Susann Sills was not a shrinking violet, says her friend Chris Solimine. They had met while they were both earning MBAs at the University of Miami. “Susann was…smart, witty, sarcastic, but not mean…just enough to make you resent it,” he said. “Incredibly motivated, a loyal friend.”
And she was an accomplished businesswoman. She and her husband, Dr. Eric “Scott” Sills, a renowned fertility specialist, had launched their own IVF practice in April 2015. “She started the business… she built it,” Solimine said, adding : “Susann, pretty much handled everything except the procedures. »
Susann Sills/Facebook
So he was shocked when he learned that Susann Sills had died suddenly on November 13, 2016, following an apparently accidental fall. “It didn’t seem plausible to me that she fell down the stairs because of a migraine,” Solimine said. But that was the story Dr. Sills had told the 911 operator that morning when he called and reported finding his wife face down on the stairs. Solimine said he wondered if there was anything else to tell.
Rick Leeds, another friend of Susann Sills, said she left him a disturbing message about a month before her death. “It sounded like she was whispering,” Leeds said. “It was so different from the happy, jovial, excited voicemails I was getting before. This one was definitely…things weren’t going well.” When they spoke, Leeds said there appeared to be tension over a photo. “She said it was a topless photo of her that appeared on a blog.” It turned out that the topless photo was one that Susann Sills had posted of herself on a political discussion forum called Patrick.net.
“Susann was apparently one of the few women involved in this forum,” according to former Orange County Sheriff’s Homicide Detective Dave Holloway, who was the lead agent on the case. “She kind of put it out there on this forum that if Donald Trump won the presidential nomination, she would post a picture of her topless,” Holloway said.
Leeds says that when he and Susann Sills spoke, it was clear that “she and Scott were in a really difficult place and she was considering leaving him.” He adds, “Whatever’s going on between her and Scott…and that photo…was just…a pivotal moment for her.”
But Holloway and his team had no idea what the photo was or what significance, if any, it had on Susann Sills’ death when they arrived at the Sills’ San Clemente home.
“Susann had injuries almost all over her body,” Holloway said. “His face was all bruised. His back was bruised…his arms and legs…had bruises and abrasions.”
“48 Hours” correspondent Tracy Smith asked, “At that time, that morning of November 13, was Scott Sills a victim or a suspect?
“To us…he was a victim,” Holloway said. “We were going to a house where two children and a husband had just lost their wife and mother.” But as they continued their investigation, the questions would multiply.
Smith enters the investigation in “The Confusing Death of Susann Sills,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Sandi Roberts
Detectives interviewed the couple’s twins, Mary-Katherine and Eric Sills, aged 12. Everyone described the marriage as “loving.” The children said their parents rarely argued and were never violent. And they all confirmed that Susann Sills had been suffering from a migraine all weekend. Mary-Katherine, whose room was the quietest, said she cleaned and tidied it to look like a hotel suite so her mother could rest, while Mary-Katherine slept in the his parents’ room.
In his 911 call, Scott Sills said his wife’s shoe came loose on the stairs, suggesting she got up in the middle of the night, tripped and fell. A collection of objects around Susann Sills’ body seemed to support the story of an accidental fall. There was a large stainless steel pot, which seemed odd at first, but Susann Sills’ family said she sometimes carried a bowl when she felt nauseous. And there was an empty bottle of Tramadol, a painkiller, which Scott Sills said Susann Sills often took to treat her migraines. And on the side was a red and white scarf. Mary-Katherine told investigators her mother was wearing it around her neck when she was discovered in the morning. But she had taken it off so as not to interfere with her mother’s breathing.
During a preliminary examination of Susann Sills’ injuries, the deputy coroner noted other neck injuries that did not appear to be consistent with a fall. “His neck had a pretty pronounced ligature mark,” Holloway said.
Smith asked: “Is it possible that she fell down the stairs and the scarf strangled her somehow?
“He could have held on to a railing… sure, I guess,” Holloway said, “but we had no proof of that.”
Instead, investigators say, they found something suspicious. There was blood in Mary-Katherine’s room where Susann Sills had stayed that night, on the curtains, the wall and the bedside table. And they discovered that Scott Sills, who was wearing a beanie on his head, had a cut on his head and a bruise on his forearm. He said he was injured while working on his car with his son Eric. Meanwhile, Eric told detectives he heard his parents arguing early in the morning. Scott Sills admitted he had an argument with Susann, but said it was because he was upset that she was working late on her laptop, which made his migraines worse.
Smith asked: “When you arrived at the house, it was a death investigation… By the time you left, was it a murder investigation?”
“No,” Holloway said, “It wasn’t as clear as that.”
DNA tests on the blood in the room ultimately came back positive for Scott Sills, with a stain on the wall showing a mixture of Scott and Susann’s DNA. “They were both there,” Holloway said. “There’s a fight.” And forensic analysis of Susann’s phone suggested there was tension in the marriage. In texts sent at the end of August, less than three months before her death, Susann wrote: “I’m trapped”… “You’re killing me”… “I just want to get out of this” And “We’re just not meant for each other“.
In November 2017, a year after her death, the coroner’s office cited Susann Sills’ cause of death as ligature strangulation and the circumstances as homicide. Dr. Sills was now the prime suspect.
When investigators questioned Scott Sills again in August 2018, he denied killing Susann Sills and, for the first time, he offered an explanation for the blood in Mary-Katherine’s bedroom. He said he cut himself while changing a mosquito net.
But on the day of Susann Sills’ death, detectives had discovered something else: a possible motive. In Scott Sills’ home office was a printed copy of an online exchange between Susann Sills and a male member of Patrick.net dated August 30, 2016. They were discussing the topless photo that Susann Sills had posted. The man, who went by the name “tenpoundbass,” wrote: “All I have to say is you must have a super cool husband. “Susann, alias “dove”, replied: “He’s exhausted, in fact. It’s not easy being married to a woman who is partially naked and poses seductively all the time…”
Scott Sills had denied printing the cat. But investigators later found a copy of the same exchange on his phone.
“Could this lead to a motive?” » asked Smith.
“Yes,” Holloway said. “If it’s… something building up inside him, some sort of anger… or jealousy about… what his wife is doing online without him.”
“Enough to kill her?” » asked Smith. “Mm-hmm,” Holloway replied.
In April 2019, Dr. Scott Sills was arrested on his way to surgery and charged with the alleged murder of his wife.
At his trial in late 2023, Sills’ defense attorney, Jack Earley, argued there was no motive for murder. And that topless photo? He told Smith: “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“It doesn’t strike you that he had this photo in two places on his phone and then on the printer?” she asked. “No,” he said. “First of all, I don’t really know who printed this thing.”
And Earley came up with a unique theory to explain how the medical examiner could have discovered a ligature strangulation. He said one or both of the family’s dogs pulled on the scarf that was wrapped around Susann’s neck after she fell down the stairs.
“Mary-Kate…saw the dogs pulling on the scarf,” Earley told Smith.
“Do you honestly think the dogs pulled hard enough to strangle him to death?” » Smith asked.
“No,” he said. “That wasn’t the main theory.”
Instead, Earley focused on another injury identified during Susann’s autopsy: a fractured C3 vertebra near the base of the neck, which may have been fatal, or at least left Susann incapacitated.
“Their breathing is compromised,” Earley explained. “If they are then suffocated, it doesn’t take much to kill them.”
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