Emile Cilliers is a man who has been arrested and accused of trying to kill his wife – for the second time – after Emile invited Victoria Cilliers on a skydiving trip in 2015. As reported by Newser , Emile was a British army sergeant who claimed to be treating his estranged wife to a skydiving trip – and since Victoria had participated in 2,600 skydives prior to that fateful day, it should have been a walk in the park for Victoria. Instead, Victoria found herself using her skydiving expertise to slow her malfunctioning parachute from 100 mph to 30 mph as she slammed into the ground.
It was the first time that the United Kingdom had experienced a person whose main and reserve parachutes had failed. Therefore, Victoria was expected to die in the huge fall. Instead, according to the Guardian , Victoria amazingly lived – and went on to see her estranged husband go through a murder trial. According to prosecutors, Cilliers tried to kill his wife by taking off half of the crucial clips that latched Victoria’s harness to her parachutes in a failed attempt to kill his wife. Cilliers had already met another woman on Tinder – and along with getting rid of his $30,000 in debt – the $160,000 that Emile would have gotten from Victoria’s life insurance payout would have purchased Emile a new life.
Victoria ended up making it out alive from the failed parachute crash, but had to contend with broken vertebrae in her back, along with fractured ribs and a broken pelvis. However, it wasn’t the first time that Emile had attempted to kill his wife, according to prosecutors. Just one week before the parachute incident, Emile allegedly altered a gas kitchen pipe in an attempt to make it explode. Cilliers joked around with her husband at that point, quipping that Emile might have been trying to kill Victoria.
“Are you trying to kill me?”
Apparently Cilliers didn’t really think that Emile was trying to kill her, because when Victoria received a text the next week from Cilliers, asking if she wanted to go on a skydive, she agreed.
“You want to go jump this weekend?”
According to the Sun , Emile has addressed both counts of the attempted murder of Victoria that he is facing by pleading not guilty.
Emile Cilliers trial: Wife ‘among top UK parachutists’ https://t.co/hmld9u7VTW
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) October 5, 2017
Emile Cilliers trial: ‘Tangled parachute’ pictures shown to jury https://t.co/Fyfggrehbh
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) October 6, 2017
Army man Emile Cilliers ‘sabotaged wife’s parachute in murder attempt’ https://t.co/wN5NJlAZiF
— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 4, 2017
[Featured Image by Germanskydiver/Shutterstock]