Did a California doctor strangle his wife, or did she die from a fall down stairs?
The fate of a fertility doctor accused of strangling his wife and then staging her body to make it look like she took a fatal fall down the stairs at their San Clemente home will soon be in the hands of an Orange County jury, as attorneys on Monday argued over whether the woman’s death was a tragic accident or the result of foul play.
More than seven years after the death of 45-year-old Susann Sills, jury deliberations are scheduled to begin in a Santa Ana courtroom on Tuesday morning in the murder trial of Dr. Eric Scott Sills.
The couple worked together at the Center of Advanced Genetics, a fertility clinic in Carlsbad, where he handled the medical work and she ran the business side. They lived with their twin children — a boy and girl who were 12 years old at the time of their mother’s death — in an upscale San Clemente neighborhood.
Early on Nov. 12, 2016, Dr. Sills called 911 to report waking up to find his wife’s injured body at the bottom of the stairs of their home, the result — he claimed — of an apparent fall.
Pathologists suspected that Susann Sills extensive injuries didn’t match up to such a fall, eventually determining that her cause of death was strangulation. After a lengthy investigation — including multiple rounds of DNA testing — Dr. Sills was arrested in April 2019.
During closing arguments Monday, Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker told jurors that Dr. Sills, now 58, attacked his wife during an early-morning argument while their children slept elsewhere in the home, strangled her and then posed her body to make it look like she had died from a fall down the stairs.
“This man killed his wife and hid it,” Walker said. “And he hid it pretty well, because it took him a while to bring him to justice.”
Bloodstains were found on curtains, a wall and a nightstand in a room where investigators believe the argument took place, the prosecutor said, and blood was found on T-shirts believed to have been worn that night by both the doctor and his wife.
Walker acknowledged that she couldn’t prove a specific motive for the alleged killing. But she noted that there were several signs of strife in the couple’s marriage, including financial strain and frustration over her relationship with his older children from a previous marriage.
In one text cited by prosecutors, the wife wrote to the doctor “you are killing me, can’t you see that?” And Walker told jurors that the doctor had become “fixated” on a topless photo his wife posted in a chat room after losing a bet over whether Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination for president.
“She wants out,” Walker said. “He is not going to let that happen.”
Dr. Sills, who opted not to testify during the trial, has denied any responsibility for his wife’s death.
The weekend of the death, Susann Sills was suffering from a migraine headache. Eric Sills’ attorney, Jack Earley, argued during the trial that Susann Sills was taking a combination of medications that impacted her balance, suffered a spinal injury in a fall on the stairs that left her unable to breathe, and was “strangled” by the family’s two large, playful dogs tugging on a scarf she was wearing as she slumped unconscious.
Earley accused investigators of focusing solely on Dr. Sills and a pathologist of changing her findings regarding cause of death to match the police theory. The defense attorney also questioned the prosecutors’ contention that Dr. Sills could have used the scarf to strangle his wife.
“They talk about how smart he is, how he has a big plan,” Earley told jurors. “He has a murder weapon and what does he do? His whole plan is to leave the murder weapon around her neck, that is what they say.”
“He is not guilty,” Earley added. “He is not responsible for the death of his wife.”
The couple’s children — who are now 19 years old — both testified. The son, during his testimony at trial, backed away from comments he made to police at the time of his mother’s death about waking up to the sound of his parents arguing early in the morning. And the daughter, during her own testimony, backed the defense contention that the family dogs pulled on her mother’s scarf.
The judge is expected to outline jury instructions on Tuesday morning, which will be followed by jurors’ deliberations.