The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance. Business owners meet Progressive Insurance.

Speaker 1 They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business. Quote in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial.com.

Speaker 1 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third-party insurers. Discounts and coverage selections not available in all states or situations.

Speaker 2 We all live two lives.

Speaker 2 Only the most intimate people that we know of really know who we are.

Speaker 3 911, do you need police or paramedics?

Speaker 4 Paramedic.

Speaker 5 It begins with a 911 call from the house.

Speaker 6 It was a Sunday morning, November 13th, year 2016.

Speaker 4 What's the address of the emergency, sir? It's Talaga in San Clemente.

Speaker 6 Tallega was a new community. It's kind of considered a sleepy little town.
Nice place to work, nice place to live.

Speaker 3 Now, what's happened?

Speaker 9 We've got a patient here who's fallen off stairs, and I don't have a pulse, and she's cold.

Speaker 5 Eric Scott Sills is a fertility doctor.

Speaker 4 He found her down at the bottom of the stairs.

Speaker 10 Yeah, partially on the stairs.

Speaker 5 Suzanne Sills is his wife.

Speaker 8 Looks like her shoe came off or something.

Speaker 5 The mother of twins, a boy and a girl.

Speaker 3 So she's not breathing?

Speaker 4 No, she's not breathing.

Speaker 5 She was the one who was found that morning.

Speaker 4 I'm going to give you instructions for chest compressions, okay?

Speaker 5 They had it on a speakerphone, so Scott and Mary Kate, the daughter, were both hurt on the 911 call.

Speaker 4 What are you trying to do, sir? I can't see what's going on. What are you doing?

Speaker 4 I'm doing the CPR.

Speaker 2 Dr. Sills was an infertility specialist.
Keep going, keep going.

Speaker 3 They ran their clinic as partners.

Speaker 12 Suzanne took care of all the business side of things.

Speaker 4 Continue the compressions until paramedics arrive and take over.

Speaker 4 She's making noises out of her mouth.

Speaker 12 She was his number one supporter in everything that he did. They really looked like they had it all.

Speaker 6 She was making some kind of noise just from the compressions that I think she was already dead.

Speaker 5 We get notified by our sergeant to come out to a house and begin a death investigation.

Speaker 3 So when you went inside, what stuck out to you?

Speaker 13 Well, as soon as you go into the front door, a stairwell is right off to your left.

Speaker 13 Suzanne was right there. She had a blanket covering her body.

Speaker 2 We could see the other things laying around like this stainless steel soup pot, a purse, an empty medication bottle.

Speaker 13 And then the scarf was a little bit further down away from her.

Speaker 6 The deputy coroner, during her preliminary body exam of Suzanne, the injuries weren't consistent with somebody falling down the stairs.

Speaker 5 Her neck had a pretty pronounced ligature mark.

Speaker 8 The question is, how was she strangled?

Speaker 3 When she was found.

Speaker 8 The scarf was around her neck.

Speaker 5 I think the first day there was mention of dogs maybe pulling on a scarf. Oh, you're so good.

Speaker 8 They had a couple of dogs rescues. Mary Kate saw the dogs pulling on the scarf.

Speaker 5 We didn't get the impression that it was any kind of violent pulling.

Speaker 3 Do you think that the dogs could have pulled on her scarf hard enough to strangle her to death?

Speaker 8 Could they do it? Yes.

Speaker 3 When you came to the house, it was a death investigation. By the time you left, was it a murder investigation?

Speaker 2 No, it wasn't just as clear-cut as that.

Speaker 14 Tracy Smith reports the puzzling death of Suzanne Sills.

Speaker 3 Do you have a spidey sense when you go into these scenes?

Speaker 2 I'd like to think so. Probably all of us would like to think so that we could just figure it out as soon as we walk in, Sherlock Holmes style.

Speaker 3 On that Sunday morning in November 2016, Orange County Sheriff's homicide detectives Eric Hatch and Dave Holloway had more questions than clues.

Speaker 15 At that point in time that morning, November 13th, was Scott Sills a victim or a suspect?

Speaker 5 To us, he was a victim. We were going to a house where two kids and a husband just lost their wife and mother.

Speaker 3 Dr. Scott Sills had made that 911 call.
and reported finding his wife and business partner, Suzanne, at the bottom of the stairs. Is it a steep stairway?

Speaker 13 Yeah, it's pretty high. I believe it was 13 and a half feet from the floor to the top of the stairs.

Speaker 15 Did it seem plausible that a 45-year-old woman in pretty good shape would have fallen down the stairs to her death?

Speaker 6 At the time, it sounded believable.

Speaker 5 Suzanne had injuries to pretty much her whole body.

Speaker 5 Her face was all bruised up. Her back was bruised up.
Both arms and legs had bruising and abrasions.

Speaker 3 And around her body was that odd collection of items.

Speaker 13 They definitely stood out, especially that steel pot. It almost looked like it was placed there.
It wasn't upside down or leaning against anything.

Speaker 2 We had to figure out why those things were there.

Speaker 3 The detectives say Dr. Sills didn't seem nervous that a homicide team was in his home asking questions.

Speaker 6 He was just kind of going with the flow.

Speaker 15 How cooperative was he?

Speaker 5 Oh, very. Everything we asked of him, he gave us.

Speaker 6 He signed a consent form that gave us permission to search his house.

Speaker 3 And when they interviewed the Sills children, Mary Catherine and Eric, the 12-year-old twins, each told a similar story to their dad that Suzanne had not been feeling well that night.

Speaker 5 Suzanne had a history of migraines. They were typically debilitating, requiring a dark room, quiet, and bedrest.
And she had been suffering from a migraine that weekend.

Speaker 3 The migraine seemed to explain that large pot.

Speaker 5 Sometimes she carried around a bowl in order to have it near her bedside in case she threw up in the middle of the night.

Speaker 3 And the empty pill bottle was for a pain medication Dr. Sills said his wife took to treat her migraines.

Speaker 15 So did that make it sound more possible that she could have fallen down the stairs because she was suffering from a migraine?

Speaker 5 Maybe.

Speaker 3 And there seemed to be nothing in the couple's relationship to suggest another reason.

Speaker 15 What did you learn about the Sills marriage?

Speaker 6 According to Scott, everything was fine. They had a, you know, a good relationship.

Speaker 3 Both children attested that their parents loved each other and said they rarely argued and were never violent.

Speaker 3 Detectives started piecing together a timeline of the weekend.

Speaker 5 Saturday night, she was on the couch.

Speaker 5 Eric came down to see her, check on her, make sure she was okay.

Speaker 3 It was around midnight when Eric said he and his mom went back upstairs after she put the dogs away in their crate. Mary Catherine had gone to bed in her parents' bedroom.

Speaker 3 Suzanne was going to spend the night in Mary Catherine's room, which was the quietest.

Speaker 5 It was Mary Catherine's idea for Suzanne to spend the night in that room. It was clean, according to Mary Catherine, and done up like a little hotel suite for Suzanne to convalesce in there.

Speaker 3 Mary Catherine had left a note on her door with what would be her last words to her mom.

Speaker 3 I know you are tired, she said, but you need to know that I love you.

Speaker 3 Around 4 a.m., Eric said he woke to the sound of his parents arguing in the next room.

Speaker 2 The two windows, that's Eric's room.

Speaker 3 So Eric is right next to Mary Catherine's room, where his mom was.

Speaker 3 And what did he he tell you he heard?

Speaker 2 Well, he heard loud voices arguing, but he didn't describe hearing any physical confrontation.

Speaker 3 Eric told detectives that after about five minutes, he decided to go sleep in the main bedroom with his sister.

Speaker 3 According to Mary Catherine's statement, she thought he'd come in around 3.40 a.m. and told her their parents were arguing about a work email.

Speaker 16 How do you know she got an email?

Speaker 17 Because Eric said they weren't talking about that.

Speaker 16 Oh, okay. So Eric told you that she got an email and that she was it was about some

Speaker 16 work.

Speaker 3 Dr. Sills told detectives he had argued with Suzanne because he found her working late on her laptop, which made her migraines worse.

Speaker 15 When you heard that they had an argument shortly before she was found at the bottom of the stairs dead. What was going through your mind?

Speaker 5 Well again, that's one more piece of data that we're going to collect. It doesn't mean one way or the other that it was a murder, but that's definitely an avenue that we would have to pursue.

Speaker 3 Neither Eric nor Mary Catherine heard their dad return to the bedroom.

Speaker 17 I woke up and my dad was just like on the covers just laying there. Like there wasn't enough room to get in, I guess.
So he just was laying there.

Speaker 16 On top of it? Yeah.

Speaker 3 It was around 6.30 a.m. the next morning when Dr.
Sills and the twins woke up.

Speaker 3 He asked them if they wanted to go to the pool and get some doughnuts.

Speaker 3 Mary Catherine said when she left the bedroom and looked over the banister,

Speaker 3 she saw her mom's body at the bottom of the stairs, that long red and white scarf around her neck.

Speaker 5 That was Mary Catherine's scarf. It was found in the same room as Suzanne's body.

Speaker 15 But the scarf wasn't on her body.

Speaker 5 When we arrived, it was not. Mary Catherine told us that she had to remove the scarf, and she did that not to impede mom's breathing.

Speaker 3 Adding to the mystery were the injuries to Suzanne's neck, the deputy coroner had noticed during a preliminary examination of the body earlier that morning.

Speaker 6 Especially with the ligature marker across her neck. It just didn't make sense.

Speaker 15 Is it possible that she could have fallen down the stairs and then somehow the scarf strangled her?

Speaker 5 Could have caught on a banister. Sure, I suppose so, but we didn't have any evidence of that.

Speaker 3 As detectives continued their investigation, the questions mounted.

Speaker 3 Did anybody in the house hear a fall down the stairs?

Speaker 2 No, nobody described hearing a fall down the stairs or if Suzanne had been carrying that stainless steel pod. No one heard that bounce down the stairs or land on the tile floor.

Speaker 5 There was no evidence on the stairs of someone going down, like broken ballast or anything like that.

Speaker 3 And something else the detectives thought was strange.

Speaker 6 It was a warm day, even though it was November. But when we spoke with Scott, and during the whole time we were in the house doing our investigation, he was wearing a beanie over his head.

Speaker 6 And he said that he slept with it because it was cold.

Speaker 15 Did you ask him to remove the beanie? Yes.

Speaker 3 As it turned out, Suzanne wasn't the only one with injuries that morning.

Speaker 5 We discovered that that Scott had some injuries.

Speaker 5 He had a cut up here on his forehead, and on his arm he had a bruise.

Speaker 3 Dr. Scott Sills said there was a simple explanation for the injuries.
He had hurt himself while working on his car in the garage with his son, Eric. There was just one problem.

Speaker 5 Eric told us, dad didn't hurt himself.

Speaker 15 Did he say to you, I left the garage, so maybe you hurt himself while I was gone?

Speaker 5 No, he told us they came in the house together.

Speaker 3 And investigators said they found something Dr. Sills couldn't explain on that day.

Speaker 15 You found blood?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 3 Blood in Mary Catherine's room, where Suzanne had been staying, on the curtains, the wall, and the nightstand.

Speaker 15 So that morning, when you asked Scott about the blood, what did he say?

Speaker 6 He didn't know where it came from. He was unaware of it.

Speaker 3 Mary Catherine told investigators the room was, quote, perfect when she left it. She also said she'd turned down the bed, but now it was made.

Speaker 6 That didn't really make sense. Why would Suzanne take the time to make the bed in the middle of the night?

Speaker 15 So if you found blood in Mary Catherine's bedroom, you know that there are ligature marks on Suzanne. Why not take him down to the station at this point and question him?

Speaker 5 Once you arrest somebody, that starts processes that you can't stop. Besides the blood in the bedroom, we didn't really have enough evidence of a fight occurring.

Speaker 5 So at the end of the day, there wasn't enough probable cause legally to arrest him.

Speaker 3 Suzanne's autopsy four days later didn't provide any definitive answers.

Speaker 3 The forensic pathologist noted that Suzanne had injuries all over her body that could have resulted from a fall, including a fractured C3 vertebra near the base of her neck, which can be fatal.

Speaker 3 Then there was that ligature mark across her neck and hemorrhaging of the blood vessels in her eyes, which pointed to strangulation. It would take months to make an official ruling.

Speaker 5 It's not something they want to rush into. It's not something they want to make a rash judgment on.
The doctor wanted to examine the whole case more clearly.

Speaker 3 In the meantime, detectives requested DNA testing on evidence collected from the Sill's home and forensic analysis on Suzanne's phone and laptop. They also dug deeper into who the Sills were.

Speaker 5 None of their immediate neighbors knew anything about the family. Eventually, we contacted whoever we could out of their contact list to try and find out more.

Speaker 9 In high school, I thought,

Speaker 18 this must be what genius means.

Speaker 18 His humor, his quick wit.

Speaker 3 Sandy Roberts and Jamie Aikens have known Scott Sills since their high school days in Harriman, Tennessee.

Speaker 18 He was something we had never seen before. In a small town in Tennessee at that age, he was very special.

Speaker 7 He was hilarious.

Speaker 7 How many people come to class in a three-piece suit? And it's not dress-up day.

Speaker 18 He's flamboyant. He's bigger than life.

Speaker 18 He was very, very kind.

Speaker 9 I grew up pretty poor.

Speaker 7 I didn't have a car in high school or anything like that, and a lot of times no lunch money. And he always pulled out his wallet and paid for it.
It just wasn't a question.

Speaker 3 His future seemed limitless. He was accepted to both law school and medical school.

Speaker 18 We were kind of all on the edge of our seat wondering what he was going to decide to do.

Speaker 3 And it was no surprise when the hometown boy became a renowned IVF specialist, a profession that would lead him to Suzanne.

Speaker 11 Suzanne was going through fertility treatment trying to get pregnant with her first husband.

Speaker 3 Chris Solomini met Suzanne Arswaga in business school where she earned an MBA. She had confided in him about her struggles to get pregnant.

Speaker 11 Having kids was everything to Suzanne. She'd cry about it.
I mean it was so important to her.

Speaker 11 And Eric Scott Sills was her fertility doctor.

Speaker 3 But soon, Chris says, they were a couple.

Speaker 11 She started talking about Dr. Sills

Speaker 11 after she had told me she was getting divorced and that she was now dating him.

Speaker 11 I just remember her saying he's a brilliant doctor.

Speaker 3 Dr. Sills, who was also coming out of a previous marriage, seemed to have met his match.

Speaker 11 Susanna was smart, witty.

Speaker 3 We love business talk!

Speaker 11 Sarcastic, but not in a mean way, you know, just enough to dig at you. You know, incredibly driven, a loyal friend.

Speaker 18 She was so classy, so beautiful, very engaging.

Speaker 7 Seemed like to me

Speaker 7 he found one that it was a good fit.

Speaker 3 Suzanne fit right in at Scott's 20th High School Runion.

Speaker 18 She danced the whole time.

Speaker 3 They were lovely together.

Speaker 18 He just seemed really happy.

Speaker 3 The couple married and welcomed twins through IVF, adding to Dr. Sill's two older kids.

Speaker 3 And eventually, Suzanne's business acumen would lead them to start their own IVF practice in April 2015.

Speaker 11 She started the business. She built it.
Suzanne pretty much ran everything with the exception of actually doing the procedures.

Speaker 3 The practice soon took off.

Speaker 19 We actually have Dr. Scott Sills here in OBGYN who's also a fertility specialist.

Speaker 3 And Dr. Sills was often featured on the TV program The Doctors, which was distributed by CBS.
We've decided to provide you that removal surgery at no cost.

Speaker 2 He was, in many eyes, a saint. He was loved by his patients.

Speaker 3 Dr. Julio Navoa is an OBGYN who co-authored a book with Dr.
Sills.

Speaker 2 Dr. Sills was a great doctor, and Susan was a great advocate for women as well.
And they were a team, not just married, but a team, and working well together.

Speaker 3 But about a month before her death, Rick Leeds, another of Suzanne's friends, says she left him a troubling message.

Speaker 12 She sounded like she was whispering. It was so different

Speaker 12 from the happy, jovial, excited voicemails I got before. This one was definitely things weren't good.

Speaker 3 When they spoke, Rick says it sounded like there was tension over a photo.

Speaker 12 She said it was a topless photo of her that had appeared on a blog.

Speaker 12 This was some discussion she didn't want to have.

Speaker 14 One family, two deaths, a haunting crime scene with a tangle of provocative evidence. 48 hours.
Peter Van Sand hosts a True Crime Limited series podcast. Blood is Thicker.
The Hargan Family Killings.

Speaker 14 Available wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now.

Speaker 3 When news of Suzanne's death reached her friends, they were stunned.

Speaker 12 It was devastating.

Speaker 11 I couldn't believe it. It didn't seem plausible to me that she just fell down the stairs with a migraine headache.

Speaker 3 It didn't sound like the vibrant Suzanne they knew.

Speaker 3 Dr. Sill's friends say they were equally perplexed.

Speaker 18 Scott would not discuss anything with us.

Speaker 7 He quickly changed the subject. We never spoke again.

Speaker 7 You don't know how tragedies affect people?

Speaker 15 What were your impressions of Scott Sills throughout the investigation?

Speaker 5 I would describe him as emotionless. He never acted as though Suzanne was even his wife.

Speaker 5 He talked about what a good manager she was and how she kept their business flowing, but he never once mentioned that she was a good mother or that he loved her.

Speaker 15 All very businesslike. Yeah.

Speaker 3 In fact, the day after Suzanne's death, the doctor had gone to work.

Speaker 20 I was shocked at who goes to the office the next morning when your wife died.

Speaker 3 Joni Ricker's daughter was a nurse at the Sills IVF clinic and had called her in a panic.

Speaker 20 She said her patients are in psycho and they have to be treated.

Speaker 3 Joni volunteered to help manage the office, something Suzanne did, and ended up working there for two years.

Speaker 3 Did Dr. Sills talk about his wife?

Speaker 9 Oh, never.

Speaker 3 Did he ever say how she died?

Speaker 20 Oh, it was never discussed.

Speaker 3 Pretty soon, she says, the doctor started changing his appearance.

Speaker 20 He started to dress like a movie star, and he was very simple before.

Speaker 3 And she says, the once balding doctor now had a full head of hair.

Speaker 18 We definitely noticed

Speaker 18 new hair.

Speaker 3 They also noticed Dr. Sill's flashier online persona.

Speaker 18 I said to one of my friends, now is Sills a doctor or a model? I personally don't know any doctors on social media that are taking selfies in the gym and

Speaker 18 their blazers and their sunglasses and their Porsches.

Speaker 9 I mean, it was a little much.

Speaker 12 All of a sudden, there started to be another woman. in photos and he was out on dates and they were going around town.

Speaker 3 The behavior raised eyebrows, but it was hardly evidence. Then in November 2017, a year after Suzanne's death, there was finally news from the coroner's office.

Speaker 3 Suzanne's cause of death was cited as ligature strangulation and the manner a homicide.

Speaker 3 Dr. Sills was now the prime suspect.
DNA results on the blood in Mary Catherine's room showed a mixture of his and Suzanne's DNA.

Speaker 5 They were both there.

Speaker 15 There was a fight.

Speaker 5 There was a fight. And he killed his wife.

Speaker 3 On August 8th, 2018, nearly two years after Suzanne's death, detectives Holloway and Hatch made a surprise house call at the doctor's home.

Speaker 15 Did you ask Dr. Sills at this point, just flat out, did you kill your wife?

Speaker 6 Yes, then he started stressing out and started sweating and he became more defensive.

Speaker 3 They say the doctor denied killing his wife, and he now offered an explanation for his blood in Mary Catherine's room. He said he had injured himself replacing a window screen.

Speaker 15 Wouldn't Mary Catherine have seen the blood that he left from replacing the screen?

Speaker 6 For sure.

Speaker 15 And she didn't mention it. Nope.

Speaker 3 Despite the death being ruled a homicide, detectives said they still had more investigating to do, like finding a motive. A search of Suzanne's phone provided some clues.

Speaker 3 Text messages hinted at problems in the marriage.

Speaker 5 There was one in particular where she had some pretty strong words towards Scott.

Speaker 3 In texts sent in late August, less than three months before her death, Suzanne wrote, I am trapped. You are killing me.
I just want out.

Speaker 3 And we just aren't right for each other.

Speaker 3 And about a month before her death, Suzanne had confided in Rick Leeds.

Speaker 12 She and Scott were in a really rocky place

Speaker 12 and she was thinking about leaving him.

Speaker 3 He said Suzanne was also upset about a photo she'd posted online.

Speaker 12 Whatever was going on between her and Scott and this picture was just a pivotal point for her.

Speaker 3 Suzanne had posted a topless photo after making a bet in a political chat room called Patrick.net.

Speaker 5 Suzanne apparently was one of the few women who was involved in this forum.

Speaker 5 She kind of threw out that if Donald Trump won the presidential nomination, that she would post a picture of her barebreasts.

Speaker 3 And on the day of her death, detectives had found a printout in Dr. Seal's home office of an exchange between Suzanne and another Patrick.net member from August 30th, 2016, discussing the photo.

Speaker 3 The man, who went by 10-pound bass, wrote, all I've got to say is you must have a super cool husband. Suzanne, aka Turtle Dove, replied, he's exhausted, actually.

Speaker 3 It isn't easy being married to a woman who is partially naked and posing alluringly all the time. Dr.

Speaker 3 Sills denied that he had printed that chat, but when investigators later searched his phone, they found a photo of the same exchange.

Speaker 15 Does this sound like this could lead to motive?

Speaker 5 Yes, if it's something that's building up in him, some kind of anger or jealousy about what his wife's doing online without him.

Speaker 15 Enough to kill her.

Speaker 3 Detectives also learned that Dr. Sills had tried to collect on a $250,000 life insurance policy on Suzanne, but he claimed the insurance company had called him.

Speaker 6 He wasn't able to collect because a death certificate was ruled as a homicide.

Speaker 15 Do you think Scott Sills thought he'd gotten away with it?

Speaker 6 I think so.

Speaker 5 Every day that went by, he felt a little bit more at ease, I think.

Speaker 3 On April 25th, 2019, nearly two and a half years after Suzanne's death, Dr. Sills was arrested for her alleged murder on his way to surgery.

Speaker 3 He quickly posted a million-dollar bond, but investigators were about to get an unexpected tip from a woman who said she had met Dr. Sills while Suzanne was still alive.

Speaker 6 They met through Facebook. He was infatuated with her.

Speaker 3 She shared an email Dr. Sills had sent her about two weeks after Suzanne's death.

Speaker 3 Poor macher Marie.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 15 So it's in French. This is probably the most important manuscript I have ever written.
I am asking you to seriously rethink our suspended but once intense relationship.

Speaker 3 When you first read that email, what was your reaction?

Speaker 6 I thought, man, I was shocked. This is a motive.

Speaker 3 So could Dr. Sills have killed his wife to get her out of the way?

Speaker 8 Oh, I just don't see that at all.

Speaker 3 Dr. Sills' defense attorney Jack Early denies that there was a romantic relationship, and he says that email was merely a devastated father's desperate attempt to find a new mother for his children.

Speaker 3 Did you feel in your gut that you could win this case? Oh, yes.

Speaker 21 Hey there, we're Corinne Vianne and Sabrina D'Anaroga here to introduce our newest podcast, Crimes of: A Crime House Original.

Speaker 22 Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season, from Crimes of the Paranormal, Unsolved Murders, and more.

Speaker 22 Our first season is Crimes of Infamy: the true crime stories behind Hollywood's most iconic horror villains.

Speaker 21 Listen to and follow Crimes of, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 In November 2023, just over seven years after Suzanne Sills' death, Scott Sills, now stripped of his medical license, went on trial for her murder.

Speaker 3 The Orange County District Attorney's Office declined our request for an interview, but cameras were allowed in court for portions of the trial, where senior deputy DA Jennifer Walker laid out her case to the jury.

Speaker 23 November 13th of 2016,

Speaker 23 this man

Speaker 23 killed his wife

Speaker 9 and hid it.

Speaker 3 Walker argued that Scott Sills beat and then strangled Suzanne to death before staging the scene to make it look like she'd fallen down the stairs.

Speaker 23 This is a murder, not an accident.

Speaker 3 The prosecution's case relied heavily on Suzanne's autopsy, but Scott Sills' defense attorney, Jack Early, came to court armed with a unique theory.

Speaker 3 He suggested that Suzanne fell, either going up or down the stairs, and that one or both of the family dogs then tugged on the scarf that was wrapped around her neck.

Speaker 3 Do you honestly think that the dogs pulled hard enough to strangle her to death?

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 8 No, I didn't. That was not the main theory that the dogs actually strangled her to death.

Speaker 3 Instead, Early focused on another injury identified in Suzanne's autopsy, that fractured C3 vertebra. He says that injury is consistent with a fall and that it would have left Suzanne incapacitated.

Speaker 8 Let's assume that someone trips and falls and fractures their C3. Their breathing is compromised.
If they're then choked, it doesn't take much to kill them.

Speaker 3 The defense had the scarf tested for dog DNA. It came back positive.
And there was testimony that the dogs were known to play tug-of-war, as seen in this video.

Speaker 3 And when Suzanne and Scott's now 19-year-old daughter, Mary Catherine, took the stand for the prosecution, her testimony supported the defense's theory.

Speaker 3 Investigator Dave Holloway was at the trial.

Speaker 5 Mary Catherine testified that she saw the dogs pulling at the scarf around her neck, and none of that came up during

Speaker 5 the day we interviewed her the first time.

Speaker 15 How did that strike you?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 I know that she was still close with her father.

Speaker 15 Do you think she's trying to protect her dad?

Speaker 5 I would say so.

Speaker 3 Early denies that. He says the reason Mary Catherine didn't tell investigators is simple.

Speaker 8 It wasn't asked. Why would she think the dogs are important? She doesn't even know that there's any question of being choked.

Speaker 3 He says Scott Sills did tell first responders, and he argued that Suzanne's toxicology tests point to an accidental fall. She had a muscle relaxant and pain medication in her system.

Speaker 3 And early told the jury that Suzanne suffered from a fainting disorder and that vertigo would accompany her migraines. But the prosecution said the defense's theory just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 23 Strangulation is a silent killer. You know what's not a silent killer? Falling down multiple stairs.

Speaker 23 You have to believe she bounced her head, neck, back, shoulders, inside her arms, legs, and feet multiple ways against approximately six stairs, like being in a soundproof pinball machine.

Speaker 23 Then was strangled by her dogs.

Speaker 23 Not reasonable.

Speaker 3 And why would Suzanne have a scarf around her neck that early in the morning to begin with?

Speaker 3 Prosecutors suggested that Scott Sills used it to strangle her and then left it around her neck to cover the marks.

Speaker 3 But Early told the jury it wasn't unusual for Suzanne to wear a scarf, especially when she wasn't feeling well.

Speaker 8 Because if she got sick, that was something that she

Speaker 8 would wear a scarf to wipe your mouth with.

Speaker 3 But the prosecution also pointed out that Suzanne and Scott's son, Eric, told investigators he saw his mother put the dogs away in their crate in the hours before she died.

Speaker 3 Eric said that his mom put the dogs in the crate.

Speaker 8 Yes, sometimes dogs, when they're crate trained, when they go to bed, will go lay in the crate, even with the door open.

Speaker 3 There was also no blood on the stairs or damage to them. There are all these injuries that you say come from the fall down the stairs all over her body, but she leaves no marks on the stairs.

Speaker 8 But there's no marks anywhere in the house.

Speaker 3 But there was that blood in Mary Catherine's bedroom, and the prosecution argued it was evidence that a fight occurred.

Speaker 3 A forensic scientist testified that the stains on the nightstand and drapes were consistent with Scott Sill's DNA.

Speaker 3 Early did acknowledge that his client's blood was in the room, but he told the jury about Scott's claim that he hurt himself there on an earlier date. From Scott replacing a screen?

Speaker 8 From getting cut on a nail that was in the back of the nightstand that was there.

Speaker 3 That forensic scientist, though, testified that one of the stains on the wall was a mixture of DNA, and Scott and Suzanne were likely contributors.

Speaker 3 Early says that doesn't mean it was Suzanne's blood, and that it could have been her touch DNA that was picked up.

Speaker 8 Susan had touched that area before at some point in time and she lived there.

Speaker 3 But the prosecution pointed out that there were also clumps of Suzanne's hair found in Mary Catherine's room.

Speaker 3 And there were bloodstains on Suzanne's clothing that were found to be consistent with Scott Sill's DNA too.

Speaker 3 Early had a rebuttal to it all, starting with the hair.

Speaker 8 She has hair extensions. And you know what hair extensions cause?

Speaker 9 Loss of hair.

Speaker 3 And the blood on the clothes?

Speaker 8 You don't know how old it is?

Speaker 3 The jury was also shown pictures of those injuries that were observed on Scott. Remember how he told investigators that he hurt himself while working on his car with his son?

Speaker 3 And how, according to investigators, Eric said that his father didn't get injured? Well, when Eric took the stand, his testimony allowed for the possibility.

Speaker 8 What he testified is, well, I didn't stay there the whole time he fixed the car.

Speaker 3 Does that seem like a discrepancy to you?

Speaker 8 Well, it's not a discrepancy. Nobody's asking him that full story at the age of 12.

Speaker 3 So he didn't necessarily say at age 12, dad didn't get the injury from the car.

Speaker 8 No, he basically said, I wasn't there when he got the injury.

Speaker 3 While Eric Sills did testify that a loud discussion between his parents had woken him up shortly before his mother's death, the defense told the jury that there was nothing to it.

Speaker 3 And those texts between Scott and Suzanne in the months before Suzanne's death?

Speaker 8 If you have 40,000 texts and and there's five of them with hard language in it, that's a perfect marriage.

Speaker 3 The jury didn't hear about the life insurance policy, that email Scott sent to another woman, or his social media photos in the wake of his wife's death.

Speaker 3 But they were told about the Patrick.net posts, and the prosecution argued that topless photo that Suzanne posted on the site enraged Scott.

Speaker 12 It wasn't a big deal.

Speaker 3 It's not striking to you that he had this photo in two places, on his phone and then on the printer?

Speaker 8 No, first of all, I don't know really who printed this stuff up.

Speaker 3 Early maintains there is no motive for murder.

Speaker 8 There was never any physical violence. They're working and

Speaker 8 marriage relationship. Everybody looked at it as loving.

Speaker 3 Scott Sills chose not to take the stand. The trial spanned three weeks and then the case went to the jury.
My heart was just pounding.

Speaker 24 What do you make of the defense that the dogs may have played a role in her death?

Speaker 14 Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and X.

Speaker 3 Jurors Aaron Ellis, Jack Van Camp, and Susan Blahoe say that when deliberations began, they felt the pressure.

Speaker 10 It's just so intimidating that you got someone's life on the line.

Speaker 3 It weighs on you.

Speaker 9 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 And the ripple effect.

Speaker 10 The kids and uh.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Did you think about that? That these kids didn't only lose their mom, that if you convict him, now they're losing their dad.

Speaker 9 Of course. Yeah.

Speaker 3 They say they also felt a clear motive was lacking. I mean, it's hard to imagine why something like this would be somebody would do that.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 3 After about three hours, they came to a decision.

Speaker 9 The jurors are indicating that they breached that verdict in this matter.

Speaker 3 The clerk read the verdict.

Speaker 25 We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Eric Scott Sills, not guilty of the crime of first-degree murder.

Speaker 25 We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant Eric Scott Sills guilty of the crime of second-degree murder.

Speaker 3 Guilty of second-degree murder. Scott Sills, who gave the gift of life to so many through his IVF practice, now convicted of taking the life of his wife, the mother of his kids.

Speaker 3 I just felt sad. I mean, I was tearing up on the way out.
This whole family had been through so much.

Speaker 3 You know, now this is the next phase of it.

Speaker 7 But he did that.

Speaker 3 The jurors we spoke to say that no one on the jury bought the defense's theory about the dogs.

Speaker 10 The dogs would have to choke her on the stairs, and my dog was as big as hers,

Speaker 10 and my dog cannot get a grip on wooden stairs with their nails to do anything. They just slide.

Speaker 3 The scarf had no puncture wounds either. I would have expected holes.

Speaker 10 And the fall down the stairs wouldn't create that scenario on her body.

Speaker 3 Instead, what they spent the most time grappling with was whether Scott Sills was guilty of first-degree or second-degree murder. First-degree murder requires premeditation and deliberation.

Speaker 9 I just didn't think he planned it. I don't.

Speaker 10 And if he had planned it or done any kind of forethought, It wouldn't be a hot-mess crime scene that it was.

Speaker 3 It was kind of like a snap.

Speaker 3 But investigator Dave Holloway says while Scott Sills may not have planned his crime, he certainly had the time to think about what he was doing.

Speaker 5 He had plenty of time from when he applied pressure to Suzanne's neck till she died to stop what he was doing. He still did it.
I was a little disappointed that it was a second degree.

Speaker 3 On March 15th, 2024, about three months after the verdict, court reconvened for sentencing. Suzanne Sills' mother, Teresa Neubauer, addressed the court and kept the focus on her daughter.

Speaker 3 She was a dynamic person. She had hopes and dreams.

Speaker 3 Hopes and dreams, Neubauer said, that one day Suzanne would see her daughter, Mary Catherine, walk down the stairs of the family's San Clemente home on her wedding day.

Speaker 9 It was a very painful

Speaker 3 thing for me to learn of the role the staircase eventually played in real life.

Speaker 3 Mary Catherine also addressed the court and spoke of all the loss she had endured at such a young age.

Speaker 3 She and her brother were taken in by a family friend after their father's arrest, and that family friend died suddenly of a health condition around the end of the trial.

Speaker 3 She asked the judge to show her father mercy.

Speaker 26 I want my father to walk me down the aisle at my wedding someday. When I have a family and children, I want my father to be there to hold my baby.

Speaker 26 I've been left orphaned, and I feel so lost without my parents.

Speaker 9 We're here for a sentencing on the matter.

Speaker 3 Judge Patrick Donahue sentenced Scott Sills to the mandatory sentence under California law, 15 years to life in prison.

Speaker 9 Good luck, sir.

Speaker 3 His fate was decided, but for so many, questions remain. Exactly what led up to Suzanne Sills' death?

Speaker 15 Do you think we'll ever know exactly how it happened?

Speaker 5 I don't think so.

Speaker 3 Scott Sills declined our requests for an interview, but in the end, no explanation will suffice or ease the profound sense of loss that lingers.

Speaker 3 Patients now without their doctor.

Speaker 2 Thousands of women felt him to be a saint.

Speaker 3 From the saint all the way down

Speaker 2 to the devil. That's how it ended up being.

Speaker 3 And children without their father or their mother.

Speaker 11 Her kids were so important to her, and everything she did revolved around her children.

Speaker 11 She was an incredible human being.

Speaker 11 You know, I miss her.

Speaker 14 Scott Sills will be eligible eligible for parole in 2033, though it could be sooner with good behavior. He is appealing his conviction.

Speaker 14 Need more time with 48 hours? Go deep behind every true crime episode with first-hand accounts from 48 Hours investigations.

Speaker 3 Were you at all prepared for what happened in this case?

Speaker 11 Shock is the word that comes to mind.

Speaker 14 Get inside the twists and turns and get in on the case. Listen to post-mortem from 48 Hours, now available wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 27 This is the story of the one. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority.
That's why he chooses Granger.

Speaker 27 Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Granger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs.

Speaker 27 And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800GRANGER, clickgranger.com, or just stop by.
Granger for the ones who get it done.