‘I DODGED A BULLET'

The ex-fiancée of the man who tried to kill his wife by sabotaging her parachute tells of years of betrayal and heartache

WAS this really the man she’d married? Victoria Cilliers couldn’t believe what she was hearing as all the horrific details came spilling out in court about how the father of her two kids had deliberately sabotaged her parachute in the hope that he’d get to witness her plummeting to her death.

But this was just the tip of the iceberg. There were also revelations about how he’d juggled two affairs at once while his wife lay in hospital with a shattered pelvis and broken ribs and vertebrae – all the result of the nightmare parachute ordeal he’d masterminded.

Yet despite all this Victoria (36), a British physiotherapist and parachute instructor, admits in her new biography, I Survived, that it was only in June 2018 when Emile (39) – a South African who served as a sergeant in the British army – was sentenced to 18 years behind bars that the penny finally dropped. “I realised he’s a monster,” she writes.

But there’s another woman who wasn’t all that surprised when she heard he’d been found guilty of trying to murder his wife. As his former fiancée and the mother of his two children, Nicolene Shephard (36) knows Emile well.

“My first thought wasn’t, ‘He’d never do that’,” she says. “I was more shocked at the thought that someone who was part of my life had tried to commit murder.”

Nicolene has her own hair-raising tales about how he lied and betrayed her during their long relationship, which left her with deep emotional scars.

“I wish I’d never met Emile Cilliers,” she tells YOU in an exclusive interview.