Parachute Murder Plot
Emile Cilliers’ secret life – how sergeant had sex with prostitutes and seedy liaisons in swingers’ clubs while plotting parachute murder of wife Victoria
FEAR rippled through Victoria Cilliers' body as she plummeted 4,000ft to the ground and realised both her parachutes were malfunctioning.
Miraculously the mum-of-two survived with just broken bones - but her fall wasn’t the result of a faulty parachute. Her evil, sex-crazed husband had tampered with it and tried to kill her.
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Five weeks on from the parachute crash in April 2015, Victoria was told the horrifying truth that her husband of four years had tried to murder her... twice.
The week before he tampered with her parachute, Emile, 38 - who frequently used prostitutes and the glory hole in his local swingers club- had also started a gas leak while his wife and the children, aged just two and five weeks, were at home.
In June this year, Emile was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years for two counts of attempted murder and reckless endangerment of his children’s lives.
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It was a crime that shocked the nation.
Now, a new ITV documentary ‘The Parachute Murder Plot’, fronted by Fiona Bruce, has uncovered the true extent of his horrific crimes, as well as his double life.
Glory holes and addicted to prostitutes
Despite a public face as an army sergeant, the perfect husband and doting father, Emile was debt-ridden and addicted to prostitutes who he begged to go bareback. He was also visiting swinging clubs and having affairs.
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Before Victoria's death, Emile told his then-lover, Stefanie Goller that he would be able to enjoy spontaneous dates again ‘from April’ – the month of Victoria’s parachute fall.
During his first interview, exclusive footage shows Emile admitting his high sex drive.
Nicolene Shepherd dated attempted murderer Emile Cillers for seven years. She talks about falling under his spell in new documentary The Parachute Murder Plot
“It’s not a marriage I want to be in. I have a very high sex drive – my wife has a low sex drive. We struggle to have sex more than twice a week,” he said.
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During their investigation, lead officer DC Maddie Hennah pulled up over 32,000 messages to his mistress Stefanie, including: “To be with you, I would do anything”.
But Emile had also been texting escorts, while simultaneously asking Victoria what their children needed for dinner.
One read: “One hour bareback for £100 and can I film it?”
He sent a similar message when on his way to see his wife in intensive care following the incident.
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In the documentary, Fiona Bruce visits a swingers club Emile frequented.
Pointing at a wall reading: “Donkey d**ks glory hole wall”, the previous manager told Fiona how Emile would frequently insert his penis into an anonymous hole and fantasise about who was on the other side.
The ‘fairy tale’ romance with a psychopath
In the weeks following Emile’s guilty verdict, Victoria admitted she still couldn’t process what had happened.
The couple had met when he was an army sergeant and she was a physiotherapist, and bonded over a love of adrenaline sports and adventure.
They married in a lavish South African ceremony in 2011, and went on to have a daughter and a another child.
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Under his spell, Victoria was also dangerously unaware that the ‘present’ Emile had bought her after the birth of their second child – a parachute jump (Victoria had jumped around 2,600 times before) – had been the intended ticket to her death.
Victoria told police how Emile had taken the parachute with him when he had taken their two-year-old daughter to the toilet, and had spent ten minutes in there.
During the trial, the jury were given a demonstration on how a parachute could be sabotaged within the space of ten minutes in a cubicle.
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After a friend called the police to report that all had not been well in Victoria and Emile’s marriage, Victoria was designated a protection officer and slowly given information about her husband’s activities.
One police officer describes how she "cried and screamed and told us we had ruined her life for not allowing her husband to come home when she needed help".
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As for their children, police later discovered it had been Emile’s intention that the youngest would have been fed by a wet nurse if his wife had died.
He had googled the term ‘wet nurse UK’ on his computer just two days before slashing Victoria’s parachute.
“He’s a psychopath, a sociopath and a pathological liar”
One person who is aware of how it feels to be under his spell is his first girlfriend, Nicolene Shepherd. They dated for seven years and had two children together.
“He was very charming – he always puts in a great amount of effort when he’s in the moment with you,” she recalls in the documentary, showing footage of the candlelit dinners Emile had cooked for her.
“The good things are so good that you manage to forgive the bad. It’s the Emile spell. You think you’re the best thing in the world but really, there’s three of four more women. But you’re so blissfully happy you don’t see the signs.”
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When their daughter Cilene was a baby, Emile left home to find work in the UK and never came home.
Months later, his mother told her he had married, and that she needed to move on.
When Nicolene heard of Emile’s attempts to murder Victoria she says he ‘wasn’t surprised’, adding: “He is a different species of man. He is a psychopath, a sociopath and a pathological liar.”
Mounting debt and a £120,000 life insurance policy for injury or death
The first court case held in November 2017 resulted in a hung jury and Emile was allowed back to work.
In court as the main witness for the prosecution, Victoria broke on the stands, and told the jury she may have ‘exaggerated’ the time that Emile had spent in the bathroom ahead of her parachute jump and said she may have wrecked the parachute herself.
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But with public interest in mind due to the seriousness of the crime, the case was heard again just a few months later in April this year.
This time, the prosecution went in harder – unearthing every piece of incriminating evidence.
A new document – a life insurance policy Emile had taken out which covered both him and Victoria for £120,000 in the event of death or injury – was also uncovered.
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With evidence of Emile’s mounting debt, another motive - that he was planning to cash out on her life insurance policy - became very clear.
Four months on from his guilty verdict, and three years on from the fateful day, Victoria has stayed away from the public eye and whether she’s forgiven her husband’s actions isn’t certain.
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Earlier this week, she returned to the sky to parachute for the first time since her near-death experience, to raise money for Wilshire Air Ambulance.
Wearing the ‘lucky shoes’ she had worn on the day, it seems Victoria is falling to freedom this time around.
The Parachute Murder Plot is on ITV tonight at 9pm.