Mother who survived huge fall after husband tried to kill her by damaging her parachute marries another skydiver
25 October 2024, 09:15 | Updated: 25 October 2024, 09:23
A woman whose husband tried to kill her by tampering with her parachute has got married to another skydiver.
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Victoria Cilliers, who nearly died after the huge fall in 2015 on a skydiving trip gifted to her by her husband Emile, met her new partner three years later - at the same Wiltshire parachuting club.
She married her new husband Simon Goodman, a former royal marine, at a register office over the weekend.
On the day of the fall on Easter Sunday 2015, both of Ms Cilliers' parachutes failed.
Remarkably, she survived the catastrophic fall through a combination of her skills as an experienced skydiver and the luck of landing on soft and newly ploughed soil.
Ms Cilliers, a military PT instructor assumed the failed parachutes were an unfortunate accident in the aftermath of the incident but later learned from the police that they suspected her husband had tampered with the equipment.
Emile Cilliers was arrested, charged and sentenced to a minimum of 18 years in prison after being convicted of two counts of attempted murder and a third charge of recklessly endangering life.
He had earlier tried to kill his wife by tampering with gas pipes at their home.
Despite this, Victoria defended her husband during the subsequent investigation and visited him in prison as a result of the coercive control he exerted in their relationship.
The pair had experienced stress in their relationship but Victoria believed the then-British Army sergeant was looking to turn over a new leaf with this gift - before it turned out to be a murder attempt.
The criminal investigation became complicated as Ms Cilliers turned against the police and supported her husband”.
Victoria had defended her husband's strengths as a father was but the police learned via a phone call from one of her friends that the marriage was not strong.
According to the investigators, they took this call very seriously and the arrest soon followed.
They soon learnt of his affair with a woman named Stephanie which Ms Cilliers was not aware of and how he no longer wanted to continue with their marriage.
Despite the investigators feeling uncomfortable in Cilliers' presence, they had no material evidence, which hampered the investigation, and Ms Cilliers' lack of cooperation exacerbated this.
However, this changed when Ms Cilliers agreed to another interview after she revealed that there had been a gas leak soon before the skydiving incident and admitted this was the “first time she (was) scared” of her husband.
She also shared how she had paid for everything in their relationship over the years and how her husband would become angry when she questioned him on expenses such as bills for meals she did not recognise.
The police discovered that he had been researching wet nurses the day before the skydive and that he had been in the toilet for between five and ten minutes with Ms Cilliers' parachute before her jump.
After speaking to a psychologist, who concluded that he be a psychopath - and a very dangerous one, the case was taken to trial at Winchester Crown Court in 2017.
However, during her testimony, Ms Cilliers claimed she “elaborated” on the length of time her husband had been in the bathroom before the jump and suggested she may have damaged the parachute.
The investigators were frustrated by her defence of her husband and the jury was unable to reach a verdict.
Describing her testimony in the series, she said: “I was always very aware of every answer I gave, the impact that, potentially, it could have on my future. I don’t think I lied a lot. I think I kept a lot of secrets, I kept a lot to myself.”
Ms Cilliers once again defended her husband in the retrial but the police were able to convince the jury that she was a victim of coercive control.
She visited him in prison as he tried to convince her to get back with him but she eventually told him that she wanted to divorce in a moment she described as “freeing”.
She said: “I have started seeing it all. This person, and what they've done to me...I don't know how you can do that to someone who you loved and had children with.”
