealed that two crucial loops, known as slinks, which attach lines to the harness from a reserve chute, were missing.

Cilliers was brought to the attention of cops after a friend of Victoria’s tipped them off that she had been subject to coercive controlling behaviour.

Victoria also told detectives that her husband had taken her packed parachute into the hangar’s toilets before her jump and how there had been a “gas leak” at the family home a week before her accident.

At the time, she had no idea her husband was trying to kill her off.

Cilliers opened the gas valve in the kitchen before leaving the house, his wife, their toddler daughter and newborn son asleep upstairs.

After smelling gas the next morning, Victoria sent a message to her husband asking if he had altered the valve, joking: “Are you trying to bump me off?”

He was there counting up my fractures. You get £1,000 for each break and he was there totting them up

As part of their investigation, detectives seized all of Cilliers electronic devices and his double life quickly began to unravel.

Messages showed Cilliers regularly used the services of sex workers and met up with people through the site Fabswingers.

And he admitted to cops he had been cheating on Victoria with Austrian skydiving instructor Stefanie and his ex-wife Carly, who also has two children with him. He also has another two children with his former partner, Nicolene Shepherd, 40.

Cilliers exchanged tens of thousands of messages with Stefanie, including one of him asking her to clean in the nude while Victoria was in hospital after her skydive plunge.

He also used his wife’s credit card while she was in intensive care and when he turned up at her bedside he was more interested in getting the doctors to sign the insurance paperwork than offering Victoria support.

She told the police: “He didn’t even say he loved me.

“He was there counting up my fractures. You get £1,000 for each break and he was there totting them up.”

Detectives had to break the news to her about his deceit and murder plots, with her initially refusing to believe them.

Victoria says in the show: “I never had any concern for my physical well being.

“I could not understand why my husband would try to kill me.”

The film tells how the police found a series of YouTube videos of Cilliers, with him professing his love to her and singing the Song By Me in a bid to communicate with her.

Victoria says: “He always made me feel like I was the one, the important one. Relationships in the past, you know they came and went.

“But I was the one that he had been waiting for. I didn’t want to burst that bubble, I didn’t want to lose everything that I thought existed in our relationship.”

And she chose not to speak out against Cilliers at his trial over her fear of him. She says in the documentary: “In court, I was very aware of what I was saying, everything was considered.

“I was careful not to give answers that would directly incriminate Emile. I was aware I’d have to live with the outcome.

“To this day I’m apprehensive talking about it because he could watch this. My heart rate’s gone up thinking what his reaction could be.”

Prison messages

Cilliers’ first trial collapsed when a jury failed to reach a verdict. But after a retrial in May 2018 he was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder.

On hearing the guilty verdict, Victoria says she felt “numb”.

She says: “It was quite confusing initially, trying to get my head around everything, keeping it shut away and in denial to some degree, having to come to terms with it.”

After the verdict, he asked her to come and see her in prison where he protested his innocence.

“I think what the picture that Emile was painting when he was coming at me with his answers was I think in a way trying to get me back to that original marriage where everything was the fairytale and we could still have the future together. We could still have the family life together.

“His sort of desolation at being in that situation, the tears, the anguish, just reaching out to me saying I’m the only one sticking by him, ‘you’re the only one that can help’, just really pulling at what is fundamentally me.

“He knew how to manipulate me right to the core.”

And she adds: “It was confusing. Having been quite strong up to that point that was then quite hard to then have to deal with him giving me the answers, or the reassurance you know this isn’t what’s happened, this is reality, everyone’s lying, the police are against me they’ve got it in for me.”

Victoria continues: “I did feel a lot of the time he believed what he was saying, even if it wasn’t true he still believed in it and that made me believe in him as well and it just made me feel like I was getting sucked back in.”

She reveals he also bombarded her with calls and letters from prison.

Victoria recalls: “I became aware he was drawing me back in. He wanted more and more of my time and energy, and the children’s time. I find it hard to hear his side, ‘I love you, I want this, I want that’. I just thought, ‘You’re manipulating me’.

“He asked me, ‘Well, what do you want?’ And I said, ‘I don’t want this. I want a divorce’. And I put the phone down. I felt free. That was the end for me.”

Of his crime she said: “He let me say goodbye to my children and was going to bring them up knowing what he’d done. I don’t understand how you could do that.”

She now adds of Cilliers: “He’s quite a sad, sick individual.”

The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot continues tonight and tomorrow at 9pm and is available to stream on channel4.com