Cheating husband who sabotaged wife’s parachute in murder bid refuses to give her divorce from behin…
A CHEATING husband who tampered with his wife’s parachute in an attempt to kill her is refusing to give her a divorce from behind bars.
Victoria Cilliers, who was at the centre of one of the country’s most shocking murder plots, said her husband begged her to rekindle their marriage after being jailed for 18 years for attempted murder.
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Twisted husband Emile Cilliers tried to murder his wife twice, but despite this he kept asking her for another chance by sending her letters and constantly calling her.
Once, he turned on the gas tap at the family home in Wiltshire, trying to blow up his wife.
Doing so, he also endangered the lives of their baby son and young daughter who were with her at the time.
After that, he convinced Victoria, a professional skydiver, into doing a parachute jump and he tampered with it so both the parachute and the reserve failed to inflate.
‘MONSTER’
She survived but got hurt in the fall.
He was sentenced to 18 years for attempted murder but, even from behind bars, he is denying her a divorce.
Victoria told the Daily Mail: “So 18 months on I’m no further forward. I’m still married to him. I still have his name. I still feel shackled to him.
“I want to be able to move out of the house, to move on and restart my life completely, perhaps in another country.
“But I’m still here, living in the marital home, and there are memories of him at every turn: in the paint colours, the curtains; the furniture we chose together.”
She said she only realised the “charming” man she had married was a monster when the judge read out all the details in court.
Victoria said: “I went back to court for the sentencing.
“It was only when the judge read out all the details of Emile’s behaviour towards me — the lying, the stealing, his complete disregard — that I finally understood.
“My husband was a monster.
“He was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years. I didn’t even glance at him as I left the courtroom.
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“At first, Emile bombarded me with letters and phone calls. And at first, I wrote back.
“He sounded like the old Emile, the one who’d once written me letters full of affection and love. He was constantly wanting me to visit. ‘No one else will come,’ he told me. ‘You’re all I’ve got left.’
“Once, I would have felt sorry for him, but no more. After weeks of this pushing, I finally told him in a phone call: ‘I don’t want this. I don’t want this marriage.’ Emile fell silent. ‘Right,’ he then replied. ‘I have to go.’
“It had taken me a long time to see how coercive and manipulative he was, and to realise I was actually a victim of domestic abuse.”
Emile was arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife in May 2015.
He was found guilty at his second trial in 2018 he was told he would serve a minimum 18 years in prison.
The fall, which he caused by tampering with her parachute, happened on Victoria’s 2,650th jump.
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But on the day, she had a gut instinct screaming at her not to jump from the aircraft.
As she plunged 3,000ft, she said how she knew something was wrong when she felt an “uneven jolt” as she pulled the parachute.
She looked up to see that the lines of her parachute were twisted and she spiraled towards the ground.
Victoria’s fall was broken by soil in a field that had recently been ploughed, and even though she survived, she broke her pelvis and ribs, fractured her spine in four places and suffered a collapsed lung.
It later emerged Emile had been having an affair with his ex-wife in the months before the attack.
This wasn’t the first time that Emile, an Army troop commander, had tried to kill Victoria.
Soon after their son Ben was born, Victoria woke up one morning to smell gas.
It was revealed in court that he had tampered with the gas pipe in their kitchen.
