June 18, 2025 • 54 mins
What happens when both a main and reserve parachute catastrophically fail during a routine jump? Join Alice and Zach as they explore an unprecedented skydiving disaster where experienced jumper Victoria Cilliers has a 4,000-foot freefall at terminal velocity. This remarkable case stands alone in British skydiving history—never before had dual parachute failures been recorded in over 2.3 million jumps. While most of our episodes examine accidents caused by mechanical failure or human error, this rare case reveals how a deliberate act of sabotage transformed a highly regulated safety system into a death trap. Discover the forensic investigation that revealed the shocking truth behind this aerial disaster and the aviation safety modifications implemented in its aftermath.
Happy Father's Day to all the amazing dads and dad figures out there—minus the human trash pile we talk about in this episode! Speaking of Father's Day, Alice got Zach a tandem skydive experience as his gift this year. Let's hope it goes better than Victoria's jump!
Sources:
• Love Murder Podcast - Victoria Cilliers case coverage
• Trial by Podcast - Two-part series on the Victoria Cilliers case
• Court records and trial transcripts
• Documentary footage from Channel 4
• Investigative reports from Wiltshire Police
• British Parachute Association incident reports
Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:
• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod
• Facebook: Final Boarding Call
Credits:
Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Picture this, , the English countrysideof Wiltshire and Colorful specks of sky
divers float gracefully back to earth.
For these thrill seekers, skydivingrepresents the ultimate freedom, those
few precious moments when nothing existsbut you and the rushing air when all
(00:21):
of life's complications are suspended.
But on April 5th, 2015, that senseof freedom was about to transform
into something far more sinister.
So stow your tray tables, fastenyour seat belts, and prepare
for a mystery at 4,000 feet.
(00:44):
Because on this episode, a final boardingcall, we're examining the perplexing
case of a skydive gone terribly wrong
. Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
Welcome to Final Boarding Call.
I feel like I sit here everytime, but I am still your
(01:07):
disaster Obsessed Toast Dallas.
And I'm Zach much less reluctant whenwe record these things in the day.
Ugh, I love it.
I love it.
Before we dive in, do we haveanything we wanna say to the people?
I just love to remind everybody as it'smy job to please like rate, review, and
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
I love that.
(01:28):
All righty.
Let's real quick, go through sources.
There are a few podcasts thathave covered this episode.
There is Love murder, which, youknow, that I love, love murder.
There's also a a trial by podcast.
episode and they did a two-parterof this story and it was excellent.
(01:48):
So those are the sources for this Bad Boy.
It's a whole lot of podcast episodes' cause I love True Crime podcasts.
This is a nuts one, a little bit of adeparture from what we typically do still
in our lane, because technically planeskydiving is a form of transportation
(02:10):
and it requires a plane to get there.
It requires a plane to get there.
You gotta take a plane.
Still aviation.
And you are going from one placeto another in a fashion where
things can go terribly wrong.
So maybe even more so than other ways.
You know.
Let's talk about it.
You guys are about to learnsomething about skydiving, which
is, I think, gonna be fun and cool.
(02:33):
April.
In England you have sunshine.
One moment, clouds.
The next April 5th, 2015 was noexception with shifting skies over
net airfield.
I'm just gonna say it fast enoughand then nobody will question me.
It's a good thing we can edit these
with shifting skies over Navan airfieldin Wiltshire, forcing Skydiver to
(02:56):
wait patiently for their chance tojump for 40-year-old Victoria Cilia.
This was familiar territory withover 2000 jumps under her belt.
She knew that patiencewas part of the sport.
I know 2000 jumps, I guess I can'tdo it 'cause I'm not that patient.
(03:18):
As an army physiotherapist andqualified free fall instructor, she was
accustomed to the rhythms of a jump day.
The preparation, the waiting, that briefsurge of adrenaline and then the peaceful
descent kind of sounds like a race day.
Do you really?
I get, I still get a little bitof an adrenaline rush when I'm
(03:40):
waiting grid to go out on track.
The extent of mine is feelinglike I have to pee right before,
but something feltdifferent about this jump.
Victoria couldn't quite place it, butan unusual sense of unease had been
following her all day earlier, jumps hadbeen canceled due to weather, and she
(04:00):
had nearly packed up and gone home to hertwo young children, 3-year-old, April and
newborn Ben, who was just a few weeks old.
That's a baby.
She's jumping after a couple of weeks.
Good for her.
I raced cars when Aria was two weeks old.
(04:21):
When you love something and youare stupidly passionate about
it, you do the dumb thing.
I just feel like thatshock to the vaginal area.
Of your harnesses when that parachutedeploys might be a little bit harder
on than the sitting in a race car.
(04:41):
Granted slamming the brakes and doingall that stuff will still jolt to
your stomach hip area, but I picturediscomfort in the nether regions if
I was wearing a skydiving harness.
Okay, thank you, Zach,for your expert analysis.
(05:04):
However, just like when I was feelinga little uneasy about getting right
back on track after giving birth,it was her husband a meal who really
encouraged her to get back on that horse.
Or in this case, strap on into thatharness, and she decided to stay and
wait for the conditions to improve.
(05:28):
Now, she knelt at theopen door of the aircraft.
She looked down at the patchworkof fields below from 4,000 feet,
which actually is a little bitlower than a typical skydiving jump.
Like when I did my skydiving, we weremuch higher than 4,000 feet, and Victoria
(05:50):
tried to push her anxiety aside, right?
Maybe that weird feelingthat she was having was just
nerves at getting back on it.
After a nine month break for pregnancy andchildbirth, the overcast sky had finally
cleared enough for a low altitude jump.
(06:10):
It wasn't ideal, but it was workablefor somebody with her experience.
With one deep breath, she launchedherself into the open sky.
Obviously this is not a tandem jumpbecause she is like hella experienced.
It could still be a tandem jumpthen with somebody that stuck hurt.
I guess so.
But she's going solo.
(06:30):
She's by herself.
Which I don't think I could ever soloskydive because the only reason I
was able to do it in the first placeis because the guy that I was tandem
with pushed me outside of the plane.
I was like, those videos of likewet kittens that you're trying to
put in a bath and they're like fullspread on the sink doing everything
(06:52):
they can to not get in the water.
That was me exiting the plane.
Woof.
For a brief moment,everything felt normal.
The familiar rush of wind, the slightdisorientation that quickly gives
way to a skydivers awareness of theirposition relative to the ground.
Then came the moment for her to deployher main parachute Victoria pulled
(07:16):
the ripcord expecting that reassuringjolt as the canopy caught air.
Instead, she felt anuneven, sickening lurch.
Looking up.
She saw her main parachute had deployed,but the lines were terribly twisted.
(07:39):
Line twists aren't uncommon in skydiving.
They happen when the canopyinflates unevenly causing the
suspension lines to get tangled.
Experienced jumpers are trained tohandle them by using body weight.
Actually to kick out of the twist,allowing the lines to straighten.
(08:01):
How is that for some air parkour?
Parkour.
Parkour.
But as Victoria attempted this standardrecovery technique, she quickly realized
that something was seriously wrong.
This was not just a normaltangle in the lines.
The canopy was notresponding as it should.
(08:23):
Instead of smoothing out, the twistsseemed to be getting worse and the
parachute was beginning to spin violently.
In skydiving, when your main parachutefails, you have mere seconds to
make a life or death decision.
The protocol is typically this.
(08:44):
You cut away the main shoot andyou deploy your reserve shoot.
This is why Sky divers always jumpwith two parachutes because redundancy
drink is built into skydiving.
Okay.
The failure of a main canopy shouldbe inconvenient, but not fatal.
(09:05):
Victoria didn't hesitate.
She cut away the malfunctioning mainparachute watching it flutter away as
she reached for her reserve handle.
This was the moment where everythinglogically should have been.
Okay.
Reserve parachutes arepacked by certified riggers.
They are inspected regularly and they aredesigned to open quickly and reliably.
(09:31):
But as Victoria pulled the reservehandle, horror replaced confidence.
The reserve canopy emerged from itscontainer, but only partially inflated.
One side opened weekly while theother flapped uselessly in the wind,
sending her into a violent spin Inthose terrifying moments, as Victoria
(09:57):
plummeted towards the earth, she triedevery emergency procedure that she
had ever learned, but nothing worked.
The ground rushed up to meether at over 100 miles per hour.
At 4:27 PM Victoria slammedinto a freshly plowed field with
devastating force James Rankin.
(10:21):
Rankin, a fellow sky diver whohad jumped before Victoria and
witnessed her desperate strugglefrom the ground sprinted across
the field to where she had landed.
He expected to find the worst.
No one survives an impact at that speed.
When emergency responders arrived,they brought equipment for what
(10:43):
logically would be a recoveryoperation rather than a rescue.
What they found in the fieldwould mark the beginning of one
of the most unusual investigationsin British criminal history.
As emergency crews worked at thecrash site investigators from the
(11:04):
British Parachute Association.
Pretty cool.
It's a weird job to get into.
Investigators from the British ParachuteAssociation began their routine
examination of Victoria's equipment.
What they discovered immediatelytransformed this from a tragic accident
into something far more sinister.
(11:25):
Both Victoria's Main.
And reserve parachutes we'remissing their slinks, which is a
critical component that connectsthe parachute canopy to the harness.
Without these vital connections,the parachutes could never
function properly, no matter howskillfully the jumper deployed them.
(11:47):
This was not equipment failure.
This was sabotage.
Let's jump ahead and talk about theinvestigation and talk about how
Victoria ended up in this field.
I'll use that as a segue as we hopinto, don't worry, we'll get back to
(12:09):
the field, but we gotta figure outhow we got here in the first place.
Detective Inspector Paul Franklinof the Wiltshire Police was called
in and his assessment was stark.
In my 30 years of policing, I'venever come across a case like this.
Between 2005 and 2014,there were approximately 2.3
(12:32):
million parachute jumps in the UKwithout a single incident where both
Maine and Reserve parachutes failed.
End quote.
Victoria's Reserve Parachute had beeninspected 16 times by 10 different highly
trained packers Since it was manufactured,the odds of both parachutes failing
(12:56):
simultaneously by chance were essentiallyzero as it just ain't, it ain't happening.
Someone had wanted Victoria dead, butwho would wanna kill a 40-year-old
physiotherapist and mother of twoyoung children, only a husband.
(13:18):
You must be married to a true crime fan.
Honey, that just also doesn'tmake a lot of logical sense.
There's no way she's out theredeveloping a bunch of enemies.
So the only person that could beangry with her is a significant other.
And yes, statistics is always the spouse.
To answer that question, just askZach or point to the investigators
(13:42):
because they need to understandVictoria's life and so do we, because
we're gonna help solve this mystery.
I already did, if that'seven what you wanna call it.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
In 1975, Victoria had discoveredskydiving through a charity jump
after her mother died of cancer.
(14:03):
When Victoria was only 16.
The exhilaration of free fallhad given her a sense of freedom
during a very difficult time.
And she was instantly hooked.
After training as a physiotherapist,Victoria joined the British Army
eventually becoming a captain.
(14:23):
She's a badass.
She continued pursuing herpassion for skydiving, becoming a
qualified free fall instructor, andaccumulating thousands of jumps.
Victoria had been married once beforeto a military man named Liam, but
the relation had ended amicably dueto the challenges of maintaining
(14:43):
a long distance military marriage.
In 2009, she met Emile ci, aphysical training instructor in the
Royal Artillery when he came to herfor treatment on an injured knee.
Boom.
Okay.
Emil told Victoria that he had twochildren from a previous relationship
(15:05):
that had ended and after a whirlwindromance they married in South
Africa where Emil's family lived.
They now had two children together,a daughter named April, and a newborn
son named Ben, who was just weeksold at the time of Victoria's jump.
On the surface, they seemed like a happymilitary family, but as investigators
(15:31):
peeled back the layers of theirmarriage, troubling details emerged.
Victoria's friends described Emileas charming, but controlling.
That's not that I, that's not how youwant your friends to describe your spouse.
It'd be that way.
How do you think myfriends would describe you?
(15:52):
The nicest guy they've ever met.
So patient.
Probably true, probably.
Probably true.
There were also whispers of financialtroubles and marital tensions.
Just one week before the parachuteincident, something strange had
happened at the family home.
(16:12):
Victoria had discovered a gas leakfrom a pipe feeding into the kitchen
stove Near the loosened valve waswhat appeared to be dried blood.
When she texted Emile about it,his response raised eyebrows.
In retrospect, that is weird.
Is the stove working?
There's a gas leak, so why is that funny?
(16:33):
Go ahead and try to light the stove.
Send a spark off wherethere's been a gas leak.
Victoria hadn't tried the stovefearing that it would indeed cause an
explosion in her house, and it wouldinstead, she called a gas technician who
(16:54):
found and fixed the loose connection.
At the time, Victoria had jokinglytexted Emil, are you trying to kill me?
He responded very defensively.
How could you even ask me that?
What does the matter with you?
But she dismissed it.
Now, in light of the parachute sabotage,investigators were connecting dots
(17:18):
and formed a disturbing picture.
Could these two incidents be connected?
And if so, who had both the motive andthe opportunity to make two attempts on
Victoria's life within a single week?
As investigators continued their work,they began following a trail that
(17:38):
would lead to the heart of Victoria'smarriage and reveal secrets that would
shock even the hardened detectives.
Let's meet a meal.
I could really go for a meal right now.
Too hungry.
As with any investigation,my love detectives needed to
(18:02):
consider all possible suspects.
Could Victoria have tampered with herown parachute in a suicide attempt?
Possible?
This theory was quickly dismissed.
Victoria had a newborn baby and a3-year-old daughter that she adored.
Now, obviously, we're not sayingthat just because of those things,
(18:23):
that automatically means thatsomebody is not experiencing
suicidal thoughts or ideations.
Kids are hard.
Yes, kids are extremelyhard postpartum depression.
I went through it.
It's no joke.
However there were other indicators inVictoria's life that showed that she was
(18:44):
not experiencing postpartum depressionto a level of suicidal ideations.
Friends described heras loving motherhood.
I don't think somebody could havedescribed that of me when I had a newborn.
I'm gonna be honest.
Yeah.
Zach's shaking his head, Nope.
Surviving motherhood is probablythe tagline I would've used.
(19:07):
And despite some challenges in hermarriage, she was looking forward
to the future more definitively.
The technical expertise required toremove the slinks in the specific way
that they had been removed made self harm.
Implausible.
What about other skydivers?
Right?
Does she make some enemies in the sky?
(19:28):
Doubt it sounds like she keeps to herself.
After interviewing dozens of fellowjumpers, absolutely no motive emerged.
Victoria was universally well-likedand respected in the community.
As investigators continued theirwork, their focus increasingly
turned to those closest to Victoria,particularly her 3-year-old.
(19:50):
The 3-year-old who knew he grabbeda pipe wrench, lucid at the gas
fitting and tried to kill his mother.
Honestly, would I putit past our 3-year-old?
She could do it, but there are times whenshe looks at me and I'm like, I need to
sleep with one eye open over m and ms.
Yeah.
You know, you give this kid eightm and ms instead of 10, and you're
(20:10):
dead to me until you get me more.
Until you get me more m and ms.
Okay spoiler alert folks, it was actuallynot the 3-year-old, but they are paying
very close attention to her husband.
Oh, I forgot about him.
Emile.
At first glance, Emile appearedto be the model husband.
(20:31):
And I mean that literally,he is handsome, he is fit.
He's seemingly devoted to his family.
But as detectives began looking into hisbackground, the facade began to crumble.
He was wanted for murder once before.
Holy shit.
That'd be nuts.
Cleared on the technicality.
(20:52):
Oh my gosh.
Wow.
You should write true crime books, honey.
Anyone?
Would that be a true crime or wouldthat be one that I just made up?
No, I, yeah, I guess you're right.
You should be fiction.
I guess it's fiction.
It wouldn't be true crime if it's afake crime, but you get what I'm saying.
This facade of the perfect husbandbegan to crumble, revealing
a web of concerning details.
(21:14):
Emil had significant financial problemswith mounting debts to payday lenders.
Banks and even colleagues.
This man and his wife had alarge life insurance policy.
'cause she liked to do crazy things.
This man is bad at money.
That is not, he's notgood with the monies.
(21:36):
His spending habits were extravagantcompared to his income and he seemed
perpetually short of cash despitehis in Victoria's combined military
salaries, like they are not a lowincome household, but he is balling
like they are in that top tax bracket.
(22:00):
I'm not sure what other countriesmaking the military, but here,
combined military incomes, they'vegotta be making like 40 bucks a month.
You are cute.
USA, she's a captain.
She's doing IUSA.
Okay.
More troubling still.
Investigators discovered thatEmile had been taking out loans in
(22:23):
Victoria's name without her knowledge.
That is such a red flag.
That's a terrible, I've only donethat twice since we've been married.
Cool.
Cool, cool.
When confronted by his wifeabout mysterious withdrawals from
her account, he had claimed heraccounts must have been hacked.
(22:44):
It was a hacker.
I don't know if I've ever told youthe story of the Tinder swindler.
I would love to find a way to tieit into this podcast, but I don't
think it's gonna be possible.
But there's a guy who basically.
Worked.
Worked the Tinder circuit and heliterally swindled a bunch of women
into giving him a ton of money.
And whenever he needed money from them,he would always say, my enemies, I
(23:08):
need to protect myself from my enemies.
And that's what this is remindingme of, that her accounts had been
hacked by this mysterious enemy.
Victoria had recently changed her will toensure that her assets would go directly
to her children, not a meal, suggestingthat she may have had that sense that
(23:33):
something was going on and she may haveeven been planning to leave him already.
Then there was the life insurance policy.
Always.
Emil had taken out coverage onVictoria worth 120,000 pounds.
And let me do a real quickthing 'cause I didn't actually
research how much that would be.
(23:55):
Okay.
Let's see.
So that to us, dollar is about $162,000.
However, this was in 2015.
So just take that with a little bitof a, an asterisk before the mountain
high inflation of the world wolf.
(24:16):
So that would've provided asubstantial financial windfall
in the event of her death.
But perhaps most damning was theopportunity the day before Victoria's
jump, Emile had accompanied her.
To the parachute Centerwith their children.
So the whole family is taking a cutelittle trip over to the Parachute Center.
(24:41):
Their daughter, the 3-year-old God.
We know this story needed to use therestroom, and when your 3-year-old
says, I need to go potty, you pullover on the side of the road and do it.
You get that child to a potty.
So when their daughter needed to usethe bathroom, Emil had volunteered
to take her, which seems like areally sweet, good dad thing to do.
(25:06):
He was carrying Victoria's newlyrented parachute over his shoulder.
They had been gone for somewherebetween five to 10 minutes.
Seems like a long potty break for child.
That seems like a long ass potty break.
Ours goes in there and pushes with all herforce and is done in about two seconds.
So true.
This is plenty of time for somebodywith knowledge of parachute equipment
(25:31):
to remove the critical slinks.
The parachute had been stored overnightin Victoria's locker at Emile's suggestion
rather than being returned to the kitstore, as would be the normal procedure.
Still, this was all as the circumstantial.
Yep.
This is entirely circumstantial evidence.
(25:53):
All of it.
Investigators needed more concreteevidence before they could make
an arrest, and that evidence wouldcome from an unexpected source.
Emile himself.
Or rather his digital footprint.
The internet.
(26:13):
Ditch your phones if youare going to commit crime.
It's so true.
Come on guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In today's world, our electronicdevices often reveal more
than we realize or intend.
As investigators examined emile's phoneand computer records, they uncovered a
(26:33):
pattern of activity that painted a pictureof a man who was leading a double life in
the weeks leading up to Victoria's jump.
Emile had been engaged inmultiple extramarital affairs
because one isn't enough.
(26:54):
Or if you're marriedhappily, one is too many.
So true.
God, it's so true.
He was still seeing his ex-wife Carly,while simultaneously using casual
sex sites and hiring sex workers.
Hell yeah, dude's.
Testosterone is through theroof, like that's, I don't know.
At what point do you say it's problematic.
(27:16):
I think this is the pointwhere it's problematic.
More significantly, he had starteda serious relationship with an
Austrian skydiving instructor namedStephanie Goer, whom he had met on
Tinder during an army skiing trip.
This fucker is so cliche.
It'd be like that text messages betweenEmile and Stephanie revealed a man
(27:40):
planning for a future without his wife.
He had told Stephanie that his marriageto Victoria was effectively over and
that the newborn baby wasn't even his.
He was just being kind by taking careof Victoria during her pregnancy.
Ooh, that is some shit.
That's horrible.
(28:00):
I was also kind to mywife during her pregnancy.
You know what this reminds me of?
This reminds me when people arecheating on their significant other,
and they post pictures of either theirpartner's dog or the shared dog, and
make it out to be their dog only.
Terrible.
(28:21):
Don't use your, don't use kids.
Don't use the dogs as a prop inyour extra marital shenanigans.
Maybe a Guinea pig, but thatis where I draw the line.
Anything past Guinea pig inappropriate.
In.
I'm gonna go snap somepictures real quick.
Shut up.
Don't.
Oh man, we have a Guinea pig.
(28:42):
They're terrible.
Don't recommend So cute poop constantly.
That's all they do.
You love the Guinea pigmore than you love me.
Oh, I do love that Guinea pig.
In one particularly telling message sentin January of 2015, Emile had written to
Stephanie, quote, from April onwards, Ican do random and spontaneous end quote.
(29:03):
Zach, this would suggestthat Emile anticipated a
significant life change in April.
In April.
Yeah.
You know, after this exact date,at this exact time, I'm gonna
be able to do whatever I want.
I'm basically just gonna be free.
What was the month ofVictoria's jump, if we recall?
(29:23):
I forgot, was it March?
It was April.
Oh, was it April?
It was April.
This, I wasn't sure if it was right beforeuncreative cliche motherfucker essentially
announced to police that, Hey, in AprilI'm gonna do something really sketchy.
Then he did it.
You know what?
Respect the hustle theman follows through.
Oh my God.
(29:45):
What really stunned the investigatorswas a search they found on a meal's
computer, how to disable a parachute com.
The amount.
Oh my gosh.
For any of our listeners out here whoalso dabble in the true crime, you
probably also crack up every time youlisten to a True Crime podcast and they
(30:06):
talk about the search history, becauseit is the funniest freaking thing.
Clear your history folks.
Clear your history.
Open up an incognito tab incognito.
How dumb do we need to be?
I know they exist.
I actually don't know howto open an incognito tab.
Zach is, Zach could never murderme with the internet because
(30:31):
he doesn't know how to use it.
Okay here's my dumb thing, thatpolice will be able to search what?
I have access to your car all the time.
What's that mean?
Sabotage.
What are you gonna like?
Cut my brake line?
Sabotage.
Catch my car on fire.
Hard to say.
It's hard to catch iton fire with you in it.
I feel like you could create like alittle puncture in a fuel line, you know?
(30:53):
And there are ways, I'm surethere are ways it would be hard.
We're not gonna give people ideas, butgenuinely, it'd be hard for your car to
catch on fire with a fuel leak because.
All of your fuel leads on the left sideof your car and your turbo and exhaust
stuff is on the right side of your car.
Great scam.
Damn just days before Victoria'sjump, he had searched online
(31:17):
for wet nurses and no folks.
That's not a weird porn thing.
That is a woman whobreastfeeds newborn babies.
I was gonna say that.
That's like a ridiculousthing to have to explain.
But then I remember I have friends andwhen I got a vasectomy, the lack of
knowledge, they thought that you justhad basically cut your entire penis off.
(31:40):
They were like, can youstill get an erection?
I had one friend, God bless him, and Ilove him to death and he is so smart,
but this makes him sound terribleand he is so can you still come?
Oh God.
I love that we have the little explicitwarning on our podcast because I'm keeping
all of that in because it's so funny.
(32:01):
Okay.
Alright.
Zach, you and the listeners might agreethat searching for a wet nurse when you
have a wife who's already breastfeedingyour baby seems pretty fucking sketchy.
Emile's behavior followingVictoria's accident was sketchy.
Detached.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was sketchy.
(32:22):
His demeanor was described by those whoencountered him as cold and uninterested.
He seemed more concernedwith his own inconvenience.
Now I have to take days off ofwork and watch these kids myself.
Then with the gravity of whathad happened, pour a meal.
Yeah, but you know what happened?
(32:43):
Gravity.
Ooh, damn.
Come on.
That's funny.
That picture emerging was of a manleading multiple lives, presenting
himself as a devoted family man,while engaging in numerous affairs,
accumulating massive deaths, andultimately plotting something unthinkable.
(33:06):
As the investigation continued,detectives learned of another
parachuting case with eerie similarities.
In August of 2006, a 37-year-oldexperienced skydiver named Steven
Hilder had fallen to his death whenboth his Maine and Reserve parachutes
failed to open during a jump at.
(33:27):
Hial.
Hi sto Hial sto, hial stoairfield in North Lincoln Shire.
The investigation into Hilder'sdeath revealed that both parachutes
had been deliberately sabotaged.
The straps had been cut almost all theway through, causing them to snap under
(33:49):
pressure initially treated as murder.
The case took a surprising turnwhen DNA evidence found on the
equipment matched hilder himself
leading investigators to concludethat it was likely a suicide.
So there was no other DNA found onthis particular piece that ended up.
(34:14):
Failing or snapping.
I always question that maybe they'reright, but it's like somebody saying, oh,
we found your fingerprints on the sky.
It's like, yeah, motherfucker.
I own the gun.
Why wouldn't my fingerprints be on it?
That's fair.
That's fair.
Maybe someday we'll cover thatstory and we can tear that one
(34:36):
apart and see what we think.
Okay.
Investigators also looked ata case from Belgium that had
made international headlines.
Now, I am not going to go too deep intothis because we actually already have
this case written, and I think thisis the case that I'm either going to
do with my cousin or my sister, but.
You know about this case actually,because we listened to this, a
(35:00):
podcast episode on this together.
But this case is really crazy, but itbasically was another sabotage esque
situation of a skydiver who died becausesomebody tampered with their equipment.
But that one is crazy, sowe'll get into it later.
While these cases provided valuablecontext, there was no direct
(35:23):
links to Victoria's situation.
The investigation remainedfocused on those with motive and
opportunity to harm her specifically.
Meanwhile, forensic analysis, welove a good forensic situation here.
Forensic analysis of the gasleak incident at Victoria's home.
(35:45):
Provided a crucial breakthrough.
Remember how there was dried blood?
It was his.
He cut himself trying to loosen it.
Yep.
Yep.
More importantly, tool mark analysisshowed that somebody had deliberately
loosened the nut on the gas valveusing a specific pair of pliers.
(36:08):
These same distinct tool marksmatched a pair of adjustable
pliers found in Emil's belongings.
This timing was also significant.
A meal had decided to spend that night.
At the Army Barracks claiming thathe wanted to avoid morning traffic,
an explanation that made littlesense given normal traffic patterns.
(36:31):
It meant that Victoria and the children,would've been alone inside of the house
that would've exploded from a gas leak.
His children.
If you wanna kill your wife,that's a real shit thing to
do, and you shouldn't do that.
If you wanna kill your children, youbelong in Dante's fucking inferno.
(36:55):
That's horrible.
It's easy to add two countsof attempted murder there.
So fucked.
Look, my kid drives me nuts.
I think both of us agreebut she drives you nuts.
I agree.
I'm on board.
But she's also the light of our life.
And if anybody even looks at hersideways, I puff up like a mama.
(37:16):
Mama chicken.
A mama chicken.
I got all fluffy and balled up.
This new evidence suggested not one, buttwo murder attempts within a single week.
The methodical nature of theseattempts pointed to somebody willing
to try multiple approaches toeliminate Victoria, whatever it takes.
(37:37):
Yeah.
So I guess if at first you don'tsucceed, don't not never give up.
well, The good news, Zach, is thatwith this actual DNA evidence, with
the really sketchy messages, thecase against Emile was building.
However, I.
Prosecutors were concerned about whetherthey had enough hard evidence to really
(37:59):
prove intent and to go for a convictionbecause you know, trying people twice,
whoa, does Europe have double jeopardy?
I just realized that you haveto introduce new evidence.
How'd you know that?
Okay, so they also have double jeopardy.
Okay.
Fascinating.
I think even with new evidence,you still can't try them again.
(38:22):
It has to be labeled as a differentcrime or a different court system.
So there are times where if you'recharged at a federal level, but if
you are serving in the army, thenyou could be charged under the
military court for the same crime.
Yeah.
You could be thrown in the BRI cuttingpotatoes for the rest of your life.
Mm.
Okay.
Much of this evidence was circumstantial.
(38:45):
They had a little bit of, they had thedigital footprint, they had a little
bit of forensic evidence, but the actuallike evidence pertaining to the skydiving
incident was still very circumstantialand they faced a significant challenge.
Would a jury be convincedbeyond reasonable doubt?
(39:06):
After months of gatheringevidence, the police were
finally ready to make an arrest.
In September, 2015, which, thinkabout this just happened in April.
Mm-hmm.
This is a very quick turnaround.
These cops were working.
Benson would've nevertolerated that turnaround time.
I heard you do a bum bum earlier.
And I do.
(39:27):
I do appreciate that.
Alright.
Emil CI was charged with twocounts of attempted murder.
One for the gas leak and onefor the parachute sabotage.
But the path to justice would prove tobe as twisted as the lines of Victoria's
sabotaged parachute with unexpectedchallenges that would test the resolve
(39:47):
of investigators and prosecutors alike.
Two years after the fateful jump,the case finally came to trial.
The prosecution presented a narrativeof a man trapped in a marriage.
He wanted to escape, motivatedby financial gain and the promise
of a new life with a new woman.
(40:09):
What a piece of shit.
Okay.
Emile pleaded not guilty to all charges.
This man's got some iron balls.
His defense argued that there wasno direct evidence linking him
to the sabotage of the parachute.
There was no fingerprints, no DNAand no witnesses who saw him tamper
(40:29):
with the equipment 'cause he wasin the bathroom with the child.
They suggested that the parachute couldhave been damaged by someone else, or that
Victoria herself might have somehow madean error during her jump, but then came
a moment that would change everything.
The prosecution announcedthat they had a key witness.
(40:51):
Somebody who could testify aboutthe impact of emile's actions.
Somebody who had experiencedthis betrayal firsthand.
Oh, I knew it.
He had done this before Against all odds.
Against every expectation ofsurvival from a 100 mile per
hour impact with the ground.
(41:13):
Victoria was alive and ready to testify.
Cute.
Go girl.
That's right.
Zach, the woman who had plummeted4,000 feet from an airplane
to the ground had survived.
(41:33):
See?
And they say, I can't jumpoff the peak of the house.
What?
Yeah, I can.
Come on.
It's fine.
This is crazy.
And honestly, the impact ofthis should have been instantly.
Fatal.
This is a crazy thing.
It's probably not this, but when yousaid, as you described it, when she
fell into a freshly plowed field,I'm just like, maybe the extra soft
(41:54):
dirt caught her like a gentle cloud.
Was it that
the issue with doing this podcastwith somebody as smart as Zach is
that it's really hard to trick him.
Yeah, I was unsure, but it poppedinto my head almost immediately.
God daily, Zach?
Yes.
When James Rankin reached herbroken body in the freshly plowed
field, expecting to find a corpse,Victoria was still breathing,
(42:19):
albeit barely.
But she was breathing.
She was fucked up.
Yes.
The paramedics who arrived withbody bags instead found themselves
treating a patient whose injuries werecatastrophic, but not immediately fatal.
Let's talk about whathappened to Victoria.
She sustained a broken pelvis, fracturedspine, broken ribs, a collapsed lung.
(42:46):
Not insane.
No, she, she left the body imprint in theground like Wiley Coyote and climbed out
and said, I'm gonna fuck this dude up.
Incredibly andmiraculously, she was alive.
The soft freshly turned earth ofthe plowed field had likely saved
her life, absorbing enough of theimpact to prevent instant death.
(43:11):
So from now on, as soon as I have aninkling, I'm just gonna say it, and
then you can be upset that the podcastis ruined from like minute four.
Love that.
That'll be really fun for me.
For weeks, Victoria hovered betweenlife and death in the hospital,
fighting to survive injuries thatvery few people could endure.
The physical recovery would be grueling.
(43:33):
Learning to walk again, enduringmultiple surgeries, months of painful
rehabilitation, but perhaps evenmore difficult was the psychological
recovery because as Victoria lay inthat hospital bed, slowly healing from
wounds that should have killed her,she had no idea that her own husband
(43:56):
had been the one who put her there.
That's fair.
Yeah.
When police first informed Victoriathat they suspected foul play in her
accident, she refused to believe it.
He wouldn't do that.
She told them firmly.
He's the father of my children.
This reaction might seem surprising,but it's actually very common in
(44:18):
victims of coercive control, which isa form of domestic abuse, where the
perpetrator uses patterns of behaviorto dominate their partner through
isolation, gaslighting financial controland emotional manipulation, which we
heard earlier is how friends describedEmile and their particular relationship,
(44:41):
friends and family described how Victoriahad gradually lost confidence over
the course of her marriage becomingincreasingly dependent on Emile, despite
his frequent absences and his veryobvious lies, the vibrant, self-assured
army captain and skydiving instructor.
Had been slowly replaced by a woman whodoubted her own perceptions and instincts.
(45:06):
Poor Victoria.
It was tough.
It do be in a stunning twist.
During the trial, Victoria stillunder Emile's psychological influence,
retracted some of her earlier statements.
She claimed she might've exaggeratedthe time that Emile spent in the
bathroom with the parachute andeven suggested that she might've
(45:27):
tampered with the gas pipe herself.
The prosecution's case seemed tobe unraveling before their eyes.
This phenomenon is unfortunately verycommon in cases of domestic abuse.
Victims often return to theirabusers, or they defend them.
Caught in this complex psychological webof fear, love, dependency, manipulation.
(45:50):
Anybody who has watched Law andorder SVU is probably familiar with
this, but it happens in real life.
Victoria, despite being nearly killed,was still emotionally tethered to
the man that she had married andthe father of her children with a
key witness essentially recanting.
The first trial ended with a hung jury.
(46:13):
Some jurors convinced of emile's guiltand others harboring reasonable doubt.
But prosecutors were determinedto try again, believing that
Victoria was a victim of coercivecontrol, who was still unable to
accept the truth about her husband.
Alright, second trial.
You ready?
I'm ready.
Okay.
First trial went.
(46:36):
Poorly, not real poorly becausethey didn't find him innocent.
Could have been worse.
That's true.
So true.
They get another shot.
Yep.
So much for one shot, two shots, twoopportunities to throw this man in prison.
In the second trial, presentedadditional evidence of Emile's character,
including his extensive history ofinfidelity and financial deception.
(47:01):
You know, sometimes this isn'tallowed because they make the
argument that it'll bias the jury,but I think that they were able to
make a case that this pretty clearlywas correlated to the crime itself.
They methodically dismantled thedefense's, alternative theories
demonstrating through expert testimony.
(47:22):
That the sabotage required specificknowledge of parachute equipment that
very few people would possess slowly.
The full picture emerged of a calculatedplan to eliminate Victoria for financial
gain and freedom from family obligations.
After six weeks of testimony, woof, thejury retired to consider the verdict.
(47:49):
He's guilty.
Is that what you're gonna guess?
Yeah, I would guess so.
Okay.
After nearly three days ofdeliberation, the jury returned.
That's a long deliberation.
Yeah, period.
The courtroom fell silentas the verdict was read.
Guilty on both counts of attempted murder.
(48:10):
The culprit.
All along had been Emile er,Victoria's own husband and
the father of her children.
He had methodically plotted tokill his wife first by tampering
with the gas valve in their home.
Then by sabotaging her parachutewhen the first attempt failed, Emile
showed no emotion as the verdictwas read because he's a not case.
(48:34):
The judge didn't mincewords at sentencing.
Quote, this was wicked offending.
This was wicked offendingof extreme gravity.
Your two attempts to murder your wifewere planned and carried out in cold
blood for your own selfish purposes.
End quote, I hereby sentence youto 75,000 years in prison, he
(48:57):
was sentenced to life in prison.
Yeah, with a minimum term of 18 years.
Victoria.
Oh God.
Let's talk about her recovery.
Victoria's recovery was bothphysical and psychological.
People can probably guess, and in inmany ways the psychological healing
was the more difficult journey.
(49:18):
For years, she struggled toaccept the truth about the man
that she had loved so deeply.
How many times did shego visit him in prison?
She continued to visit Emile in prison.
Maintained contact with him, unableto fully break the emotional bonds
despite knowing what he had done.
I was just gonna say don'tjustify for your partners.
(49:41):
If they do bad things, don'tcome up with excuses for them.
No, he had a lot going on.
He was so stressed I did something wrong.
That shit happens all the time.
It's constantly.
Yeah, and this is a reallyextreme case because he tried
to murder her pretty wild.
The physical recovery was also grueling.
Victoria had to learn to walk.
(50:02):
She had to endure multiple surgeriesand months of painful rehabilitation.
The woman who had once slept fearlesslyfrom aircraft now faced the challenge
of simply standing up unassisted.
But Victoria's resilience, the samequality that had helped her survive a fall
that should have been fatal, served herwell in recovery, step by painful step,
(50:24):
she rebuilt her strength and her life.
In a documentary on UK's, channelfour, Victoria finally acknowledged
publicly what had taken years toaccept privately that she believed
Emile had tried to kill her.
When asked how she felt about Emilehearing this from her, she simply said
the truth hurts in what might be themost powerful testament to her spirit.
(50:47):
Victoria went skydiving again at a girlshe didn't want the jump that almost
killed her to be her final experiencewith something that she loved so deeply.
She completed a tandem jump with a frienddescribing it as freeing, and the ultimate
escapism that jump went perfectly.
(51:08):
And Victoria has sinceretired from the sport.
Today, Victoria continues torebuild her life with her children,
transforming a story of betrayalinto one of survival and resilience.
Her case helped bring greater publicawareness to the reality of coercive
control and relationships leadingto broader recognition of this form
(51:29):
of abuse in the UK legal system.
The case of Victoria Soer remindsus that sometimes the greatest
danger isn't the obvious risk.
It's not the act of jumping froma plane at 4,000 feet that posed
the real threat to Victoria's life.
Rather, it was the person that she trustedmost in the world, the one who should
have been protecting her, who insteadcalculated how to use her passion against
(51:52):
her in the most deadly way imaginable.
In skydiving the ground is alwaysthe ultimate danger, a reality
that every jumper acknowledges eachtime they step out of an aircraft.
But for Victoria, the truethreat wasn't below her.
It was beside her in the formof a husband whose smile masked
calculation and whose words ofencouragement concealed deadly intent.
(52:18):
Her story's really a stark reminder thatsometimes most dangerous falls aren't
from thousands of feet in the air.
They're from the heights of trust.
When someone's love betrays us.
Love.
Love.
What's love got to do with it.
Got to do with it.
Got to do with it.
What's love?
Got to do a secondhand handy motion.
(52:41):
All right, Zach.
That is our story for today.
Our first skydiving story won'tbe our last, but it is our first.
I'm glad we ended on song together.
Me too.
You just keep on bonding withme at the end of these shows.
Postponing me loosening a gas line.
Wow.
We don't have a gas stove.
(53:02):
No, we don't.
Doesn't work the same.
Okay.
Oh, Zach, did you enjoy this episode?
I did enjoy this episode.
I love being right fromthe very beginning.
I live for it.
Cute.
Folks, if you also were rightand you enjoyed this episode,
please go ahead and subscribe.
Leave us a comment, tell afriend, et cetera, et cetera.
(53:24):
We are on Instagram atfinal board and Call pod.
We are on Facebook.
We have a final boarding call, podcastdiscussion group and we would love
to hear from you, make suggestionsof future episodes, et cetera, et
cetera, and finally join us next timewhen we will be exploring another
transportation disaster story.
When are you gonna tell me a story?
(53:44):
I've offered so many times.
I don't want to hear that shit from you.
I think it would be really cool.
Until then, remember tostow your tray tables.
Fasten your seat belts and preparefor the unexpected, because not every
trip reaches its final destination.
Goodbye.
Butchered it.
Oh, goodbye.
(54:05):
Picture this.
No.
Picture this, , the English countrysideof Wiltshire and Colorful specks of sky
divers float gracefully back to earth.
For these thrill seekers, skydivingrepresents the ultimate freedom, those
few precious moments when nothing existsbut you and the rushing air when all
(00:21):
of life's complications are suspended.
But on April 5th, 2015, that senseof freedom was about to transform
into something far more sinister.
So stow your tray tables, fastenyour seat belts, and prepare
for a mystery at 4,000 feet.
(00:44):
Because on this episode, a final boardingcall, we're examining the perplexing
case of a skydive gone terribly wrong
. Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
Welcome to Final Boarding Call.
I feel like I sit here everytime, but I am still your
(01:07):
disaster Obsessed Toast Dallas.
And I'm Zach much less reluctant whenwe record these things in the day.
Ugh, I love it.
I love it.
Before we dive in, do we haveanything we wanna say to the people?
I just love to remind everybody as it'smy job to please like rate, review, and
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
I love that.
(01:28):
All righty.
Let's real quick, go through sources.
There are a few podcasts thathave covered this episode.
There is Love murder, which, youknow, that I love, love murder.
There's also a a trial by podcast.
episode and they did a two-parterof this story and it was excellent.
(01:48):
So those are the sources for this Bad Boy.
It's a whole lot of podcast episodes' cause I love True Crime podcasts.
This is a nuts one, a little bit of adeparture from what we typically do still
in our lane, because technically planeskydiving is a form of transportation
(02:10):
and it requires a plane to get there.
It requires a plane to get there.
You gotta take a plane.
Still aviation.
And you are going from one placeto another in a fashion where
things can go terribly wrong.
So maybe even more so than other ways.
You know.
Let's talk about it.
You guys are about to learnsomething about skydiving, which
is, I think, gonna be fun and cool.
(02:33):
April.
In England you have sunshine.
One moment, clouds.
The next April 5th, 2015 was noexception with shifting skies over
net airfield.
I'm just gonna say it fast enoughand then nobody will question me.
It's a good thing we can edit these
with shifting skies over Navan airfieldin Wiltshire, forcing Skydiver to
(02:56):
wait patiently for their chance tojump for 40-year-old Victoria Cilia.
This was familiar territory withover 2000 jumps under her belt.
She knew that patiencewas part of the sport.
I know 2000 jumps, I guess I can'tdo it 'cause I'm not that patient.
(03:18):
As an army physiotherapist andqualified free fall instructor, she was
accustomed to the rhythms of a jump day.
The preparation, the waiting, that briefsurge of adrenaline and then the peaceful
descent kind of sounds like a race day.
Do you really?
I get, I still get a little bitof an adrenaline rush when I'm
(03:40):
waiting grid to go out on track.
The extent of mine is feelinglike I have to pee right before,
but something feltdifferent about this jump.
Victoria couldn't quite place it, butan unusual sense of unease had been
following her all day earlier, jumps hadbeen canceled due to weather, and she
(04:00):
had nearly packed up and gone home to hertwo young children, 3-year-old, April and
newborn Ben, who was just a few weeks old.
That's a baby.
She's jumping after a couple of weeks.
Good for her.
I raced cars when Aria was two weeks old.
(04:21):
When you love something and youare stupidly passionate about
it, you do the dumb thing.
I just feel like thatshock to the vaginal area.
Of your harnesses when that parachutedeploys might be a little bit harder
on than the sitting in a race car.
(04:41):
Granted slamming the brakes and doingall that stuff will still jolt to
your stomach hip area, but I picturediscomfort in the nether regions if
I was wearing a skydiving harness.
Okay, thank you, Zach,for your expert analysis.
(05:04):
However, just like when I was feelinga little uneasy about getting right
back on track after giving birth,it was her husband a meal who really
encouraged her to get back on that horse.
Or in this case, strap on into thatharness, and she decided to stay and
wait for the conditions to improve.
(05:28):
Now, she knelt at theopen door of the aircraft.
She looked down at the patchworkof fields below from 4,000 feet,
which actually is a little bitlower than a typical skydiving jump.
Like when I did my skydiving, we weremuch higher than 4,000 feet, and Victoria
(05:50):
tried to push her anxiety aside, right?
Maybe that weird feelingthat she was having was just
nerves at getting back on it.
After a nine month break for pregnancy andchildbirth, the overcast sky had finally
cleared enough for a low altitude jump.
(06:10):
It wasn't ideal, but it was workablefor somebody with her experience.
With one deep breath, she launchedherself into the open sky.
Obviously this is not a tandem jumpbecause she is like hella experienced.
It could still be a tandem jumpthen with somebody that stuck hurt.
I guess so.
But she's going solo.
(06:30):
She's by herself.
Which I don't think I could ever soloskydive because the only reason I
was able to do it in the first placeis because the guy that I was tandem
with pushed me outside of the plane.
I was like, those videos of likewet kittens that you're trying to
put in a bath and they're like fullspread on the sink doing everything
(06:52):
they can to not get in the water.
That was me exiting the plane.
Woof.
For a brief moment,everything felt normal.
The familiar rush of wind, the slightdisorientation that quickly gives
way to a skydivers awareness of theirposition relative to the ground.
Then came the moment for her to deployher main parachute Victoria pulled
(07:16):
the ripcord expecting that reassuringjolt as the canopy caught air.
Instead, she felt anuneven, sickening lurch.
Looking up.
She saw her main parachute had deployed,but the lines were terribly twisted.
(07:39):
Line twists aren't uncommon in skydiving.
They happen when the canopyinflates unevenly causing the
suspension lines to get tangled.
Experienced jumpers are trained tohandle them by using body weight.
Actually to kick out of the twist,allowing the lines to straighten.
(08:01):
How is that for some air parkour?
Parkour.
Parkour.
But as Victoria attempted this standardrecovery technique, she quickly realized
that something was seriously wrong.
This was not just a normaltangle in the lines.
The canopy was notresponding as it should.
(08:23):
Instead of smoothing out, the twistsseemed to be getting worse and the
parachute was beginning to spin violently.
In skydiving, when your main parachutefails, you have mere seconds to
make a life or death decision.
The protocol is typically this.
(08:44):
You cut away the main shoot andyou deploy your reserve shoot.
This is why Sky divers always jumpwith two parachutes because redundancy
drink is built into skydiving.
Okay.
The failure of a main canopy shouldbe inconvenient, but not fatal.
(09:05):
Victoria didn't hesitate.
She cut away the malfunctioning mainparachute watching it flutter away as
she reached for her reserve handle.
This was the moment where everythinglogically should have been.
Okay.
Reserve parachutes arepacked by certified riggers.
They are inspected regularly and they aredesigned to open quickly and reliably.
(09:31):
But as Victoria pulled the reservehandle, horror replaced confidence.
The reserve canopy emerged from itscontainer, but only partially inflated.
One side opened weekly while theother flapped uselessly in the wind,
sending her into a violent spin Inthose terrifying moments, as Victoria
(09:57):
plummeted towards the earth, she triedevery emergency procedure that she
had ever learned, but nothing worked.
The ground rushed up to meether at over 100 miles per hour.
At 4:27 PM Victoria slammedinto a freshly plowed field with
devastating force James Rankin.
(10:21):
Rankin, a fellow sky diver whohad jumped before Victoria and
witnessed her desperate strugglefrom the ground sprinted across
the field to where she had landed.
He expected to find the worst.
No one survives an impact at that speed.
When emergency responders arrived,they brought equipment for what
(10:43):
logically would be a recoveryoperation rather than a rescue.
What they found in the fieldwould mark the beginning of one
of the most unusual investigationsin British criminal history.
As emergency crews worked at thecrash site investigators from the
(11:04):
British Parachute Association.
Pretty cool.
It's a weird job to get into.
Investigators from the British ParachuteAssociation began their routine
examination of Victoria's equipment.
What they discovered immediatelytransformed this from a tragic accident
into something far more sinister.
(11:25):
Both Victoria's Main.
And reserve parachutes we'remissing their slinks, which is a
critical component that connectsthe parachute canopy to the harness.
Without these vital connections,the parachutes could never
function properly, no matter howskillfully the jumper deployed them.
(11:47):
This was not equipment failure.
This was sabotage.
Let's jump ahead and talk about theinvestigation and talk about how
Victoria ended up in this field.
I'll use that as a segue as we hopinto, don't worry, we'll get back to
(12:09):
the field, but we gotta figure outhow we got here in the first place.
Detective Inspector Paul Franklinof the Wiltshire Police was called
in and his assessment was stark.
In my 30 years of policing, I'venever come across a case like this.
Between 2005 and 2014,there were approximately 2.3
(12:32):
million parachute jumps in the UKwithout a single incident where both
Maine and Reserve parachutes failed.
End quote.
Victoria's Reserve Parachute had beeninspected 16 times by 10 different highly
trained packers Since it was manufactured,the odds of both parachutes failing
(12:56):
simultaneously by chance were essentiallyzero as it just ain't, it ain't happening.
Someone had wanted Victoria dead, butwho would wanna kill a 40-year-old
physiotherapist and mother of twoyoung children, only a husband.
(13:18):
You must be married to a true crime fan.
Honey, that just also doesn'tmake a lot of logical sense.
There's no way she's out theredeveloping a bunch of enemies.
So the only person that could beangry with her is a significant other.
And yes, statistics is always the spouse.
To answer that question, just askZach or point to the investigators
(13:42):
because they need to understandVictoria's life and so do we, because
we're gonna help solve this mystery.
I already did, if that'seven what you wanna call it.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
In 1975, Victoria had discoveredskydiving through a charity jump
after her mother died of cancer.
(14:03):
When Victoria was only 16.
The exhilaration of free fallhad given her a sense of freedom
during a very difficult time.
And she was instantly hooked.
After training as a physiotherapist,Victoria joined the British Army
eventually becoming a captain.
(14:23):
She's a badass.
She continued pursuing herpassion for skydiving, becoming a
qualified free fall instructor, andaccumulating thousands of jumps.
Victoria had been married once beforeto a military man named Liam, but
the relation had ended amicably dueto the challenges of maintaining
(14:43):
a long distance military marriage.
In 2009, she met Emile ci, aphysical training instructor in the
Royal Artillery when he came to herfor treatment on an injured knee.
Boom.
Okay.
Emil told Victoria that he had twochildren from a previous relationship
(15:05):
that had ended and after a whirlwindromance they married in South
Africa where Emil's family lived.
They now had two children together,a daughter named April, and a newborn
son named Ben, who was just weeksold at the time of Victoria's jump.
On the surface, they seemed like a happymilitary family, but as investigators
(15:31):
peeled back the layers of theirmarriage, troubling details emerged.
Victoria's friends described Emileas charming, but controlling.
That's not that I, that's not how youwant your friends to describe your spouse.
It'd be that way.
How do you think myfriends would describe you?
(15:52):
The nicest guy they've ever met.
So patient.
Probably true, probably.
Probably true.
There were also whispers of financialtroubles and marital tensions.
Just one week before the parachuteincident, something strange had
happened at the family home.
(16:12):
Victoria had discovered a gas leakfrom a pipe feeding into the kitchen
stove Near the loosened valve waswhat appeared to be dried blood.
When she texted Emile about it,his response raised eyebrows.
In retrospect, that is weird.
Is the stove working?
There's a gas leak, so why is that funny?
(16:33):
Go ahead and try to light the stove.
Send a spark off wherethere's been a gas leak.
Victoria hadn't tried the stovefearing that it would indeed cause an
explosion in her house, and it wouldinstead, she called a gas technician who
(16:54):
found and fixed the loose connection.
At the time, Victoria had jokinglytexted Emil, are you trying to kill me?
He responded very defensively.
How could you even ask me that?
What does the matter with you?
But she dismissed it.
Now, in light of the parachute sabotage,investigators were connecting dots
(17:18):
and formed a disturbing picture.
Could these two incidents be connected?
And if so, who had both the motive andthe opportunity to make two attempts on
Victoria's life within a single week?
As investigators continued their work,they began following a trail that
(17:38):
would lead to the heart of Victoria'smarriage and reveal secrets that would
shock even the hardened detectives.
Let's meet a meal.
I could really go for a meal right now.
Too hungry.
As with any investigation,my love detectives needed to
(18:02):
consider all possible suspects.
Could Victoria have tampered with herown parachute in a suicide attempt?
Possible?
This theory was quickly dismissed.
Victoria had a newborn baby and a3-year-old daughter that she adored.
Now, obviously, we're not sayingthat just because of those things,
(18:23):
that automatically means thatsomebody is not experiencing
suicidal thoughts or ideations.
Kids are hard.
Yes, kids are extremelyhard postpartum depression.
I went through it.
It's no joke.
However there were other indicators inVictoria's life that showed that she was
(18:44):
not experiencing postpartum depressionto a level of suicidal ideations.
Friends described heras loving motherhood.
I don't think somebody could havedescribed that of me when I had a newborn.
I'm gonna be honest.
Yeah.
Zach's shaking his head, Nope.
Surviving motherhood is probablythe tagline I would've used.
(19:07):
And despite some challenges in hermarriage, she was looking forward
to the future more definitively.
The technical expertise required toremove the slinks in the specific way
that they had been removed made self harm.
Implausible.
What about other skydivers?
Right?
Does she make some enemies in the sky?
(19:28):
Doubt it sounds like she keeps to herself.
After interviewing dozens of fellowjumpers, absolutely no motive emerged.
Victoria was universally well-likedand respected in the community.
As investigators continued theirwork, their focus increasingly
turned to those closest to Victoria,particularly her 3-year-old.
(19:50):
The 3-year-old who knew he grabbeda pipe wrench, lucid at the gas
fitting and tried to kill his mother.
Honestly, would I putit past our 3-year-old?
She could do it, but there are times whenshe looks at me and I'm like, I need to
sleep with one eye open over m and ms.
Yeah.
You know, you give this kid eightm and ms instead of 10, and you're
(20:10):
dead to me until you get me more.
Until you get me more m and ms.
Okay spoiler alert folks, it was actuallynot the 3-year-old, but they are paying
very close attention to her husband.
Oh, I forgot about him.
Emile.
At first glance, Emile appearedto be the model husband.
(20:31):
And I mean that literally,he is handsome, he is fit.
He's seemingly devoted to his family.
But as detectives began looking into hisbackground, the facade began to crumble.
He was wanted for murder once before.
Holy shit.
That'd be nuts.
Cleared on the technicality.
(20:52):
Oh my gosh.
Wow.
You should write true crime books, honey.
Anyone?
Would that be a true crime or wouldthat be one that I just made up?
No, I, yeah, I guess you're right.
You should be fiction.
I guess it's fiction.
It wouldn't be true crime if it's afake crime, but you get what I'm saying.
This facade of the perfect husbandbegan to crumble, revealing
a web of concerning details.
(21:14):
Emil had significant financial problemswith mounting debts to payday lenders.
Banks and even colleagues.
This man and his wife had alarge life insurance policy.
'cause she liked to do crazy things.
This man is bad at money.
That is not, he's notgood with the monies.
(21:36):
His spending habits were extravagantcompared to his income and he seemed
perpetually short of cash despitehis in Victoria's combined military
salaries, like they are not a lowincome household, but he is balling
like they are in that top tax bracket.
(22:00):
I'm not sure what other countriesmaking the military, but here,
combined military incomes, they'vegotta be making like 40 bucks a month.
You are cute.
USA, she's a captain.
She's doing IUSA.
Okay.
More troubling still.
Investigators discovered thatEmile had been taking out loans in
(22:23):
Victoria's name without her knowledge.
That is such a red flag.
That's a terrible, I've only donethat twice since we've been married.
Cool.
Cool, cool.
When confronted by his wifeabout mysterious withdrawals from
her account, he had claimed heraccounts must have been hacked.
(22:44):
It was a hacker.
I don't know if I've ever told youthe story of the Tinder swindler.
I would love to find a way to tieit into this podcast, but I don't
think it's gonna be possible.
But there's a guy who basically.
Worked.
Worked the Tinder circuit and heliterally swindled a bunch of women
into giving him a ton of money.
And whenever he needed money from them,he would always say, my enemies, I
(23:08):
need to protect myself from my enemies.
And that's what this is remindingme of, that her accounts had been
hacked by this mysterious enemy.
Victoria had recently changed her will toensure that her assets would go directly
to her children, not a meal, suggestingthat she may have had that sense that
(23:33):
something was going on and she may haveeven been planning to leave him already.
Then there was the life insurance policy.
Always.
Emil had taken out coverage onVictoria worth 120,000 pounds.
And let me do a real quickthing 'cause I didn't actually
research how much that would be.
(23:55):
Okay.
Let's see.
So that to us, dollar is about $162,000.
However, this was in 2015.
So just take that with a little bitof a, an asterisk before the mountain
high inflation of the world wolf.
(24:16):
So that would've provided asubstantial financial windfall
in the event of her death.
But perhaps most damning was theopportunity the day before Victoria's
jump, Emile had accompanied her.
To the parachute Centerwith their children.
So the whole family is taking a cutelittle trip over to the Parachute Center.
(24:41):
Their daughter, the 3-year-old God.
We know this story needed to use therestroom, and when your 3-year-old
says, I need to go potty, you pullover on the side of the road and do it.
You get that child to a potty.
So when their daughter needed to usethe bathroom, Emil had volunteered
to take her, which seems like areally sweet, good dad thing to do.
(25:06):
He was carrying Victoria's newlyrented parachute over his shoulder.
They had been gone for somewherebetween five to 10 minutes.
Seems like a long potty break for child.
That seems like a long ass potty break.
Ours goes in there and pushes with all herforce and is done in about two seconds.
So true.
This is plenty of time for somebodywith knowledge of parachute equipment
(25:31):
to remove the critical slinks.
The parachute had been stored overnightin Victoria's locker at Emile's suggestion
rather than being returned to the kitstore, as would be the normal procedure.
Still, this was all as the circumstantial.
Yep.
This is entirely circumstantial evidence.
(25:53):
All of it.
Investigators needed more concreteevidence before they could make
an arrest, and that evidence wouldcome from an unexpected source.
Emile himself.
Or rather his digital footprint.
The internet.
(26:13):
Ditch your phones if youare going to commit crime.
It's so true.
Come on guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In today's world, our electronicdevices often reveal more
than we realize or intend.
As investigators examined emile's phoneand computer records, they uncovered a
(26:33):
pattern of activity that painted a pictureof a man who was leading a double life in
the weeks leading up to Victoria's jump.
Emile had been engaged inmultiple extramarital affairs
because one isn't enough.
(26:54):
Or if you're marriedhappily, one is too many.
So true.
God, it's so true.
He was still seeing his ex-wife Carly,while simultaneously using casual
sex sites and hiring sex workers.
Hell yeah, dude's.
Testosterone is through theroof, like that's, I don't know.
At what point do you say it's problematic.
(27:16):
I think this is the pointwhere it's problematic.
More significantly, he had starteda serious relationship with an
Austrian skydiving instructor namedStephanie Goer, whom he had met on
Tinder during an army skiing trip.
This fucker is so cliche.
It'd be like that text messages betweenEmile and Stephanie revealed a man
(27:40):
planning for a future without his wife.
He had told Stephanie that his marriageto Victoria was effectively over and
that the newborn baby wasn't even his.
He was just being kind by taking careof Victoria during her pregnancy.
Ooh, that is some shit.
That's horrible.
(28:00):
I was also kind to mywife during her pregnancy.
You know what this reminds me of?
This reminds me when people arecheating on their significant other,
and they post pictures of either theirpartner's dog or the shared dog, and
make it out to be their dog only.
Terrible.
(28:21):
Don't use your, don't use kids.
Don't use the dogs as a prop inyour extra marital shenanigans.
Maybe a Guinea pig, but thatis where I draw the line.
Anything past Guinea pig inappropriate.
In.
I'm gonna go snap somepictures real quick.
Shut up.
Don't.
Oh man, we have a Guinea pig.
(28:42):
They're terrible.
Don't recommend So cute poop constantly.
That's all they do.
You love the Guinea pigmore than you love me.
Oh, I do love that Guinea pig.
In one particularly telling message sentin January of 2015, Emile had written to
Stephanie, quote, from April onwards, Ican do random and spontaneous end quote.
(29:03):
Zach, this would suggestthat Emile anticipated a
significant life change in April.
In April.
Yeah.
You know, after this exact date,at this exact time, I'm gonna
be able to do whatever I want.
I'm basically just gonna be free.
What was the month ofVictoria's jump, if we recall?
(29:23):
I forgot, was it March?
It was April.
Oh, was it April?
It was April.
This, I wasn't sure if it was right beforeuncreative cliche motherfucker essentially
announced to police that, Hey, in AprilI'm gonna do something really sketchy.
Then he did it.
You know what?
Respect the hustle theman follows through.
Oh my God.
(29:45):
What really stunned the investigatorswas a search they found on a meal's
computer, how to disable a parachute com.
The amount.
Oh my gosh.
For any of our listeners out here whoalso dabble in the true crime, you
probably also crack up every time youlisten to a True Crime podcast and they
(30:06):
talk about the search history, becauseit is the funniest freaking thing.
Clear your history folks.
Clear your history.
Open up an incognito tab incognito.
How dumb do we need to be?
I know they exist.
I actually don't know howto open an incognito tab.
Zach is, Zach could never murderme with the internet because
(30:31):
he doesn't know how to use it.
Okay here's my dumb thing, thatpolice will be able to search what?
I have access to your car all the time.
What's that mean?
Sabotage.
What are you gonna like?
Cut my brake line?
Sabotage.
Catch my car on fire.
Hard to say.
It's hard to catch iton fire with you in it.
I feel like you could create like alittle puncture in a fuel line, you know?
(30:53):
And there are ways, I'm surethere are ways it would be hard.
We're not gonna give people ideas, butgenuinely, it'd be hard for your car to
catch on fire with a fuel leak because.
All of your fuel leads on the left sideof your car and your turbo and exhaust
stuff is on the right side of your car.
Great scam.
Damn just days before Victoria'sjump, he had searched online
(31:17):
for wet nurses and no folks.
That's not a weird porn thing.
That is a woman whobreastfeeds newborn babies.
I was gonna say that.
That's like a ridiculousthing to have to explain.
But then I remember I have friends andwhen I got a vasectomy, the lack of
knowledge, they thought that you justhad basically cut your entire penis off.
(31:40):
They were like, can youstill get an erection?
I had one friend, God bless him, and Ilove him to death and he is so smart,
but this makes him sound terribleand he is so can you still come?
Oh God.
I love that we have the little explicitwarning on our podcast because I'm keeping
all of that in because it's so funny.
(32:01):
Okay.
Alright.
Zach, you and the listeners might agreethat searching for a wet nurse when you
have a wife who's already breastfeedingyour baby seems pretty fucking sketchy.
Emile's behavior followingVictoria's accident was sketchy.
Detached.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was sketchy.
(32:22):
His demeanor was described by those whoencountered him as cold and uninterested.
He seemed more concernedwith his own inconvenience.
Now I have to take days off ofwork and watch these kids myself.
Then with the gravity of whathad happened, pour a meal.
Yeah, but you know what happened?
(32:43):
Gravity.
Ooh, damn.
Come on.
That's funny.
That picture emerging was of a manleading multiple lives, presenting
himself as a devoted family man,while engaging in numerous affairs,
accumulating massive deaths, andultimately plotting something unthinkable.
(33:06):
As the investigation continued,detectives learned of another
parachuting case with eerie similarities.
In August of 2006, a 37-year-oldexperienced skydiver named Steven
Hilder had fallen to his death whenboth his Maine and Reserve parachutes
failed to open during a jump at.
(33:27):
Hial.
Hi sto Hial sto, hial stoairfield in North Lincoln Shire.
The investigation into Hilder'sdeath revealed that both parachutes
had been deliberately sabotaged.
The straps had been cut almost all theway through, causing them to snap under
(33:49):
pressure initially treated as murder.
The case took a surprising turnwhen DNA evidence found on the
equipment matched hilder himself
leading investigators to concludethat it was likely a suicide.
So there was no other DNA found onthis particular piece that ended up.
(34:14):
Failing or snapping.
I always question that maybe they'reright, but it's like somebody saying, oh,
we found your fingerprints on the sky.
It's like, yeah, motherfucker.
I own the gun.
Why wouldn't my fingerprints be on it?
That's fair.
That's fair.
Maybe someday we'll cover thatstory and we can tear that one
(34:36):
apart and see what we think.
Okay.
Investigators also looked ata case from Belgium that had
made international headlines.
Now, I am not going to go too deep intothis because we actually already have
this case written, and I think thisis the case that I'm either going to
do with my cousin or my sister, but.
You know about this case actually,because we listened to this, a
(35:00):
podcast episode on this together.
But this case is really crazy, but itbasically was another sabotage esque
situation of a skydiver who died becausesomebody tampered with their equipment.
But that one is crazy, sowe'll get into it later.
While these cases provided valuablecontext, there was no direct
(35:23):
links to Victoria's situation.
The investigation remainedfocused on those with motive and
opportunity to harm her specifically.
Meanwhile, forensic analysis, welove a good forensic situation here.
Forensic analysis of the gasleak incident at Victoria's home.
(35:45):
Provided a crucial breakthrough.
Remember how there was dried blood?
It was his.
He cut himself trying to loosen it.
Yep.
Yep.
More importantly, tool mark analysisshowed that somebody had deliberately
loosened the nut on the gas valveusing a specific pair of pliers.
(36:08):
These same distinct tool marksmatched a pair of adjustable
pliers found in Emil's belongings.
This timing was also significant.
A meal had decided to spend that night.
At the Army Barracks claiming thathe wanted to avoid morning traffic,
an explanation that made littlesense given normal traffic patterns.
(36:31):
It meant that Victoria and the children,would've been alone inside of the house
that would've exploded from a gas leak.
His children.
If you wanna kill your wife,that's a real shit thing to
do, and you shouldn't do that.
If you wanna kill your children, youbelong in Dante's fucking inferno.
(36:55):
That's horrible.
It's easy to add two countsof attempted murder there.
So fucked.
Look, my kid drives me nuts.
I think both of us agreebut she drives you nuts.
I agree.
I'm on board.
But she's also the light of our life.
And if anybody even looks at hersideways, I puff up like a mama.
(37:16):
Mama chicken.
A mama chicken.
I got all fluffy and balled up.
This new evidence suggested not one, buttwo murder attempts within a single week.
The methodical nature of theseattempts pointed to somebody willing
to try multiple approaches toeliminate Victoria, whatever it takes.
(37:37):
Yeah.
So I guess if at first you don'tsucceed, don't not never give up.
well, The good news, Zach, is thatwith this actual DNA evidence, with
the really sketchy messages, thecase against Emile was building.
However, I.
Prosecutors were concerned about whetherthey had enough hard evidence to really
(37:59):
prove intent and to go for a convictionbecause you know, trying people twice,
whoa, does Europe have double jeopardy?
I just realized that you haveto introduce new evidence.
How'd you know that?
Okay, so they also have double jeopardy.
Okay.
Fascinating.
I think even with new evidence,you still can't try them again.
(38:22):
It has to be labeled as a differentcrime or a different court system.
So there are times where if you'recharged at a federal level, but if
you are serving in the army, thenyou could be charged under the
military court for the same crime.
Yeah.
You could be thrown in the BRI cuttingpotatoes for the rest of your life.
Mm.
Okay.
Much of this evidence was circumstantial.
(38:45):
They had a little bit of, they had thedigital footprint, they had a little
bit of forensic evidence, but the actuallike evidence pertaining to the skydiving
incident was still very circumstantialand they faced a significant challenge.
Would a jury be convincedbeyond reasonable doubt?
(39:06):
After months of gatheringevidence, the police were
finally ready to make an arrest.
In September, 2015, which, thinkabout this just happened in April.
Mm-hmm.
This is a very quick turnaround.
These cops were working.
Benson would've nevertolerated that turnaround time.
I heard you do a bum bum earlier.
And I do.
(39:27):
I do appreciate that.
Alright.
Emil CI was charged with twocounts of attempted murder.
One for the gas leak and onefor the parachute sabotage.
But the path to justice would prove tobe as twisted as the lines of Victoria's
sabotaged parachute with unexpectedchallenges that would test the resolve
(39:47):
of investigators and prosecutors alike.
Two years after the fateful jump,the case finally came to trial.
The prosecution presented a narrativeof a man trapped in a marriage.
He wanted to escape, motivatedby financial gain and the promise
of a new life with a new woman.
(40:09):
What a piece of shit.
Okay.
Emile pleaded not guilty to all charges.
This man's got some iron balls.
His defense argued that there wasno direct evidence linking him
to the sabotage of the parachute.
There was no fingerprints, no DNAand no witnesses who saw him tamper
(40:29):
with the equipment 'cause he wasin the bathroom with the child.
They suggested that the parachute couldhave been damaged by someone else, or that
Victoria herself might have somehow madean error during her jump, but then came
a moment that would change everything.
The prosecution announcedthat they had a key witness.
(40:51):
Somebody who could testify aboutthe impact of emile's actions.
Somebody who had experiencedthis betrayal firsthand.
Oh, I knew it.
He had done this before Against all odds.
Against every expectation ofsurvival from a 100 mile per
hour impact with the ground.
(41:13):
Victoria was alive and ready to testify.
Cute.
Go girl.
That's right.
Zach, the woman who had plummeted4,000 feet from an airplane
to the ground had survived.
(41:33):
See?
And they say, I can't jumpoff the peak of the house.
What?
Yeah, I can.
Come on.
It's fine.
This is crazy.
And honestly, the impact ofthis should have been instantly.
Fatal.
This is a crazy thing.
It's probably not this, but when yousaid, as you described it, when she
fell into a freshly plowed field,I'm just like, maybe the extra soft
(41:54):
dirt caught her like a gentle cloud.
Was it that
the issue with doing this podcastwith somebody as smart as Zach is
that it's really hard to trick him.
Yeah, I was unsure, but it poppedinto my head almost immediately.
God daily, Zach?
Yes.
When James Rankin reached herbroken body in the freshly plowed
field, expecting to find a corpse,Victoria was still breathing,
(42:19):
albeit barely.
But she was breathing.
She was fucked up.
Yes.
The paramedics who arrived withbody bags instead found themselves
treating a patient whose injuries werecatastrophic, but not immediately fatal.
Let's talk about whathappened to Victoria.
She sustained a broken pelvis, fracturedspine, broken ribs, a collapsed lung.
(42:46):
Not insane.
No, she, she left the body imprint in theground like Wiley Coyote and climbed out
and said, I'm gonna fuck this dude up.
Incredibly andmiraculously, she was alive.
The soft freshly turned earth ofthe plowed field had likely saved
her life, absorbing enough of theimpact to prevent instant death.
(43:11):
So from now on, as soon as I have aninkling, I'm just gonna say it, and
then you can be upset that the podcastis ruined from like minute four.
Love that.
That'll be really fun for me.
For weeks, Victoria hovered betweenlife and death in the hospital,
fighting to survive injuries thatvery few people could endure.
The physical recovery would be grueling.
(43:33):
Learning to walk again, enduringmultiple surgeries, months of painful
rehabilitation, but perhaps evenmore difficult was the psychological
recovery because as Victoria lay inthat hospital bed, slowly healing from
wounds that should have killed her,she had no idea that her own husband
(43:56):
had been the one who put her there.
That's fair.
Yeah.
When police first informed Victoriathat they suspected foul play in her
accident, she refused to believe it.
He wouldn't do that.
She told them firmly.
He's the father of my children.
This reaction might seem surprising,but it's actually very common in
(44:18):
victims of coercive control, which isa form of domestic abuse, where the
perpetrator uses patterns of behaviorto dominate their partner through
isolation, gaslighting financial controland emotional manipulation, which we
heard earlier is how friends describedEmile and their particular relationship,
(44:41):
friends and family described how Victoriahad gradually lost confidence over
the course of her marriage becomingincreasingly dependent on Emile, despite
his frequent absences and his veryobvious lies, the vibrant, self-assured
army captain and skydiving instructor.
Had been slowly replaced by a woman whodoubted her own perceptions and instincts.
(45:06):
Poor Victoria.
It was tough.
It do be in a stunning twist.
During the trial, Victoria stillunder Emile's psychological influence,
retracted some of her earlier statements.
She claimed she might've exaggeratedthe time that Emile spent in the
bathroom with the parachute andeven suggested that she might've
(45:27):
tampered with the gas pipe herself.
The prosecution's case seemed tobe unraveling before their eyes.
This phenomenon is unfortunately verycommon in cases of domestic abuse.
Victims often return to theirabusers, or they defend them.
Caught in this complex psychological webof fear, love, dependency, manipulation.
(45:50):
Anybody who has watched Law andorder SVU is probably familiar with
this, but it happens in real life.
Victoria, despite being nearly killed,was still emotionally tethered to
the man that she had married andthe father of her children with a
key witness essentially recanting.
The first trial ended with a hung jury.
(46:13):
Some jurors convinced of emile's guiltand others harboring reasonable doubt.
But prosecutors were determinedto try again, believing that
Victoria was a victim of coercivecontrol, who was still unable to
accept the truth about her husband.
Alright, second trial.
You ready?
I'm ready.
Okay.
First trial went.
(46:36):
Poorly, not real poorly becausethey didn't find him innocent.
Could have been worse.
That's true.
So true.
They get another shot.
Yep.
So much for one shot, two shots, twoopportunities to throw this man in prison.
In the second trial, presentedadditional evidence of Emile's character,
including his extensive history ofinfidelity and financial deception.
(47:01):
You know, sometimes this isn'tallowed because they make the
argument that it'll bias the jury,but I think that they were able to
make a case that this pretty clearlywas correlated to the crime itself.
They methodically dismantled thedefense's, alternative theories
demonstrating through expert testimony.
(47:22):
That the sabotage required specificknowledge of parachute equipment that
very few people would possess slowly.
The full picture emerged of a calculatedplan to eliminate Victoria for financial
gain and freedom from family obligations.
After six weeks of testimony, woof, thejury retired to consider the verdict.
(47:49):
He's guilty.
Is that what you're gonna guess?
Yeah, I would guess so.
Okay.
After nearly three days ofdeliberation, the jury returned.
That's a long deliberation.
Yeah, period.
The courtroom fell silentas the verdict was read.
Guilty on both counts of attempted murder.
(48:10):
The culprit.
All along had been Emile er,Victoria's own husband and
the father of her children.
He had methodically plotted tokill his wife first by tampering
with the gas valve in their home.
Then by sabotaging her parachutewhen the first attempt failed, Emile
showed no emotion as the verdictwas read because he's a not case.
(48:34):
The judge didn't mincewords at sentencing.
Quote, this was wicked offending.
This was wicked offendingof extreme gravity.
Your two attempts to murder your wifewere planned and carried out in cold
blood for your own selfish purposes.
End quote, I hereby sentence youto 75,000 years in prison, he
(48:57):
was sentenced to life in prison.
Yeah, with a minimum term of 18 years.
Victoria.
Oh God.
Let's talk about her recovery.
Victoria's recovery was bothphysical and psychological.
People can probably guess, and in inmany ways the psychological healing
was the more difficult journey.
(49:18):
For years, she struggled toaccept the truth about the man
that she had loved so deeply.
How many times did shego visit him in prison?
She continued to visit Emile in prison.
Maintained contact with him, unableto fully break the emotional bonds
despite knowing what he had done.
I was just gonna say don'tjustify for your partners.
(49:41):
If they do bad things, don'tcome up with excuses for them.
No, he had a lot going on.
He was so stressed I did something wrong.
That shit happens all the time.
It's constantly.
Yeah, and this is a reallyextreme case because he tried
to murder her pretty wild.
The physical recovery was also grueling.
Victoria had to learn to walk.
(50:02):
She had to endure multiple surgeriesand months of painful rehabilitation.
The woman who had once slept fearlesslyfrom aircraft now faced the challenge
of simply standing up unassisted.
But Victoria's resilience, the samequality that had helped her survive a fall
that should have been fatal, served herwell in recovery, step by painful step,
(50:24):
she rebuilt her strength and her life.
In a documentary on UK's, channelfour, Victoria finally acknowledged
publicly what had taken years toaccept privately that she believed
Emile had tried to kill her.
When asked how she felt about Emilehearing this from her, she simply said
the truth hurts in what might be themost powerful testament to her spirit.
(50:47):
Victoria went skydiving again at a girlshe didn't want the jump that almost
killed her to be her final experiencewith something that she loved so deeply.
She completed a tandem jump with a frienddescribing it as freeing, and the ultimate
escapism that jump went perfectly.
(51:08):
And Victoria has sinceretired from the sport.
Today, Victoria continues torebuild her life with her children,
transforming a story of betrayalinto one of survival and resilience.
Her case helped bring greater publicawareness to the reality of coercive
control and relationships leadingto broader recognition of this form
(51:29):
of abuse in the UK legal system.
The case of Victoria Soer remindsus that sometimes the greatest
danger isn't the obvious risk.
It's not the act of jumping froma plane at 4,000 feet that posed
the real threat to Victoria's life.
Rather, it was the person that she trustedmost in the world, the one who should
have been protecting her, who insteadcalculated how to use her passion against
(51:52):
her in the most deadly way imaginable.
In skydiving the ground is alwaysthe ultimate danger, a reality
that every jumper acknowledges eachtime they step out of an aircraft.
But for Victoria, the truethreat wasn't below her.
It was beside her in the formof a husband whose smile masked
calculation and whose words ofencouragement concealed deadly intent.
(52:18):
Her story's really a stark reminder thatsometimes most dangerous falls aren't
from thousands of feet in the air.
They're from the heights of trust.
When someone's love betrays us.
Love.
Love.
What's love got to do with it.
Got to do with it.
Got to do with it.
What's love?
Got to do a secondhand handy motion.
(52:41):
All right, Zach.
That is our story for today.
Our first skydiving story won'tbe our last, but it is our first.
I'm glad we ended on song together.
Me too.
You just keep on bonding withme at the end of these shows.
Postponing me loosening a gas line.
Wow.
We don't have a gas stove.
(53:02):
No, we don't.
Doesn't work the same.
Okay.
Oh, Zach, did you enjoy this episode?
I did enjoy this episode.
I love being right fromthe very beginning.
I live for it.
Cute.
Folks, if you also were rightand you enjoyed this episode,
please go ahead and subscribe.
Leave us a comment, tell afriend, et cetera, et cetera.
(53:24):
We are on Instagram atfinal board and Call pod.
We are on Facebook.
We have a final boarding call, podcastdiscussion group and we would love
to hear from you, make suggestionsof future episodes, et cetera, et
cetera, and finally join us next timewhen we will be exploring another
transportation disaster story.
When are you gonna tell me a story?
(53:44):
I've offered so many times.
I don't want to hear that shit from you.
I think it would be really cool.
Until then, remember tostow your tray tables.
Fasten your seat belts and preparefor the unexpected, because not every
trip reaches its final destination.
Goodbye.
Butchered it.
Oh, goodbye.
(54:05):
Picture this.
No.
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