Inside the true story behind The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot

This article was first published in 2024 in Radio Times magazine in line with the Channel 4 broadcast. The documentary is now available to watch on Netflix.

On Easter Sunday 2015, 38-year-old mother-of-two Victoria Cilliers leapt out of a plane on a skydive, a gift from her husband Emile following the birth of their son.

An experienced parachutist, she expected to drift down to a safe landing, exactly as she had done 2,654 times previously.

Instead, neither her primary parachute nor the safety reserve worked and she hurtled 4,000ft to the ground at 60mph in front of her young family. She suffered a broken spine, fractured ribs and a shattered pelvis, but survived because the jump was made from a comparatively low height and because her small frame had a relatively soft landing in a ploughed field.

But as police would uncover, this was no accident. The day before her jump, British Army sergeant Emile Cilliers, 35, had sabotaged the parachute of his wife of four years, mother to his three-year-old daughter and five-week-old son.

“He’s a narcissist and a psychopath,” says investigating officer DC Maddy Hennah, who can be seen in a new three-part docudrama charting the events leading to Cilliers’ conviction on two counts of attempted murder in 2018.

“I don’t think he will ever admit his guilt.”

It was a difficult investigation, where all the evidence was circumstantial. There were no witnesses to the parachute sabotage, nor any CCTV; and because it wasn’t a murder enquiry, a team of just three CID detectives was assigned.

But the police enquiry soon started making a series of shocking discoveries, starting with a previous attempt on Victoria’s life by Cilliers just days earlier, when he caused a gas leak at their Wiltshire home that could also have killed their two children. With mounting debts, he planned to kill Victoria for her £120,000 life insurance.

Two days before sabotaging his wife’s parachute, he googled the phrase “wet nurse”.

Ultimately, he was found to have a string of lovers, including his ex-wife (with whom he has two older children), and to have used swingers’ clubs. Even on his way to see Victoria in hospital, he texted a sex worker to arrange a meeting.

“We were incredulous that someone could be so cold and callous,” recalls Hennah. “There was great sadness in each discovery, and that Victoria would have to be told. As a woman, how awful to have to live with knowing that your partner would do all these things.”

But Cilliers’ hold over Victoria was so coercive that after two initial interviews with police, she didn’t speak to them again. And under oath in court, she contradicted her previous sworn statements.

“She was trying to scupper the trial,” says Hennah. “The evidence she gave was what she wanted to believe.” It was only when Cilliers attempted to continue his manipulation of his wife from prison that she was able to break free. Now she’s written a book about her experiences and she also appears in the docudrama.

“I think people are still gripped by the story because it has everything,” says Hennah. “A good-looking couple, a very unusual attempt on someone’s life, affairs, sex workers… The British public seem to love it when it’s a bit salacious and titillating. We’re pretty basic as human beings.

“It’s a big thing to realise that you didn’t only put yourself in danger but your children, too. Victoria wanted the ideal picture that she had in her head of what a family should be like, and that’s part of the reason she was blinkered to what was going on. Women need to be aware – and men too, as it can happen to anyone. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.”

Indeed, the Cilliers investigation enabled Hennah to join the mental dots about the cracks in her own relationship.

“Victoria told us she saw a woman’s name she didn’t know come up on her husband’s phone,” says Hennah. “She asked him who the woman was, and he told her, scathingly, ‘Men can have women as friends, you know.’ Those were words I’d heard in my own relationship and it was a lightbulb moment. I thought, ‘I need to get out now.’ Within a month, I was gone.”

Cilliers was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years, meaning he could be released in 2036, aged 56.

Hennah says it’s for the parole board to decide whether that should happen. “Personally I think he potentially still could be a danger to any partner. As a woman, I wouldn’t want to meet him. I think he’s still a dangerous man.”

The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot is available to watch on Netflix and Channel 4.

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