Catherine Rusoff
Susann Sills was no shrinking violet, says her friend Chris Solimine. They met while they were both pursuing their MBAs at the University of Miami. “Susann was…smart, witty, sarcastic, but not in a cruel way…just enough to criticize you,” he said. “Incredibly motivated, a loyal friend.”
And she was a talented businesswoman. Along with her husband, Dr. Eric “Scott” Sills, a renowned fertility specialist, they started their own IVF practice in April 2015. “She started the business…she built it,” Solimine said, adding : “Susann is beautiful and performed everything except actually doing the procedures.”
Susann Sills/Facebook
So it came as a shock when he read the news that Susann Sills had died suddenly on November 13, 2016, from an apparently accidental fall. “It didn’t seem plausible to me that she just fell down the stairs with a migraine,” Solimine said. But that was the story Dr. Sills told the 911 operator that morning when he called and reported finding his wife face down on the stairs. Solimine says she wondered if there was more to the story.
Rick Leeds, another friend of Susann Sills, said she left him a troubling message about a month before her death. “She sounded like she was whispering,” Leeds said. “It was so different from the happy, jovial, upbeat voicemails I’d gotten before. This was definitely…things weren’t good.” When they spoke, Leeds said there seemed to be tension over a photo. “She said it was a topless photo of her that appeared on a… blog.” As it turned out, the topless photo was posted by Susann Sills on a political chat room 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… sort of said on this forum that… if Donald Trump won the presidential nomination, she would post a picture of her bare breasts,” Holloway said.
Leeds says that when he and Susann Sills spoke, it became clear that “she and Scott were in a very difficult situation and that she was thinking about leaving him.” He adds, “Whatever was going on between her and Scott… and that photo… was just… a turning point for her.”
But Holloway and his team had no idea about the photo or what significance it had in Susann Sills’ death, if any, when they arrived at the Sills’ San Clemente home.
“Susann had injuries all over her body,” Holloway said. “Her face was all bruised up. Her back was bruised…both her arms and legs…had bruises and abrasions.”
“48 Hours” correspondent Tracy Smith asked, “At that moment that morning, Nov. 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 sons and a husband had just lost their wife and mother.” But as the investigation continued, the questions grew.
Smith joins the investigation in “The Puzzling Death of Susann Sills,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, May 18, 2024, at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Sandy Roberts
Detectives interviewed the couple’s 12-year-old twins, Mary-Katherine and Eric Sills. Everyone described the marriage as “loving.” The children said their parents rarely fought and were never violent. And everyone confirmed that Susann Sills suffered from migraines all weekend. Mary-Katherine, whose room was the quietest, said she cleaned and arranged it to look like a hotel suite so her mother could rest, while Mary-Katherine slept in her parents’ room.
In his 911 call, Scott Sills said that his wife’s shoe had fallen on the stairs, suggesting that she had gotten up in the middle of the night, tripped and fallen. A collection of items around Susann Sills’ body appeared to support the story of an accidental fall. There was a large stainless steel pot, which seemed strange at first, but Susann Sills’ family explained that 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 took frequently to treat her migraines. And next to it was a red and white scarf. Mary-Katherine told investigators that her mother was wearing it around her neck when she was discovered in the morning. But she took it off so as not to impede her mother’s breathing.
During a preliminary examination of Susann Sills’ injuries, the deputy coroner noted some other injuries to her neck that did not appear to be consistent with a fall. “Her neck had a pretty pronounced ligature mark,” said Holloway,
Smith asked, “Is it possible that she fell down the stairs and somehow the scarf strangled her?”
“It could have gotten caught in a banister… sure, I suppose so,” Holloway said, “but we didn’t have any evidence of that.”
Instead, investigators say, they found something suspicious. There was blood in Mary-Katherine’s room where Susann Sills had spent 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 that he heard his parents arguing in the early hours of the morning. Scott Sills admitted that he argued with Susann, but said it was because he was upset about her working late on her laptop, which worsened his migraines.
Smith asked: “When you got home, it was a death investigation… When you left, it was a murder investigation?
“No,” said Holloway, “it wasn’t that clear.”
DNA tests on blood in the room ultimately came back positive for Scott Sills, with a stain on the wall showing a mix 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” It is “We’re just not right 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 manner as homicide. Dr. Sills was now the prime suspect.
When investigators interviewed Scott Sills again in August 2018, he denied killing Susann Sills and, for the first time, offered an explanation for the blood in Mary-Katherine’s room. He said he cut himself while changing a window screen.
But on the day of Susann Sills’ death, detectives found something else – a possible motive. In Scott Sills’ office was a printout of an online exchange between Susann Sills and a male member of Patrick.net dated August 30, 2016. They were discussing that topless photo that Susann Sills had posted. The man, who used “tenpoundbass” wrote: “All I have to say is you must have a super cool husband.” Susann, also known as “dove” replied: “He’s exhausted, actually. It’s not easy being married to a woman who is partially naked and posing seductively all the time…”
Scott Sills denied publishing the chat. But investigators later found a copy of the same exchange on his phone.
“Does that sound like it could lead to a motive?” Smith asked.
“Yes,” said Holloway. “If it’s… something that’s building up in him, some kind of anger… or jealousy about… what his wife is doing online without him.”
“Enough to kill her?” Smith asked. “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 that there was no motive for murder. And that topless photo? He told Smith, “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Isn’t it surprising to you that he had this photo in two places on his phone and then on his printer?” she asked. “No,” he said. “First of all, I don’t really know who printed these things.”
And Earley offered a unique theory to explain how the forensic pathologist could have found 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 the scarf,” Earley told Smith.
“Do you honestly think the dogs pulled hard enough to strangle her to death?” Smith asked.
“No,” he said. “That wasn’t the leading theory.”
Instead, Earley focused on another injury identified in Susann’s autopsy: a fractured C3 vertebra near the base of her neck, which could have been fatal, or at least left Susann incapacitated.
“Their breathing is compromised,” Earley explained. “If they are suffocated, it won’t take much to kill them.”
