Stephen Hilder

The death of Stephen Hilder, aged 20, occurred on 4 July 2003 at Hibaldstow Airfield, England, in an incident in which Hilder fell to his death when, during a 3-person team skydive, both his main and reserve parachutes failed. The investigation into the death, "unique in British crime history", revealed expert-level tampering with both canopies, but failed to determine whether the incident was murder or suicide.

Background Stephen Paul Hilder was born on 12 December 1982 in Hereford and attended the Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School. He was later an officer cadet at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, England. A keen parachutist, he died around 2:45 pm on Friday, 4 July 2003, at Hibaldstow Airfield, when both his main and reserve parachutes failed to operate correctly. He had been participating in a week-long British Collegiate Parachute Association championship skydiving competition with his "Black Rain" teammates and fellow officer cadets, Adrian Blair and David Mason (both aged 19), who had all made over 200 jumps each. His funeral was held at St Mary's Church in Burghill, Herefordshire, on Thursday, 31 July 2003.

Criminal investigation Initially, due to cloudy conditions, the incident was not noticed as it happened, either by the team's videographer, his teammates, or observers on the ground. However, a disturbance in a nearby cornfield, where jumpers who missed the landing zone often ended up, was noticed, and the body was soon found. The Humberside Police were called and collected evidence from the body, alongside DNA samples from everyone present and visually inspecting all other parachutes on-site.

A 10-month search for a murderer with a motive ensued, including nationwide mail-outs to all British Parachute Association (BPA) members, a Crimewatch programme, and a full-page advertisement in the BPA magazine, Skydive. while a third man, who remained unnamed, was also arrested and subsequently released without charge.

Laboratory tests of the parachute straps revealed that fibres from the severed risers were present on Hilder's body, while DNA tests on the parachute straps revealed the presence of Hilder's DNA alone. This caused bafflement for both the police and Hilder's family and friends, who had seen no indication that Hilder was intending to die by suicide. One police officer stated that "Nothing we have discovered during the investigation and no one we have interviewed has said anything to suggest Stephen may have been contemplating killing himself." The inquest was also informed that at the time of his death, Hilder had money problems and was around £17,000 in debt (due to overspending related to skydiving), was close to the end of a casual relationship, and had wrongly assumed that he was failing his first-year academy exams. A similar tampering event happened to Charlie Mullins in 1997, but the interference was noticed in a pre-jump check.

In October 2010, a 26-year-old Belgian elementary school teacher, Els Clottemans, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years in jail for tampering with a love-triangle rival's parachute in exactly the same way as Hilder's in what was known as the "Parachute Murder". The victim, Els Van Doren, died in November 2006 in the town of Opglabbeek when both her parachutes failed. In May 2018, he was found guilty of attempted murder in an attempt to receive a £120,000 life-insurance payment and to end his marriage to be with his lover.

Media The incident was covered by the BBC's Crimewatch in an episode aired on 24 July 2003, and by ITV Studios in a 2011 documentary titled Real Crime: Sky Diver Murder or Suicide? It was also covered by a July 2018 episode of Casefile True Crime Podcast.