You might remember the fishy incident that involved South African-born Emile Cilliers being accused of attempting to murder his wife.

Well, now he is on trial in the UK, and the details that are emerging are pointing in the direction of him being guilty.

Going over documents at the Winchester Crown Court in the UK last week, members of the jury heard that Victoria Cilliers, 40, miraculously “survived a 370m parachute jump after her main and reserve chutes failed to open properly,” reports IOL:

Victoria was considered one of Britain’s top skydivers when she jumped from a plane at Netheravon on Salisbury plain in south-west England.

The veteran free-fall instructor who had completed about 2 600 jumps was meant to have completed what is known as a “hop and pop” jump – a low-level skydive, where the parachute opens immediately upon the jumper leaving the plane.

Shortly after leaving the plane, Cilliers realised she was in trouble when her first parachute didn’t open properly. After jettisoning the main chute, she activated her reserve, but it too malfunctioned and she began spinning towards the ground.

Experts said she survived the failure by slowing her descent to 45km/h and guiding her parachute, which had a single line attached, towards a ploughed field.

Those who rushed to where she lay had expected to find her dead, but she was alive, having suffered a broken pelvis, ribs and vertebrae.

It is alleged that in two days before her in jump in April 2015, her husband Emile, 37, had “removed two pieces of equipment from the parachute – slinks – that connect a parachute to the jumper’s harness”.

The day before he allegedly tried to kill her by “turning on a gas valve and trying to cause an explosion at their home”. The court heard that when Victoria had discovered the leak, she sent her husband a WhatsApp message asking him jokingly if he was“trying to kill” her.

Awkward.

The couple were married at the Twelve Apostles in Cape Town in 2011.

When it was prosecutor Michael Bowes QC’s turn to address the jury, he explained why Emile was being accused of attempted murder.

Apparently, Emile had told his lover, who he met through the Tinder dating app, that he was leaving his wife, reports The Telegraph:

[Bowes] said that the defendant had created a lie for his lover that he was leaving his wife because he was not the father of one of his children, because his wife had been having an affair.

He added that the defendant – who was also having a sexual relationship with his previous wife, Carly Cilliers – had debts of £22,000 and he believed he would be set to receive a £120,000 insurance payout on her death.

That’s a cool R2,1 million.

Although Mark Bayada, a chief instructor of the Army Parachute Association at Netheravon, did tell jurors that an innocent explanation for the missing slinks “might be that they were cut away when paramedics treated her at the accident site,” that explanation has been deemed rather unlikely.

And so the trial continues.

[source:iol]