The boss of the parachute club where an Army sergeant is accused of tampering with his wife’s chute has told a court he ‘would not have had room’ to carry out sabotage in the toilet cubicle where it allegedly took place.
Emile Cilliers, of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, is on trial at Winchester Crown Court for two charges of attempting to murder his former Army officer wife Victoria Cilliers on Easter Sunday, April 5 2015.
The 37-year-old is also accused of a third charge of damaging a gas valve at their home a few days earlier, in the second allegation that he attempted to kill his 40-year-old wife.
The court has heard that Cilliers is accused of taking his wife’s packed parachute into the hangar’s toilets where he is alleged to have tampered with it.
When asked if he felt the sabotage could have taken place within a toilet cubicle with the parachute hung on the coat hook on the rear of the door, airfield boss Mark Bayada replied: ‘I do not think so.’
Army sergeant Emile Cilliers, left, is on trial accused of trying to murder wife Victoria, pictured right with her husband, by sabotaging her parachute before a skydive
Mark Bayada, chief instructor at Netheravon Airfield where the incident occurred, told Winchester Crown Court he ‘did not think’ Cilliers would have had room to tamper with the parachute in a toilet cubicle where it allegedly took place
Mr Bayada, the Army Parachute Association’s (APA) chief instructor at Netheravon airfield, said that he did not know how knots occurred in Mrs Cilliers’ reserve parachute lines but added they could have happened as a result of the slinks being removed.
The prosecution alleges that the defendant tampered with his wife’s reserve by removing the slinks, which are a soft link to connect the lines with the harness.
When asked about how the knots, found high up the lines closer to the canopy, might have occurred, Mr Bayada said: ‘I absolutely do not know and it’s the first thing I found to be very unusual about the whole thing.
‘To have the knots created deliberately above the sliders when the parachute is packed, that would need you to open the reserve container, undo the lines, pull them through the slider and restart it.
Cilliers is also accused of attempting to murder wife Victoria, 40, (pictured on their wedding day in South Africa in 2011) a few days earlier when he damaged a gas valve at their home
Cilliers is said to have started an affair with Stefanie Goller (above) after meeting her on Tinder and allegedly tried to kill his wife for £120,000 insurance money
The jury heard Cilliers was involved in a sexual relationship with ex-wife Carly Cilliers (above)
‘You wouldn’t need to unfold the material but you would need to deploy all the lines; quite a lengthy process.’
He added: ‘One, the hook is very weak, it’s a soft metal hook, I’m not sure if it would take the weight of the equipment, the other one is the weight of the kit itself, it’s very difficult to work on a set of kit.’
Mr Bayada said that the kit store at Netheravon, where the parachute that Mrs Cillers’ hired for her jump was kept, was never left ‘unlocked and unmanned’.
Alan Westley, who has been the chief rigger for the APA since September 2013, told the court that reserve parachutes are required to be checked and re-packed every six months and he kept a spreadsheet to organise when each parachute was due to be checked.
Jurors were given a tour of the men’s toilets at Netheravon Airfield, Wiltshire, where the alleged tampering took place on Easter Sunday, 2015
Trial judge Mr Justice Sweeney, right, and prosecution barrister Michael Bowes, QC, left, are pictured inspecting a 149 reserve parachute similar to the one used by Mrs Cilliers
Jurors and defence barrister Elizabeth Marsh QC, left, also inspected a similar main parachute and Mrs Cilliers’ locker, where the parachutes were kept before the jump
Describing the process, he said: ‘I take it up to my rigging room, which is a sterile environment, and then I go through a complete check of the whole equipment, every single component gets checked prior to the reserve being repacked.’
The jury was shown a video of Mr Westley checking and repacking a reserve parachute.
Mr Westley, who joined the Army Air Corps in 1998, said that of the 500 reserve parachutes he had checked before May 2015 which had slinks, he had never found one with a missing slink or with a slink undone or not properly done up.
Describing Mrs Cilliers, with whom he has jumped 100 times, Mr Westley said: ‘She was a very competent, capable jumper, she was an accelerated free-fall instructor.’
He said that her own parachute, which was sent away for inspection at the time of her near-fatal jump, was smaller and ‘more high performance and sporty’ than the one she hired.
Mr Westley said that on Saturday April 4 2015, the day before the jump, he authorised the kit store at Netheravon to issue a 149 parachute to Mrs Cilliers because he knew she was experienced to use it.
Describing the defendant’s jumping ability, he said that he had ‘fairly low experience’ and was an ‘infrequent jumper’.
He said that Cilliers was qualified to pack main parachutes but not reserve parachutes, and carried out paid work packing parachutes at Netheravon.
Mr Westley said that Cilliers had completed a four-day reserve packing course and he had previously supervised the defendant packing his wife’s own personal reserve parachute.
The reserve parachute for Victoria was immediately found to be faulty, the court was told
Cilliers ‘deliberately removed vital pieces of equipment intending that she should be killed when the reserve parachute inevitably failed’, the court was told
Parachute equipment is labelled above. Two vital pieces of equipment which fasten the parachute to the parachutist’s harness were missing, the court heard
Two slinks, which attach the lines of the canopy to the rest of the rigging, were missing from one side of the parachute, the court heard, preventing it from working correctly. Pictured: Images show the use of slinks, also known as S-Links, on a chute
The court heard that the Safire 149 parachute used by Mrs Cilliers was last used on March 25 2015, with a previous use in that March and another 38 flights in 2014.
The reserve, which was bought as a new rig in July 2007, was last inspected by Mr Westley on February 4 2015.
He confirmed that he checked all four risers of the reserve parachute for slinks on that inspection and said that all of the slinks were in a ‘fully serviceable’ condition.
The court heard that of the approximately 25,000 jumps a year at Netheravon in 2013, there were 33 deployments of reserve parachutes, of which 19 were APA kit.
In 2014, 35 reserves were deployed, of which 16 were club kit, in 2015 there were 26 reserve deployments, of which eight were club kit, and in 2016 there were 26 deployments with seven by club kit.
The court previously heard Cilliers tried to murder his wife to get £120,000 from insurance after starting an affair, a court heard today.
The jury was told Cilliers, who serves with the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, had started an affair with Miss Goller after meeting her on Tinder.
In Whatsapp messages to her, he lied that Victoria, a physiotherapist who had previously served as an officer in the British Army, had given birth to a child that was not his but the result of an affair, the court was told.
Evidence shown in court reveals the gas valve that is alleged to have been adjusted by Cilliers
The top arrow shows damage to a nut made by a pair of pliers found in a toolbox located in the utility room of Cilliers’s home
The jury also heard that Cilliers was involved in a sexual relationship with his ex-wife Carly Cilliers.
South African-born Cilliers, who in 2015 had debts of around £22,000, allegedly believed he would receive £120,000 from an insurance policy in the event of his current wife’s death.
But, in December 2014, Victoria had changed her will, cutting her husband out, as she ‘did not have faith Cilliers would be able to manage the money himself’ – something he was ‘unlikely’ to have known about, the court was told.
Jurors yesterday toured the airfield where the incident took place and were shown the room where parachutes were kept as well as the men’s toilets the sabotage allegedly took place in.
They were shown the kit store and mats where the parachutes are packed ready to be used during the jumps as well as a wall of photos depicting different types of parachute malfunctions.
The jurors were then taken to a set of toilets where the prosecution allege the defendant took the parachute to tamper with it before storing it in a locker overnight after poor weather prevented her jumping on the Saturday.
Prosecutors said that on forensic examination, the nut (left) revealed tool marks matching mole grips (right) seized from a toolbox locked in the utility room
They were also shown a packed Safire 149 parachute, similar to that used by Mrs Cilliers and were given a chance to pick it up to feel its weight as well as take it into the toilets with them.
The trial previously heard Cilliers was ‘unemotional and bewildered’ when he visited the airfield the following day.
The court was told that the day after the incident, Cilliers visited the airfield and met Mr Bayada, who has been chief instructor of the Army Parachute Association at Netheravon since 2013.
In his third day of giving evidence to the court, Mr Bayada said he had said in his police statement that Cilliers had appeared ‘unemotional’ and ‘bewildered’ during the visit.
Mr Bayada added that Cilliers had seemed ‘very quiet’ and ‘in shock’, but added that he did not know him very well personally.
He said that after further investigations by his staff, a decision was made later that afternoon to contact the police about the parachute malfunction.
Cilliers denies all three charges.
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