Susann Sills was no shrinking violet, says her boyfriend Chris Solimine. They had met while both were earning MBAs from the University of Miami. “Susann was… smart, witty, sarcastic, but not in a mean way… just enough to tease you,” he said. “Incredibly driven, a loyal friend.”
And she was an experienced businesswoman. Together with her husband, Dr. Eric ‘Scott’ Sills, a renowned fertility specialist, they had started their own IVF practice in April 2015. many did everything except actually carry out 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 likely to me that she just fell down the stairs with a migraine headache,” Solimine said. But that was the story Dr. Sills told the 911 dispatcher that morning when he called to report finding his wife face down on the stairs. Solimine says he wondered if there was more to it.
Rick Leeds, another friend of Susann Sills, said she left him a disturbing message about a month before her death. “She sounded like she was whispering,” Leeds said. “It was so different from the happy, jovial, excited voicemails I’d gotten before. This one was definitely… it wasn’t good.” When they spoke, Leeds said it sounded like there was tension over a photo. “She said it was a topless photo of her that had appeared on a… blog.” It turned out that the topless photo was one that Susann Sills had posted of herself on a political chat room called Patrick.net.
“Susann was apparently one of the few women involved in this forum,” said Dave Holloway, a former Orange County homicide detective who led the case. “She… kind of threw out 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 was clear: “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 this photo… was just… a pivotal point for her.”
But Holloway and his team had no idea about the photo or what significance it had in Susann Sills’ death when they arrived at the Sills’ home in San Clemente.
“Susann had injuries to almost her entire body,” Holloway said. “Her face was all bruised. Her back was bruised… both 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 went to a house where two children and a man had just lost their wife and mother.” But as they continued their investigation, the questions piled up.
Smith delves into 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+.
Sandi 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 argued and were never violent. And they all confirmed that Susann Sills had been suffering from migraines all weekend. Mary-Katherine, whose room was the quietest, said she cleaned and tidied it up to resemble a hotel suite so her mother could rest, while Mary-Katherine slept in her parents’ bedroom.
During his 911 call, Scott Sills said his wife’s shoe had come loose on the stairs, indicating she had gotten 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 cooking pot, which at first seemed strange, but Susann Sills’ family explained that she sometimes carried a bowl with her when she felt sick. And there was an empty bottle of Tramadol, a pain medication that 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 that 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 hinder her mother’s breathing.
During a preliminary examination of Susann Sills’ injuries, the deputy coroner had noted several other injuries to her neck that did not appear consistent with a fall. “Her 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?”
“It could have been stuck on a railing… sure, I think 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 stayed that night, on the curtains, the wall and the bedside table. And they discovered that Scott Sills, who had been wearing a beanie on his head, had a cut on his head and a bruise on his forearm. He said he injured himself while working on his car with his son Eric. Meanwhile, Eric told detectives that he heard his parents arguing in the early morning hours. Scott Sills admitted that he had an argument with Susann, but said it was because he was angry that she was working late on her laptop, which aggravated her migraines.
Smith asked, “When you came to the house, it was a death investigation… By the time you left, was it a murder investigation?”
“No,” Holloway said, “it wasn’t that obvious.”
DNA tests on the blood in the bedroom ultimately came back positive for Scott Sills, with a stain on the wall showing a mixture of both Scott and Susann’s DNA. “They were both there,” Holloway said, “There’s an argument.” And forensic analysis of Susann’s phone suggested there was tension in the marriage. In texts sent in late August, less than three months before her death, Susann wrote: “I’m trapped”… “You’re killing me”… “I just want out” And “We’re just not right for each other.”
In November 2017, a year after her death, the coroner’s office listed Susann Sills’ cause of death as ligature strangulation and the manner of homicide. Dr. Sills was now the prime suspect.
When investigators interviewed Scott Sills again in August 2018, he denied murdering 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 had found something else: a possible motive. In Scott Sills’ home office was a printout of an online exchange between Susann Sills and a male member of Patrick.net, dated August 30, 2016. They discussed the topless photo Susann Sills had posted. The man, who went by the name ‘tenpoundbass’, wrote: ‘All I have to say is that you need a super cool husband.” Susann, aka “turtledove”, replied: “Actually, he’s exhausted. 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 chat. But investigators later found a copy of the same message on his phone.
“Does this sound like this could lead to a motive?” Smith asked.
“Yes,” Holloway said. “If it’s… something building up inside 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 arrested on the way to surgery and charged with the alleged murder of his wife.
During his trial in late 2023, Sills’ attorney Jack Earley argued there was no motive for murder. And that topless photo? He told Smith, “It wasn’t a problem.”
“You don’t notice 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 stuff.”
And Earley came up with a unique theory to explain how the forensic pathologist could have found ligature strangulation. He said one or both of the family’s dogs had pulled on the scarf wrapped around Susann’s neck after she fell on the stairs.
“Mary-Kate…saw the dogs pulling on the scarf,” Earley told Smith.
“Do you really think the dogs pulled hard enough to strangle her?” Smith asked.
“No,” he said. “That wasn’t the main theory.”
Instead, Earley focused on another injury found at Susann’s autopsy: a fractured C3 vertebra near the base of the neck, which could have been fatal, or at least left Susann incapacitated.
“Their breathing is affected,” Earley explained. “If they are then strangled, it doesn’t take much to kill them.”
