Surviving a Skydive with a Sabotaged Parachute: The Story of Victoria Cilliers | Fascinating Horror — Transcript

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1. 0:09On the 5th of April, 2015, 39-year-old Victoria  Cilliers stood in the open door of an aircraft
2. 0:16and looked out over Salisbury Plain in south-west  England from a height of 1,200 metres (or 4,000
3. 0:23feet). After taking in the view for a moment, she  jumped – trusting to her many years of experience
4. 0:29as a skydiver… and to the parachute strapped  to her back. As she began her long fall to the
5. 0:35Earth below she felt good: free and happy, doing  something she loved. She could not possibly know,
6. 0:42at that moment, that the parachute on  her back would fail her, and she would
7. 0:47soon join the small cadre of people who have,  miraculously, survived a parachute failure.
8. 0:55The parachute is an invention that was imagined  quite some years before it became a practical
9. 1:00reality. Many inventors in the 1700s and  1800s experimented with using large swathes of
10. 1:06fabric to slow a human being’s fall and allow  them to land gently enough to avoid injury.
11. 1:13Early parachute designs didn’t resemble what  we’d recognise as a parachute today. They were
12. 1:19huge and cumbersome. The first successful  parachute jump was carried out in 1797,
13. 1:25by French balloonist Andre-Jacques Garnerin, and  his invention had little in common the sleek,
14. 1:31wearable parachutes of today. Instead, his device  featured a basket similar to that of a hot air
15. 1:38balloon, and an unfolding, umbrella-like canopy. It was carried aloft by a balloon to a height of
16. 1:441,000 metres (or around 3,000 feet), and then  released. The craft oscillated wildly as it
17. 1:52fell – there was no vent in the canopy, and  so it rocked back and forth as air spilled
18. 1:56out from underneath, eventually coming in for  a bumpy landing that left its inventor shaken,
19. 2:02pale and faintly seasick… but alive. In the century which followed,
20. 2:08many attempts were made to refine the  parachute – some more successful than
21. 2:13others. French inventor Franz Reichelt believed  that he was the first to crack the design of
22. 2:18a wearable chute in 1912… but unfortunately  fell to his death in a daring leap from the
23. 2:25Eiffel Tower while trying to demonstrate it. As World War One began, more time energy and
24. 2:32funding was poured into aviation, and  parachute designs steadily improved as
25. 2:36a result. Soon parachutes could reasonably  be stored within a cockpit… and even worn
26. 2:43without losing too much mobility. It was during the Wars that many
27. 2:47of the first examples of people surviving  parachute failures can be found. There is,
28. 2:54for example, the case of Nicholas Alkemade. At just 21-years-old, Nicholas went to war,
29. 3:00serving as a tail gunner in the UK’s  Royal Air Force. On the 24th of March,
30. 3:051944, he and seven other crewmembers boarded an  Avro Lancaster heavy bomber, and took off for a
31. 3:12night-time bombing run over Berlin. The mission  was a success, but on the way back they came
32. 3:18under heavy fire from Luftwaffe fighter planes. As the Lancaster caught fire, Nicholas faced a
33. 3:24terrible decision... stay on board and risk  burning to death, or jump from the plane.
34. 3:31There were parachutes on board, but the flames had  already rendered them useless. Jumping would be a
35. 3:37death sentence... but Nicholas didn't hesitate.  He threw himself from the plane and fell 5,490
36. 3:45metres (or 18,000 feet) to the ground below. By immense good fortune, he survived - his
37. 3:53fall arrested by a dense but soft tree canopy  and a heavy bank of snow. His only injury was
38. 4:00a sprained knee... and, indeed, he was in such  good health that when he was captured by German
39. 4:05soldiers they refused to believe his story.  It was only after finding and examining the
40. 4:11wreckage of the plane he'd jumped from that they  conceded that he was telling the truth. Later,
41. 4:17in a prisoner-of-war camp, he was issued special  documentation by the Gestapo to make record of
42. 4:23the incredible circumstance of his survival. While Nicholas’s seven fellow crewmembers
43. 4:30died in the crash of their bomber... Nicholas  himself survived. He went on to survive the war,
44. 4:37and lived into his sixties. Nicholas Alkemade was by no
45. 4:42means the only person to survive jumping  from a plane without a parachute. Another
46. 4:47case that garnered a huge amount of media  attention when it happened in 1971, was
47. 4:52that of Juliane Koepcke. At just 17 years old she  survived a fall of 3,000 meters (or 10,000 feet),
48. 5:00when the plane she was flying on was hit by  lightning, and disintegrated. She was ejected,
49. 5:06but remained attached to a bank of seating, which  acted like a rotor, slowing her fall. When she
50. 5:13plunged into the canopy of the rainforest below  she suffered serious injuries… but ultimately
51. 5:19survived, and was able to hike to safety. There are dozens of stories like these of people
52. 5:26who have, by a seeming miracle, survived a fall  that should have killed them. In most cases this
53. 5:32fall was the result of a tragic accident… but the  case of Victoria Cilliers is somewhat different.
54. 5:40When 39-year-old Victoria Cilliers took on  a parachute jump on the 5th of April, 2015,
55. 5:46she wasn’t worried about her chances of survival.  Rather, she was looking forward to the experience.
56. 5:53She had undertaken thousands of jumps before,  and was qualified as a skydiving instructor.
57. 5:59It was a pursuit that she was passionate  about, and she had no reason to believe
58. 6:03this jump – which had been a gift from her  husband – would be different from any other.
59. 6:09On first exiting the plane at 1,200 metres  (or 4,000 feet) feet, Victoria recalls feeling
60. 6:16good. The breath-taking views, the shot of  adrenaline, and the thrill of plummeting
61. 6:20towards the ground below all combined to  remind her of why she loved skydiving.
62. 6:27Her good mood didn’t change when  she tried to deploy her main chute,
63. 6:30and it malfunctioned. She struggled with it for a  moment, but quickly realised that it was no good.
64. 6:36She would have to cut it loose and use her reserve  chute. Not a problem, of course: she’d dealt with
65. 6:42malfunctions like this before. Calmly, Victoria  cut away her main chute and deployed her reserve.
66. 6:49It was only when her reserve chute immediately  tangled that Victoria realised the gravity of
67. 6:54her situation. She was now plummeting  to Earth, spinning uncontrollably,
68. 7:00with no other equipment to rely on. She did  not, however, entertain any thoughts of death:
69. 7:06but instead turned her attention to surviving  the fall that she was now locked into.
70. 7:12She knew that it was possible  to survive a parachute failure,
71. 7:15just as Nicholas Alkemade and Juliane Koepcke  had done in decades past. And she knew that
72. 7:21there were things she could do to improve her  chances: for example, steering towards a body
73. 7:26of water if one was available, and spreading  out her body to create as much air resistance
74. 7:31as possible and decrease her fall speed. There was little time to do either of these
75. 7:37things before she hit the ground. There had been  no bodies of water to aim for… but by luck she
76. 7:43landed in a recently ploughed field, where loose  earth was piled in large mounds. These offered a
77. 7:50small amount of impact absorption. The fact  that the tangled reserve chute had put her
78. 7:56into a spin also marginally slowed her descent. Victoria Cilliers hit the ground. And lived.
79. 8:04All the same it was an immensely hard fall.  She suffered multiple broken bones and a spinal
80. 8:10injury. The ground team, who had witnessed her  fall from a short distance away, raced to her
81. 8:16side… but initially approached her with a body bag  rather than a first aid kit, convinced that there
82. 8:23was no chance at all that she could have survived. But survive she did. And, not only that, but she
83. 8:31went on to make a full recovery from her spinal  injury – eventually finding herself in a position
84. 8:36to not just walk again, but return to skydiving. The skydiving school that had organised the
85. 8:44fateful jump considered it suspicious that both of  Victoria’s chutes had failed. They contacted the
86. 8:50police, who launched an investigation… and very  quickly ascertained that someone close to Victoria
87. 8:56had been responsible: her husband, Emile Cilliers. Wishing to claim on a £120,000 life insurance
88. 9:05policy, he had made two attempts to end  Victoria’s life. His first had been by
89. 9:11damaging the valve on their home’s gas cooker to  flood the house with gas and potentially cause an
90. 9:16explosion. When Victoria discovered the damaged  valve, he had written it off as an accident,
91. 9:22and Victoria had believed him – even joking with  him by saying, “Are you trying to bump me off?”
92. 9:29His second attempt had been to sabotage her  parachute, which he had done by taking it
93. 9:34into the toilet at the airfield just before her  scheduled jump. There he tangled the lines of her
94. 9:40main chute and removed parts of her reserve. This sabotage was almost discovered,
95. 9:46as her initial jump time was rescheduled at  the last minute due to bad weather. Rather
96. 9:52than return the sabotaged parachute to the kit  store, Victoria’s husband insisted on storing
97. 9:57it in a locker they both used at the airfield –  something that was against standard practise, but
98. 10:03which Victoria agreed to, as it might save some  time when they returned for her rescheduled jump.
99. 10:10Even when evidence of Emile’s tampering  was found and presented to Victoria,
100. 10:15she was reluctant to believe that he had  done what it appeared he had done. They had
101. 10:20been married for several years and had a family  together. While the relationship had not often
102. 10:25been a happy or easy one, she still struggled  to believe that he would resort to murder.
103. 10:32Ultimately, a jury decided that Emile was guilty  of attempting to murder Victoria Cilliers. He was
104. 10:39sentenced to life in prison, with a term  that would last a minimum of 18 years.
105. 10:46Nicholas Alkemade, Juliane Koepcke and Victoria  Cilliers all fell from a plane without a
106. 10:52parachute – each for a different reason. All three  survived. All three recovered from their injuries.
107. 11:00The very idea of surviving a fall from a plane  with no parachute seems absurd. Impossible. And
108. 11:08yet, throughout history, a very small number  of people have managed to do just that.